Category: General CCAR

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What It Means to Truly Live Jewishly

Rabbi Shoshanah Conover

I first heard of Emmanuel Levinas when I was a first year student in rabbinical school.  Rabbi Levi Lauer, then head of Diapora-Israel relations and scholar at Shalom Hartman Institute, addressed first-year students in hopes of recruiting some of us to attend Hartman’s seminar for rabbinical students.  In the midst of his remarks, he summed up the essence of the philosophy of Levinas  in one sentence.  I still remember Lauer’s phrasing: “When you meet another person and look into their eyes, you take responsibility for them.”  This notion of the mutual responsibility of humanity resonated deeply.

I barely studied Levinas in rabbinical school– just one hour in a class with Dr. Eugene Borowitz.  It wasn’t until I came to Chicago, three years out of school, that I began to study him.

When I arrived to Chicago, I almost immediately found a perfect chevrutah, the extraordinary Rabba Rachel Kohl Finegold.  We decided to learn together Nine Talmudic Readings by Emanuel Levinas.  She was the Gemara queen and I had “a bit” of a knack for the commentary by Levinas.  We managed to get through four of his transcribed lectures before life intervened in our intensive studies.

One lecture stood out among the rest– “Temptation of Temptation”.  There, he analyzed the passage from the Talmud (BT Shabbat 88a-b) beginning with the midrash of God holding Mt Sinai over the Hebrews like a titled tub.  In his analysis, Levinas criticizes “Western Man” for his constant dabbling into ideas, never committing to any one thing.  Yet, in our receiving of Torah, the Israelites accepted the ethic of action– of responding to the Other.  At our core, according to the ideal of Levinas, we understand that “the messenger is the message.”

I have studied this lecture intensively three times now.  First with Rachel, then with a beloved colleague and conservative rabbi Adam Kligfeld.  And this year, I studied it with high school senior Caroline Kaplan.  I want to share with you excerpts of how she described the experience in her Dvar Torah at her Kabbalat Torah ceremony:

For months now I’ve had a sticky note up in the corner of my computer. It reads, “We live in a world that gives no room to be what we dreamt of being”.  Poet Adrienne rich wrote this. She was a woman, a Jew and gay, none of which are easy to be.  …

I connected with this quote because she articulated the hopelessness I’d seen around me.

 How can we move forward when there is so much to do, so much to repair, and so many distractions that keep us from truly committing to do good works?

The answer is at once both obvious and complicated; so of course Torah and the great scholars who study it could only give the answer.   I was looking for a place, something to ground me, to give me purpose. I needed to reconnect. That’s what I told Rabbi Conover, and she immediately knew what I needed. “Levinas!” she said, and she couldn’t have been more right.

Together we read Levinas’s Talmudic commentary entitled “Temptation of Temptation”, which made me understand what it means to truly live Jewishly.

The passage in the Talmud begins with a famous Midrash.

“God inclined the mountain over [the Israelites] like a tilted tub and said: If you accept the Torah, all is well, if not here will be your grave.”

Levinas saw this not as being threatened with physical death, but instead the threat was an even greater one. If we didn’t accept Torah we were to spend the rest of our lives just wandering in the desert—tempted by all kinds of ideas and interests. The wandering and never committing to a real ethic would’ve been the greatest death of all.

The passage in the Talmud continues  on with the response of the Israelites when we are offered the Torah.  We responded:  Naseh vinishma, “we will do, and we will hear “ implying we will do before we hear.

So what does it mean to do before hearing?

According to Levinas it means to truly respond to another’s need, without weighing all the available opportunities, or contemplating all the other options. … According to Levinas,“Consciousness is the urgency of a destination leading to the other person and not an eternal return to self.” So much of my learning in secular education and in my life has been about dabbling.  Learning for knowledge’s sake, being well rounded. … Torah teaches us that there is only one true piece ofknowledge that we must learn: “The messenger is the message.” Our duty is to respond to their needs, their voice.  It’s a different kind of learning and being in this world. And that’s what I’m embracing when I receive Torah this evening. That’s the way I want to live in this world, by acting. Not just so I can become what I dreamt of being, but so I can listen and respond to others—help their dreams to be realized too.

