Midatlantic

Welcome to JRF's Mid-Atlantic Region!

Victoria Cangelosi — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:13:18 -0400

Our Congregations/Havurot

Congregation Am Haskalah - Allentown, PA	Congregation Beth Israel - Media, PA
Congregation Dor Hadash - Pittsburgh, PA	Congregation Kehilat Shalom - Belle Mead, NJ
Congregation Kol Emet - Yardley, PA	Congregation Or Hadash - Ft Washington, PA
Kehilat HaNahar - New Hope, PA	Kol Tzedek - Philadelphia, PA
Leyv Ha-Ir - Philadelphia, PA	Minyan Dorshei Derekh - Philadelphia, PA
Mishkan Shalom - Philadelphia, PA	String of Pearls - Princeton, NJ
Temple Beth El - Newark, DE	Temple B'nai Abraham - Bordentown, NJ
Temple Beth El - Hammonton, NJ	Temple Beth Shalom - Mechanicsburg, PA
Tzedek v'Shalom - Newtown, PA

JRF Legacy Project

Victoria Cangelosi — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:02:34 -0500

As the JRF and the RRC continue to restructure our movement for a better future, JRF has created a timeless Legacy Tribute Book in honor of our congregations. This keepsake memento will walk our members through the years of Reconstructionist history and highlight each of our communities in story and pictures. We are looking for your help to make this once-in-a-lifetime tribute book a reality. Would you consider making a gift to the JRF to support our lasting legacy?

For donors who support our movement with a gift at the Kaplan Legacy Sponsorship $5,000 level, we will send you a Legacy Tribute Book, the accompanying Legacy DVD, and commemorative leather bound editions of Judaism as a Civilization and Reconstructing Judaism.

For donors who support our movement with a gift at the Eisenstein Legacy Sponsorship $1,800 level, we will send you a Legacy Tribute Book, the accompanying Legacy DVD, and one commemorative leather bound edition of either Judaism as a Civilization or Reconstructing Judaism - your choice.

For donors who support our movement with a gift at the Patron Sponsorship $720 level, we will send you a Legacy Tribute Book and the accompanying Legacy DVD.

For donors who support our movement with a gift at the Friend Sponsorship $360 level, we will send you a Legacy Tribute Book.

For donors who support our movement with a gift at the $118 level, we will send you a complimentary Legacy DVD.

Please consider contributing to this special project and receiving these special, limited edition items you will always treasure for your personal library. These also make wonderful, unique gifts for a friend or loved one.

Make your gift online or call Jennifer at JRF: (215) 885-5601 ext. 20.

97 Orchard by Jane Ziegelman

Victoria Cangelosi — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:05:28 -0400

Between 1863 and 1935, five families of different ethnic backgrounds lived at 97 Orchard St., now the homs of the famed Tenement Museum. In the widely acclaimed 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement, author Jane Ziegelman explores the ways in which food shaped the lives of the German, Irish, Italian, and Jewish families who lived at this residence.

Purchase this book

Or Hadash joins "YES" coalition

Shelley Rosenberg — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:58:27 -0400

Has Or Hadash always been welcoming to lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered people? Yes! Has Or Hadash been officially listed as a welcoming congregation so that people searching for a synagogue will know that? Not until now!

At the December (2008) Board meeting, the leadership of Or Hadash voted to become a member of the Yes!Coalition, an interfaith council of faith communities that welcome sexual minorities, their families and friends. The Coalition organizes the Guide to Welcoming Congregations, an online list of welcoming congregations throughout the five-county Philadelphia area. Until now, only 12 of 120 listing congregations were synagogues, and Or Hadash was not one of the 5 Reconstructionist congregations listed. [Note: Since December, the Coalition has expanded its listing to approximately 300 congregations, including at least 15 synagogues and Jewish organizations.]

The Coalition, which is a project of the Interfaith Working Group, undertakes projects that speak to the religious diversity and justice concerns of the LGBTQ community. In existence since 2001, Yes! has sponsored or supported several conferences, the interfaith New Freedom Seder, and the first Philly Pride Interfaith Celebration. The organization is currently undertaking a reorganization and outreach effort that will expand the Guide to Welcoming Congregations, activate a Speakers Bureau, and plan and coordinate outreach and events that will further the Coalition’s goals. To that end, Shelley Rosenberg, a current Board member and former president of Or Hadash, has joined the organization’s central council as liaison to the Jewish community.

It is also worth noting that Or Hadash is part of the Reconstructionist movement, which has been on record with resolutions supporting LGBTQ inclusion in its member congregations, rabbinical association and rabbinical college.

Now, Or Hadash can truly state: Yes, we are welcoming. And, Yes, we are actively reaching out and extending that welcome to all.

For more information see JRF's resources on LGBTQ inclusion http://jrf.org/node/1742 , the YES! coalition website, http://www.yescoalitionphilly.org/, and the YES! Coalition outreach efforts featured in the Jewish Exponent, http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/18401/.

To visit Or Hadash in Ft. Washington: http://jrf.org/orhadash/

Students Run For Wellness, Capture Beth Israel Award

Lisa Tuttle — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:58:50 -0400

Students Run Philly Style runners competing in the 2009 Philadelphia Marathon.Congregation Beth Israel of Media, PA, today announced that Students Run Philly Style has won its 2009 “Friend of the Community Award.” Students Run Philly Style is the only program in Philadelphia that sets up mentored training programs for students to try running as an outlet for their energy. Many students who have participated have enjoyed better health and more focus in school. The award will be given to program director Heather McDanel, following 8PM Shabbat services at Beth Israel on Friday, May 8.

Based on a similar initiative in Los Angeles, Students Run Philly Style connects students with adult mentors who help them imagine and accomplish goals beyond their dreams, including the completion of a marathon. The program has been credited with delivering powerful results for youth, including increasing high school graduation rates, improving health, providing safe choices after school and developing positive relationships with caring adults. This past November more than 60 students from the program ran the Philadelphia Marathon, and teams of hundreds of student runners are regularly seen at local runs such as the Run for the Monk 5K, scheduled for June 5 in Springfield.

This innovative program has been endorsed and supported by a wide range of organizations, including the Robert Wood Johnson foundation, the Philadelphia Foundation, and the William Penn Foundation.

Students Run Philly Style and Heather McDanel will be honored at a ceremony to be held at Congregation Beth Israel on Friday, May 8 at 8:00 PM. The public is warmly invited to attend. For further information, contact Congregation Beth Israel at (610) 566-4645.

The Friend of the Community ceremony with remarks by Ms. McDanel is presented by Beth Israel Social Action and Religious Practices Committees, with underwriting by the Jewish Federation of Philadelphia.

Since 1998, the Social Action committee of Congregation Beth Israel has presented the “Friend of the Community Award” to individuals or groups whose work in Delaware County exemplifies the Jewish value of “Tikkun Olam,” or repairing the world. Members of Beth Israel participate in a range of community projects, such as serving home-cooked meals at the Life Shelter in Upper Darby, teaching reading to children, computer skills to shelter families in Chester and collecting donations for MAZON, the Jewish Response to Hunger.

Just in Time for Purim: A New Case for the Or Hadash Megillat Esther

Lisa Tuttle — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:34:59 -0400

Rabbi Joshua Waxman displays Or Hadash's new megillah case.At Erev Purim services, members of Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation in Fort Washington, PA, were treated to the first public showing of the custom made case which was designed to hold their internationally recognized Megillat Esther.

The birch wood case was designed and built by craftsman David Hale of Vermont. The calligraphy which wraps around the case was written by Rabbi Kevin Hale, the Sofer whose artistry is reflected in the layout and writing of the scroll itself.

Read the fascinating story of Rabbi Hale's creative partnership with Or Hadash members to craft their own Megillat Esther.

Or Hadash 2009 Scholar in Residence Shabbat a Great Success

Lisa Tuttle — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:31:16 -0400

Submitted by Gail Morrison-Hall

Dr. Rumee Ahmed and Dr. Ayesha ChaudhryThe 2009 Or Hadash Dickstein Scholar in Residence Shabbat was held on Friday February 20 and Saturday February 21. The congregation was pleased to welcome Dr. Rumee Ahmed and Dr. Ayesha Chaudhry, Assistant Professors of Religion and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Colgate University. Drs. Ahmed and Chaudrhy participated in three lively, engaging and enlightening sessions.

The first session on Friday evening focused on modern Muslim conceptions of Islam and its place in the world in the context of the last 3oo years. Saturday morning’s expanded Torah study focused on the week’s Torah portion and analogous passages from the Qur'an, asking how we might make spiritual meaning of difficult sacred texts. Saturday evening’s session titled, Intimate Conversations: An Insider’s View of Living as a Muslim in 21st Century America, was a thoughtful frank discussion led by Rabbi Joshua Waxman on topics of contemporary concern.

The forthright, open and honest interchange during the entire weekend made for an extraordinary event. The congregation’s response to the weekend was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. The tone for these well attended sessions was set on Friday evening when the couple, who are married, mentioned their delight in being back at a Reconstructionist congregation. They related that while undergraduates at Brown University they often joined with a Reconstructionist Havurah for Friday evening services (led by R. Serena Eisenberg, RRC.’02), as a means of extending their own spiritual activities. (Friday is a special day of prayer for Muslims). Or Hadashers are hoping the scholars will pay a return visit to the synagogue to continue the dialogue begun during this year’s Scholar’s Shabbat.

Ayesha S. Chaudrhy is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Middle Eastern And Islamic Studies at New York University. She is also a Doctoral Fellow in the Religion Department at Colgate University. Dr. Chaudhry is from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Dr. Rumee Ahmed is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Middle Eastern and Islamic Civilizations at Colgate University. He received his doctorate from the University of Virginia in Religious Studies, having written his dissertation on the construction of Islamic legal narratives. Dr. Ahmed is from the suburban Washington, D.C. area.

A Long Journey Leads to Rabbi’s First Pulpit: At String of Pearls, a Lifelong Dream Finally Fulfilled

Lisa Tuttle — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:09:24 -0400

This article is reprinted with permission from the New Jersey Jewish News.

Donna Kirshbaum led several lives before becoming a rabbi. (Photo by Marilyn Silverstein)
by Marilyn Silverstein
NJJN Bureau Chief/PMB

September 9, 2008

The scene is crystal clear in Rabbi Donna Kirshbaum’s memory. She was eight years old and had just finished reading a child’s biography of George Fox, founder of the society of Quakers.

“I remember leaning against the fridge and telling my mother, ‘I’m going to lead my people the way George Fox led his people,’” she recalled.

This summer, close to half a century later, that childhood dream became a reality as Kirshbaum took her place as religious leader and educational director of Princeton’s only Reconstructionist congregation, String of Pearls.

The product of what she calls “a devoutly nonreligious upbringing,” the 57-year-old Kirshbaum journeyed toward her first pulpit the long way around. A native of Philadelphia, where she was raised in the secular Jewish tradition of the folkshul, she has led lives as a teacher of classic Greek and Latin, a mother, a cellist, a dairy farmer in the Missouri Ozarks, and a religious-school principal.

Ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pa., this past June, Kirshbaum holds a bachelor’s degree in ancient Greek from Swarthmore College and a master’s degree in Latin literature from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland in Baltimore.

She taught classics off and on for 22 years at the Kimberton Waldorf School in Pennsylvania, studied cello for two years with a member of the Amadeus Quartet near London, co-owned a Missouri dairy farm for six years, and lived in Baltimore for 21 years, teaching the classics at her alma mater and helping to found the Bolton Street Synagogue there.

Along the way, Kirshbaum had three sons — Ben, now a physician at New York University; Matt, a graduate student in architecture at Yale University; and David, a senior forestry major at the University of Vermont. The night before her ordination, she married Louis Friedler, a professor of mathematics at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pa. The couple resides in Swarthmore.

Throughout her life, the thread that has woven everything together has been her love of the religious life, according to Kirshbaum.

“To put it simplistically, I must have the religious gene in my family,” she said as she sat in her Princeton Township office. “I could never get enough contact with people who had religiously informed lives. I think this is just part of who I was from birth and before.

“But I put it off and put it off, and it became the classic dream that festered but wouldn’t go away,” she said. “Then, when my middle son left for college, I got the beginning of a taste of the empty nest and I thought: Now or never.”

At the age of 51, Kirshbaum applied to RRC and began a six-year journey toward becoming a rabbi.

“For the first time, I really felt shot out of a cannon,” she said. “I was on a very, very clear trajectory. A certain diffuseness that had characterized my life was gone.

“Those six years — it was like a continual Shabbat,” she said. “To be in my 50s and just stop everything — it was so sweet.”

To the sweetness of those years, Kirshbaum added the spice of a diverse work experience. While at RRC, she served as an assistant at the college’s Academic Coalition for Jewish Ethics; held student pulpits in Baltimore and Detroit; studied chaplaincy at Johns Hopkins Hospital; worked with Jewish students at Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford colleges; traveled to Ghana with the American Jewish World Service; and served as a rabbinic intern with CLAL-the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York, and with Greenfaith, a New Brunswick-based interfaith environmental advocacy and educational group.

While at the seminary, Kirshbaum won a number of awards, including the international Whizin Prize of RRC’s Center for Jewish Ethics, the Driesen Prize in Science and Judaism, and the Bartnoff Prize for Spiritually Motivated Social Action.

Challenges of diversity
When she arrived at the moment of ordination, Kirshbaum said, “it was a dream come true. It was also really bittersweet — leaving the nest and having to do the hard and important work of taking the access points to Jewish wisdom and making them truly accessible to other Jews.”

That is the work Kirshbaum has taken up at String of Pearls, a 52-family congregation that describes itself on its website, www.stringofpearlsweb.org, as “a proudly diverse and inclusive Jewish congregation welcoming young and old, singles and families, Jews by birth and by choice, non-Jewish partners in interfaith couples, gay and straight, the spiritually settled and the spiritually restless, in short, all who are willing to commit to the integration of community, worship, study, and acts of loving-kindness (gemilut hasadim) and repair of the world (tikun olam).”

The congregation meets for Shabbat, holiday, and family services at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton and runs a cooperative religious school on Monday afternoons at the Princeton Day School.

“I fell in love with these people,” Kirshbaum said. They are “very committed to community-based Judaism. I really see a nice, equal weighting of the three traditional pillars of Torah, avoda (worship) and gemilut hasadim here.”

As she meets with each congregational family, she is finding the classic case of “two Jews and three opinions,” the rabbi said.

“I find that just delicious and very, very healthy — that kind of diversity,” she said. “I think people appreciate the informality and the fact that we don’t have a building and we have to draw our identity from other places. I think that is all to the good.”

But the diversity of String of Pearls also poses a challenge. “We have to find a way to integrate not just non-Jewish partners, but the children, who will tell you with absolute seriousness that they are ‘half and half,’” she said. “We have to really make those children feel not just welcome, but valuable members of the Jewish people without Judaism dissolving into a kind of wisdom tradition only.”

Kirshbaum brings to such challenges “the excitement, optimism, and energy of being fresh out of school,” she said. “I think of the congregants as my study partners, my spiritual partners, my partners in trying to create more justice in the world.”

As she begins her journey at String of Pearls, Kirshbaum said she thinks every day about how rare it is to get to live out a lifelong dream.

“I’m aware of what a privilege it is to start all over again,” she said. “As my oldest son said to me at my wedding on the night before my ordination, ‘So, Mom, now you have a marriage. Tomorrow you’ll have a career. What’s next?’

Reconstructing the Megillah: Or Hadash Commissions First Truly Reconstructionist Megillat Esther

Lisa Tuttle — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:48:30 -0400

Rabbi Kevin Hale laying out the Megillat Esther scroll

An Unusual Megillah
By Marissa Brostoff

This article originally appeared in The Forward and is reprinted with permission.

The Scroll of Esther is getting a makeover from several kids in Pennsylvania, a Reconstructionist scribe and a computer graphics program.

Congregation Or Hadash, a small Reconstructionist synagogue located in the Philadelphia suburb of Fort Washington, has commissioned a sofer to create a megillah that incorporates drawings by students in its religious school.

"We are creating the first truly Reconstructionist megillah," said Rabbi Joshua Waxman, who leads Or Hadash. (To boot, Hale is the first ordained Reconstructionist sofer.)

"It's a kosher scroll, and we use the traditional text, but we engage with it and try to inject our own voices into it and experience it as something fresh."

The megillah project was conceived partly as a celebration of the congregation's 25th birthday. But Waxman was adamant that it would not be an ordinary present.

"It's easy to commission something," Waxman said. "It would have been easy to make a few phone calls to our more generous donors, but instead we invited everyone to help underwrite it for $1.80 a letter. I find it faintly distasteful when synagogues virtually auction off ritual items - you know, 'You, too, can own the Song of the Sea for $15,000.'"

To Waxman and some of his congregants, it also seemed too easy to let a sofer do all the work. So religious-school students were encouraged to submit illustrations of scenes from the Purim story, including "Vashti saying 'no,'" "Mordechai at the gate refusing to bow down," and "Haman being led to the stake."

The result, a range of 20 colorful drawings by artists aged between 5 and 14, was compiled by Hale and grafted onto parchment next to the appropriate portions of text. "It's really an illuminated manuscript," Hale said.

Further enlivening the text, Hale inscribed the names of key characters of the story in different colors. Haman's name - which, Waxman pointed out, is often set aside in traditional megillot to give cantors a chance to work up the contempt with which they must utter it - is in red; Esther's is in green, and Mordechai's is in blue.

Despite the unusual features of this megillah, those involved in its production say it's kosher. "The rules for writing a kosher scroll are more flexible in this case, because nowhere in the megillah is the name of God mentioned," said Gail Morrison-Hall, an art teacher and Or Hadash member who coordinated the scroll-making project.

The scroll was set to be unveiled at a celebration at the synagogue yesterday, four days before Purim. Hale, who lives in Leeds, Massachusetts, was slated to be on hand to teach a crash course in scroll-writing for the congregation's kids. "Who knows, maybe it will inspire a future scribe," Waxman said.

Report from the First Harmoniyah Retreat - November, 2007

Rabbi Margot Stein — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:26:21 -0500

Harmoniyah Steering Committee(L-R, rear) Barry Brian (Or Hadash), Elaine Moise (Kedem), Cantor Rachel Epstein (Adat Shalom), Doris Dyen (RRC, Dor Hadash), Rabbi Shawn Zevit (JRF), (L-R, Front) Barbara Nordstrom-Loeb (Mayim Rabim), Lauren Resnick (Dor Hadash)

Music is flowing in the Reconstructionist movement! Voices raised with kavanah, moving renditions of favorite classics, and brilliant interpretations of liturgy seamlessly intermingle with fresh explorations of the meaning of God, Torah and Israel in their broadest sense.

The November, 2007 retreat of Harmoniyah: The Reconstructionist Music Network brought together more than 40 music-lovers from 20 congregations in the US and Canada. During three days of davenning, singing, jamming, and workshops, we shared new ideas and practical tools for enriching congregational worship with music from a wide variety of genres. We opened up the conversation about where our music comes from and where we think it is going. We talked about core texts and prayers, about choirs and communal music making, about the role of traditional nusah (HWD) and bold new melodies, about chanting and about electronic instruments, about Shabbat and healing services.

At the Saturday night kumsitz, a full array of musical styles was on display, from chant, blues and folk-rock to Ladino, Yiddish and klezmer offerings. And at the Sunday night panel discussion, which I had the privilege of moderating, we explored such issues as:

Can the Ashkenazic modes and melodies of many a childhood comfortably share space with Sephardic and Yemenite rhythms? Rachel Hersh Epstein’s Psalm 150 experiments with this question, producing a difficult (for us Westerners) but exquisite take on the popular sing-along psalm. As to the future, her prediction: funky fusion sounds.

Liz Bolton treated us to 8 or 9 different melodies for the Reader’s Kaddish. Many of them were easily recognized by the participants (High Holiday evening, Shabbat and so on). We did get stumped, though, on the particular nusah (HWD) for shelosh regalim between maftir and haftarah!

By being intensely personal, Shefa Gold hopes to be simultaneously universal. She spends a great deal of time with a single phrase, seeking its deeper meaning so that she can come into relationship with it before setting it to music.

Shawn Zevit believes that the leader who wishes to bring musical change must appreciate who we already are musically. Our grandparents and our childhoods are powerful influences on us all, and Shawn treated us to some of his family’s unique melodies.

What’s clear is that having a nice voice and enjoying leading congregational singing doesn’t itself prepare you for spiritual leadership and pastoral caregiving. In MIRAJ’s workshop on healing services, one of my goals was to teach lay people who sing to also lead, because the role will often be thrust upon them by virtue of their musical talent. What’s more, healing services and bedside rituals are powerful, private moments of spiritual transition that can profoundly benefit from a compassionate musical presence. Just as in other aspects of our rabbinates, the “conscious use of self” is essential. MIRAJ “consciously uses” itself in a model of shared spiritual leadership. We assert comfortably, yet yield effortlessly, whether teaching, leading joyous musical services, or giving a concert. There’s a dynamic flow among our voices. Harmony down below, in the service of creating harmony up above. Ken yehi ratzon!

Harmoniyah's web page.

This article appeared in a slightly different form in the December issue of the RRA Connections, the newsletter of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association.

Robert Glatzer: from Kol Emet in Yardley, PA

Rabbi Liz Bolton: Congregation Bet HaTikvah, Baltimore, MD

Rabbi Shawn Zevit