VI: Newspaper and News Service Clips on Last Year's National Unity Shavuot
- "Under One Roof," The Jewish Journal (of L.A.), May 7, 1999
- "Torah for Torah's Sake," The Jewish Journal (of L.A.), May 21, 1999
- "A Study in Unity," The New York Jewish Week, May 21, 1999
- "Editorial," The New York Jewish Week, May 21, 1999
- "Jews of All Denominations Come Together to Study, Pray," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 19, 1999
Under One Roof Twelve area synagogues invite the community to come together and study TorahFROM: The Jewish Journal (of Los Angeles) May 7, 1999
By Julie Gruenbaum Fax, Religion Editor
In a bold step toward interdenominational peace, 12 area synagogues are inviting the community to come together this week to study the one thing that unites Jews from across the religious spectrum: Torah.
The May 10 event comes just before Shavuot, the holiday that celebrates the receiving of the Torah, and is billed as something of a re-enactment of Sinai, where tradition holds that all Jews-past, present and future-stood together.
"Ultimately, what binds us as a people, more than anything else, is our common commitment to Torah, and upholding Torah and living Torah," says B'nai David-Judea Congregation's Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky. "Our defining, crystallizing moment as a nation was when we stood as one people with one heart to receive God's word."
Congregants and community members from all denominations will come together to study biblical, midrashic, liturgical and talmudic sources regarding the receiving of Torah. Participants will first break up into groups of four to study selected texts, and then, after refreshments and music with Sinai Temple's Craig Taubman, they will gather into larger groups with rabbis to discuss the texts.
"We are starting with the assumption that every Jew has a place in Torah and that the Torah has a special message revealed through each individual Jew," says Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, executive vice president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.
"Meeting in Torah," co-sponsored by the Board of Rabbis and the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership (CLAL), will be held at the Jewish Federation’s new Westside facility on Sawtelle Boulevard.
Participating synagogues include Adat Shalom, Beth Jacob Congregation, B'nai David-Judea, Ohr HaTorah, Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, Shaarei Tefila, Sinai Temple, Temple Beth Am, Temple Emanuel, Temple Isaiah, Temple Israel of Hollywood and Wilshire Boulevard Temple. One need not be a member of one of these synagogues to attend.
The overall goal is to understand that, though we may interpret things very differently, we are all starting at the same place and all have a common devotion to the same holy text," Kanefsky says. "That reality should be very powerfully reinforced."
Temple Israel of Hollywood's Rabbi Michelle Missaghieh, who, along with Kanefsky, organized the event, says that the texts should elicit personal reactions and experiences rather than partyline denominational thinking.
"We are all engaging the texts and coming at it not only from our movements but personally," says Missaghieh. "Each movement is not homogenous. Each person comes with his or her own history and biases and love and passion."
That became clear when the rabbis themselves sat down to study the texts in preparation for the evening, trying to get a taste of what the participants would be thinking and feeling.
The process began last October, when Kanefsky, Missaghieh, Temple Beth Am's Rabbi Perry Netter and Sinai Temple's Rabbi Sherre Zwelling attended a CLAL conference where rabbis from Chicago presented a successful interdenominational program they had organized last Shavuot.
In fact, such interdenominational programming has been on the rise recently, in Los Angeles and elsewhere. With the conversion crises hemorrhaging in Israel and religious pluralism taking a sound beating, many community leaders are scrambling to prove that there is such a thing as one Jewish People.
In Los Angeles last year, 40 rabbis signed on to an agreement that laid out simple guidelines for engaging each other with respect. Smaller inter-synagogue programs occur regularly.
For Missaghieh, who has planned several such events at her synagogue, it is an effort that is both natural and necessary.
"The Jewish people, within our diversity, have so many things we can share and struggle with together," she says. "No matter what movement we're from, we have a precious gem, which is Torah."
"Meeting in Torah' takes place Monday, May 10, from 7:30 to 9:45 p.m., at the Jewish Federation's Westside facility, 1950 Sawtelle, north of Olympic (parking in the building is free). For more information, call the Board of Rabbis at (323) 761-8600.
FROM: The Jewish Journal (of Los Angeles) May 21, 1999
Torah For Torah's SakeThe Jewish Federation's Westside facility was transformed into a beit midrash, a traditional Jewish study hall, last week when more than 250 people of all denominations gathered to study Torah together.
'There were people sitting and standing in every crevice of the two rooms and hallway that were used," says Temple Israel of Hollywood's Rabbi Michelle Missaghieh, who helped organize the event. "People were studying all over the place."
Missaghieh says attendance exceeded all expectations, as Jews from across the city demonstrated their enthusiasm for studying Torah with others who might have a different point of view.
The event, called 'Meeting in Torah," was sponsored by the Board of Rabbis of Southern California and CLAL - The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and supported by a dozen Westside shuts of all denominations. Musician Craig Taubman also led the group in songs, and at one point had ail participants singing and swaying together to "Shehecheyanu."
Similar programs 'in Denver, Miami, New York and Chicago are being held in the weeks before Shavuot (which began Thursday night), the holiday that celebrates the giving of the Torah.
In fact the texts selected for the evening revolved around different concepts of Torah.
"People enjoyed the atmosphere in which they could feel comfortable sharing their thoughts about how they see Torah, how they understand Torah," says Yosef Kanefsky, the rabbi of B'nai David Judea Congregation, who also helped organize the event. "We wanted to create a forum where Jews could, with love and honesty, share Torah with each other, and in that sense we succeeded beyond our dreams."
The event was so successful organizers hope to make it a yearly happening, and they are exploring possibilities for doing even more. Whatever the exact format future events take, one thing is dear to Kanefsky:
"Torah study is the right formula."
From: The New York Jewish Week, May 21, 1999
A Study In UnityBy: ERIC J.GREENBERG, Staff Writer
Rabbis from across denominational divide, scholars gather for Shavuot learning in pilot project.
Talk about mixing it up. A diverse group of rabbis and Jewish scholars assembled Monday at a Catholic university campus on the Upper West Side for a night of Jewish learning in honor of Shavuot, the holiday marking the giving of the Ten Commandments.
The rabbis, from institutions across the denominational spectrum, gathered at Fordham University's Pope Auditorium to study at the first-ever National Unity Shavuot, co-sponsored by CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.
About 250 people from throughout New York City attended the event, designed to spur interdenominational unity - and partly because of CLAL's concern that Shavuot is a generally ignored holiday in American Jewish life compared to the more popular Passover and Chanukah.
As part of a pilot project, a similar gathering was held last week in Los Angeles that attracted about 250 people with 13 synagogues participating. The learning sessions were expected to be duplicated as well on the first night of Shavuot in Chicago and Miami.
The gathering at Fordham Law School, titled "Our Jewish Journeys: Community Study for Shavuot" was co-sponsored by Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper East Side; the Conservative Congregation Shaare Zedek; the Reconstructionist West End Synagogue; the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, a Conservative-Reconstructionist center; and the JCC on the Upper West Side.
"The events represent the willingness of participants to put aside their denominational differences to re-enact a moment which tradition says stressed both the unity and individuality of Jews," said Rabbi Rachel Sabath, CLAL's director of rabbinic programs.
The program was advertised with the phrase "One People, One Mountain, One Book, Many Voices."
Participants were divided into groups of 12 in the noisy auditorium, where they studied and discussed a biblical text.
Sitting on the floor in a corner of the hall, Professor David Kraemer of the Jewish Theological Seminary explored the paragraph from Genesis in which God commands Abraham to leave his homeland for an unknown place.
"It's about journeys," Kraemer said. "What does the text here have to do with what came before?"
Shavuot, an agricultural festival in the Bible, traditionally includes the all-night study of Jewish texts on the first evening of the two-day holiday. It also features the reading of the Book of Ruth, the biblical story of a Moabite woman who "converts" to Judaism and becomes the ancestor of King David.
In an inspired move, organizers tapped as guest speaker The New York Times Magazine editor Stephen Dubner, author of the best-selling "Turbulent Souls: A Catholic Son's Return to His Jewish Family." Capsulizing his book, Dubner told movingly of how his parents, Brooklyn-born Jews, had independently converted to Catholicism in their youth, and his long journey to discover and reclaim his Jewish roots. He compared his parents' conversion to Abraham's sojourn, and his own search to Ruth's tale.
Dubner confided that a coincidence cemented his belief that searching for Judaism was the proper path: He discovered that a long-lost cousin was the Hollywood actress Ilana Eden, whose only starring role was playing Ruth in a 1950s movie "The Story of Ruth." "It was then I thought `there's something to this,' " he said.
Even as the spirit of unity was being stressed, it was clear that the gathering did not have Orthodox representation from the right wing. Orthodox participants such as Rabbis Aaron Frank and Barry Gelman are assistants to Rabbi Avi Weiss, a Modern Orthodox spiritual leader in Riverdale, and Rabbi Joshua Lookstein is the assistant and son of Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the centrist rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun. Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for Agudath Israel of America, noted there were no representatives of any of the prominent ultra-Orthodox yeshivas from Lakewood, NJ, Baltimore or Brooklyn.
"The right wing world was not there, and we're quite a major part of renaissance of Orthodoxy today," he said. But in a sort of double bind for CLAL organizers, Rabbi Shafran acknowledged that while his group was not invited, it would not have come anyway. "We don't participate in gatherings that could be misunderstood by people as endorsing the concept of `multiple Judaisms,' " he said. "CLAL's whole essence is dedicated to the concept of Jewish pluralism," which he said Agudah strongly opposes. "You can't believe halacha [Jewish law] is dependent on the culture of the day and at the same time is timeless," Rabbi Shafran said. "To pretend these things are minor issues is a disservice to the participants and to the Jewish people as a whole."
But Rabbi Shafran welcomed participants to come to study Torah on Shavuot "no matter what their affiliation, in the many shins and yeshivot" affiliated with Agudath Israel.
Similarly, Rabbi Daniel Brenner, director of CLAL's National Jewish Resource Center, said his group "wants to make every effort to reach out to people as far right as we can to get them involved in work we do. "We feel anyone interested in dialogue instead of monologue is welcome. I think you have to bring you differences to the table," he said. " When you do, you not only challenge your ideas but you strengthen your ideas." Rabbi Brenner said CLAL often gets "the cold shoulder" from people in the right-wing community. "We want to welcome their voice in this dialogue," he said. "It's an area which needs expansion. We need to expand the dialogue as far as we possibly can."
The New York Jewish Week, May 21, 1999
Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks celebrated this weekend, is a timely reminder of the importance of unity to the Jewish people. Falling this year just four days after the Israeli national elections, Shavuot marks the moment of ultimate Jewish harmony, when the People of Israel gathered at Mt. Sinai and accepted the Torah. Indeed, tradition has it that every Jewish soul— past, present and future—was a witness to the revelation.
The festival does not have the ritual symbols of the Passover seder or the Sukkot lulav, etrog and sukkah, but it commemorates the tote belief system of the Jewish people and religion, the Torah, with its history and its mitzvot that still guide us today. On Shavuot it is customary to stay up all night reading and studying the Torah and its teachings, renewing our partnership with God at Sinai and our commitment to live Jewish lives.
At a time when Jewish unity is threatened here and in Israel by social, theological and political rifts, we must redouble our efforts to find ways to bring us together by focusing on what unites rather than separates us as a people. One positive sign was a joint study project of rabbis and scholars across denominational lines that took place this week, in honor of Shavuot, in New York, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles. The sessions, sponsored by CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, showed that participants were able to put aside their denominational differences in the interest of increasing Torah study. May such efforts continue to grow.
In Israel, in the wake of a bitter, five-month long election campaign that emphasized strong societal differences, heating should be a priority of the next government Gaps must be bridged between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, religious and secular, hawks and doves, and wealthy and poor. Shavuot reminds us what holds us together-one people, one mountain, one Torah. The Talmud teaches that the beginning and end of Torah is performing acts of loving-kindness: Surely an increase in tolerance, understanding and performance of mitzvot will bring merit on alt of us this Shavuot and bring us all one step closer together.
FROM: JTA On Line (The Jewish Telegraphic Agency) 5-19-00
HOLIDAY FEATURE:
Jews of All Denominations Come Together to Study, Pray on Shavuot
By Julia Goldman
NEW YORK, May l9 (JTA) -- After the religious-secular tensions that marked Israel's recent election campaign, the idea of all Jews standing together as a people to receive the Torah at Mount Sinai may seem a distant dream.