In my life I’ll extend my hand whenever needed. I’ll wander through this desert with a purpose. This connecting with others is what I need to do, hearing the needs of the ones aroundme and responding.  This is how the people like …family have begun to change the world. In the years to come I’ll join them in making room for dreams to be realized, those who commit and act, those are the ones who repair the world, and that is the type of woman I’m becoming.

My family at home has certainly helped me strive to become this kind of woman, yet my family here at the Temple has inspired and embraced my development as a Jew and as a person in crucial ways.

Emmanuel Levinas (photo: CC BY-SA 2.0)
Emmanuel Levinas (photo: CC BY-SA 2.0)

Rabbi Shoshanah Conover serves Temple Sholom of Chicago.

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General CCAR Rabbis Reform Judaism

We Are All the Interim Rabbi

In the opening months of my tenure at my new congregation, I said to a group of lay leaders, “I am the interim rabbi.”  No, I didn’t mean that I would move on at the end of a year, like the outstanding intentional interim colleague who served so well in that capacity before my arrival.  Still, I meant what I said.

There was a time that such a thought would have shocked me.  I served more than twenty years in one congregation, beginning a year after ordination.  I expected to serve there until retirement, then actively as rabbi emeritus until burial in that Temple’s cemetery.  I envisioned my rabbinate as intimately bound to that singular synagogue.

The future I envisioned was not to be.  After a traumatic upheaval, I submitted my resignation; then, however awkwardly, by mutual agreement, I continued to serve in limited ways during a year’s sabbatical.  Over the course of those months, I came to the realization — at first painful, and ultimately comforting — that the congregation and I would be just fine without one another.

I began to divide the ways of that congregation into three categories:  1) Practices that predated my rabbinate there; 2) Aspects that colleagues, congregants and I had built together; and 3) Innovations that sprang into being after me, before I was even fully out the door.

My division of that congregation’s world, though, was false. Even if I was there much too long to have been what we derisively term an “unintentional interim,” I had been the interim rabbi.  We all are.  Congregations have stories that begin before we arrive and continue after we leave.  Even our most lasting and well-remembered impact would likely have happened, in one form or another, had somebody else been in “our” pulpit.  בלעדי, Yoseph said, “Without me, God (and unseen forces of history) will see to (the congregation’s) welfare.”

This realization requires a humility, a ביטול היש, that challenges everyone, perhaps particularly rabbis.  Its acceptance, though, may lead to a healthier, happier rabbinate, not to mention more successful congregational transitions.

Whether we serve five years or fifty, we can help our congregants become the Jews they can best become, facilitate meaning and service in our communities, and summon the Divine Presence.  If we see ourselves as interim rabbi, for four years or forty, we can leave our congregations healthy.  Read that last sentence again; it’s an intentional double entendre:  Both we and our congregations need to be healthy at the end of our tenures.

When an interim rabbi leaves, at the end of one year or a full career, s/he can find a new, fulfilling life, potentially including meaningful rabbinical service, outside that congregation.  When an interim rabbi leaves, after two years or twenty, the congregation can be primed to welcome a new rabbinical leader, to continue its history into its future, from strength to greater strength.

Rabbi Barry Block serves Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, AR.

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Books General CCAR Passover Pesach Technology

Post-Pesach Blog: Zero-Based Seder Leading with Sharing the Journey Haggadah

Passover might be over, but it’s not too late (or too early…) to look back and start to bank ideas for next year.  Rabbi Eddie Goldberg shares thoughts from his seder experience. 

