Brett Gurewitz, the guitarist from punk rock band “Bad Religion” is selling his bar mitzvah yarmulke on eBay. The kippah has the inscription on the inside:
“Bar Mitzvah of Brett Gurewitz | May 24, 1975”
I wonder if anyone would be interested in a signed copy of my Bar Mitzvah haftorah?
Originally published in the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers
Congregation Beit Kodesh growing for the future
BY LINDA ANN CHOMIN
Phyllis Lewkowicz couldn’t be happier about welcoming new members to the family at Congregation Beit Kodesh in Livonia. Several months ago, she and members of the temple had formed a Save Our Synagogue committee. When Lewkowicz first came to the area in the 1950s, the synagogue didn’t exist, but grew over the years until membership began dwindling. On Sunday, Nov. 6, members will celebrate the congregation’s rebirth by dedicating the renovated sanctuary at noon.
“This will be a special occasion,” said Phyllis Lewkowicz, one of the visionaries who began holding Shabbat (Sabbath) services at Clarenceville Central Elementary School in 1958. “It’s part of the entire plan to improve the sanctuary and building.”
Although Beit Kodesh still doesn’t have a rabbi, they are welcoming Jason Miller who’ll serve as a consultant to help them grow for the future. Rabbi Miller will speak about his position in the congregation and give the Shehechi’anu blessing of thanksgiving, present a new Kiddush cup used for wine sanctification during Shabbat and holiday services then affix three of the 15 Mezuzzah blessings to doorposts in the synagogue before sharing brunch with the congregation. Each of the Mezuzzah [sic] contains a parchment with the Shema prayer from the Torahthe books of Jewish scriptures.
Jeff Kirsch originally sought the help of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism to connect with Rabbi Miller who will guide the congregation until they’re able to have a full-time rabbi. Currently members like Kirsch lead the services.
“We believe there’s potential,” said Jeff Kirsch, vice president of the religious committee and a Farmington Hills resident. “We’ve already seen very positive changes. Membership has gone up.”
“We’re a viable organization,” added congregation president Martin Diskin, a Farmington Hills resident. “I feel at home here. I’ve broadened my Jewish education over my 30-years with the synagogue.”
Rabbi Miller believes the congregation, which serves not only Livonia, but Farmington, Canton, Westland, Novi and Northville, will continue to grow because of offerings such as the Sunday school. The 29-year old rabbi feels there are many young families like his who are looking for a synagogue to meet their needs. Rabbi Miller has a 21-month-old son and his wife is expecting twins in the next 4- to 5-weeks.
“Beit Kodesh is an amazing place. The people are a more dedicated community of Jewish people that I’ve ever seen,” said Rabbi Jason Miller who by day works as assistant director of the University of Michigan Hillel, a program for Jewish college students in Ann Arbor.
“In terms of geography they’re situated in an area with many young Jewish families who are unaffiliated and looking for a community just like this. They’re going to need the religious education.”
Along with educating youth in the Jewish faith another plus for new members is sure to be the congregation’s acceptance of interfaith marriages.
“Beit Kodesh is committed to reaching out to those families and bringing them in,” said Rabbi Miller. There a lot of Jewish families in this area not being reached. We’re proud of who we are, a conservative congregation with people in times of grief, in times of joy. That’s what people are looking for in today’s age.”
To RSVP for the sanctuary rededication and brunch with the rabbi, call (248) 477-8974. The cost for the brunch is $5, no charge for children age 12 and under.
Congregation Beit Kodesh is located at 31840 West Seven Mile, between Farmington and Merriman roads, Livonia. For more information, visit the Web site at www.beitkodesh.org.
University of Michigan Hillel co-sponsored the Ludacris concert tonight. I think I am now deaf in both ears, but it was a fun event. I took my cousin Jeff Gudes and we watched from the 5th row with Jeff’s sister Lindsey. Today was my grandfather David Gudes’s 11th yahrzeit and I’m sure he enjoyed seeing three of his grandkids together at a concert, but most likely he had a problem with the music.
