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Issue #356 – 23 April 2009 / 29 Nisan 5769
The leadership and staff of the World Union wish Israel and its citizens a joyous and pride-filled 61st Independence Day.
IN THIS ISSUE:
WORLD UNION AND HUC-JIR HOLD SIXTH ANNUAL PESACH PROJECT
PROGRESSIVE HAGADDAH MAKES DEBUT IN ISRAEL
IMPJ AFFILIATE BLESSES THE SUN – AND PUTS IT TO GOOD USE FOR PESACH
LBC EMPHASIZES INTERFAITH WORK AT HOLIDAY TIME
WORLD UNION AND HUC-JIR HOLD SIXTH ANNUAL PESACH PROJECT
Bucking the global economic downturn, 16 students from the Jerusalem campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion raised funds to travel to the former Soviet Union to help Progressive Jews celebrate the Pesach holiday. It was the sixth consecutive year that the Pesach Project, guided by the World Union, has taken place. This time it was organized in large part by HUC-JIR students Amy Goodman and Jordan Helfman, with supervision from Rabbi David Wilfond, the campus’ director of admissions, and coordination by Debbie Pulik of the World Union’s Jerusalem-based FSU staff.
“The effects of the economic crisis are apparent and acutely felt in the field,” says Alex Kagan, the World Union’s director for the FSU. “Fewer congregations are being supported financially, and those that are fortunate to receive support are receiving less. More and more activities are being funded by local congregations, and some activities have been discontinued. However, the fact that 5,300 people participated in seders this year was significant and attests to the need of Jews in the FSU for traditional religious activity such as the Pesach Project, as well as the overall presence of the Reform movement.”
Several HUC-JIR students assisted the six resident Progressive rabbis - Alexander Lyskovoy and Leonid Bimbat (Moscow), Stas Wojciechowicz (St. Petersburg), Alexander Dukhovny (Kiev), Gregory Abramovich (Minsk) and Mikhail Kapustin (Simferopil) - to lead seders and other Pesach holiday activities. The rest fanned out into the periphery to help other movement professionals, as well as lay leaders and students from the World Union’s Institute for Modern Jewish Studies, to hold seders in smaller Progressive communities. All together, the students traveled to 18 cities and towns in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Alexander Haydar, executive director of the movement in Ukraine, thanked the World Union and HUC-JIR for continuing the project despite the difficult economic times. “The implementation of the Pesach Project this year encouraged the continued development and growth of Jewish life in Ukraine, showing the members of our congregations the size and importance of the Reform Movement and the concern for them by both HUC-JIR and the World Union,” he said.
A seder at St. Petersburg’s Progressive congregation.
Progressive pre-schoolers in Kiev learn about the holiday.
The World Union-published Russian-Hebrew Hagaddah.
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PROGRESSIVE HAGADDAH MAKES DEBUT IN ISRAEL
The Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism distributed a new Hagaddah for this year’s Pesach holiday. Compiled and published by MARAM, the Israeli council of Progressive rabbis, it is titled A Hagaddah for These Times and structured in a way to give the seder a more modern, egalitarian and inclusive atmosphere. It was edited by Rabbi Prof. Yehoyada Amir, Rabbi Dr. Dalia Marx and Rabbi Yehoram Mazor.
In addition to the traditional features of a Hagaddah, the MARAM version refers to the Holocaust and the rise of the State of Israel as a haven for the Jewish people. It also emphasizes the importance of universal freedom, equality and social justice by incorporating relevant passages from Israeli literature, poetry and song.
The IMPJ made the Hagaddah available to both its membership and the wider Israeli public, using an advertising campaign that highlighted holiday activities at the movement’s two dozen congregations and suggestions for special family-oriented seder activities that keep in mind the attention spans – and appetites – of youngsters.
The cover of MARAM’S new Hagaddah.
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IMPJ AFFILIATE BLESSES THE SUN – AND PUTS IT TO GOOD USE FOR PESACH
Kibbutz Lotan, an affiliate of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, was the scene of a “solar seder” that made use of the mostly sunny weather of Israel’s southern Arava desert. It was especially appropriate as the holiday opened with the “Birkat Hahama,” or blessing of the sun, a ritual that takes place once every 28 years when our star, according to Jewish tradition, returns to the place it held in the universe at the time of creation.
Lotan has a long track record of award-winning programs devoted to ecology and sustainability (see WUPJnews #’s 301 and 348), including its 6-week Green Apprenticeship program, which combines coursework in permaculture and ecovillage design, and in organic farming. (Watch a YouTube video on the program by going to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvKr7VsDQ0E.)
Aria Penkava, a recent graduate of the program, held a seder of her own for several friends from the course, as well as kibbutz volunteers. "Large meals with the entire kibbutz are usually nice," she said, "but not all of us speak Hebrew and we were worried we would lose out on the intimacy of the seder."
Penkava’s seder meal included items prepared in a solar oven, which focuses heat from the sun to slow-cook foods. (Her kibbutz neighborhood of straw-bale and dry mud huts also uses solar power and solar-heated water.) “[W]e wanted to not only bless the sun,” said the 20-year-old Calgary, Canada, native, referring to the Birkat Hahama, ”but actually use its energy to do something constructive and creative [for Passover]. I'm just happy knowing I can bake the things I love to eat without having to use any gas or electricity."
[With thanks to Joshua Silverstein, and to Alex Cicelsky of Kibbutz Lotan’s Center for Creative Ecology]
Aria Penkava and Joshua Silverstein with Kibbutz Lotan’s solar oven. (Photo: Center for Creative Ecology, Kibbutz Lotan)
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LBC EMPHASIZES INTERFAITH WORK AT HOLIDAY TIME
Six faculty members and students from London’s Leo Baeck College participated in the Church of England’s annual retreat for Anglican seminary students, held at Canterbury Cathedral on Palm Sunday, April 5th. The delegation, led by LBC’s vice principal, Rabbi Dr. Michael Shire, presented views on the concepts of the messiah and the “suffering servant” as expressed in the Hebrew Bible.
The other members of the delegation were LBC faculty member Dr. Annette Boeckler, student rabbis Judith Rosen-Berry, Andrea Zanardo and Lea Muehlstein, and Rabbi Dr. Michael Hilton of the Reform movement’s Kol Chai synagogue in Hatch End.
Hilton and Boeckler presented a Jewish exegesis on Isaiah 53, in which the description of a suffering servant is interpreted as referring to the Jewish people. Dr. Jeremy Wortham, director of the South East Institute for Theological Education (SEITE), explained the Christian view in which the suffering servant heralds Jesus’s role as the messiah. Shire, Boeckler, Rosen-Berry, Zanardo and Muehlstein led workshops on Jewish views of death and resurrection, blessings, identity, conversion and Jewish liturgy.
The seminar was organized by SEITE, whose members participated last year in LBC’s government-funded Clergy United project. The college has lengthy experience in interfaith work, having hosted Christian and Muslim clergy for a series of interfaith dialogues throughout 2007-8. The longstanding relationships established in these dialogues led to the invitation to participate in this year’s SEITE Easter seminar.
Shire called the retreat a “unique opportunity to participate in the training of Church of England clergy and provide insight into Jewish views of scripture and rabbinic thinking that will impact on their work on campuses, hospitals and in their parishes.”
LBC vice principal Rabbi Dr. Michael Shire (right) with the delegation to the Church of England’s Palm Sunday seminar (left to right): Dr. Annette Boeckler, student rabbi Andrea Zanardo, Rabbi Michael Hilton, and student rabbis Judith Rosen-Berry and Lea Muehlstein.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
May 14-24, 2009 – Third Annual URJ Israel Kallah at the World Union’s Anita Saltz International Education Center in Jerusalem
June 18, 2009 – Abraham Geiger College – Rabbinic ordination and 10th anniversary celebration in Berlin, Germany
July 9-12, 2009 – 15th Annual Conference of the Union of Progressive Jews of Germany, Berlin/Spandau, Germany
July 9-19, October 15-25 and December 3-13, 2009 – Dreams and Realities: The People, the Land and the Torah of Israel - A Reform Jewish Study Seminar, Saltz International Education Center, Jerusalem
November 4-8, 2009 – Biennial of the Union for Reform Judaism, Toronto, Canada
January 28-31, 2010 – Union of Jewish Communities in Latin America Biennial, Panama
March 4-7, 2010 – European Region Biennial Conference, Paris, France
April 16-18, 2010 – Liberal Judaism Biennial Weekend, England
May 28-29, 2010 – Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism Biennial, Israel
February 7-13, 2011 – CONNECTIONS 2011, USA
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