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Showing posts from 2014

Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it out of....

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Little known Hanukkah fact: In the original Yiddish version of the dreidel song, the dreidel is not made of clay, but of 'blai,' which is lead. Lead used to be the most popular material for making dreidels, before it was known how terribly toxic such dreidels would be. From an old guide to Hanukkah crafts, here are instructions for making a dreidel out of molten lead. But if you love your family, please make your dreidel out of clay or wood or plastic and not out of lead!

Thousands of years of long-lasting oil

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Everyone knows the Hanukkah story about a little bit of oil lasting for eight days.  But not everyone realizes that this was not actually the first story in Jewish tradition about miraculously long-lasting oil. Earlier this fall, we and communities around the world read a passage from the book of Kings, the Haftarah for Parashat Vayera, which is about miracles performed by the Prophet Elisha, the protege of Elijah the Prophet. One of these stories (2 Kings 4) describes a woman who approaches Elisha and tells him:  I am in dire financial straits; my husband is dead and we are in terrible debt; our creditors now want to seize my two children as slaves. Elisha asks her: “What do you have at home?”  She responds:  “We have nothing at all at home, except for a jar of oil.”  Elisha tells her to borrow jugs and vessels from all her neighbors and then to pour oil out of this jar that she has, into the borrowed vessels.  Miraculously, this jar of oil keeps on pouring.  It fills up all

Shammai and Hillel fight it out: How should we light the Hanukkah candles?

How was it decided that we should light one candle on the first night of Hanukkah? In this audio message, join me in going back in history to listen to the debate between the ancient rabbis Hillel and Shammai about how best to mark the Hanukkah miracle, and how best to face the challenges of the future.  Chag Urim Sameach - best wishes for a happy Hanukkah holiday!

The Fruit That Remembers: What Botanists Say About the Etrog

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The Etrog is undoubtedly one of the most unusual Jewish ceremonial objects. If you have spent some time with an Etrog, you know that it smells wonderful, it doesn't taste so great, and it looks like a mutant lemon, (usually) with a distinctive protrusion on one end.  It is one of the Arba Minim , the four kinds of plants that Jews use ceremonially during prayers on the holiday of Sukkot. As I learn more about the Etrog, both Judaically and botanically, I realize what a powerful symbol it is for the Jewish people. In English, an etrog is called a 'citron,' and it's a very early member of the citrus family.  According to many botanical scholars, it’s the very first citrus fruit to be cultivated.  In fact, almost all of the citrus fruits that we know of today - grapefruits, oranges, lemons, limes - are human creations, cultivated by crossing the four original citrus fruits (citron, mandarin, pomelo, and papeda) with each other.  This would indicate that not

A Yom Kippur thought on the origin of a Jewish toast: "L'chaim" - "to life!"

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I shared this reflection with my community a few years ago on a Yom Kippur evening.   Each Shabbat morning in our synagogue, before we say the Kiddush, the prayer over wine, it is traditional for the leader to say ' savri meranan ,' or ' savri haverei, ’ which basically means, “Your attention please!”.  This is traditionally followed by everyone saying, with great enthusiasm, “ L’chaim !"  If you know Hebrew, or if you ever saw Fiddler on the Roof , you know that L’chaim! means "To Life!"  Then we say the blessing over wine. You may have wondered where this peculiar Jewish toast comes from.  In fact, it is almost a thousand years old.  The Midrash Tanhuma , a collection of ancient midrashim, describes this practice , in a way that has a lot to teach us about wine, about community, and about each other.  The Midrash says: When there's a death-penalty trial, and the verdict is about to be announced, one of the judges announces: savri meranan

Finding hope in Israel: Rosh HaShanah sermon 5775 / 2014

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This sermon was delivered on the first day of Rosh haShanah, 5775 (2014), at the United Synagogue of Hoboken, New Jersey. When Naftali Hertz Imber opened up the newspaper, he could not believe what he was reading. As he sat there that day in 1878, in the city of Iasi, in Romania, he saw a small item in a Jewish newspaper that said that for the first time in hundreds of years, there were to be Jewish farmers farming the land of Israel. Imber, a Jewish poet in his early 20’s, had many reasons to be surprised by this news.  The Jewish communities that he knew, in Eastern Europe, were mostly poor - some were urban, some were rural, but virtually none of the Jews were farming the land, as Jews were generally not permitted to own land.  No matter how many years or decades or centuries their families had dwelled in an Eastern European village or region, they were still regarded as foreigners, people who really belonged somewhere else, living on land that belonged to others.  

Yom HaShoah - Holocaust Remembrance Day thoughts, 2014

Tonight begins Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. For the last several years, I have sent a note to the congregation noting the survivors from our community who have died since last yom HaShoah.   As we know, those who survived the Holocaust as adults are now in their 90’s or older, and the youngest of the survivors -- those too young to remember anything about the experience -- are nearly 70.  Each year, we note the losses of survivors in our community, who were our links to a world destroyed. This year, I think especially of Gerda Stuiver z”l, mother of USH member Jake Stuiver, who died last April in her 80’s, and Lee Berendt z”l, father of USH member Chuck Berendt, who died just a month ago at age 90. Gerda Stuiver was originally from Vienna.  When she was 8 years old, in 1938, she was one of the approximately 10,000 Jewish children from Europe who were brought to England as part of the Kindertransport rescue mission.  She was fortunate to be reunited with her mother

Iron Chef Passover Edition at USH! -- results

On March 30, we had an amazing Pre-Passover program for the USH community - Iron Chef Passover Edition! Two teams of chefs from our community competed to make delicious Passover food using some secret ingredients they were told about only immediately before they began to cook.  (Secret ingredients were:  dates; fennel; mint.) Simultaneously, we had workshops on Matzah baking and Haroset making and a seder trivia game.  Then we ate some amazing food and voted!  (Of course it's too late to vote now, but you can see the ballot at bit.ly/ironchefpassover . And the winners were: Best appetizer:    Team Emiril L'Chaim - BAM! -- Deep Fried Matzo Balls w/ dipping sauces! Best side dish:   Team MGSRR - Symon - Same Kukhers -- Vegetable Saag w/ Fennel & Mint! Best dessert:    Team MGSRR - Symon - Same Kukhers -- Matzah Bark! Most creative use of secret ingredients:   Team Emiril L'Chaim - BAM!  Grand prize winners:  Team MGSRR - Symon - Same

"Dayyeinu"? "Enough"? -- For Passover 2014 / 5774

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  One of the best-known parts of the Seder is certainly one of the most unusual:  the song or prayer called “ Dayyeinu .”  It is perhaps the best known of all Passover melodies.   This is the song that expresses thanks to God for each of the various steps of the process of the Exodus from Egypt.  After each step, we say “ Dayyeinu - It would have been enough for us.”  “If God had taken us out of Egypt, but not imposed justice upon the Egyptians - It would have been enough for us.  If God had given us the Mannah in the desert, but not given us the gift of Shabbat, it would have been enough for us.”  Etc. The problem is that some of the lines of Dayyeinu just seem completely illogical. For example, I think of the line, “If God had split the Red Sea for us, but not led us through on dry land, Dayyeinu .  It would have been enough for us.”  Really now!  I’m not sure that would have been quite enough for me.  To have the opportunity to see this dramatic miracle - the splitting o