What business does a Hillel have in bringing a performer like Ludacris? In the words of Executive Director Michael Brooks:
“U-M Hillel has multiple agendas. One is obviously to serve the needs of the campus Jewish community by providing classes, kosher meals, religious services and Israel programming and counseling. Another is to enrich the life of the entire campus in much the same way that the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan sponsors a wide range of cultural programs that are of interest to a much broader New York audience than just the Jewish community in addition to their more traditional Jewish programming. In the past several years U-M Hillel has similarly brought to campus Chris Rock, Dr. Ruth, Kurt Vonnegut, Adam Sandler, Leonard Nimoy and Spike Lee among many others. On campus we also have a vested interest in building bridges to other communities and the Ludacris concert is very much in this category. It’s probably true that few if any other Hillels in the country would regularly do programming like this, but in this respect U-M Hillel isn’t like most other Hillels.
If we were diverting resources from our core mission activities to sponsor programs like this we would not be doing it, but in fact we depend on the income from many of these large scale events to help fund other parts of our program. That the Michigan Student Assembly and the University Activities Center immediately came to Hillel to co-sponsor this event with them speaks volumes about the role that U-M Hillel has come to play in campus life and we believe that this is a good thing for both the university and the Jewish community.”
I also met Michael Phelps (winner of six gold and two bronze medals at the U.S. Olympics in swimming) before the concert. Another photo to post to my Wall of Fame.
From the New York Times
In a Town of ‘Friends,’ an Amen Corner
By JOHN FREEMAN GILL
WHEN David Light was a student at Columbia University in the early 1990’s, dating a future rabbi who would later become his wife, the couple watched in fascination as the biggest party animal they knew – a beer-guzzling, skirt-chasing frat king – recreated himself as a rabbinical student.
Out of this conflict between the pursuit of spiritual knowledge and the pursuit of a good seat at the bar at the legendary West End, Mr. Light eventually created “Morningside Heights,” a script for a television sitcom that NBC recently bought. Mr. Light is now developing the script with two executive producers in the hope that NBC will finance the filming of a pilot.
The sitcom is set on Seminary Row, the block of West 122nd Street where the Jewish Theological Seminary sits diagonally across Broadway from Union Theological Seminary. The show is a piously irreverent comedy about good-looking would-be ministers, rabbis and imams who share a dorm and try not to sleep with one another.
It could scarcely be set anywhere else.
“The neighborhood is a huge character in the show,” said Mr. Light, 31, who attended Columbia as an undergraduate and a graduate student in the film division of the School of the Arts, and whose wife studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Along with its grand Gothic churches, Riverside Church and the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, the neighborhood’s sheer density of institutions of higher learning – Columbia, Barnard and Seminary Row itself – makes Morningside Heights an area that Mr. Light calls “a hotbed of seeking.”
“Whether it’s knowledge, or what your place is in the world, it’s a place to ask these huge questions,” Mr. Light said. “Whether in Riverside Park or St. John the Divine or the Hungarian Pastry Shop, it’s a truly contemplative and vibrant place that I love.”
The area also provides the soaring visual backdrop for a new, perhaps more spiritually highbrow representation of New York than America is accustomed to seeing in television comedies.
Over the past decade, the dominant comedic images of New York beamed around the planet have been the sophisticatedly shallow self-absorption of “Seinfeld,” the chirpy chumminess of “Friends,” the winking urbanity of “Will & Grace” and the cosmo-swilling, Manolo-obsessed man hunters of “Sex and the City.” Regardless of how unrealistically those shows may have portrayed New York, they shared a certain upscale levity. If “Morningside Heights” makes it into the NBC lineup, it will most likely present a different face of the city.
“It’s definitely a step back from 24/7, and it’s a step back from the glamour, too,” said Ron Simon, who is curator of television at the Museum of Television and Radio and who studied film at the Columbia School of the Arts. “You’re not downtown, you’re uptown, where there’s a little possibility of solitude, where you can have discussions that deal with self-examination instead of materialistic striving.”
Faith and spirituality, he added, “were certainly words that we didn’t hear much pre-9/11.”
If there’s a link between “Morningside Heights” and the more upscale New York comedies of recent years, it is Eric McCormack, one of the show’s executive producers and the actor who plays Will in “Will & Grace,” in its final season on NBC.
“The New York of ‘Will & Grace’ is almost a kind of a dream New York,” Mr. McCormack said. “It’s Riverside, it’s Upper West Side, it’s people with money and time to spend it. It’s a little bit fantasy almost in the way Noel Coward’s New York was in the 30’s, as opposed to what we’re going to attempt to do with ‘Morningside Heights.’ I keep thinking of that opening shot of ‘Welcome Back, Kotter,’ just that sense of more where real things happen.”
In addition to their tone of youthful joie de vivre, the major New York-based sitcoms of the last decade all had at their heart a group of supportive friends that served as an ersatz family. In this sense, “Morningside Heights” is not such a radical departure. While the show’s cheerfully intolerant evangelist character may tell his cohorts of different faiths that they’re destined to burn in hell, by the end of the pilot episode, even he is sharing dinner and camaraderie with the rabbi, the imam and the others. In this reimagining of the New York ideal of perfect integration, the melting pot has become a large pizza at the West End, with everything on it.
From the Daily Show with Jon Stewart
“Modonna is Jewish in the same way that she’s British!”
By Jay Michaelson
From the Jerusalem Post
Ask anyone in the Jewish institutional community, and they will reply that demographics is not their primary concern; it’s their only concern. With study after study portending the imminent demise of the Jewish people, philanthropists and the institutions they support are scrambling to somehow avert extinction. Ironically, though, many efforts have been undermined precisely by the desperation which inspires them.
Increasingly, their “target audiences” – marginally-affiliated Jews 18 to 45, the ones most apt to leave the fold – know the game. They smell the con, and sense that the slogans and high-concept Web designs are mere ploys to get them to marry another Jew and reproduce. Where to look for different models of Jewish outreach, which might address the demographers’ panic while remaining authentic enough to actually work?
Statistically, the two most successful Jewish outreach organizations today are Chabad-Lubavitch and the Kabbalah Center. Many “professional Jews” don’t want to face this fact, since it flies in the face of their assumptions – not least the assumption that unaffiliated Jews want to be “just like us.” It’s frustrating, too, that these weird guys in beards are doing a better job reaching the unaffiliated than smart Ivy grads with master’s degrees in public relations. So, in the face of these two organizations’ remarkable success, we hear jokes. Kabbalah – isn’t that about Madonna, and magic strings? And, you know, of all the world’s religions, the closest one to Judaism is Chabad.
But if Jewish organizations are serious about creating engaging and sustainable communities, maybe it’s worth looking at the success of these two mystical institutions to see why they seem to be working so well. So what do we find?
Immediately, one sees that Chabad and the Kabbalah Center are focused not on “community” or “continuity” or any of the other synonyms for tribe, but on spirit. And they both talk about God, a word which many professional Jews hesitate to utter. We may disparage the messianism of Lubavitch and the commercialism of the Kabbalah Center, but their rhetoric is straightforward: This is about God, spirituality, even enlightenment. If you’re interested, come to a class. [more]
Rules of the Sukkah (with numbered footnotes)
© Rabbi Arthur E. Gould, Sukkot 1999 – 2001. Used by permission.
You can build it very small (1)
You can build it very tall (2)
You can build it very large (3)
You can build it on a barge
You can build it on a ship (4)
Or on a roof but please don’t slip (5)
You can build it in an alley (6)
You shouldn’t build it in a valley (7)
You can build it on a wagon (8)
You can build it on a dragon (9)
You can make the skakh of wood (10)
Would you, could you, yes you should
Make the skakh from leaves of tree
You shouldn’t bend it at the knee (11)
Build your Sukkah tall or short
No Sukkah is built in the Temple Court
You can build it somewhat soon
You cannot build it in the month of June (12)
If your Sukkah is well made
You’ll have the right amount of shade (13)
You can build it very wide
You can not build it on its side
Build if your name is Jim
Or Bob or Sam or even Tim
Build it if your name is Sue (14)
Do yu build it, yes you do!
From the Sukkah you can roam
But you should treat it as your home (15)
You can invite some special guests
Don’t stay in it if there are pests
You can sleep upon some rugs
Don’t you build it where there’s bugs
If in the Sukkah it should rain
To stay there would be such a pain (16)
And if it should be very cold
Stay there only if you’re bold
So build a Sukkah one and all
Make it large or make it small
Sukkah rules are short and snappy
Footnotes:
1. Maimonides (RMBM) Mishne Torah, Hilchot Sukkah, Chapter 4, Section 1.
The minimum height of a Sukkah is 10 tefachim. A tefach is a measure of the width of the four fingers of one’s hand. My hand is 3 1/4 inches wide for a minimum Sukkah height of 32 1/2 inches. The minimum allowable width is 7 tefachim by 7 tefachim. This would result in a Sukkah of 22 3/4 inches by 22 3/4 inches.
2. The maximum height is 20 Amot. An Amah is the length from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. My Amah is 15 1/2 inches for a maximum height of 25 feet. Others say that 30 feet is the maximum.
3. According to RMBM the Sukkah can be built to a width of several miles. Shulchan Aruch also says there is no limit on the size of the width.
4. RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 6.
5. RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 11. RMBM states that one may construct a Sukkah by wedging poles in the four corners of the roof and suspending scakh from the poles. The walls of the building underneath are considered to reach upward to the edge of the scakh.?
6. RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 8-10 discusses the ins and outs of building your Sukkah in an alley or passageway.
7. There is a location referred to in the Talmud called Ashtarot Karnayim. According to the discussion there are two hills, with a valley in between where the Sun does not reach. Therefore it is impossible to sit in the shade of the roof of the Sukkah. I can’t find the reference…hopefully next year.
8. RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 6. You can go into a Sukkah built on a wagon or a ship even on Yom Tov.
9. RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 6. OK, RMBM says a camel but dragon rhymes with wagon a lot better, don’t you agree. Anyway, RMBM says you can build your Sukkah on a wagon or in the crown of a tree, but you can’t go into it on Yom Tov. There is a general rule against riding a beast or ascending into the crown of a tree on Yom Tov.
10. Chapter 5 deals with the rules for the scakh. Basically, you can use that which has grown from the ground, and is completely detached from the ground. So, for example, you cannot bend the branches of a tree over the Sukkah to form the scakh. But you can cut the branches from a tree and use them as scakh.
11. This would be a violation of the rule cited in the prior footnote.
12. Shulchan Aruch, Hilchot Sukkah, Perek 636, Section 1. The Sukkah should not be built sooner than 30 days before the Hag. However, if the structure is built prior to 30 days, as long as something new is added within the 30 days, the Sukkah is kosher.
13. Of course it’s a well known rule that you must sit in the shade from the roof of the Sukkah and not in the shade that may be cast by the walls. It seems that this might affect the height of the walls, depending on the longitude of the location where you are building your Sukkah.
14. Technically, women, servants and minors are exempt from the Mitzvah of Sukkah. In our day we hope we know better than to read out half the Jewish people from the observance of Mitzvot. Of course, that’s just a personal opinion of the author.
15. RMBM ibid Chapter 6, Section 6 explains that you should eat, drink and live in the Sukkah for the 7 days as you live in your own home. One should not even take a nap outside of the Sukkah.
16. RMBM ibid, Section 10. If it rains one should go into the house. How does one know if it is raining hard enough? If sufficient raindrops fall through the scakh (roof covering) and into the food so that the food is spoiled – go inside!
It is only the second Rosh Hashanah for Ikar, a new congregation in Los Angeles, and some 600 people will be attending its services at the Westside Jewish Community Center.
Six-hundred people.
Not bad for this synagogue-less community that was started in April 2004 by Rabbi Sharon Brous, a 2001 graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), the flagship institution of the Conservative movement.
