Thanksgiving Reflection - Delivered at Brookline Interfaith Clergy Association Thanksgiving Service, 2016

Even several weeks after a particularly harsh and divisive presidential campaign, I know that people are still on edge. Trump supporters are celebrating their victory, but many feel hurt by the reaction of many Clinton supporters, many of whom seem to paint supporters of the president elect with the broad brush of racism and bigotry. Many Clinton supporters, in addition to their deep disappointment serious apprehensions about the future, feel that they don’t recognize their country and cannot believe that even here, in Brookline, there are voters who supported the other side. And those Trump voters, not surprisingly, often feel misunderstood and even unwilling to acknowledge their support. How, one might ask, can we find something we’re grateful for, something to sustain us in such a situation? What is a blessing we can identify in this new reality?

Here’s my response: At work at Center Communities of Brookline  last week, I had a series of conversations with colleagues and residents who voted differently than I did. If you know me already, you probably know how I voted. If you don’t know me, I’m willing to tell you face to face, but it’s really not relevant in this context. What’s relevant is this: these were difficult conversations, full of the pitfalls of our contemporary political scene: we get news from different sources, so not surprisingly we have diametrically opposed views of the candidates and of the events that have followed the election. 

With one colleague, the conversation was especially challenging. One of us, the Trump supporter, feels threatened by the intensity of the negative feelings expressed by Clinton supporters, especially in attributions of bigotry.  The other one of us, the Clinton supporter, couldn’t understand how someone so devoted to our shared community and shared values of racial and gender justice could overlook the various factors that seemed to disqualify Trump for the office of president. The Trump supporter couldn’t understand how someone so devoted to security and economic fairness could simply overlook the various factors that seemed to disqualify Clinton for that office. 

But as we talked, we also began to listen, to pay attention to the words and, even more important, the feelings the other was communicating. We began to understand a bit more, to see the election, and perhaps even the world, through the eyes of the other. Not that she convinced me or that I convinced her, but we were talking, listening, relating, and connecting.

In Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers that forms part of the Mishnah, a compendium of Rabbinic traditions codified around 200 of the Common Era, Rabbi Hananiah ben T’radyon is quoted as saying

אבל שנים שיושבין ויש ביניהם דברי תורה שכינה שרויה ביניהם.

 that “when two persons meet and exchange words of Torah, the Shekhinah--the presence of God--hovers over them.” In this conversation, difficult as it was, I felt the presence of Shekhinah between me and my colleague, and for that blessing I am supremely grateful. May we all find the capacity to listen to one another, to argue strenuously for what we believe in, and to work tirelessly for justice. And most of all, may we discover how to make it possible for the Shekhinah to dwell among us, even amid passionate disagreements.

Poetry and the Blessings of Misunderstanding

Published on Hebrew College's "70 Faces of Torah Blog" on November 2, 2016

There are utterances — their meaning
Is obscure or negligible, 
But to attend to them
Without agitation is impossible.

                - Mikhail Lermontov, 1840

As we come to the close of a bitter election season, in which the use and misuse of language has loomed so large, this week’s Torah portion, Noach, gives us an opportunity to ponder both the importance and the challenges of linguistic diversity.

Parts of this campaign have effectively channeled the fear and resentments of a large portion of the electorate through what gets characterized as “plain speech,” unadulterated by “political correctness.” Whether a given instance of so-called “plain speech” is meaningful or meaningless, factually correct or plain wrong, it can foster an extreme emotional response. Such speech also fosters divisiveness, across regional, ethnic, gender, religious, and class differences, among others—in a way that makes it difficult for people with different views or positions to communicate with one another.

From this perspective, it might be tempting to suggest that we have reached a Tower of Babel moment— we can’t even talk with one another anymore, so we lament the loss of the unity and clear communication that we had until… well, when? Isn’t linguistic diversity (even if we’re all speaking the same language) simply a fact of life?

This question lurks behind the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), in which God confounds the generation after the Flood by confusing their language and scattering them across the earth. Traditional commentators see this loss of linguistic and geographic unity as a punishment for some sort of rebellion, though the text never specifies any hostile motive—only a desire to make a name (shem, most likely a monument, as in “yad vashem” from Isaiah 56:5) and to avoid dispersal.

But the biggest objection to this reading is the fact that Genesis 10:5 reports that “[f]rom these [descendents of Japheth] the maritime nations branched out by their lands—each with its language—their clans and their nations.” Migration and linguistic diversity here appear to be uncontroversial facts of human life, so it seems unlikely that they would become punishments a mere chapter later. To understand what is at play here, it’s worth noting that the Hebrew text of the story is unusually rich in verbal play: the similarity of sounds—for instance of nivleh (let’s confuse) and bavel (Babylon); and word repetition—safah (language) and kol ha-aretz (all the earth) each appear five times. This word play is explicitly poetic, carrying an emotional resonance beyond the words’ plain meaning.

The story also carries verbal and thematic echoes of the story of Creation and the expulsion from Eden. When God says, “Let us go down there and confound their speech…” (hava nerda, in 11:7), the phrase echoes another instance of surprisingly plural divine language in Genesis 1:26—“let us make a person in our likeness and image”—as well as God’s “going down” into Eden to confront Adam and Eve after they realize their nakedness in Genesis 3:8. These verbal echoes—God’s use of the first-person plural (to whom is God speaking?) and God’s descent to both confront and confound—connect the story of the Tower of Babel to the blessing of creation and the trauma of expulsion, carrying an emotional resonance beyond the plain meaning of the text.

That resonance is what Lermontov identifies as the surplus content of otherwise obscure utterances, which Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (in citing Lermontov’s poem) characterizes as poetic language, “language of pure transcendence without correlative.” For Levinas, poetry transforms words into signs without any objective meaning, undoing any simple correlation between a word and what it is supposed to mean. “No novel, no poem… has thus perhaps done anything else [but] undo the structure of language. Without this, the world would know only the meanings which inspire official records or the minutes of…board meetings…” Poetic language may at times be difficult to understand, but its meaning is ultimately far greater than what we can fully express in our usual, every-day language. In Genesis, such poetic resonance in the narrative contrasts with the apparent uniformity of the language used by the Tower Builders themselves: “All the earth had the same language and the same words.” This sameness suggests not only that everyone spoke the same language, but that everyone was in agreement about the meaning of words. In the Garden of Eden, the absence of death also meant the absence of growth and development; here, the absence of misunderstanding, which allows for the construction of towers, means the absence of poetry, of the struggle to understand another person that lends meaning to our existence.

In this reading, the confounding of languages is not a punishment, but a corrective; and what prompts this corrective is not the building of the tower, but the triumph of linguistic uniformity in the face of diversity. Although diversity is necessary and even desirable, the challenges it poses are real—and can lead to conflict. One midrash imagines the murderous rage that will result from that loss of mutual understanding: “Thus one said to his colleague, ‘Bring me water,’ whereupon he would give him earth, at which he struck him and split his skull.” Such violence, however, results not so much from the initial misunderstanding as from the failure of the interlocutors to strive for understanding across the linguistic divide. They decided, or at least one of them did, to forgo communication in favor of violence.

For Levinas, poetic speech carries an ethical dimension: our fundamental responsibility to go beyond ourself towards the Other and to recognize the irreducible diversity of individuals. In this ethical imperative, we see the contrast with demagogic speech. The demagogue not only denies this responsibility to the Other; their language also imagines and longs for a pre-Babel world devoid of diversity with its challenges and blessings.

Diversity, like poetry, can be difficult—but it is far superior to the alternatives: a fantasy of “plain speech,” or a uniformity enforced by violence.

Got Questions? Well, So Do I!!

This post was printed in the 100 Centre Street Journal in January, 2016

Now that the Hanukkah menorahs have returned to their boxes in the cellar and we’ve recovered from our Gregorian New Year’s celebration, it’s time to look back at some of the questions that arose from the holiday season.  I hope that my responses will not only interest you but also spur you to come up with additional questions about Judaism or interfaith topics--if you pass them along to Dodie or bring them to me directly, I’ll be happy to consider responding in print.  I should also say that if you see something in the answers I’ve provided here that you disagree with, please let me know and I’ll be happy to discuss it.  Finally, I’ve included a question for you at the end of the article, so I hope you’ll have the patience to read the whole thing!