Recently a stressed-out father asked me what haggadah would be best for a family with youngish children.  I was happy to recommend Sharing the Journey (CCAR Press), by Alan S. Yoffie and illustrated by Mark Podwal. But I reminded the dad that the haggadah does not a good seder make, by itself.  The more important question is not which haggadah but what is one trying to accomplish.  Indeed, a case in Chicago could be made for taking the children to Lake Shore Drive and asking them to imagine reaching a large body of water with a hostile army in pursuit.  What would they do?

Nevertheless, due to Chicago weather (it was snowing during the seder) and inconvenient rules involving religious rituals on state beaches, the seder we conducted last night was a close second to being the most authentic Pesach moment for the eleven of us, mostly cousins, who shared a seder for the first time ever or, if not, then in about thirty-five years.

In preparing for the seder I knew that the new haggadah would serve us well with its respect for tradition, beautiful appearance, transliteration (mostly) and contemporary spin.  I also spend a lot of time on a Power Point (or Keynote) component.  (I even have a version of the new haggadah on my iPad.)  Although I found the Visual Tefilah Haggadah supplement well done, I chose after considerable thought to use instead my own, which does not follow the new haggadah so much as provide a midrashic complement to it.  In general I see electronic tefilah (or seders) as an enrichment and not mirroring of the worship or ritual experience.

I am glad to report that, due in some measure to my efforts and the invaluable help of my 23-year old USC computer science grad, the seder came off without a hitch.  The incredible culinary talents and warmth of my wife did not hurt either.  It was great presenting a seder experience to contemporaries who thought that Maxwell House equaled the tip-top of haggadah offerings.  We also had a nine-year old cousin who had never attended a seder before.  She entered visibly scared and annoyed and left the star of the seder and having asked all the right questions and more!

Tonight the seder will be presented at our congregation with the new haggadot.  I know the food and atmosphere will not be able to  match last night’s efforts but I am delighted that, if we succeed, the haggadah will have proven its worth once again as a sacred component of an evergreen evening.

RabbiGoldbergSeder-2014

Edwin Goldberg, D.H.L., is the senior rabbi of Temple Sholom of Chicago and is one of the editors of Mishkan HaNefesh, the new CCAR machzor.

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Azkarot General CCAR Rabbis Reform Judaism

Azkarot: Introducing a New RavBlog Feature

Lazarus Bach, alav hashalom, was a UAHC Board member for a number of years in the 1950s and 1960s. It was in that capacity, I imagine, that he came into possession of several years’ worth of CCAR Yearbooks. I remember pulling them down from the shelf in my grandparents’ den and flipping through them on Friday nights before Temple, while Grandpa Laz watched the Mets. And so it was that, as a pretty young kid, I first became aware of the workings of our Conference. I didn’t understand much of what I was reading, but I remember feeling like my grandfather was pretty important for being connected to those books. I also remember, very clearly, a sense of wonder at the Memorial Tributes and the “List of Deceased Members.”

All things pass, including grandfathers and CCAR Yearbooks. As the Conference deploys its resources differently in the present day, we no longer receive a bound volume with the proceedings of our convention and other business of the conference. I’m not complaining. I love that we have archived streams of many conference sessions, I frequently access materials on the CCAR  website, I appreciate the way in which Ravblog has become a creative publishing space, and I enjoy the informality and immediacy of our Facebook group.

I do miss those memorial tributes, though. More to the point, I miss the idea of them, the notion that we are a Conference which doesn’t let its members fade from memory. In a conversation with Rabbi Hara Person at the CCAR Press display last week in Chicago, I mentioned that fact. In bringing it up, I momentarily forgot that, in that setting, Hara was the Rabbi and I was the congregant. Hara knows (as we all do) what to say when a congregant has an idea: “Great idea, Larry. How’d you like to take it on?” I decided to say what we all hope to hear when we kick that idea back in our eager congregant’s direction: “Sure, Hara, I’ll do it.”

And so, welcome to a new feature of RavBlog: Azkarot. With the “azkarot” tag, we intend to recreate via Ravblog part of what was lost with the transition away from a physical CCAR Yearbook: a repository of memorial tributes for our colleagues who have died. Our first post, which will go live next week, will be Rabbi Margie Meyer’s tribute to Janice Garfunkel (z”l), offered at last week’s WRN Dinner. Others will follow in due course.

Others will follow in due course, provided we have the material. And so, this is my plea: the azkarah you offered at a regional kallah, the hesped you shared at a beloved colleague’s funeral…please send them along to me. I’ll work with Hara to ready them for publication on Ravblog, and they’ll be posted as a semi-regular feature of the site. We no longer have a physical yearbook in which to publish memorial tributes, but we need not let go of the practice of remembering, as a Conference, when our members die.

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CCAR Convention General CCAR Rabbis Reform Judaism

A Conference of Colleagues, A Blessing of Rabbis

I’m not sure what one calls a large gathering of rabbis. Is it a rabble of rabbis? A den of rabbis? A blessing of rabbis? Whatever the official appellation, there sure were a lot of us at the CCAR convention I just attended in Chicago. In fact there were over 500 rabbonim gathered at the Fairmont Hotel for 4 days of learning, studying, schmoozing, and connecting. As always it is a sweet reunion of old friends, pulling out our iPhones, sharing pictures of our spouses and our kids and now for some of us, our grandchildren. It has also become a chance to meet new colleagues with new ideas about so much of what we senior rabbis have been doing for decades. These encounters can be bracing: the young are so certain about so much… These encounters can also be humbling, because they produce fresh insights into long held views on any number of practices.

We invite young scholars, many of them now teaching at Hebrew Union College, the Reform seminary. And they are so smart! So credentialed from fine universities: Yale, Sorbonne, Hebrew University, and so forth… We learn that there are few eternal verities in Jewish Studies.

We also invite people from the world of business and politics to share their wisdom as it relates to Jewish life and leadership. With them we learn the shifting complexities and expectations of community, whether that be a community of consumers, Congressmen and women, or congregants. It is sobering for all of us to recognize that everyone agrees with the notion that we are living during a transition; we just don’t know to what we’re transitioning. There’s the rub…

untitled-58-2Yet with all the stress on the new and evolving, some things do not change, including the Reform movement’s commitment to social justice. This past Wednesday night Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center reminded us that for 50 years, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (“the RAC”) has been the hub of Jewish social justice and legislative activity in Washington, D.C. The RAC educates and mobilizes the Reform Jewish community on legislative and social concerns, advocating on more than 70 different issues, including economic justice, civil rights, religious liberty, Israel and more. He spoke with Jim Wallis, a Christian writer and political activist who is best known as the founder and editor of Sojourners magazine. Together they reminded the rabbis to keep our eyes on the prize.

Congregational life is changing and by definition, so too must the congregational rabbinate. We are less and less called upon to be scholars, experts in Jewish studies. More and more we are called upon to serve our temples through compassionate caring and connection. Adhering to “the way we have always done it” has slowly changed to doing “whatever is new and hip.” We are truly in new digital territory with analog maps. That consensus is shared by the vast majority of rabbis. So many Reform rabbis agreeing about anything en masse is cause to pay attention.

Rabbis are opinionated people with a deep sense of obligation to our congregations. We know that we will be called upon for unimaginably wonderful moments. We also know that we will be called upon to be present, to hold the center in the midst of devastating loss. We are not prophets yet we are often expected to fill that role – as well as the role of priest. Being at a conference of colleagues reminds us all that we are all human. We lack super powers. We are lonely sometimes. We are blessed to be present in the most sacred moments of life. Thirty years after my ordination and a day after the CCAR annual convention, I feel more blessed, luckier every day, to be a congregational rabbi.

Rabbi Keith Stern serves Temple Beth Avodah in Newton, MA.

