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Email this pageIssue # 318
Issue #318 – 26 June 2008 / 23 Sivan 5768
IN THIS ISSUE:
TEL AVIV-AREA CONGREGATION CONSECRATES DONATED SEPHARDIC TORAH
UKRAINE CONGREGATION FLOURISHES, THANKS IN PART TO TWINNING RELATIONSHIP
WORLD UNION CENTER CELEBRATES JERUSALEM DAY
TEL AVIV-AREA CONGREGATION CONSECRATES DONATED YEMENITE TORAH
Kehilat Brit Olam of Kiryat Ono, near Tel Aviv, recently held a joyous reception for a Torah scroll, the purchase of which was made possible by funding from Britain’s Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue and by donations from Brit Olam members and Bar Mitzvah families. The congregation’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Adi Cohen, and its lay leadership and members, led by chairwoman Janet Nussbaum, celebrated its arrival with great festivities.
“We passed the Torah from hand to hand, from generation to generation,” says Nussbaum. “I had the honor of being the last in line and walking the Torah into the prayer hall. The Torah was placed in the aron kodesh by our oldest member, Yehudah Olchitil, assisted by our youngest member, Shlomo Zvi Bloch, and his father, Eyal.”
The scroll is about 80 years old and came to Israel from Yemen close to 60 years ago, when the country’s Jewish community was airlifted en mass to the Jewish state.
“We were looking for a scroll that was clearly written, light enough for our b’nei/b’not mitzvah to carry, and in the Sephardic tradition,” says Nussbaum.” Why Sephardic? We call ourselves an ‘Israeli’ congregation [and] Rav Adi suggested that it was inappropriate that an Israeli congregation have only Ashkenazi scrolls.”
“When a Yemenite scroll became available,” she continues, “we went to see it more out of curiosity than anything else. As I told the members of the congregation, it was love at first sight. Yemenite scrolls tend to be smaller and lighter than Ashkenazi ones. The Yemenites don't attach their scrolls to poles (eitzei chaim), which makes them [even] lighter and easy to handle.”
Brit Olam was established in the late 1970s and currently meets for Shabbat and holiday services in a rented lecture hall at the Ono Academic College. It established contact last year with NPLS, whose chairman, Brian Sass, came for a visit. The British congregation later agreed to include Brit Olam’s Torah needs in its annual Kol Nidre appeal. Rabbi Cohen is scheduled to make a reciprocal visit to NPLS next month.
Brit Olam services the spiritual needs of all the towns in the Ono Valley: Kiriat Ono, Ramat Gan, Petach Tikva, and others. In addition to religious celebrations, the congregation is active in Jewish education in local schools and in adult study classes.
Rabbi Adi Cohen helps pass the new Yemenite Torah from generation to generation in its new home in Kiryat Ono, where congregants rejoice in dance. Like most scrolls written in the Sephardic tradition, the Torah rests in a wooden box that is placed in the holy ark.
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UKRAINE CONGREGATION FLOURISHES, THANKS IN PART TO TWINNING RELATIONSHIP
The Progressive congregation in Lutsk, Ukraine, recently completed the restoration of a synagogue building it received from local authorities. The restoration project was made possible by donations from local sponsors and congregation members, and from Temple Sinai in North Miami Beach, Florida.
The Lutsk congregation has also flourished thanks to an inspiring relationship with the Liberal Synagogue Elstree in Elstree Herts, U.K. The twinning program was initiated by Ann Etkind, a member of the British congregation, who has visited Lutsk several times.
“This was my third visit,” she writes, “and it was interesting to see how the community has developed since we first had contact with them in 2005. [R]ight from the beginning, when I started to correspond with their English speaking student member, Tanya Zaks, I felt that here was a group of people with a real vision.”
Etkind says the twinning relationship has been mutually beneficial. “We have been able to assist them by sending funds to help enable Hebrew and religious education classes to continue to be run there, but they are helping us, too, by reminding us of the value of our religious traditions that we sometimes take for granted.”
Etkind adds that during her most recent visit, which followed the renovation, she discovered that the relationship had been further affirmed in a very physical way. “[T]he design in the main hall in Lutsk reminded me very much of our own synagogue in Elstree. It turned out that this was not a coincidence – they had noted the style of our hall in the various photographs we had sent and decided to incorporate something similar. So we have taken this as a lovely compliment and a further strengthening of our twinning.”
“[W]hat I most value about the trips I have made to Lutsk,” she concludes, “is the opportunity to feel this link with a community that is so far away from us geographically, and yet so close in a spiritual sense. I have been able to see how they are growing and developing. I have made some real friends there – and I hope that the support we have been able to offer them will help their community continue to move forward. [T]here is certainly much interest in the project from all ages here [in Elstree]. Looking outside our own community sometimes helps us to re-focus on what actually is important – and our Lutsk link is helping us to do that.”
To find out how your congregation can assist the World Union in developing the Progressive Jewish communities of the former Soviet Union, contact its Jerusalem office at wupjis@wupj.org.il.
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WORLD UNION CENTER CELEBRATES JERUSALEM DAY
Mercaz Shimshon/Beit Shmuel, the World Union’s headquarters and Jerusalem’s Progressive Jewish education and culture center, recently marked 40 years since the reunification of Jerusalem with a special series of Jerusalem Day activities that included tours, exhibitions and entertainment and were attended by hundreds of participants.
The tours took in the various faces of Jerusalem, focusing on neighborhoods, ethnic groups, famous clans and even the city’s humor and music. The exhibitions featured foods and arts that are closely identified with Jerusalem, ranging from hummus and baklava to oriental tapestries and the work of an Armenian photographer from the early 20th century. The day’s activities ended with a sold-out evening performance in the beautifully decorated courtyard at Beit Shmuel by Rivka Zohar, often called Israel’s Edith Piaf.
Meanwhile, The Jerusalem Post recently published a glowing review of a tour to Jordan, one of the many cultural and educational activities offered on a regular basis by Mercaz Shimshon/Beit Shmuel. Click here to read the entire article.
Among the Jerusalem Day activities offered by Mercaz Shimshon/Beit Shmuel were tours of sites ranging from the architecturally significant Schmidt Girls' School in eastern Jerusalem to the colorful Mahane Yehuda outdoor market, capped with an evening concert by Israeli music legend Rivka Zohar.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
July 4-6, 2008 – Biennial conference of the British Movement for Reform Judaism in Leicester, UK
July 10-13, 2008 – Biennial conference of the World Union’s Latin America Region in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
July 10-13, 2008 - Annual conference of the Union of Progressive Judaism in Berlin, Germany (information currently in German only)
October 30-November 2, 2008 – Biennial conference of the Union for Progressive Judaism (UPJ) for Australia, Asia and New Zealand in Melbourne, Australia
March 17-23, 2009 – CONNECTIONS 2009 – The 34th international convention of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv
