Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Message from the President It is now officially summer time. Last month I mentioned slowing down and having a more restful routine during the summer. I want to share the following article from Reform Judaism regarding the importance of The Sabbath as a day of rest. If you are like me slowing down is easier said than done, yet it is a worthy goal. While many of us are out of town more often in the summer than during the rest of the year, be sure to mark your calendars for scheduled events. Please note that our Rabbi visits continue during the summer months, and your attendance ensures our ongoing presence in the community. I look forward to seeing you soon!
Shalom,Jeff
Jeff Peller, PresidentRodeph Sholom Congregation
1
CONTACT US! Jeffrey Peller:
President [email protected]
m
Barbara Snow: VP, Sisterhood, Calendar [email protected]
m
Ron Wright: Brotherhood
Robin Gardner:
Treasurer rhungrygator@comcas
t.net
Jeff Brant: Yahrzeits, Birthdays,
Anniversaries [email protected]
JULY 2017 TAMMUZ - AV 5777
NEWSLETTER RODEPH SHOLOM ROME, GEORGIA
Shabbat: A Radical Jewish Notion reformjudaism.org In six steps, God takes the world from utter chaos to exquisite organization and then stops to rest. This is an example for all of us to follow.
Shabbat: A Radical Jewish NotionBY RABBI RUTH ADAR , 6/23/2017
Shabbat is a radical, transformative idea.In the ancient world, there were no weekends; most people worked seven days a week. Even those who lived more leisurely lives, like Pharaoh or the Mesopotamian rulers, had rigid roles to carry out and from which there was no break.Then along came the Jews, with our peculiar creation story. Unlike any other creation narrative, ours begins as follows:When God began to create heaven and earth – the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water— God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day,
2
RODEPH SHOLOM JU JULY 2017
and the darkness God called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.– Genesis 1:1-5 And so on.The process of creation is not a making from nothing, but an organization of a pre-existing chaos. From that chaos, the Creator separates light from darkness, and organizes time as well: “evening and morning, a first day.” This goes on for six “days,” with the organization becoming more and more complex and sophisticated. Then something remarkable happens:The heaven and the earth were finished, and all their array. On the seventh day God finished the work that God had been doing, and God ceased on the seventh day from all the work that God had done. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation that God had done.– Genesis 2:1-3The Creator steps back from Creation, and rests. Work stops.Some people get all wound up over this story, fighting about whether the world was “created in six days” and how that squares with evolution. Those people are missing the point, which is that in six steps, the Creator takes the world from utter chaos to exquisite organization and then stops to rest. And by “declaring it holy,” the narrative suggests this is an example to us – that will be fleshed out in the rest of the Torah.Later, we are commanded to rest on Shabbat, in case we didn’t catch it in the narrative the first time:Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Eternal your God: you shall not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, or your cattle, or the stranger who is within your settlements. For in six days the Eternal made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and God rested on the seventh day; therefore, the Eternal blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.– Exodus 20:8-11So here we are, 21st century Jews who have to figure out what to do with this idea of Shabbat. Oddly enough, we are now back in an age when more and more of us are forced to work seven days a week, with demands coming hourly through email and smartphones.It is a radical act to say, “No, I am going to make time and space in my life that I will use to be instead of to do. I will use this time to make a genuine connection with people I love. I will use that time to become more truly myself. And yes, I will rest.”It isn’t easy or profitable to do these things. It means hustling a little more to take the time off. And perhaps we need to begin by carving out a little time, gradually expanding it as we are able. That’s OK. The more Shabbat, the richer life can be; we have a lifetime to get there.Ahad Ha’am, a great Hebrew essayist and cultural Zionist wrote: “More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel.”
3
RODEPH SHOLOM JU JULY 2017
Shabbat is a taste of the world as it could be, a world in which there is no slavery, and in which every person is valued for who they are, not for what they can do. It is said that if enough Jews kept Shabbat, the world would be transformed. I believe it.
Rabbi Ruth Adar serves unaffiliated Jews in the East Bay Area of California and teaches at Lehrhaus Judaica. She blogs at Coffee Shop Rabbi.
4
RODEPH SHOLOM JULY 2017
Rodeph Sholom 2016-17 Board
Jeffrey Peller: President
Barbara Snow: Vice President
Robin Gardner: Treasurer
Jeff Brant: Past President
Ira Levy: At Large
Ron Wright: At Large
Anne Lewinson: At Large
Lyons Heyman: Emeritus
5
MISHEBERACH Prayers for Healing
With a holistic view of humankind, we pray for physical cure as well as spiritual healing. Please keep these members and friends in your thoughts and prayers: Betty White, The Troy family, Jeff Brant, Lucas Aschanfenberg, Abe Fleischer, Norma Goldman, Chris Hodges, Lester Ritter, Brenda Wall, Shawn Miller, son of Faith and Cliff, Louise Stein
RODEPH SHOLOM JULY 2017
July Schedule
Weekend of July 7th - Enjoy Shabbat with your family
Friday July 14th - 7:30 Shabbat Services with Rabbi followed by kiddush
Tuesday July 18th - 6:30 Board Meeting
Weekend of July 21st - TBD
Friday July 28th - 6:30 Covered dish followed by Shabbat Services with Rabbi Beiner
July Donations In Memory of Charmaine Raboy Florice Schneider
In Memory of Aaron Joel Goldwasser, Lake Mary, FL Nancy and Jeff Brant
To Rodeph Sholom Genie and Steve Coyle, Rome, GA
July Birthdays
7 Joshua Billian 11 Stephanie Schecter 14 Marlowe Brant 19 Leslie Goldsmith 20 Paula Wachsteter 24 Miriam Loya 27 Jeffrey Peller 28 Alex Goldsmith
July Anniversaries
1 - Barbara and Jason Bagwell 19 - Jean and Lester Ritter
6
RODEPH SHOLOM JULY 2017
July Yahrzeits 7/1 Goodman, Meyer7/4 Borochoff, Michael7/5 Mendelson, Sarah Lesser7/5 Bredosky, Solomon7/7 Foglia, Mildred Esserman7/8 Wall, Herbert7/8 Cutler, Bernie7/8 Lesser, Phillip7/10 Kauffman, Bernard7/11 Schwartz, Mitzi7/12 Bercovitz, Ike7/12 Eplan, Leon7/12 Mendelson, Jacob Edward7/17 Cohen, William7/17 Esserman, Hyman7/18 Levin, Rose Esserman7/20 Adler, Ellen Gordon Levin7/22 Isacoff, Samuel7/22 Sulzbacher, Edna7/23 Gavant, Charles Rubin7/23 Miller, Ida7/23 Rothenberg, Nathan7/24 Mendelson, Pearl Strauss7/25 Brick, Sol7/26 Feinstein, Herbert7/26 Kraft, Raye7/27 Esserman, Lettie7/30 Schwartz, Molly7/31 Friedman, Ann Stein
7
RODEPH SHOLOM JULY 2017
Emma Lazarus Poet 1849–1887
Emma Lazarus was born in New York City to a wealthy family and educated by private tutors. She began writing and translating poetry as a teenager and was publishing translations of German poems by the 1860s. Her father privately printed her first work in 1866 and the next year, her first collection, Poems and Translations (1867), appeared from a commercial press. The book gained the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others. Over the next decade, Lazarus published a second volume of poetry, Admetus and Other Poems (1871); the novel Alide: An Episode in Goethe’s Life (1874); and a play in verse, The Spagnoletto (1876). Reading George Eliot’s novel Daniel Deronda, with its exploration of Jewish identity, stirred Lazarus to consider her own heritage. In the 1880s, she took up the cause—through both poetry and prose—against the persecution of Jews in Russia, publishing a polemical pamphlet The Century (1882) and Songs of a Semite: The Dance to Death and Other Poems (1882), one of the first literary works to explore the struggles of Jewish Americans. Lazarus was one of the first successful and highly visible Jewish American authors. She advocated for Jewish refugees and argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland before the concept of Zionism was in wide circulation. After the publication of Songs of a Semite, she traveled to England and France and met and befriended poets and writers such as Robert Browning and William Morris. After her return to the United States, she was commissioned to write a poem to help raise funds for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. She initially declined and then wrote a sonnet commemorating the plight of immigrants. Lines from that 1883 sonnet, “The New Colossus,” were engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1903. After her death, the scope of Lazarus’s life and career was obscured by the fame of “The New Colossus.” There have been recent attempts to revitalize scholarship and interest in her work, including a volume of selected poems from the Library of America and a biography, Emma Lazarus (2006), by Esther Schor.
8
RODEPH SHOLOM JULY 2017
JEWISH CULTURE NEXT MONTH:
