#HeshbonNISAN
Sunday, March 14, 2021 // Nisan 5781
Today marks the beginning of Nisan, the first month of spring. As we prepare for the warming temperatures and start of Pesah, let these stories from six of our colleagues inspire you and fill you with hope for the new season as we explore Freedom: FROM and Freedom: TO. (continues below)
Rabbi Ervin Birnbaum: The Story of the Exodus Ship
I find it interesting and fascinating to what an extent our past does not abandon us and serves us as a source of inspiration for all time to come. We are now in the month of Nisan. Soon Pesah will be with us. It should serve as no surprise yet it is a source of admiration that the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt burst open on the eve of Pesah 1943, for how could the remnant of Jews celebrate the Seder with the brutal Nazis taking thousands to Treblinka daily!
Neither is it a coincidence that the Haganah ship which took a significant number of Jews to the Land of Israel after the Shoah should inherit its name from our glorious past. Allow me to relate to you one day of our memorable voyage, curiously enough, linked to the exodus from Egypt.
Rabbi Mario Rojzman: The Ancient Jewish Vaccine Against Loneliness
As I prepare to write these lines, my friend and congregant journalist Andrés Oppenheimer tells me that Japan has just created a Ministry of Loneliness to deal with the growing crisis of despair, drug addiction and suicides that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote work and the cancellation of social gatherings during the pandemic have worsened loneliness-related mental health problems.
Japan, Andres told me, has followed in the footsteps of Great Britain, which had already created a Ministry of Loneliness in 2018, amid a growing wave of depression and mental illness that experts link to technological isolation. The United States is not exempt. It is believed that 130,000 people will die during the pandemic due to the plague of solitude and hopelessness (overdose, suicides and deaths from sadness).
What do we Jews have to offer as an antidote to depression, loneliness and hopelessness?
Rabbi Eliav Bock: Connecting with the Divine in the Outdoors
This past Shabbat morning, I suited up my baby daughter in her winter gear, put on my own jacket and gloves, put her in the hiking backpack and headed out the door for my Shabbat teffilot. It is a ritual we have practiced almost every shabbat over the past year, so long as the temperature is above 20 degrees, and it is not raining.
Walking around my suburban neighborhood I sing, out loud, often clapping and dancing to the words of the morning prayers. It is a practice started last March when I thought I would be gone from shul for only a few weeks. I watched the early spring turn to the hot summer, to the vibrant fall, to this past snowy winter. I watched the brook, where I often stop to recite the Amidah, go from a thawing stream, to a small trickle in the late summer, to a frozen slide the past few months.
Rabbi Sandra Kochmann: Freeing Ourselves from the "Always" and the "Never"
In my work as the rabbi in charge of the egalitarian side of the Kotel, I am often invited to speak about the role of women in Judaism with groups not familiar with egalitarian and pluralistic Judaism, who only know what they know from what they heard from others.
After explaining why women can participate equally in the synagogue; that the separation between men and women is not necessary during prayer; that women can wear tallit, tefillin, officiate, read the Torah and much more, the questions that I receive at the end of my talk generally include two words: "always" and "never." They ask: "Why do you want to do that, if Jewish women never did? Why do you want to change things, if it was always like this in Jewish history?"
Rabbi Danielle Upbin: Our Body as Teacher - A Spiritual Journey Through the Hebrew Letters
As a rabbi and yoga instructor, I have had the privilege of inviting my students through a spiritual journey of the oytiot, exploring the nuanced meaning of the Hebrew letters through dialogue and creative embodied expression. The otiyot are more than just broken down sounds. They are rich in symbolic meaning. The mystical tradition posits that the otiyot are even the blueprint of Creation.
Because the otiyot contain so much spiritual power, when we process them through the lens of certain spiritual questions, we find that they speak to us, opening up new creative avenues of exploration, insight, and meaning. The world of the otiyot swirl with symbolic meaning, lending themselves to an interpretive process and basis for discussion that is at the heart of the Passover ritual experience.
Rabbi Mark J. Bisman: Freedom from the Perspective of Retirement
From the perspective of retirement (for 7+ years)
Freedom from the financial need to work to support self & family & to save for retirement.
Freedom from communal responsibility: as a דאתראAמרא; for an institution’s survival; for tracking the well-being of congregants; choosing weekly what angle to take on the parshah in a D’var Torah; an external work schedule and staff meetings; publicly “doing Jewish” — being a dugma in my role as a rabbi; being in Scottsdale for Yamim Noraim.
(continued from above) If you would like to contribute to our #HeshbonHodesh series by sharing a brief self-care story or offering our colleagues an opportunity for connection, please reach out to Sheryl or Ilana by the full moon so it can make it into the next newsletter.
Wishing you a Hodesh Tov!