While the congregants will be praying from the Conservative prayerbook, and following the Conservative halacha, such as mixed seating and having prayers led by women and men, don’t call them Conservative. Brous has not affiliated with the Conservative movement.
The same goes for Nashuva, which meets in a Westwood Blvd. church, and Kehillat Hadar on the Upper West Side in New York. Both boast mailing lists of 2,000 people, many of whom are in the coveted 20s and 30s demographic. Both define themselves as independent, egalitarian communities committed to spirited traditional prayer, study and social action. That sounds like the very definition of Conservative. But instead of calling themselves Conservative, Nashuva and Kehillat Hadar go by the term “non-denominational.”
Call it the Conservative Crisis. [more…]
University of Michigan students pick potatoes for the winter at the collective Jewish farm in Konotop.
By Allison Goldstein
While most students were bringing their summers to a close, 15 University of Michigan Hillel students were just beginning our adventure. On August 22, along with our rabbi and program director, we departed on a 10-day service program to Ukraine. The project was sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), which provides assistance to overseas Jewish communities, University of Michigan Hillel and Kharkov Hillel, with financial support from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and the Mandell L. and Madeleine H. Berman Foundation.
Ukraine is home to one of the largest Jewish populations outside of Israel, but the current number of active Jews is small due to the difficulty, and even danger, of dealing with anti-Semitism and the lack of Jewish resources. Thus, our primary goal was to connect with Ukrainian Jews who are rebuilding Jewish life following years of Nazi atrocities and Communist rule, to provide them support and a link to a larger, global Jewish community.
We flew into Kiev, and after a brief visit to Babi Yar, the site of tens of thousands of Jewish deaths during World War II, we boarded an overnight train bound for Kharkov, our main destination. Kharkov, the second largest city in Ukraine, consists of approximately 1.8 million people, 40,000 of whom are Jewish (down from 150,000 before WWII). It was upon our arrival in Kharkov that we got our first glimpse into the incredible revitalization of Jewish life taking place in Ukraine. At six in the morning, we were greeted with signs and roses by students from Kharkov Hillel and JCC Beit Dan, whose incredible warmth and enthusiasm, to our amazement, only seemed to grow throughout the week we spent together. These students, our peers, were so eager to connect with us and to celebrate a joy for being Jewish.
We visited many Jewish establishments, including Hillel, Hesed welfare centers and JCC Beit Dan. We took the time to play with children from broken homes whose development depended on the warmth and caring of Hesed workers, to repair apartments of elderly Jewish community members who relied on JDC’s assistance to meet their most basic needs for food, clothing, and medicine, and to celebrate with our peers. All the while we gained insight into the pride and pure zest for life that is such a prominent part of Ukrainian culture.
The Shabbat we spent at Kharkov Hillel was an unforgettable experience. Despite the lack of Jewish educational resources, these students knew the words to every song and blessing by heart, and in spite of the language barrier that existed for many, their enthusiasm and passion brought everyone together into what felt like one big family. This again held true in our visit to the small town of Konotop where, although the Jewish community was much older, the pure pleasure of their singing and dancing seemed like that of children.
For our University of Michigan Hillel group, the incredible time we spent in Ukraine opened our eyes to Jewish life outside of the United States and Israel, and made us think about what it means to be Jewish and about how much we take for granted living in a land of freedom. We are so thankful to have had the chance to meet so many wonderful people, and we are going to do everything we can to continue our connection with our Ukrainian peers and aid in their quest to strengthen their Jewish community.
Allison Goldstein is a sophomore at the University of Michigan.
I was just forced to watch this animated cartoon called “Tekiyah” fifteen times by my 20-month-old son who thaught it was a riot.
It is the brainchild of Ben Baruch, a direct descendent of the Vilna Gaon. ShaBot 6000 is the continuing cartoon saga of a pious Jew who purchases a robot to work as a Shabbos Goy for his household. The inquisitive robot, ShaBot, decides that he is Jewish, and is therefore unable to fulfill his duties as servant. ShaBot spends his days asking questions about Judaism, trying to find logic in a religion that sometimes DOES NOT COMPUTE.