Category: inclusivity

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CCAR Convention Convention Inclusion inclusivity

Jewish Community Outreach & Interconnectedness: Rabbi Sanford T. Marcus Reflects

Each year at CCAR Convention, we honor members of our organization who were ordained 50 years ago or more. In advance of CCAR Convention 2020, March 22-25 in Baltimore, Rabbi Sanford T. Marcus reflects on the importance of community outreach to his rabbinate.

I think community outreach has been one of my most memorable accomplishments in my 50 years in the rabbinate.  With the influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union in 1989, I organized the mentoring of some 100 immigrants who settled in Columbia, arranged to have English classes taught at my temple, and welcomed many of the adults and children as members of temple.  B’nai mitzvah and weddings among the newcomers were unique occasions celebrated by the entire Jewish community.

I had organized a Catholic-Jewish dialogue that resulted in numerous interfaith programs alternately held at temple and at Catholic churches. It included members of the Conservative congregation along with ours. This led to the bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina speaking at my temple with over 400 Jews and Catholics attending. That was front page news here. The bishop invited me to be an observer at a diocese synod, which provided a unique insight into Catholic religious policy in the making. 

I also was a member of a steering committee which formed a statewide Partners in Dialogue with Christians of various denominations: Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Native Americans. It sponsored occasions for sharing faith observances and ethnic foods. And with the co-sponsorship of the University of South Carolina Department of Religious Studies, the Dialogue brought to town internationally known religious leaders for an annual event. 

With the leadership of Dr. Selden Smith and South Carolina Holocaust survivors and their children, we formed the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust, designed to honor South Carolina survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants, and the South Carolinians and their descendants who participated in the liberation of concentration camps. This led to the erection of a beautiful monument honoring their memory in downtown Columbia. 

Shortly after arriving in Columbia, I joined The Luncheon Club, a racially diverse group that promotes collegiality and is informative on current issues. It originated in 1962 when African Americans were unable to eat in white establishments. It continues to meet today. I became heavily involved in interracial relations and formed a Black-Jewish Coalition which held dialogues, pulpit exchanges, and a joint Passover Seder held at my temple.

All in all, I feel that I have grown in knowledge and discretion over the years of my rabbinate and have a greater understanding of how interdependent we Jews are with the rest of our population and how important good community relations are.

Sanford T. Marcus is the Rabbi Emeritus of the Tree of Life Congregation in Columbia, South Carolina. He served as the spiritual leader of the synagogue for twenty years prior to his retirement in 2006. Ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1970, he is a recipient of two master’s degrees, and was awarded an honorary doctor of divinity degree. 

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Inclusion inclusivity Poetry Prayer

In Unity and Hope

This prayer was written by Alden Solovy and Rabbi Ilene Harkavy Haigh at the 2019 URJ Biennial in response to the many conversations around politics, policy, and the many challenges facing Jews in America and beyond. As we enter into Shabbat during the largest gathering of Jews in North America, we come together physically and spiritually in unity and hope. 

How fair are your tents, O Jacob,
When we stand together,
In unity and love,
In the the name of hope and harmony.

How fragile are our tents
When our fears divide us
When we allow outside winds
To blow within.

Who but You,
Ruach Elohim,
Can define who we are?
What keeps us strong.
What keeps us whole.

Who but us,
Klal Yisroael,
Can shield us,
Carrying each other
As one against the storm?

How fair are our tents, O Israel,
When we stand together,
In the name of unity,
In compassion, in strength,
For our children,
And for our children’s children.

Ken yihi ratzon.

Alden Solovy is a liturgist and poet who has written five books including This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day and This Joyous Soul: A New Voice for Ancient Yearnings, both from CCAR Press. He is currently the Liturgist-in-Residence at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. Rabbi Ilene Harkavy Haigh is the rabbi at Congregation Shir Shalom in Woodstock, Vermont and has been the recipient of the Bonnie and Daniel Tisch Leadership Fellowship, the Michael Chernick Prize in Rabbinic Literature, and the Weisman Memorial Prize in Homiletics, among others.

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inclusivity

Behind the Veil: Inclusion Under the Chuppah

I have known Niv since he was a baby. Living in LA we had a group of Israeli friends with whom we celebrated the Jewish holidays as well as our families’ life cycles. Niv’s parents were part of this group. Being less than one year old when we first got to know him, he crawled like every other baby that age. But when our son, who was his age, and other children started to take their first steps, Niv still crawled, and he crawled all the way to first grade and after. There had been a severe complication at birth, and he had gone through an operation that paralyzed his legs and left them undeveloped. His parents went through many different treatments, both medical and alternative, hoping he would one day stand on his feet, But when their efforts did not lead to a breakthrough, they finally put him in a wheelchair.

I remember him playing “I have a little dreidel” on his tiny violin in first grade. As the years passed, the violin became his life’s project. He played beautifully and with all his soul, I was deeply moved every time I heard him play. He ended up going to the Juilliard School, where he met Leah in one of the master classes. Actually, she was the one who paid attention to him while he was completely busy perfecting his performance. It took her some time to finally approach him and ask him to go out. It took him some time to understand that she wasn’t inviting him to practice or study together, and they started dating. Last spring they approached me about their wedding. I immediately said yes, not thinking about the 15-hour flight to LA or the time of year, being so close to the High Holidays. I was so moved and happy by their choice of one other, by their deep and unrelenting love, with my appreciation and sense of wonder growing as I got to know them more and appreciate the way they related to each other in preparing for the big day.

On top of all the many details a couple needs to consider when planning their wedding, there were many more: where and how were we going to perform the ritual dipping in water? Would we need a ramp going on to the chuppah, the marriage canopy? would Niv be able to cover Leah’s head with the veil just before she entered under the chuppah? And lastly: how do you break a glass sitting in a wheelchair?

Carefully and gently Leah and Niv figured out the right way for them, which was very simple when I come to think about it: Niv was going to find a way to do everything that a groom would do, including the glass breaking, the first dance and all the rest. That’s how simple it was!

It was a magical wedding. Just watching Leah go down the aisle and Niv rolling his chair to greet her. Then watching her lean down so he could pull the veil over her. I was in tears, as were many of the friends and relatives in attendance. It wasn’t only for the strength of will, which Niv proved throughout his life by not giving up anything that his classmates and friends did; it was her wondrous ability to see beyond what the eye perceives, to acknowledge that the real deep meaning of things is veiled, as I had learned from a beautiful ‘children’s’ book that I read throughout my adolescence and adult life, The Little Prince, which taught me that ‘the real important things are hidden from the eye’, resonating in a quote from Rev. Adelaja: “The most precious things are always invisible; they are always kept hidden.”

These days in the Jewish year, the days just before the coming of the New Year, we are forever more aware of the veil that too often hides the essence from us. The most meaningful practice of this time of year is cheshbon nefesh, soul searching, which means to look through the veil and find out the truth about ourselves, about our own lives. This is what we need to do so we can welcome the new year in a deep and truthful way.

I wish you all a meaningful time of soul searching,

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Rabbi Ayala Miron serves Kehillat Bavat Ayin in Rosh Ha’ayin, Israel.