High Holidays - September 17, 2018

High Holidays Supplement to Jewish News September 17, 2018

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have often heard congregants remark at the end of a Rosh Hashanah service how worshiping with their temple family has given them a renewed sense of community and a strong desire to help others in the New Year.

One never knows when G-d may be listening to our Rosh Hashanah resolutions.

On a frigid, snowy day this past January, Temple Emanuel lost power for more than 24 hours. A pipe froze and burst in the back of the sanctuary, flooding the building. The water’s depth varied from three to six inches.

“A man who happened to be driving past Temple Emanuel, saw water pouring out of the roof and called the Temple,” says Jason Lovitz. “He got Gary Tabakin’s cell phone number from the recording.”

Tabakin, temple president at the time, called Lovitz, second vice-president, who is a firefighter and paramedic for Norfolk Fire-Rescue, for help.

Lovitz contacted a friend (the Deputy Fire Chief in Virginia Beach), who sent a firetruck for assistance.

At Tabakin’s request, Lovitz contacted several congregants to assist with the massive clean-up. Within minutes, the Temple had a minyan of volunteers.

Finding the water valve shut off was difficult, and inches of dense snow on the ground further complicated the search.

“Once the water was shut off, the firefighters decided to stay for an additional hour just to help out,” says Lovitz.

When the water ceased gushing in, everyone momentarily breathed a sigh of relief. It was followed by the sound of volunteers sloshing through the water to rescue the temple’s sacred books.

Gail Gogan, Temple Emanuel’s office manager and Lovitz coordinated the renovation project.

The Insurance Adjuster assessed the damage and guided the process, along with James Nottingham, who served as

Lovitz’s ‘right hand man.’ Four rooms were flooded or in need of repair.

“Gary was busy taking about 12 calls a day during the 10-month restoration,” says Lovitz. “And Rabbi Marc Kraus was always available when anyone needed to blow off a little steam.”

Temple Emanuel’s executive board and board of directors approved special committees to help keep the project moving. And, Temple volunteers united to work wherever needed.

A miracle find took place when a demo team cut two feet of sheetrock off the bottom of the walls around the “Memorial Room” (located at the back of the sanctuary). Looking to see if there was an electrical socket behind the walls, Lovitz got a huge surprise.

“I looked up and saw two, gorgeous stained-glass windows,” he says. “We don’t know why they were covered up, but they now make the room even more beautiful.”

The temple removed their 50-year-old wooden pews and replaced them with new seats that are comfortable and easy to arrange to accommodate various seating patterns.

“Our new sanctuary is reconfigurable, so it will allow us to use our space much more creatively,” says Rabbi Kraus.

The congregation really loves its multi-functional features.

“When I first saw the new sanctuary, I got a warm feeling that I was home again,” says Joy Kaps, a long-time temple member. “I’m also thrilled with the seating arrangement!”

Temple Emanuel celebrated its first Jewish New Year in their newly renovated spiritual home.

“There is a famous quote from Rav Kook, who was the first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine,” says Rabbi Kraus. “The old will be made new and the new will be made holy.”

And so, it is.

High Holidays

On Yom Kippur, atoning for our online sins Edmon J. Rodman

(JTA)—If you’re like me, you blog, read, and share a lot of political stuff. But who really reads these posts and articles all the way through? Especially with the longer stories, who has time to look up the sources, or check if that odd photo was first posted on some sketchy partisan website?

Instead, we click and we skim; we copy and we paste.

But then comes Yom Kippur.

If we accept the accounting in the Talmud that says “Evil gossip kills three: the one who says it, the one who listens, and the subject of the gossip,” we may need to ante up for an awful lot of headstones come Atonement Day. The heart of the Yom Kippur liturgy is the Viddui, the two-part confessional composed of the shorter Ashamnu, an alphabetical acrostic of our wrongdoings, and the longer Al Chet, which explores, at length, the areas where we have fallen short.

When the Day of Atonement arrives, we will confess to both “unwillingly and willingly” acting out of arrogance, speaking ill of others and rashly judging others and gossiping. And in this time of extreme partisanship, that has me thinking: Has the season of politics gerrymandered our personal boundaries, reshaping the areas of shortcomings for which we need to ask forgiveness? Have we wittingly or unwittingly emailed unchecked “truths”—and sometimes checkered—to family, friends, and people we don’t even know?

The problem hit home when a friend forwarded me an email breathlessly purporting to show that by comparison to previous first ladies, Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton each had an unprecedented high number of paid White House staff. Not passing my sniff test, I looked it up on Snopes.com, a fact-checking website. I discovered the story was filled with false comparisons and easily researchable errors. Yet it was forwarded to me as if the truth.

