Issue # 302

Issue #302 – 6 March 2008 / 29 Adar I 5768


IN THIS ISSUE:

2008 GEIGER AWARD GOES TO JORDAN'S PRINCE HASSAN

WORLD UNION COMMITTEE HELPING TO STRENGTHEN ISRAEL'S NORTH

REFORM SYNAGOGUE IN LEEDS CELEBRATES REBIRTH OF TORAH SCROLL

UPCOMING EVENTS

 

2008 GEIGER AWARD GOES TO JORDAN'S PRINCE HASSAN

HRH Prince Hassan of Jordan received the 2008 Abraham Geiger Award this week during a formal ceremony in Berlin, Germany. Every two years, the award is presented  by Abraham Geiger College, continental Europe’s first post-war rabbinic seminary in Potsdam near Berlin, an affiliate of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. Previous recipients of the award include Karl Cardinal Lehmann, Alfred Grosser, Emil Fackenheim z’’l, and Susannah Heschel.

In his laudatory speech, Germany’s Federal Minister of the Interior Dr. Wolfgang Schauble said, “Today, in commemoration of the great liberal Jewish thinker, Abraham Geiger, we are honoring Prince Hassan as ‘a voice for global sustainability, reconciliation and inter-religious dialogue.’ Abraham Geiger managed to successfully combine a strong faith with tolerance and academic freedom. Hence, it was no coincidence that he became the founder of modern Qur’an Studies. Figures such as Abraham Geiger and Prince El Hassan bin Talal show us the possible shape of a fruitful dialogue between Islam, the Jewish faith and Christianity.”

Prince Hassan, president emeritus of the Club of Rome and the World Conference of Religions for Peace, touched many issues in his acceptance speech, referring to common values, human security and collective responsibility. “Jews, Christians and Muslims must insist upon the ethical dimensions and demand that humanitarian factors be placed at the forefront of all other considerations. We must seek a new kind of politics, capable of ending humanity’s ancient wars against itself and against nature. Politics for people, or anthropolitics, if you will.” (Click here to read the full text of Prince Hassan’s speech.) To honor the prince as a builder of bridges between Jews and Muslims, an academic volume exploring the multicultural origins of the Qur’an was dedicated to him.
 
In his remarks to the assemblage, World Union President Rabbi Uri Regev said, “We are all God’s children, created in God’s image, and put into this world with the task of partnering with God in his unfolding work of creation, of tikkun, of mending and healing. …It is the sacred responsibility of all those who are committed to see God’s children live together in harmony and peace to extend our hands to each other, and to counter the extremists in our midst. In that spirit we honor Prince Hassan bin Talal today.”
 
The program also included remarks by Nathan Kalmanowicz, an executive board member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and Bekir Alboga, who chairs the Coordinating Council of Muslims in Germany. Among the other 550 guests present were: top federal and state officials, several cabinet members and some 30 members of parliament; the ambassadors of Austria, Egypt and Jordan and the minister of the Israeli embassy; senior representatives of the country’s religious communities, including the chair of Germany’s general rabbinical conference, Rabbi Henry G. Brandt, the president of the Council of the Protestant Church of Germany, Bishop Huber, and Berlin’s Catholic Bishop Weider; academic and cultural leaders, such as Alfred Grosser (Paris) and Josef Joffe, editor-in-chief of the national weekly Die Zeit; and members of German nobility, including the head of the House of Prussia. Lynn Lazar Magid and Shelley Lindauer, the first vice president and the executive director, respectively, of the Women of Reform Judaism, as well as World Union representatives, Jim and Liz Breslauer were among the guests of honor.
 
This year’s award ceremony, which took place at the grand premises of the State of Bavaria’s representation in Berlin, also marked the opening of the Jewish Institute of Cantorial Arts (JICA), the Geiger arm that will train Progressive cantors and educators. As part of the festive evening program marking the occasion on March 4, there was a performance by Danny Maseng, JICA’s patron artist, who met an enthusiastic audience. Prince Hassan has agreed to apply the prize money of € 10.000 to a conference on “Growing, Thirst, Impurity. Religious and Ecological Aspects of Water” in Potsdam in 2009.


Federal President Horst Koehler of Germany (r.) congratulates Prince Hassan
bin Talal on being awarded the Abraham Geiger Prize in Berlin on March 4, 2008.


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WORLD UNION COMMITTEE HELPING TO STRENGTHEN ISRAEL'S NORTH

The World Union’s Global Social Action Network (GSAN) has joined the Northern Exposure Project, which is aimed at strengthening the economic base of communities in northern Israel. The Northern Exposure Project is a joint initiative of the New Israel Fund, the Jewish Agency, the United Jewish Communities, the Hadassah Foundation and the Cummings Foundation.

Northern Exposure was launched by Shatil, the New Israel Fund’s empowerment and training center for organizations engaged in social change. It grew out of the realization that government assistance for small businesses in Israel’s north was woefully inadequate after the fighting with Hezbollah in the summer of 2006. During that fighting, Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets on the upper, central and western Galilee regions, causing many deaths and serious injuries and effectively shutting down the area’s economy for the duration of the conflict.

“GSAN joined this endeavor,” says its chairman, Dr. Philip Bliss (who is also a vice chair of the World Union’s executive board), “to engage individuals and groups from the Reform and Progressive family around the world to support Israel by featuring a trip to the north on their next visit, with the understanding that the economic stability of the north is crucial to the stability of the country at large.”

For more information, visit Northern Exposure’s Web site at  www.nes.org.il.  It features over 170 small businesses, as well as a narrative about their background and how they were affected by the Lebanon war.


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REFORM SYNAGOGUE IN LEEDS CELEBRATES REBIRTH OF TORAH SCROLL

Some 150 people attended a rare ceremony known as Siyum Hatorah (Completion of the Torah) held recently at Sinai Synagogue in Leeds, England, an affiliate of Britain’s Reform movement. The scroll had split apart at a seam during services, and London sofer (scribe) Marc Michaels deemed the amount of work necessary to restore it to be so extensive that it was rendered like new.

The Torah was welcomed into the synagogue with a ceremonial procession involving the congregation’s other four scrolls. The last nine letters, which had been left unfinished, were ceremonially completed under a canopy formed by a tallit using special quill pens made from turkey feathers.

The letters were added by nine people representing all generations of Sinai Synagogue, including Issy Kempner, its most recent bat mitzvah celebrant. The ceremony was accompanied by live harp music played by Issy’s sister, Jess. Another congregant who was honored by adding a letter was Roy Adams, who almost single-handedly raised the £3,000 necessary for the repair work by holding a fund-raising walk. As with all joyful synagogue occasions, the ceremony featured singing, dancing and good food.


A final letter is ceremonially added to the sefer Torah at Sinai Synagogue
in Leeds.


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UPCOMING EVENTS

March 13-16, 2008 – Biennial conference of the World Union’s European Region, Vienna, Austria

May 15-19, 2008 – World Union mission to St. Petersburg, Russia for the dedication of Sha’arei Shalom Synagogue-Center

May 23-24, 2008 – Biennial conference of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism

June 13-15, 2008 – Biennial conference of the South Africa Union for Progressive Judaism (SAUPJ) in Cape Town

July 3-13, 2008 – World Union mission to Brazil and Argentina, culminating in the biennial conference of the World Union’s Latin America region, Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil

March 17-23, 2009 – CONNECTIONS 2009 – The 34th international convention of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv


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