So to the Hanukkah questions, courtesy of Dodie Catlett:

1. What is the significance of Hanukkah gelt, and when/why did it change from coins to chocolate?

As with many Jewish customs, Hanukkah gelt has its roots both in Jewish history and in the encounter of Jews with the primarily Christian cultures of Europe and North America.  To start with Jewish history and religious practice, it’s important to remember that Hanukkah commemorates the victory of the Maccabees over the Greek empire.  When the Maccabees (Hasmoneans) reestablished sovereignty over Jerusalem, they struck coins reflecting that sovereignty.  Further on in history, the rabbis of the Talmud decreed that when a person had to choose between purchasing kiddush wine and oil for the Hanukkah lamps (in the days before wax candles), he should buy oil in order to publicize the miracle of the oil in the temple that should have lasted one day but instead lasted eight. For that reason, the tradition arose of giving gifts of money to the poor at Hanukkah time to pay for oil. 

More recently, in Europe and in North America (I’m not as familiar with Hanukkah customs in other parts of the world), the practice arose of giving money to tradesmen and students at Hanukkah time as a kind of year-end tip.  I assume that this practice was at least in part in imitation of the year-end tips that non-Jews would offer in honor of Christmas and the New Year.  Equally recent was the custom of spinning the dreidel, which was a basic kind of gambling game that would require money to become interesting.  The practice of gift giving at Hanukkah is rather fraught for many Jews, since there’s a sense that Hanukkah has gained prominence (and commercial attention) only by its proximity to Christmas.  It’s important to remember, however, that gift-giving at Christmas time is also a fairly recent phenomenon and can be equally fraught for many Christians concerned with commercialization and a lack of spiritual significance. 

The rise of chocolate gelt (as opposed to real coins) seems to have its origin in the shift from Hanukkah as an opportunity to give tips to our tradesman (although many of us still tip our mail carriers and newspaper delivery people at the New Year) to a holiday for children.  Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis University was quoted by NPR as suggesting that chocolate in the form of coins was a way of preserving the cultural memory of earlier practices.  What’s important to remember is that Hanukkah traditions, like all Jewish practices, will continue to evolve as Jews strive to find an ongoing balance between similarity and distinctiveness in relation to the larger culture.

2. I’ve seen menorahs with seven lights and with nine lights; why the difference?

A “menorah,” strictly speaking, is a lamp stand.  According to the Torah, the menorah in the Temple had seven lamps (again, this is in the time before wax candles) and is described in several places, including Exodus 25:31-40.  

These days, when people say “menorah” or, more specifically, a “Hanukkah menorah,” they are referring to a “hanukkiyah,” the nine-branched lampstand that we use only for Hanukkah.  Generally, these hanukkiyot (to use the Hebrew plural) include eight candle holders (or oil lamps, for people who prefer period instruments) on one level, plus another at a different level (lower or higher) for the “shamash” (“beadle”), which we use to light the other lights.

3. Why was the color blue chosen for Jewish holiday merchandise and gift wrap?

This question is particularly interesting because it points to several aspects of the Jewish experience, including the widespread acceptance of Hanukkah as a legitimate alternative to Christmas in this country and the rise of Zionism and the state of Israel as a gloss on the Hanukkah story of self-determination and cultural distinctiveness.

To begin with the latter factor, it’s important to note that the colors of the Israeli flag are blue and white, in part to echo the traditional colors of the Jewish prayer shawl.  The blue is called t’khelet, which is described in the Torah and has been traced to pigment derived from mollusks. These colors, which the Zionist movement adopted at its inception in the late 19th century, were described in “Judah’s Colors,” an 1864 poem in German by Ludwig August Frankl: “Blue and white are the colours of Judah; white is the radiance of the priesthood, and blue, the splendors of the firmament.” (see Ronald L. Eisenberg, Jewish Traditions: A JPS Guide, 2004, p. 577 and Amanda Green, “Why Are Blue and White the Hanukkah Colors?,” Mental Floss on-line).

Since the explanation about Hanukkah in this country has focused not only on issues of religious freedom and self-determination but also Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, Jews readily associate the holiday with the establishment of the State of Israel and thus the colors of the state, namely blue and white.  These colors have the added advantage of being clearly distinct from green and red, which in this country are the currently accepted colors for Christmas (I understand there is a history there, as well, but I am ignorant of it). In both cases, marketers have cemented the use of these colors as an easy visual shorthand for both retailers and consumers to recognize products for one or the other holiday.  

As a curious aside, I learned in my internet searches that in the first half of the 20th century, most Hanukkah candles (and electric Hanukkah lights) were manufactured in an orange color, so that before the current vogue for blue and white, the color of Hanukkah was indeed orange.  If any of you has any memories of the shift from orange to blue and white (or, indeed, memories of other colors associated with Hanukkah), I would love to hear about them!

With blessings for a happy and healthy New Gregorian Year!