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CCAR Convention General CCAR Rabbis Reform Judaism

Healing and Strengthened With Friends at the CCAR Convention

I come to the CCAR Convention every year for many reasons. I want to learn, refine, rediscover and build rabbinic skills, and I want to spend time with my colleagues and friends. And this year especially, I not only wanted to but truly NEEDED to be with my colleagues and friends.

It’s been a long six weeks since the fire at my congregation TBS that not only destroyed our kitchen, but also brought our building to its skeleton because of the smoke and soot damage.  For me, my entire staff and amazing lay leadership, days have been long and involved, and to be honest, we are all exhausted. Coming to CCAR was a welcome moment to step away and hope to fulfill the goals I set out with every year. But this conference would become something more.

As in this week’s Torah portion during which the priest is called to the house or bedside of someone with tza’ara (a visible growth or skin disease) he was expected to investigate if the person was in fact clean once again, in other words cured. This portion is one of two that is challenging because we automatically fall into the “gross factor” and challenge the portions relevance. However, there are positive blessings as the priest was not only the spiritual practitioner for the people, he was also the physician, seeking healing for anyone in his community. He brought support and strength.

This year’s CCAR is filled with many “priests” (aka, colleagues and friends) who seek to bring healing and invite me, and actually all of us to recognize that the tza’arot that plague our lives are not insurmountable. That they can be cleaned and we can be made whole and able to embrace a new normal.

I have been overwhelmed by the love and support of every CCAR colleague and friend who read my post about our TBS fire and have offered support on all levels. Many of you I know and some are new to me. Each of you are a part of my rabbinic family and your compassion is felt deeply. Everyone of you have overwhelmed me in the most amazing way and I am feeling inspired, healed, whole and ready for the next chapter of our congregations journey toward recovery.

10003475_10152094270038196_640183136_nAnd the support knows no boundaries. Last night, 54 rabbis shaved their heads, participating in St. Baldrick’s 36 Shave for the Brave in loving support of our colleagues and friends Rabbis Michael and Phyllis Sommer and in memory of their son, Sammy, z’l, who lost his battle to leukemia in December. Last night we gathered to support those who shaved (and I even wielded the shears for one shavee) as we celebrated raising over $575,000 (and that number continues to grow) toward childhood cancer research. We also mourned because  this event reminds us that too many children are dying. While some may say this is only a drop in the bucket, we know that every drop counts and eventually the bucket will be filled and we pray no family will ever have to lose another child to cancer.

We come to the CCAR Convention to learn, grow and yes, to heal. And together, we find it and create the moments. And tomorrow, we will leave stronger, more whole, and blessed. I know I am.

Rabbi Heidi Cohen is the rabbi of Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Ana, CA. This post originally appeared on her blog, ravima.com

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CCAR Convention General CCAR News Rabbis Reform Judaism

Arriving at #CCAR14 – The CCAR Convention

The CCAR Convention – it’s a gathering of over 550 rabbis in one place.  An awesome experience every year with opportunities to study, teach, pray with, and connect with colleagues.  And it all takes place starting in just a few hours.

convention-home-imageSome of us have already arrived and being from the west coast, are wide awake at 1:53 am. Morning will come soon enough and meetings will begin, (I’m honored to serve on the CCAR National Board) and learning will commence. Not to mention, much coffee  will be consumed because we will not be sleeping. Too many people to catch up with as most of us talk throughout the year but this is the one time we get to see one another face to face. And who wants to sleep when someone pulls out a guitar in the lobby and all we want to do is sing all night!

So let the 125th CCAR National Convention begin.  There will be great programs, amazing conversations, and thoughtful challenges to help us be better rabbis. (And I’m feeling good that all this is true, I am on the committee who helped plan it).

Follow us on Twitter – #CCAR14, read my blog and many others and check out what happens when 700 Reform rabbis get together in one place! Yeah, this is going to be awesome!