Nothing to beat our chests over, you say? Or is it? When we wittingly or

otherwise pass along something that damages the reputation of another—not that you have done it, but, um, somebody like you—is this something that we should confess, or make amends for, on Yom Kippur?

Many of us blindly (or with one eye open) resend or post links to all kinds of things. It seems harmless, makes us feel like we are with it, and our hearts (mine included) go all aflutter when our “friends” praise us even for the most outrageous stuff.

Posting or forwarding unchecked or unread articles may seem innocuous, but it’s not.

“The speed and ease with which utter personal destruction and irreparable social division—whether the result of malice, misinformation, or well-intentioned miscalculation—can be brought about through the transmission of words is staggering,” wrote Rabbi Daniel Z. Feldman in his book, False Facts and True Rumors: Lashon HaRa in Contemporary Culture.

Speaking ill of others is known in Judaism as lashon hara—evil speech or, simply, gossip. It represents the understanding that words can do real damage—quite unlike the “but words will never hurt me” maxim we learned as children.

And once that damage is done, how do you repair it? The classic example is of breaking open a feather pillow in the wind and then trying to recover all the feathers. Now imagine the wind as the internet, spreading the “feathers” to an almost infinite number of unknown destinations. There is no way to get them all back.

Sometimes lashon hara is permitted— for instance, when it is necessary to give information to someone whom you feel will be harmed without it. However, people who are concerned about lashon hara are scrupulous with their speech about others. In places where traditional Jews do business, it’s not unusual to see a

sign that says “No Lashon Hara.”

While I don’t expect to see campaign signs dotting lawns with a similar message, perhaps a computer graphic saying “Stick to the Facts” would be useful at this time of year.

Being passive listeners or readers of gossip isn’t an excuse, either. According to Feldman, a person “who is on the receiving end of lashon hara must be careful not to act in a way that endorses or supports the offending speech. As such, we must evaluate to what degree clicking on websites, and all the more so linking to a website or distributing a link, acts as an extension and facilitation of the original message,” he wrote.

So how should we respond if we have fallen short online?

Feldman observes that lashon hara “causes greater spiritual corruption to the offender than a standard transgression causes,” since it registers “a dual effect”—harming the subject and the speaker at once.

In addition “to the appeal for forgiveness from the victim,” he offers that the three “basic steps of general repentance are called for: confession, regret and commitment to better behavior in the future.” In other words, Feldman contends that the traditional response to lashon hara is equally applicable in the digital world.

But how exactly are online amends accomplished? Once these digital “feathers” are released, how do we get them back?

When someone needs to make amends for something they have said, most experts suggest a face-to-face apology, where responsibility is taken with no excuses. For those who we know that we have hurt online, I believe a face-to-face “please forgive me”—or at least a phone

call—is very much in order.

Though a similar apology to our online minions seems a physical impossibility, I am wondering if, taking apologies into the digital age, amends could be made by posting a correction. And not just an “oops,” but a link to an analysis of the offending post that reveals its factual flaws, along with several sites useful for fact checking.

As election frenzy again is taking place during the High Holidays, chances are the shoddily sourced story you forwarded won’t cause personal damage to a candidate; some big-time politician is probably not going to be affected by your post. But what about your reputation, and your relationship with your community?

Attitudes, and possibly votes, may have changed as a result of your untrue post.

An online apology won’t get all the feathers back, but it is a start in sewing up the pillow. And providing your list with the tools to fact-check in the future would be a move toward a more aware online community.

For some, confessing our online mistakes to our friends may be the hardest part. For others, it is acknowledging our shortcomings as part of Yom Kippur’s acts of atonement. On the Day of Atonement, it is custom that with each word or phrase of the Ashamnu we strike our chests.

And this year I am going to apply the words from my prayer book to my own keyboard behavior: We transgress, we quarrel, we mock, we neglect, we gossip.

Indeed, we are probably all candidates for a keyboard confession.

Edmon J. Rodman is a JTA columnist who writes on Jewish life from Los Angeles.

Contact him atedmojace@gmail.com.

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High Holidays

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Nine things you didn’t know about Yom Kippur MJL Staff

(My Jewish Learning via JTA)—Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, starts at sundown on Tuesday, Sept. 18.

Traditionally one of the most somber days on the Jewish calendar, it’s known for fasting and repentance—not to mention killer caffeine withdrawal headaches.

However, the holiday has some lesser-known associations as well.

1. The word “scapegoat” originates in an ancient Yom Kippur ritual.

Jews historically have been popular scapegoats—blamed for an array of ills not of their creation. But, and we’re not kid-ding, they really do deserve blame (or credit) for the term scapegoat. In Leviticus 16:8 (in the Torah portion Achrei Mot), the High Priest is instructed on Yom Kippur to lay his hands upon a goat while confessing the sins of the entire community—and then to throw the animal off a cliff.

2. Another animal ritual, swinging a chicken around one’s head, has sparked considerable controversy, and not just from animal-rights activists.

In 2015, the kapparot ritual, in which a chicken is symbolically invested with a person’s sins and then slaughtered, spurred two lawsuits in the United States: one by traditional Jews claiming their right to perform it was being abridged by the government and another by animal-rights activists. Centuries earlier, the ritual drew criticism from notable sages like the Ramban (13th century) and Rabbi Joseph Caro (16th century), whose objections had less to do with animal welfare than with religious integrity.

3. Yom Kippur once was a big matchmaking day.

The Talmud states that both Yom Kippur and Tu b’Av (often described as the Jewish Valentine’s Day) were the most joyous

days of the year, when women would wear white gowns and dance in the vineyards chanting “Young man, lift up your eyes and see what you choose for yourself.

Do not set your eyes on beauty, but set your eyes on a good family.” Given the aforementioned caffeine headaches and the difficulty of making a decision on an empty stomach, we’re glad this particular tradition is no more.

4. Food and drink are not the only things Jews abstain from on Yom Kippur.

Other traditional no-nos on Yom Kippur include bathing, wearing perfume or lotions, having sexual relations and wearing leather shoes. The less-than-attractive aroma resulting from the first two restrictions (not to mention the romantic restrictions imposed by the third) may explain why the day ceased to be an occasion for finding true love.

5. In Israel, Yom Kippur is the most bike-friendly day of the year.

Although many Israelis are secular, and there is no law on the books forbidding driving on Yom Kippur, virtually all the country’s Jews avoid their cars on this day.

With only the occasional emergency vehicle on the road, bikers of all ages can be seen pedaling, even on major highways.

6. Eating a big meal before the holiday begins will make your fast harder rather than easier.

Traditionally, the meal eaten before beginning the fast is supposed to be large and festive, following the Talmudic dictum that it is a mitzvah (commandment) to eat on the eve of Yom Kippur, just as it is a mitzvah to fast on Yom Kippur itself.

However, eating extra food—particularly in one last-minute feast—does not help to keep you going for 24 hours, says Dr. Tzvi Dwolatzky of Israel’s Rambam Health

High Holidays Care Campus. He suggests eating small amounts of carbohydrates (bread, potato, rice, pasta), some protein (fish, chicken) and fruit.

7. On Yom Kippur in 1940, London’s Jews kept calm and carried on.

In the midst of the Battle of Britain, the relentless Nazi bombardment of London that began in September 1940, the city’s synagogues went on with their Yom Kippur services. According to JTA, while air raid warnings “twice disturbed” the morning services on Oct. 12, 1940, “most synagogues carried on regardless” and a “large proportion of the men attending services wore uniforms of the various forces.”

8. Yom Kippur’s Kol Nidre services are the only night of the entire Jewish

calendar when a prayer shawl is worn for evening prayers.

According to the late Rabbi Louis Jacobs, the tallit (prayer shawl) is worn during Kol Nidre as “a token of special reverence for the holy day.” It is traditional to wear a tallit or a white garment for the entire holiday, with the color white symbolizing both our spiritual purity and our removing ourselves from the vanities of the material world. Many people actually wear a white robe called a kittel.

9. A Virginia rabbi’s pro-civil rights movement sermon on Yom Kippur in 1958 riled up local segregationists and sparked fears of an anti-Semitic backlash.

JTA reported that Virginia’s Defenders of State Sovereignty group demanded that local Jews “move quickly to refute

and condemn” Rabbi Emmet Frank of Alexandria’s Temple Beth El for his sermon criticizing the state’s “massive resistance” to school desegregation and said that if he had intended to destroy Christian-Jewish relations, “he could not have been more effective.” While a “leading member” of the Reform temple reportedly said a “considerable” number of congregants worried

Frank’s stand “might result in increased anti-Semitism,” others “sided with the rabbi, holding that he held a spiritual and moral duty to speak out for social justice.”

The congregation stood by Frank, and the Washington Post published an editorial calling him a “courageous clergyman.”