But each spring, Jews celebrate the holiday of Shavuot, which begins at sundown Thursday. The, festival commemorates the moment when the Israelites became a community of 600,000 living according to one sacred text.
In an effort to recreate that event, a group of young rabbis affiliated with CLAL -- The National Jewish, renter for learning and Leadership -- organized the first National Unity Shavuot and an accompanying Web site.
This series of interdenominational gatherings in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Miami builds oil the traditional Shavuot practice of staying up all night to study in groups.
One of CLAL's aims is to bring together rabbis of all Jewish outlooks to study, sing and engage in open dialogue, overcoming differences in denomination and gender.
Several times a year, the New York-based organization invites small groups of up-and-coming rabbis from across the country on retreats, where secluded settings foster the building of mutual understanding arid some unusual compromises.
Rabbi Carol Levithan, who works at a Jewish Community Center in Manhattan, recalled a recent retreat in Newport, RI, at which the rabbis "worked out a remarkable compromise" so that they could pray together.
The women sat on one side; men on the other, with a line of chairs between them: Men who were comfortable sitting with the women were free to do so, and women read from the Torah.'
"It required some give on both sides," Levithan said. "The beauty of the experience was that that was accomplished."
Inspired by such experiences at the retreats, the National Unity Shavuot organizers sought to bring the same pluralistic spirit to the community at large.
"Movements are just labels we use to define ourselves," said Rabbi David Kalb of Westport, Conn.
Such labeling is "ludicrous" and divisive, Kalb said, with an arm-waving flourish. "Why don't we just come back to the text?"
In New York on Monday evening, about 300 people checked political discussions about that day's election at the door of the Pope Auditorium at Fordham University in Manhattan. Sitting in circles in groups of 12, they took up a selection of texts culled from the Bible, rabbinic sources, contemporary writings and the Book of Ruth, which is usually read on Shavuot.
CLAL-affiliated rabbis and invited scholars led discussions on the theme of "Jewish Journeys" -- from the patriarch Abraham to Lena Romanoff, an author and contemporary convert to Judaism -- as the participants leaned in to hear above the volley of voices in the large hall.
Stephen Dubner, the best-selling author of "Turbulent Souls: A Catholic Son's Return to His Jewish Family," also spoke about his own spiritual path to the birth religion of his parents, who converted and raised him as a Catholic.
The event was co-sponsored by four local synagogues and the JCC on the Upper West Side.
The diversity of the crowd was evident from the array of kipot, flowing tresses, buns, toupees and balding pates.
But differences in age, denomination and level of Jewish knowledge did not seem to hinder the free flow of conversation.
"The nature of the discussion and the subject matter lent itself to centrality and universal issues," said Judy Eiger of Staten Island, N.Y., who was there with her husband and son.
Art Wernicke, a member of a Reform study group, or havurah, in Greenwich, Conn., came to the event that evening at Kalb's invitation.
"Most people today think there is a gulf' between Jews of different denominations, Wernicke said. But his chavurah was "more impressed by the commonality than by the differences" in Kalb's approach.
"The cross-fertilization was terrific," added Barbara Kasman, another member of the Greenwich chavurah.
To promote a similar exchange of ideas, CLAL put together its Shavuot Web site (www.shavuot.org) so that Jews across the country could take part in the study and discussion.
"The Web is the form where we have the potential to break down boundaries," said Rabbi Daniel Brenner, a Reconstructionist rabbi who works for CLAL and organized the Shavuot event and Web site.
The Internet medium is "perfect to advance the idea that there are many Judaisms," Brenner said.
There could be hundreds or thousands, he said, depending on how one understands "what the tradition means and how to balance it with contemporary life."
Mutual understanding is the key to Jewish unity, he said, citing an Orthodox colleague, Rabbi Joshua Lookstein, whom he met through CLAL.
Brenner recalled Lookstein telling him, "If this really works, then I can imagine" even those Jews who "oppose us will see there is one Jewish people, and we can get beyond classifying each other."
© Jewish Telegraphic Agency Inc. May 21, 1999
Copyright 1999-2003, CLAL - The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership