Issue #355

Issue #355 – 7 April 2009 / 13 Nisan 5769


The leadership and staff of the World Union for Progressive Judaism wish you and your family a joyous Pesach holiday.

Note to our readers: WUPJnews will not appear next week.


IN THIS ISSUE:

PESACH REFLECTIONS FROM JERUSALEM

ANOTHER IMPJ CONGREGATION RECEIVES GOVERNMENT-SUPPLIED BUILDING

FIRST-EVER REFORM PRESIDENT OF LEEDS JSOC

DUTCH INSTITUTE LED BY LEADING LIBERAL RABBI LAUNCHES NEW WEB SITE

UPCOMING EVENTS


PESACH REFLECTIONS FROM JERUSALEM
By Rabbi Joel Oseran, Vice President for International Development 

One of my favorite passages from the Haggadah, which we will be reading on Wednesday evening, is the following: In every generation, each person must regard himself/herself as if he/she personally came out of Egypt.

The teachings implicit in this one line are profound indeed. First, the message is unmistakable - that we Jews who live today are connected to the past as well as to the future. On the one hand, we have inherited our traditions from parents, grandparents and oh so many generations that we never had the privilege to meet. And on the other hand, we are obligated to pass these traditions on to our children, grandchildren and all those future generations we will never know. It is my small measure of eternal life. In every generation….

Perhaps this is why the Passover seder has become the seminal family experience in our Jewish tradition. Not only does the Torah command us to eat the paschal offering as a family, but throughout the generations we, as a family, have told and retold the narrative of leaving Egypt. (The word haggadah means to retell.)

Teaching number two is unmistakable as well - that which we do as a family helps preserve us as a family. The seder ritual is designed to strengthen our bonds of generational continuity. From the youngest (who traditionally recites the Four Questions) to the oldest (who traditionally sits at the head of the table), our celebration of Passover keeps us united as a family. Another small measure of eternal life. In every generation….

A third message our text clearly teaches us is to take being Jewish very, very personally. We are not a religion obsessed with the primordial domain or an afterlife. We are not fixated on escaping human nature or designing new realities we would prefer to encounter. We are a people, an extended family, if you will, that tries at each step along the way to personally reconnect with those who came before us in order to understand better what God demands of us.

We are actually obligated to connect with those who came before us - with our parents, who gave us life; with our grandparents, who gave life to our parents, and so forth - back to our forefathers and foremothers, who gave us life as a people by leaving Egypt and declaring at Sinai: We shall do and we shall listen.

Being Jewish is to take personally our 4,000-year history - we personally left Egypt, we ourselves stood at Sinai, it was we who entered Eretz Yisrael, we were the ones exiled by the Romans, we personally were oppressed, violated and slaughtered by the Cossacks, by the Nazis, by the Amaleks in every generation. And we, too, returned to Israel to make the desert bloom. We, too, escaped Soviet oppression to live as free Jews in Moscow or Kiev, or here at home in the State of Israel. Another small measure of eternal life. In every generation….

As we prepare to sit down with family and friends at our seder tables, let each of us take a moment to consider how blessed we are to be part of this extraordinary extended and eternal family - the Jewish People. We who had the joy to participate just a few weeks ago in Connections 2009, our World Union’s 34th international convention in Israel, know full well the powerful experience of being together as a World Union family. Worshipping together with friends from 26 countries on Shabbat morning and singing Mi Chamocha, the song our ancestors sang as they departed Egypt, reminded me that as long as we stand together, as a united Progressive Jewish community, our ancestors’ song will continue to be heard around the world. Another small measure of eternal life. In every generation….

May your Pesach holiday be filled with joy and sweetness, with the meaning of past generations and the inspiration of the untold story of our future.

Chag Sameach.


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ANOTHER IMPJ CONGREGATION RECEIVES GOVERNMENT-SUPPLIED BUILDING
Kehilat Tzur Hadassah, an affiliate of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, recently took delivery of a government-funded pre-fabricated building for use as a synagogue and community center. It is the last of four IMPJ affiliates to receive the buildings granted to non-Orthodox congregations in a history-making move by the country’s Housing and Construction Ministry. (The others are in Modi'in, Tivon and Zichron Ya'acov; see WUPJnews #’s 312, 317 and 330, respectively.)

“We are so proud to have been included in this affirmative action and hope and pray this will enhance our ability to promote and enhance the place of liberal Progressive Judaism in Israel at our new community campus,” said Ruth Trucks, Kehilat Tzur Hadassah’s president. The community’s spiritual leader is Rabbi Ofer Sabath Beit Halachmi.

The 1,600 sq.ft. pre-fab arrived aboard four heavy trucks and is just the first part of the congregational campus. It is now in the process of being finished and connected to the local electrical grid, water supply and sewage system. Members are also helping to install fencing, outdoor flooring, a playground and basic landscaping.

“We have already spent over $100,000 in preparing the land and infrastructure,” Trucks added. “We want to thank all those who so generously have supported us in these efforts. We are now in the midst of raising $50,000 that is needed to complete this stage of our campus development.”

Several weeks ago, children from the congregation’s pre-school and their families celebrated Tu B’shevat, the Jewish "arbor day," by planting almond trees along a specially-prepared perimeter garden. To see a YouTube clip of that event, as well as the assembled but as-yet unfinished building, click here.

To find out how you can help Kehilat Tzur Hadassah complete its building program, write to info@ktzh.org.


Screenshot of a YouTube video of the delivery of Kehilat Tzur Hadassah’s new government-supplied synagogue building. Click here or anywhere on the photo to go to the video.


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FIRST-EVER REFORM PRESIDENT OF LEEDS JSOC
Daniel Grabiner, 19, a long-time member and leader of the British Reform branch of Netzer Olami, the World Union’s international Progressive Zionist youth movement, has been elected president of Leeds University Jewish Society, considered a major development as it is one of the country’s largest Jewish student bodies. Grabiner is the nephew of Michael Grabiner, the World Union’s newly sworn-in senior vice chairman.

The freshman economics and political science major grew up at North Western Reform (Alyth) Synagogue, where he has also taught and been involved in the choir and charity initiatives since age five. He spent a gap year in Israel on the Shnat Netzer program.

“I ran because I wanted Leeds to be the best JSoc in the country and I think I was the one who could do that, with real passion, determination and drive,” says the young Grabiner. “I wanted other JSocs to look to us for inspiration.”

His election took place as Britain’s Movement for Reform Judaism raised its profile on the country’s campuses as part of its Jeneration outreach program to young people (see WUPJnews #286). “Jeneration Students” was launched in September, 2008, with a range of projects, including publication of “The Ultimate Guide to Student Survival,” which includes tips on all aspects of student life, from living on a limited budget to finding Hillel houses and maintaining kashrut on campus.


Daniel Grabiner, newly-elected president of Leeds University Jewish Society.


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DUTCH INSTITUTE LED BY TOP LIBERAL RABBI LAUNCHES NEW WEB SITE
The Jacob Soetendorp Institute for Human Values, dedicated to social and economic justice, peace and reconciliation, interfaith dialogue, children’s rights and the environment, recently launched a new Web site, which can be accessed at http://www.soetendorpinstitute.org/. Formerly called the Jewish Institute for Human Values, it is led by Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp, a long-time leader of the Dutch Liberal movement, a former president of the World Union’s European Region, and an award-winning advocate for human rights and interfaith dialogue (see WUPJnews #316).

“Our Web site is a call to all of humanity,” said Soetendorp. “Compassion and hope propel us to action. We are truly ‘one earth community with one common destiny.’ We are all called upon, every hour, every day, to mend and repair the world, to heed the cry of every single child, every human being, who suffers and to meet their basic needs, to make the world more just, sustainable and peaceful.”

The institute is named for Soetendorp’s father, Jacob, a pre- and post-war leader of the country’s Jewish community and a long-time educator and peace, human rights and interfaith advocate.

It is told that in early 1943, in the middle of the Holocaust, Jacob and his wife Miryam informed the local registry officer that they wished to name their newborn son Awraham Shalom. When the officer tried to persuade them not to give the child such a conspicuously Jewish name, they insisted that they do so to denote the “peace that will come.”

After an incident with the Gestapo – in which Jacob infuriated a Nazi officer by telling him that no matter what, Awraham would “never grow up to be a child of murderers” – he and Miryam went underground and hid the boy with a non-Jewish family near Arnhem. The Soetendorps were reunited after the war, and Jacob went on to become the rabbi of liberal congregations in Amsterdam and later in Gotenburg, Sweden, as well as a president of the World Union’s European Region in the 1960s. He was also a leader of the Poale Zion movement, chief editor of the Dutch Jewish weekly N.I.W., and a pastoral worker reclaiming Jewish children hidden with non-Jews.

The inspiration of Jacob’s life was described by his son this way: In the Jewish experience the desert is not the end, but emptiness which longs and demands to be filled. What is torn and broken is not the symbol of hope dashed, but the challenge to seek healing. We must watch for the gardens that can and will be planted in the desert, for the water in the rock, and always plant for the future in the present.



Screenshot of the new Web site of the Jacob Soetendorp Institute for Human Values.


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UPCOMING EVENTS

May 14-24, 2009 – Third Annual URJ Israel Kallah at the World Union’s Anita Saltz International Education Center in Jerusalem

June 18, 2009 – Abraham Geiger College – Rabbinic ordination and 10th anniversary celebration in Berlin, Germany

July 9-12, 2009 – 15th Annual Conference of the Union of Progressive Jews of Germany, Berlin/Spandau, Germany

July 9-19, October 15-25 and December 3-13, 2009 – Dreams and Realities: The People, the Land and the Torah of Israel - A Reform Jewish Study Seminar, Saltz International Education Center, Jerusalem

November 4-8, 2009 – Biennial of the Union for Reform Judaism, Toronto, Canada

January 28-31, 2010 – Union of Jewish Communities in Latin America (UJCL) Biennial, Panama

March 4-7, 2010 – European Region Biennial Conference, Paris, France

May 28-29, 2010 – Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism (IMPJ) Biennial, Israel

February 7-13, 2011 – CONNECTIONS 2011, USA


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