Rabbi Heidi Cohen is the rabbi of Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Ana, CA. This post originally appeared on her blog, ravima.com 

You can follow everyone tweeting about #CCAR14 by following our #CCAR14 Twitter list.

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CCAR Convention General CCAR News Rabbis

Celebrating the Class of 1964: “An Alternative Universe ”

At the upcoming CCAR Convention, we will honor the class of 1964, those who have been CCAR members and served our movement for 50 years.  In the weeks leading up to convention, we will share and celebrate the rabbinic visions and wisdom of the members of the class of 1964.

I wish I could claim some idealistic, high-minded reason that I entered HUC-JIR in Cincinnati.  I fear it was a combination of adolescent rebellion and idol worship.  I grew up in a scientific family and dutiful enrolled for a university course in chemical engineering; but I found the work devoid of emotional content.  I was excited about my electives in psychology, ethics, and economics.  As my undergraduate years drew to a close, I cast about for my next step in life.  I realized that the people I most admired were Reform rabbis: my childhood rabbi, Morris Lieberman, and the young rabbis I met through NFTY: Herb Bronstein, Hy Perlmutter, and Dick Sternberger.

It turned out that HUC-JIR was a good fit for me.  I loved learning the biblical texts and, even more, midrashim.  In retrospect, I now understand that the thought-world of Jewish religion provided me an alternative to the crassness and materialism in American life that distressed and repelled me.  The idealism of the pre-exilic prophets inspired me.  What satisfaction I took from arriving at Martin Luther King’s 1963 convocation in Washington and encountering a UAHC banner proclaiming: “Tzedek, Tzedek teer-dof.”  

Over the decades, the Bible and the Midrash have been my lodestones.  Jewish study and texts turned out to be my refuge, a source of solace and strength. 

Life has been exceptionally good to me.  I loved my contact with the Jews in the small bi-weekly congregations I served.  I felt good about my four years as an Army chaplain, mostly in Frankfurt, West Germany.  Roland Gittelsohn at Temple Israel of Boston was an outstanding mentor.  My thirty years in the pulpit of Temple Sinai of Brookline were profoundly gratifying.  Thanks to the cordiality of my successor, Andy Vogel, I still feel very much at home in that Sanctuary and at Temple programs.  In retirement, I also spent seven significant winters serving the members of Temple Beth Shalom of San Juan.  It could not have turned out so well without the love and support of my wife, Beth.  Her humor, insight, and people-sense have been invaluable.  She and the rabbinate have provided me with a deeply satisfying life.

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CCAR Convention General CCAR Rabbis Reform Judaism Social Justice

Shave for the Brave: A “Magical” Moment

I was thinking so much about Sammy this past Purim.  He was a kid who loved all things fun and magical and creative.  One of the things I learned early on with Sammy is that you have to have a gimmick with him in order to get “in” to his world.  He loved jokes and so we were able to connect a little bit over humor.  He loved Angry Birds, and so I was thankful when I learned I could get him to sit on my lap if I handed him my phone with Angry Birds already open and ready for him to play with.  He  also LOVED magic.

I’ve known Sammy since the day he arrived.  His parents are some of my best friends and I was there a few days after he was born.  I remember it like it was yesterday – I walked into their home and crept up slowly to the sleeping newborn, just to get a peek of him.  Suddenly, like magic (or my loud footsteps) he awoke and shined those bright eyes on me. It was a great moment.  And there were many great moments to follow.  Until, the not-so-great moments came.

Sammy Magic 2After Sammy’s cancer relapsed in 2013, I went to go visit him, in May, at the hospital.  Determined to bring a little something that I thought would brighten Sammy’s day, I came into the room with my bag full of tricks.  Literally!  I brought Sammy some magic tricks with lights and balls and bags.  But, the thing he loved the most, that day, was the Magic Hat I brought him from FAO Schwartz.  He could even pull a stuffed bunny out of the hat!!! It all brought a smile to Sammy’s face that I will never forget. It looked like my work as “Auntie Liz” was done!

Sadly, it was not.  I was there a few days after Sammy was born and I was there the day after Sammy died, in December.  I sat and cried with my friends and family and their family who are like my own family. I helped David, Sammy’s brother, buy clothes for the funeral.   I helped carry Sammy’s body, through the cold and snow, at the cemetery to help bury Sammy and say goodbye to his physical presence.  It was the greatest honor I could have, as his Auntie Liz, to be there for him, even when he was no longer there.

We are still here for Sammy, and we are here for many, many other families that are struggling with the pain associated with pediatric cancer.  While Sammy was sick, there were so many people from around the world that were touched by the Sommer’s story and their blog.  Everyone wanted to help, but really didn’t know what to do.  Well, now there is something that is being done.  Phyllis Sommer and Rebecca Einstein Schorr decided that they could convince 36 Rabbis to shave their heads and raise funds for pediatric cancer research, in honor of Sammy’s memory.  The “shave” is being run through the St. Baldrick’s foundation and is taking place on April 1st at the CCAR convention in Chicago, IL – Sammy’s hometown.  The intention was to raise $180,000 from 36 rabbis.  But so many people signed on that we have almost 100 people who have raised more than $420,000 for this event.  It’s almost like, magic….

And that moment, at the Shave on April 1st will truly be magical.  We will watch as Sammy’s parents, Michael and Phyllis, shave their heads.  We will watch as other Rabbis, men and women, shave their heads in honor of Sammy’s memory and in honor of so many other kids out there who struggle every day.  We will watch, in these next few weeks, as our numbers of dollars raised continue to rise and rise and rise.  I am so proud of what my colleagues have done and I am so proud to help be an event organizer for this special and magical moment.  But, most of all, I am proud that I got to know and love Sammy, that I got to be his Auntie Liz, and that he has inspired so many people to continue to work their own magic, in the world.

Sammy and Liz

Rabbi Elizabeth S. Wood serves The Reform Temple of Forest Hills, NY.

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CCAR Convention General CCAR Rabbis Reform Judaism

Celebrating the Class of 1964: “Blessed to See the Jewish Community Thrive”

At the upcoming CCAR Convention, we will honor the class of 1964, those who have been CCAR members and served our movement for 50 years.  In the weeks leading up to convention, we will share and celebrate the rabbinic visions and wisdom of the members of the class of 1964.

I was born in Cincinnati at Good Samaritan Hospital right next door to HUC. My parents always said that they wanted to enroll me in the college then and there. I grew up in Los Angeles, went to UCLA, and with others from the classes of ‘63 and 64′ were blessed to have been the first to attend the LA school on Appian Way in the Hollywood Hills. So many stories to recount about those heady days, but in a different venue.

It’s about 2200 miles between LA and Cinti and I spent my entire career in Denver, which is exactly in between. My first three years were as an assistant at Temple Emanuel, a 1000 family congregation then in a city of about 20,000 Jews. By 1967 the city had morphed from western cow town to metropolis, from half a million to a million souls and then some. As Rikki and I were contemplating our next move, three young families proposed that we stay and start another congregation in the southern part of the city where new housing projects were getting underway. It was a most fortuitous decision. By our first Rosh Hashanah service we were 78 families with 125 children in the religious school.

We rented space in a lovely Congregationalist Church and held school and services there for our first nine years. (The cross on the wall? Well, think of it as a “T” for Temple.) The relationship between the two congregations was exceptional. Rev. Stu Haskins and I are still close friends. The congregants became a sort of learning, teaching, mutual adoration society. We built the sukkah each year in their courtyard and hundreds of their members came to learn and “shake.” We preached at each others services at special times, especially during national days of mourning or celebration. We raised money for Israel. We began a joint Thanksgiving service that continues to this day, the longest such interfaith service in US history between just two congregations. While Rikki and I have led over 25 congregational trips to Israel through the years, one of the most memorable was when Stu and I took 40 people from the two congregations, and for 17 days shared in accounts from both traditions as we journeyed from site to site.

In 1972, Audrey Friedman Marcus, then educational director of Temple Micah, asked if I’d like to co-author a series of 30 pamphlets entitled “Our Synagogue.” We wrote them in three sessions together and they were published by Winston Press and ultimately distributed by Behrman House. Both of us had a passion for Jewish education and were appalled at the paucity of relevant, dynamic, beautifully designed, kid friendly and teacher oriented materials then available. So we started our own publishing company. At first we called it Alternatives in Religious Education, which was the title of a monthly teaching magazine that Audrey produced for a limited market. We later changed the name to A.R.E. Publishing. Within a year, we were writing mini-courses (a novel product at the time) on Jewish Marriage, Divorce, Circumcision, Aging, Calendar, Jews in the Soviet Union, and more. We designed a game about Soviet Jewry and a learning experience about the Holocaust.  We sent out flyers  and to our astonishment orders came in. Rikki turned our basement into a warehouse and packed and shipped and took orders and billed. When the materials overwhelmed our garage and basement, we bought a warehouse and then a larger one. Teacher materials followed – a major multi-book Hebrew program (Z’man Likro) and handbooks galore – The Jewish Teachers Handbook, Principals Handbook, Teaching Torah, Holidays, Mitzvot, Haftarah, and more, each a gem of Jewish research and practical teaching applications. By the time we sold the company after 30 years, we had spawned many other boutique publishing ventures such as Karben Copies and Torah Aura, while in the process becoming one of the largest Jewish publishers in the English speaking world.

Meanwhile, Temple Sinai was growing. With 300 families, we bought land and built a lovely facility in our target area. A year later cracks began to appear, major costly attempts to fix the building failed, lawsuits ensued, but we had to keep the building standing to win a court case. Six years later, on the courthouse steps, we recovered every cent we had put into the building and land and bought a magnificent Denver public school building that had been abandoned due to mandated cross city busing for integration. New Year’s day 1984, as we moved into the new facility (with two foot thick walls and no cracks, we called it Fort Sinai), our eldest daughter Robin was dying. At 19, she spent her last months of strength teaching art in our preschool, and passed away quietly at home surrounded by loving family and many friends. Kaddish for the building and the child.

Life has its pauses; resiliency carries us onward. We soon added a beautiful new sanctuary (now bearing our family name), social hall, offices, youth lounge, and chapel to the terrific school facility. In its new space, Sinai flourished, growing to 1150 families. Assistant Rabbis and soloists were a great source of inspiration to members as well as to me. I loved to watch them grow into their talents, to see them learn to walk and then to run off to lead their own congregations. Some 20 kids coming through Sinai’s school have become rabbis, cantors, or Jewish educators. I think I’m most proud of that. I am also pleased to have been able to resurrect the joint conversion program, in which 20 rabbis of all denominations (not yet the Orthodox) teach and serve on the Bet Din. I have been the Av Bet Din for decades.

I retired in 2005 after leading the Temple for some four decades. It’s in very good hands still, building again and flourishing as I know it will. I still teach a Torah Study class there every Shabbat morning with my dear friend Rabbi Steve Kaye as we have done for the past 28 years. We do one verse a week. We just finished Numbers 15:1. We’re hoping to live long enough to get through Deuteronomy.

Writing has always been a source of pleasure for me and so I was pleased to have been able to publish two books since 2005 – Forty Years of Wondering: The High Holy Day Sermons and my first novel Holy Fire. They say the second novel is the hardest. “They” is right.

Our children Ron and Dina are married to wonderful spouses and have each presented us with two grandchildren, whom we adore. Denver has been very sweet to us in every way and Rikki and I feel most blessed to have watched the city and the Jewish community grow and thrive.

Baruch tiyeh, may it continue to do so.