Celebrations
Limiting the Power of Kings
48. SHOFETIM | Civil Liberties | Seasons of American Sacred Time | War and Civil LibertiesThe Fourth of July, the Torah, and the Presidency
The Fourth of July is a holy day in the liturgical calendar of the American people, and a time of memory and hope for many people in many nations - not for American national reasons, but because it recalls a great modern document and action on behalf of human rights and the calling to account of an unaccountable, irresponsible ruler.
In Jewish custom, special Torah readings and Prophetic passages are set aside to be read and discussed on the Jewish festivals. In the customs of the movement for Jewish renewal, beginning with havurah (fellowship) retreats in the mid-1970s and continuing in the Kallot (gatherings) sponsored every other summer by ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, it has become a joyful custom to honor this festival in a special way:
PASSOVER OF PEACE: A New Seder of the Children of Abraham, Hagar, & Sarah
Israeli-Palestinian Collision | Devoting Jewish Holidays to Peace | PesachBy Elana Levy and Carole Resnick for Syracuse Jews for Peace (April, 2009)
The material in this hagada is in part taken from the hagada by this name, written by Rabbi Arthur Waskow. Material from many other sources has also been included.
SEDER PLATE
A traditional seder plate includes five items:
- zeroa, a roasted shank bone representing the Paschal lamb, the holiday offering
made in Temple days (vegetarians today often use a roasted beet for its bloodred
color, or a roasted sweet potato for the pun of calling it the Paschal Yam;)
- beitzah, a roasted egg (with various symbolism; many see it as a symbol of
Murder is Murder & ABORTION IS NOT
Adolescence | Sexuality & SpiritualityBy Rabbi Arthur Waskow *
So another physician has been murdered for making it possible for pregnant women to actually use their constitutional right and their moral responsibility to choose whether to give birth or abort the fetus.
All honor to Dr. Tiller, who joins the list of martyrs for ethical decency and human rights. His death approached religious martyrdom in the classical sense: he was killed in his own church as he arrived to worship, killed for acting in accord with his religious commitments and his moral and ethical choices -- which were to support the moral and ethical choices of women he viewed as authentic bearers of moral responsibility.
Torturing the Image of God
1. B'RESHIT | Addressing global militarism & world empire | Torture | War and Civil Liberties | Yom KippurBy Rabbi Arthur Waskow
How are we to respond to a recent report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life that the more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of alleged terrorists?
According to Pew, 54% of Americans who attend church services at least once a week said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42% of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed.
The study did not include synagogue-attending Jews or Muslims, Hispanic Catholics, or Black Protestants (all of whom might be expected, out of the historical life-experience of their groups with being tortured, to oppose it more vigorously).
A Sun of Justice with Healing in its Wings
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | 25. TZAV | Interreligious Relations | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global Scorching | Pesach[This article, along with Avi Katz' illustration of scorching danger and solar healing, is appearing in the Jerusalem Report as my "word of Torah" concerning the Shabbat of April 4, 2009, just before Passover. For important connections between this article and the Passover and Blessing of the Sun that follows, see the note at the end of this message. – Arthur Waskow]
Jewish tradition assigns the last chapter of the last of the classical prophets – Malachi, who spoke about 2500 years ago -- to be read on the Shabbat just before Passover. Read this year, the passage takes on an uncanny significance for our generation:
Watch YouTube Film of Original Freedom Seder, 1969!
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | Peace | Addressing global militarism & world empire | Interreligious Relations | Justice and Race | Pesach | Seasons of American Sacred Time | Spirituality of Justice | War, Peace, & the Jewish Community 1. To plan your own New Freedom Seder of the Earth, , click on the article just beneath this for the text. For the Blessing of the Sun on April 8, see articles 3 & 4 below.
2. To view on YouTube part of the only existing film of the original Freedom Seder held on April 4, 1969, access the film at –-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5HgiGMqh6g
3. The Shalom Center has available ten DVD's of a much fuller film record of the Seder. To the first ten people to make an on-line DONATION OF $180, we will be glad to give the gift of one of those films. Donate by clicking on the Shalom Center logo on the right-hand margin of this page (right there! >>>>>>>>>>>) and enter "1969" in the "honor of" box.
"CHAROSET" & THE LIBERATION OF THE WORLD
Earth | Pesach | Sexuality & SpiritualityBy Rabbi Arthur Waskow *
"Why is there charoset on the Seder plate?"
That's the most secret Question at the Seder – nobody even asks it. And it’s got the most secret answer: none.
The Haggadah explains about matzah, the bread so dry it blocks your insides for a week.
The Haggadah explains about the horse-radish so bitter it blows the lid off your lungs and makes breathing so painful you wish you could just stop.
The Haggadah even explains about that scrawny chicken neck masquerading as a whole roast lamb.
But it never explains charoset.
Yes, there's an oral tradition. (Fitting for something that tastes so delicious!) You've probably heard somebody at a Passover Seder claim that charoset is the mortar the ancient Israelite slaves had to paste between the bricks and stones of those giant warehouses they were building for Pharaoh.
Blessing of the Sun: The Talmud, 1981, 2009, & the Future
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global Scorching | Festival SpiralBy Rabbi Arthur Waskow *
Early in the morning of April 8, 1981, I gathered with several hundred other people at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC, to watch the sun rise and to bless it in what is surely the rarest and perhaps the oddest of all Jewish ceremonies -- Birchat HaChamah, the Blessing of the Sun, that comes only once every 28 years. It commemorates, according to ancient tradition, the moment when God created the sun in the first place.
Ancient Jewish tradition (Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 59b) teaches: "Whoever sees the sun at its tekufah [transformative cycle-marker], the moon in its power, the stars [or planets] in their orbits, and the signs of the zodiac in their orderly progress, should say, 'Baruch oseh ma'aseh v'reshit. Blessed be the Doer of Deeds of "In the Beginning [Creation]."
SHALOM CENTER PRESENTS Green Menorah Award to JEWISH RECONSTRUCTIONIST CONGREGATION, Evanston
GREEN MENORAH COVENANT (on climate crisis) | Oiloholic Uncle Sam & Global Scorching | Tu B'ShvatSHALOM CENTER PRESENTS
GREEN MENORAH AWARD
TO JEWISH RECONSTRUCTIONIST CONGREGATION:
OFFERS MATCHING GRANT TO YOUTH GROUP
At a celebration of Tu B'Shvat, the midwinter Jewish festival for the rebirthing of trees and nature, on Friday evening February 6, 2009, The Shalom Center presented its annual Green Menorah Covenant Award to the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation of Evanston.
The Green Menorah Covenant Award honored JRC for construction of an extraordinarily "green" energy-saving congregational building, the only religious structure in America to be considered "platinum level" in energy conservation.
Activism Takes Tu B'Shevat to New Levels
Earth | Tu B'ShvatWorking to Tread Lightly on the Earth
Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, February 05, 2009 - Aaron Passman
.The Tu B'Shevat seder Elaine Cohen oversees at her synagogue is a tradition that goes back nearly 20 years. Between 15 and 30 people attend the annual event, and this year's meal, like others, will feature the traditional four cups of wine, as well as emphasize nuts and fruit -- products of the trees the meal celebrates.
Seders like these -- once small, unremarkable events -- have become an increasingly popular way of marking the holiday, and are now a fixture on many synagogue calendars. While they're modeled after the Passover seder, there is one distinct difference, noted Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia.
