NE HIST SOCIETX 1500 R ST 1INCOEN NE 6 8 5 0 8 - 1 6 5 1
Celebrating More Than 75 Years VoLLXXV
No. 9
21 Cheshvan, 5758
Omaha, NE
NCJW makes gift in honor of Israel's 50th
Book Fair luncheon speaker to discuss'nostalgic journey' by Diane Axler Baum
NCJW National Vice-president was in Israel last week as part of a Leadership Mission. The group visited several sites of NCJW projects, including this kindergarten in Beit Shemesh.
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In honor of Israel's upcoming 50th anniversary, a leadership delegation of the National Council of Jewish Women traveled to Israel last week. In addition to hearing from high level American and Israeli government officials, the organization made (Continued on page 8)
November 21,1997
Writer Elizabeth Ehrlich, who formerly covered energy,'finance and Bocial issues for Business Week, will keynote the Jewish Book Fair's annual Community Luncheon on Wednesday, Dec. 5, at noon, at the JCC. She will speak on "A Nostalgic Journey through the Year: Holidays & Honey Cake," based on her new book Miriam's Kitchen: A Memoir. In Miriam's Kitchen, Ehrlich chronicles her personal progression from religious ambivalence to Jewish fulfillment, a path of rediscovery that begins with the cooking lessons given by her mother-in-law, Miriam, a Holocaust survivor. Miriam passionately carries on the traditions she learned in her village in Poland. Talking while she cooks, she shares with her daughter-in-law many of her life experiences before and after World War EC. Ehrlich builds her book around these recollections and skillfully intersperses 26 recipes from Miriam's Jewish kitchen. Luncheon co-chairmen are Marsha Kleinberg and Frances Gottlieb, who said, This is a heartfelt book. "Miriam teaches her daughter-in-law more than how to make chopped liver, apple cake and cholent. She gives her valuable lessons in life, -strength, and the meaning of family traditions." The book also serves as a vehicle for the author to speak out on womanhood and motherhood, faith
and belief, and the importance of passing tradition from generation to generation. It has received praise by other authors who write on Jewish subjects. Anne Roiphe, for example, called it "a rich stew of tradition and innovation," and Daphne Merkin said it poses "serious questions about the need to define Elizabeth Ehrlich ourselves in a wide-open American culture, as well as the ways in which our hunger for meaning goes unfed by that culture." Ehrlich was born in Detroit in 1954, attended the Detroit Public Schools, and graduated magna cum Iaude in.History from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. • --^ r"I Following graduation, she worked a stretch of temporary jobs and freelance writing. She was a staff aid to the Michigan Legislature for 18 months, (Continued on page 2)
Reform/ Conservatsue groups host annual conventions Leaders urge spiritual return, well aware of the challenges by Debra Nussbaum Cohen
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DALLAS (JTA) - So many Reform Jews attended morning prayers during their biennial convention here that they spilled out into the hotel lobby. With the doors of three' adjacent alternative services open, the recitation of the Shema in different tunes merged into one powerful, spiritual song. About half the men - and many women - covered their heads with kipot at Shabbat morning services. It was the first time that organizers of the gathering of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Reform movement's congregational body, had made yannulkas available. And unlike earlier conventions, where only a sprinkling of people wore tallitot, or prayer shawls, this year there were too many to count. In his Shabbat morning sermon, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the UAHC, demanded ~ in strong language that got several standing ovations — that Jews rise up from their "crippling ignorance." For several years now, the movement - with 875 congregations, the largest in America - has been in transition. However, at this 64th biennial, which drew 4,500 Jews from acroBs the country, the movement's top leaders officially embraced tradition in a way never before seen at a UAHC convention. From. Torah-chanting lessons to the distribution of new booklets of Sabbath and holiday prayers and songs, the direction was unequivocal. The 50-year-old Yoffie warned the delegates that if they did not become serious about the Jewish part of their Reform Judaism, the movement would be so weakened that it would cease to be effective. "Never in our history has the gap between the serious Reform Jew and the non-serious Reform Jew been so great," he said to the delegates gathered in a cavernous hotel convention space-turnedeanctuary. "Too many of us can name the mother of Jesus, but not the mother of Moses; we know the author of Das Kapital, but not the author of the
Guide for the Perplexed," referring to Marx's bible of communism and Maimonides' seminal redaction of Jewish law forilay people. Yoffie kicked off five new programs to help Reform Jews get where he wants them to go. On the regional and local level, he Rabbi Eric Yoffie said the UAHC will help Reform Jews: * Learn how to chant the Torah, an honor usually reserved for the rabbi in Reform congregations; .* Read and discuss at least four serious Jewish books each year; * Study relevant Jewish texts as part of every temple committee meeting; * Include Torah study in each Sabbath service; anrl at home; * Gather on the eve of Shavuot next year to learn together on a night when Jews traditionally stay up late studying the book of Ruth and other Jewish texts. • ' • Yet within the movement, not all members are embracing the the new turn toward tradition. "A lot of people in this movement are doing it to feel more Orthodox, more authentic," said one woman at the convention who asked that she not be named. "And that's not what Reform is supposed to be about." Indeed, the emphasis on tradition poses challenges for a movement that has long rejected i t (Continued on page 4)
Conservative Jews different, despite alliance with Reform by Debra Nussbaum Cohen : , : KIAMESHA LAKEi NY; (JTA) - When it comes to religious pluralism in Israel, the Reform movement has gotten most of the press. '•••'•'"" : "• The- Conservative movement has been largely ignored by Orthodox religious and political leaders and' spared'the rhetorical barbs aimed at the Reform, a group thought by many Israelis to include everyohe.who isnotOrthodox and whiichis publicly derided by some influential Orthodox'leaders as "close to Christianity;"' • ••• •••.•:"• ':•• "':;• But now the Masorti movement, the Israeli'arm of the Conservative movement, is beginning to be understood as something quite different from Reform, its leaders say. •• Indeed; Reform and Conservative Judaism do differ i n significant ways. A s a result, there are different opinions within the Conservative movement as to how far the alliance with the Reform should go. ' Stephen Wolnek, the newly elected international president of. the United Synagogue ; for Conservative Judaism, said that although the Masorti and Reform movements are allied in thenfight for official recognition in the Jewish state, "We would not allow the Reform movement to veto a solution within the Ne'eman Committee that we : ; find acceptable." ; ; ; .'' ',• ;;'v:'.;v;-v;v; ;•:•-..: Womek of Port Washington, N.Y., was referring to the committee empowered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to find a way to reconcile the Reform and Conservative movements' demands for the legal recognition of their marriages, conversions and divorces with the Orthodox rabbinate's demand that the status quo - in which they have sole control over all matters of personal religious identity--be maintained. Wolnek made his comments in an interview.at the biennial convention of his organization, held at the Concord Hotel in the Catskill Mountains last . (Continued on page 4)