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High Holidays

How to celebrate Sukkot without a sukkah Sara Shapiro-Plevan

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(My Jewish Learning via JTA)—The central mitzvah of Sukkot is found in Leviticus 23:42, where Jews are commanded to dwell in a sukkah, a temporary hut, for seven days and nights. We do this in order to remember the experiences of our ancestors, both on the journey from Egypt to the Land of Israel and in a later era, when farmers brought offerings to the ancient Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the harvest.

But many people live in climates, neighborhoods, or buildings that preclude constructing and living in a sukkah. A local synagogue, campus Hillel, or even kosher restaurant will likely have one that you can use to fulfill the mitzvah of sitting in a sukkah. Yet everyone, with or without a personal sukkah, can turn to creative interpretations of “dwelling” and focus on the aspects of Sukkot that are oriented toward other rituals and customs to enrich the holiday experience.

At home in a hut In the Torah, the children of Israel used sukkot (plural of sukkah) as their temporary homes while traveling through the desert. Instead of constructing your own temporary space—or in addition to it—you can help someone else acquire a permanent home. Habitat for Humanity runs building projects in many urban areas. There are also many Jewish organizations that address homelessness and poverty, such as the numerous groups that are part of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable. (In Tidewater, for example, area congregations participate in NEST, housing the homeless during the winter months, as well as monthly soup kitchens as the one held at Ohef Sholom Temple.)

Other service programs in the community may help individuals transition from homeless shelters into homes by collecting housewares and other necessary items. The acknowledgement that there

are those in our communities who have no shelter at all can bring a meaningful awareness to your celebration.

A temporary dwelling A sukkah is a transitional shelter meant to provide only the basic structure of a building. In fact, Jewish law requires a minimum of 2½ walls, and the ceiling, covered in tree branches and leaves, must be open enough so that the stars are visible.

One alternative is to build a sukkah-like structure indoors. For children, the act of building forts and tents is the creation of a personal play space. Adults can build a canopy over the dining room table using a tablecloth, or even over the bed—perhaps to look like a huppah, or wedding canopy—to enjoy the temporary shelter and reminder of transition that it evokes.

Harvest holiday In the Bible, Sukkot marked the time of the fruit and grape harvests. It is also harvest time in North America, and the produce of the season is readily available.

You can visit a farmer’s market or even a farm to buy or help harvest seasonal fruits and vegetables. Go apple picking or just visit the park to collect fallen leaves and twigs to use as decorations. Create centerpieces for the home with fruits and vegetables and plan meals that incorporate a wide selection of local produce.

Look for the variety of produce imported from Israel during this time of year, as well.

The four species The lulav and etrog are comprised of four kinds of plants (citron/etrog, palm/ lulav, myrtle/hadas and palm/arava) and are often called the four species, or “arba minim.” They function as one unit, and we say one blessing over them together.

High Holidays Their purpose is to gather and enjoy the plants of the land.

Anyone can shake a lulav at home, in a synagogue, or wherever you find yourself, even out in the natural world. A lulav and etrog can be found online or in a local Judaica store. Chabad of Tidewater is another local source.

The four are often referred to under the inclusive term lulav, since the lulav is the largest and most prominent of the species. Thus, while the mitzvah is to wave the lulav, this actually refers to waving all four species: palm, willow, myrtle, and etrog. Also, when people refer to the lulav and etrog, they are referring to all four species, including the willow and myrtle.

Ushpizin Welcoming guests is a Jewish value expressed all year by the mitzvah of “hachnasat orhim” (welcoming guests). Invite guests to your home for a sukkah party or a meal and serve harvest-themed treats. You might also host a picnic in a local park.

At Sukkot we specifically welcome ushpizin, traditionally one of seven exalted men of Israel to take up residence in the sukkah with us: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and David. Be creative and encourage your guests to welcome their own ushpizin — famous personalities and heroes, ancient or modern, Jewish or not Jewish, who lived exemplary

lives and continue to inspire.

The time of our joy In Jewish liturgy, Sukkot is referred to as the time of our joy, “z’man simchateinu.” Take time off to spend with family or friends, or make lots of phone calls to wish a “chag sameach,” a happy holiday, to loved ones who are too far to visit.

Make your home a joyful place with decorations in the spirit of the holiday.Decorate your front door with a harvest theme, hang paper chains from your ceilings or build a mini-sukkah out of graham crackers, pretzels, and icing to serve as a fun treat. Sukkahs (the Hebrew plural is sukkot) in Israel are often decorated with what Americans would refer to as “Christmas lights,” so grab a box and string them around your windows and walls to transform your home into a sukkah.

The space and financial investment needed to build a sukkah can be very real, but finding ways to celebrate the holiday only takes some creative thinking.

Sara Shapiro-Plevan serves as the coordinator of congregational education for New York City for the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York.

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