Rabbi Jim

Second Day of Festivals at the Worship and Study Minyan - Part 1

Recently, there was an exchange on our Discussion list about the Second Day of Yom Tov in the Diaspora—in Hebrew: yom tov sheni shel galuyot. The posts offered thoughtful reflections on our current practice, which has developed over time in response to Rabbi Gold’s decision, many years ago, that the minyan, like congregations in Israel and in the Reform movement, would observe a single day of festivals. (As with Israeli and many Reform congregations, we would continue to celebrate a second day of Rosh Hashanah.) This issue may seem somewhat rarified, but it raises significant practical and ideological questions.

In practical terms, when the eighth day of Pesach falls on a Shabbat, Israel and the Reform movement continue on with the Torah-reading cycle and are thus “out of sync” with the rest of the Jewish world for several weeks or, as will happen in 2016, for several months. A lesser challenge is the need to combine the rituals of Sh’mini Atzeret and Simchat Torah into a single, lengthy, and tonally-disjointed service.

Turning to ideology, I have attempted to reconstruct Rabbi Gold’s original decision on the basis of various conversations and the posts on the list serve. If other members have recollections of conversations with Rabbi Gold or, even better, access to a written record of his thoughts on these questions, I would very much like to hear from them. As far as I understand, his decision stemmed primarily from a rejection of any notion of the inferiority of “diaspora” Judaism. If Israeli Jews were no longer in galut (exile--a loaded term in Israel-diaspora relations to be sure!), neither were diaspora Jews who had built glorious Jewish civilizations across the world. Therefore, there should be consistent practice across all Jewish communities, and since the second day of the festivals had been characterized in some rabbinic responsa as an extra burden on diaspora Jews to encourage them to yearn for Zion (or, after the establishment of the State of Israel, to encourage Aliyah), that consistent practice should be to observe a single day of the festivals.

Moving from this admittedly thin reconstruction of Rabbi Gold’s reasoning to our own exploration of the issue, several questions arise:

1. If our goal, like Rabbi Gold’s apparently was, is at least in part to assert the dignity of diaspora Jewry, why wouldn’t we also want to assert the dignity of diaspora practice, which from the earliest periods of rabbinic Judaism—itself largely the product of diaspora—was to observe two days?

2. Given that the second day of the festivals places an extra burden on diaspora Jews, how does the principle of “tircha al hatzibur” (avoiding an undue burden on the community) factor into our thinking?

3. Finally, if the Israeli practice meant being “out of sync” with the diaspora Torah-reading cycle for weeks or months after Pesach in certain years, why do we (unlike our Reform brothers and sisters) immediately revert to the diaspora cycle?

Before addressing these questions directly in the context of our minyan and its practice, however, I think it makes sense to review the concept of yom tov sheni in general.

According to the Babylonian Talmud (Beitzah, 4b), yom tov sheni emerged from the potential confusion that might arise if far flung communities of Jews were not to receive word of the proper day of a festival in time for the celebration. To address this doubt (s’feika deyoma), the custom (minhag) was to observe two days of festivals. In practical terms, these included the first and final days of Pesach, the first and final days of Sukkot (the latter being Sh’mini Atzeret), Shavuot, and Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur was not doubled, given that a fast day would be too much of a burden. In the land of Israel, by contrast, Jews maintained the biblical practice of celebrating holidays for one day. The exception would prove to be Rosh Hashanah, in theory because there might reasonably be doubt about the first day of Tishrei even in the Land of Israel, although scholars suggest that the practice become widespread in Palestine only after the migration of a population of Jews from Provence in the 11th century.

One might immediately point out the slight absurdity of fixing Yom Kippur without concern for doubt five days before reasserting doubt about the beginning (and ending) of Sukkot. Indeed, for the Rabbis named in Beitzah, this custom was no longer technically necessary, since the rabbis had determined a system for calculating the calendar without reference to the physical movement of the moon. The reason for persisting in celebrating the second day was formulated as follows:

Because they sent [word] from there [Palestine]: Give heed to the customs of your ancestors which have come down to you; for it might happen that the government might issue a decree and it will cause confusion [in ritual].

This answer is interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, it comes from Palestine, suggesting that the rabbis there had an interest in maintaining distinct customs for communities inside and outside of the Land. Of course, we find this dictum in the Babylonian Talmud, which suggests that the authorities who compiled the gemara shared this interest in maintaining the distinction. Second, it clearly locates the practice in the realm of minhag (custom)—although functionally, the distinction between custom and law can be vanishingly small. Third, it justifies a conservative practice by reference to governmental persecution, which was much more of a given in Roman-controlled Palestine than in Babylonia.

Another justification for maintaining the practice comes a few lines earlier, when the gemara asks if R. Assi regards the two days of the festival as “one continuous holiness.” This concept of continuous holiness appears quite often in explanations about the festivals (at least from a diaspora perspective!!). If the second day of a festival is truly as holy as the first, who are we to cancel it, thus destroying moments of holiness? Indeed, for those Jews who can manage it (and in this country, many of those people work in the Jewish community!), the second day of festivals truly increases joy and celebration, even as it increases the burdens on individual Jews who feel compelled to choose between their Jewish practice and their livelihood and on congregations who often struggle to make a minyan on the second day of festivals.

Regardless, until the establishment of the State of Israel, the preponderance of Jewish life qualified as diaspora—galut. (As I’ve already noted, galut can also be translated as “exile”; which translation you choose can affect your opinion of yom tov sheni, a topic I’ll have more to say about in another post!) As such, there were very few communities who did not follow the diaspora calendar, at least officially. Even today, when both the Reform movement worldwide and essentially all Israeli congregations follow the biblical calendar, the diaspora calendar remains the default. I have tried and failed to find an Israeli luach (schedule of religious observances) online. In general, books and websites about Jewish holidays (at least those aimed beyond a Reform audience) mention the Israeli and Reform practice, but assume yom tov sheni as a default. Although there is a fair amount of dissatisfaction with yom tov sheni shel galuyot in this and other (small c) conservative congregations, the reality is that most of them will, at least officially, continue to maintain the holiness of the second day.

In future posts on this topic, I plan to have a look at the legal codes and other texts relevant to this discussion, including responsa from the Reform and Conservative movements. I will also explore, through the prism of the three questions I outlined above, the dilemmas we face in our current practice and some others we would face if our practice were to change.

However, since I am writing during the season of Sh’mini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, I want to raise it as an example as to the complexity of this issue. Simchat Torah itself (as a festival distinct from Sh’mini Atzeret rather than a repetition of it) arose only in the Middle Ages when the annual Torah-reading cycle become predominant over its rival triennial system (which ended every third Pesach and was quite distinct from our triennial system, which simply divides each of the annual system’s weekly sidras into three). Since Judaism was at that time by default a diaspora phenomenon, so too was Simchat Torah. Therefore, the process of integrating Simchat Torah into Sh’mini Atzeret was not a return to biblical or pre-exilic practice but an attempt to adapt the principle of a single day of the festival in the Land of Israel to practices that emerged in the diaspora. I mention this not to valorize one practice over another but rather to point out the complex—and ongoing—interplay between diaspora and center in the life of the Jewish people.

In this context, I’ll share a paragraph from a Chabad website:

Following the custom of the holy Arizal, many in Israel participate in hakafot sh'niyot ("second hakafot") on the night following the one-day holiday—thus joining their Diaspora brothers and sisters in their celebration of the Torah. These second hakafot have an advantage: since it is no longer a holiday, the singing can be accompanied by live music. If you are in Israel for the holiday, you might want to make your way on this night to the Western Wall, where the singing and dancing lasts well into the night.

(http://www.chabad.org/holidays/JewishNewYear/template_cdo/aid/1288162/jewish/A-Deeper-Look-at-Shemini-Atzeret-Simchat-Torah.htm)

May your fall be filled with the blessings of joy, peace, and dancing!

Rabbi Jim

Interfaith Accompanying

Rarely would I express gratitude for weather that pushes me off my bicycle and on to the T: late, crowded trains; jostling passengers; travel times increased from 25 minutes to 55 or more.  But today, I'm grateful I took the T, because I found a tweet that intrigued me:

Rev. Laura Everett ‏@RevEverett

Crowd sourcing #Lent : what are you adding/giving up for 40 days? Thinking maybe for me- no glowing screens 2 hrs before bed?

I responded:

Jim Morgan ‏@RabbiJimM

@RevEverett Love it (although of course I don't do lent)--but I think I should do that all the time!! Not giving up tv but taking sleep!

And that got us going on a twitter-only conversation (my first, by the way) in which Rev. Laura suggested that we "swap" Lent practices, even that she would take on kashrut during the 40 days (which is actually more because Sundays, it turns out, don't count).  First order of business, Laura said, was for me to obtain and consume a pancake for Fat Tuesday, i.e. today.  (Kimchi pancakes and potato pancakes--i.e. latkes--wouldn't do, but a crepe would be fine.)

Although I was very excited about the pancake, I wasn't entirely comfortable with a "swap," since it wouldn't do for me to take on a Lenten practice (awkward that, for a rabbi). So I suggested instead that we accompany one another during our periods of spiritual preparation for major holidays.  I would accompany her during Lent as she prepared for Easter through repentance and fasting.  Laura would then accompany me (beginning before Easter arrives, since the Jewish and Christian calendars do not coincide this year) during S'firat ha-Omer, the Counting of the Omer, a time of self-examination and partial mourning practices when Jews prepare for Shavuot--the holiday that celebrates our receiving of Torah.

We haven't discussed it in detail, but over twitter we started a list: we will learn each other's texts, help each other maintain our practices (she's giving up screens after 9:30 pm--I notice I'm writing at 10:30, so I'm not much help so far!), and visit the other's congregation.  I suggested that she join our minyan (Worship and Study Minyan at Harvard Hillel) for Shavuot, where we could offer a joint reflection on our experience of accompanying one another.  In my ignorance, I'm not sure when would be most appropriate for me to join her congregation--I am eager to learn.

And yes--I still made a point of eating a pancake tonight--a lemon and sugar crepe from Paris Creperie in Coolidge Corner (so delicious--I was happy for the dispensation!), and I hope Laura will nosh on hamentashen for Purim (perhaps she'll even join us at Hillel for the Megillah!).

And all of this learning and reflection because of the snow storm that kept me off my bicycle!

Dedicating Ourselves to the Rebuilding of Jewish Life in Ukraine

This week, as my family has lit the Hanukkah candles, I have placed the Soviet Jewry Movement and Boston’s participation in the Dnepropetrovsk Kehillah Project alongside the rededication of the Temple as miracles to be thankful for.  This inclusion is especially appropriate because last week, we celebrated the 25^th Anniversary of the March on Washington for Soviet Jewry.

On December 6, 1987, over 250,000 people, representing 300 Jewish Federations, Community Councils, synagogues, youth groups, and other Jewish and non-Jewish organizations, rallied at the Washington Mall to urge President Reagan to prioritize human rights in his upcoming meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev.  The March was the culmination of the struggle to free Soviet Jewry and it succeeded. Like present-day Maccabees, Jews came together against mighty odds and contributed to the ultimate fall of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Jewry Movement was about more than rescuing Jews from the USSR. It was about the freedom of Jews to celebrate their culture and religion. Over the following months and years, more than one million Jews emigrated from the USSR to Israel, Europe, and the United States. 

At least as many remained behind in the Former Soviet Union, a place where generations of Jews were forbidden to practice Judaism and where many hid or even forgot their Jewish identity.  With the fall of Communism, however, came the opportunity for renewal, even as Jewish life remains a challenge throughout the region.

Amid the heroic efforts of many individuals and agencies, we in Boston were fortunate to partner with Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, where a thriving Jewish community has risen out of the ashes of the Holocaust and Communism to become one of the most important communities in Europe.

Through JCRC's 20-year partnership in the Dnepropetrovsk Kehillah Project, which thrives thanks to generous funding from Combined Jewish Philanthropies, many Jews in Greater Boston have been privileged to play a small role in the miracle that has happened there: the rebuilding of Jewish life. In the process, our partners have inspired many of us to reengage our own Jewish identities.

Today in Dnepropetrovsk, 400 students attend the Jewish Day School, Dnepropetrovsk Hillel recruits the largest Birthright delegation from the FSU, and the largest Jewish communal center in Europe has just opened.

At the same time, the community continues to honor its obligation to the heroes and heroines of the past. With Boston’s support and expertise, they have opened the assisted living facility Beit Baruch and the new Jewish Medical Center to care for elderly Jews. Ida Tzypkina, one of the first residents of Beit Baruch (and known to many in Boston as “Yiddishe Mama”), now lives her life in dignity and safety, celebrating her Jewish heritage in ways she never thought possible during the war.

Challenges remain, and Jews in Dnepropetrovsk and beyond still struggle with antisemitism, poverty, alienation, and the lingering effects of the Soviet suppression of Jewish life.  But this year we recall our partners in Ukraine, along with the countless FSU Jews in other lands, who have accepted these struggles and have dedicated themselves to rekindling Jewish life. For this blessing, we thank the heroes of the Soviet Jewry Movement who helped bring this miracle to reality.  We will strive to follow their example.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Hanukkah!

Dnepropetrovsk Trip Report – Executive Summary

October 17-23, 2012

JCRC’s very productive visit to Dnepropetrovsk coincided with the opening of the Menorah Center, the largest Jewish communal building in the world.  With this opening, Dnepropetrovsk confirms its status as a central Jewish address in Ukraine and all of Eastern Europe.  Thanks in part to the advocacy of the Boston Jewish Community, the building is wheelchair accessible and offers an unprecedented opportunity for the inclusion of people with disabilities and their families.  Most of the Jewish community’s offices will be located in the Menorah Center, which also houses a Museum of Ukrainian Jewry and the Holocaust (with the support of the JDC), a hotel, a youth hostel, a kosher supermarket and restaurants, a concert hall, and a large scale ballroom facility. 

Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki has made it clear that the relationship with Boston has helped make the Menorah Center become a reality.  To give a specific example, the community acted on advice from Boston partners to make the management of the Menorah Center independent of its other activities, which has both improved the building and freed the community to focus on its religious, education, and charitable priorities.  Unfortunately, they do not expect to receive any dividends from its operations for some years. 

Beth Moskowitz, the chair JCRC’s Committee for Post-Soviet Jewry, received the honor of cutting the ribbon for the new museum, and was the only woman to be named during the ceremony—another example of subtle Boston advocacy!

Invited to cut the ribbon at the entrance to the museum were Yuri Kiperman, one of the pioneers of the Jewish renaissance in Dnepropetrovsk, Beth Moskowitz, leader of the delegation from our sister Jewish Community of Greater Boston (USA) and the chair of their Committee for Post-Soviet Jewry, and Leon Sherman, a philanthropist who has donated a unique collection of artifacts to the museum (http://djc.com.ua/news/view/new/?id=8101).

Much of our visit was devoted to developing our medical partnerships with old and new partners.  The Corky Ribakoff Women’s Clinic will soon celebrate its fifteenth anniversary, and we hope to celebrate that milestone in the spring.  We were proud to learn that the training Dr. Valeria Sidelkovskaya received this past spring in Boston has paid off: her new skills with the Doppler feature of the Ultrasound Machine we donated in 2009 allowed her to make a life-saving diagnosis.  With our friend Yuri Bolbot, we made plans for a post-graduate course in pediatrics in the spring, including an effort, in cooperation with the Medical Academy and the Dnepropetrovsk Municipality, to spur a media campaign encouraging the immunization of infants and children.  Finally, one of our Boston doctors, a psychiatrist, lectured about postpartum depression at Hospital No. 3 to twenty doctors and nurses from throughout the city.

We also had meetings with several of our agency and Dnepropetrovsk partners, including one with Marsha Frankel of JF&CS, who works (among many other projects) with the Educational Resource Center for Special Needs, and Susan Wolf-Fordham, co-chair of the ERC Steering Committee, where we came together to sketch out a strategic direction as Beit Chana Teaching College (the host of the ERC) begins plans to move downtown next to the Menorah Center.  Our collective vision is to make the ERC a lab school for a new Department of Special Needs Education at Beit Chana.  Both Beit Chana and the community at large are committed to the inclusion of children with special needs throughout the community.  For instance, our Jewish Big Brother and Big Sister program for the first time includes “littles” with Downs Syndrome who have been welcomed with open arms by the other children.

Thanks to the generosity of an individual donor, the ERC has been able to add an accessibility ramp to the new van they received from Women’s Philanthropy during the Community Mission last May.

 Beth Moskowitz watches as Tamara Olschanitskaya and Svetlana Efimova ride the new accessibility ramp. 

   Larissa, Sonia, and Sonia, littles from Jewish Big Brother Big Sister of Dnepropetrovsk at the Day School.

Finally, Beth and Noga Nevel had a productive conversation with the leaders of Dnepropetrovsk’s Next Generation Movement, making plans for a trip to Boston in the spring of 2013 and ongoing social media communication.

The trip culminated in a beautiful Shabbat, with dinner at Rabbi Kaminezki’s and lunch with Zelig Brez and his family.  As usual, we came away with an infusion of yiddishe ruach in our souls and a sense of the blessings of this remarkable partnership.