|
Sing in the New Year: Join Beth El's High Holy Day Chorus
Rehearsals: Wednesdays, August 12th - September 23rd • 7:00-9:00 pm
Are you a CBE member who loves to sing? Join the chorus, and prepare for the High Holy Days through some of Jewish tradition's most beautiful music. Musical background is not necessary --the only requirement to sing with the chorus is your commitment to being at the rehearsals and the services.
The Chorus will sing at the late services on Erev Rosh Hashanah (Friday, September 18th, 8:45 pm) and Kol Nidre (Sunday, September 27th, 8:45 pm) Rehearsals will take place Wednesday evenings from August 12th through September 23rd, 7:00-9:00 p.m. at Beth El. Our repertoire will include High Holy Day music from Spain, Germany, Casablanca, Poland, Israel and the U.S. We’ll work hard, but the atmosphere will be fun and supportive! In addition to sheet music, rehearsal CDs will be available to all singers who would find them useful in learning the music.
The Chorus will be directed by Beth El's incoming Rabbinic Intern, Reuben Zellman. Reuben has significant experience as a director and singer of Jewish choral music, and is looking forward with enthusiasm to working with Beth El's chorus! Please email Reuben to let him know that you'll be singing with us, or with any questions. He will be delighted to be in contact with you as soon as he begins his new position at Beth El on August 1st. We want YOU, yes YOU, to sing in the year 5770!
Attention all 8th-12th Graders!
Do you like working with children in a fun & interactive environment? Congregation Beth El Religious School is hiring Madrichim for the 2009-2010 school year. Madrichim are tutors, classroom aides, specialty leaders (music, dance, or drama), or office assistants. Madrichim receive honoraria and valuable professional work experience. For more information, and to apply, click here to download the application. You can also email Rebecca DePalma, or call 510-848-2122 x214 with your questions.
The community is invited...
Book Reading with Beth El's Dan Bellm
Sunday, August 2 • 2:00 pm
Beth El's Dan Bellm will be reading poems from his most recent book, Practice, as well as newer work at the Mo' Joe Cafe, corner of Sacramento and Blake in Berkeley.
The community is invited...
JFCS/East Bay is pleased to co-present the following film at the
29th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
Empty Nest
Sunday, August 2 • 9:30 pm • Roda Theatre at the Berkeley Rep
In a witty and sophisticated farce, middle-aged playwright Leonardo Vindel (the marvelous Oscar Martínez) descends into a world where fantasy and reality interlace seamlessly.
For more information please click here.
The community is invited...
Free Mondays at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
The Tale of Nicolai and the Law of Return
Monday, August 3 • Roda Theatre at the Berkeley Rep
For more information, please click here.
Reflections about Tisha B’Av
Rabbi Menachem Creditor at Netivot Shalom forwarded me these reflections on Tisha B’Av, written by Rabbi Miriyam Glazer. I found her remarks challenging and inspiring. If you would like to read this entire derash (sermon), please let me know. – Rabbi Yoel Kahn:
I’ve come to understand that Tisha B’Av is not really about the burning of the Temple at all; if it had been about only that, I suspect it would have fallen by the wayside many centuries ago. As the Rambam [Maimonides] taught us, Tisha B’Av, is “in memory of the terrible things that happened because of ancestors’ evil deeds” precisely because our ancestors’ evil deeds “are like our own... today ” ( Hilchot Taaniyot 5:1 ). True in the time of the Rambam; tragically, how much more so today .
“Marguerite,” asked the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, “are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving?” Are you crying, Marguerite, because of the death that autumn brings? No, said Hopkins, it’s not actually that. “It is the blight man was born for; it is Marguerite you mourn for.” Though she may seem to weep for the falling of dead leaves in the autumn, the deepest source of her tears is the reality of death, and the reality of the fleeting nature of her own life, the fleeting nature of life itself.
The loss of the Temple, the burning of the city, the years of exile – they are the historical pretext for this mourning time. But to confront the spiritual significance of Tisha B’Av is to face the vast and terrible extent of the “evil deeds” all around us in our own profoundly troubled times. It is to critique, sharply and truly, the cruelties, inequalities, and lies of our own society and culture here and now, and the myriad ways we ourselves, in worshipping idols, have failed to act on behalf of the “widow, the orphan, and the stranger in our midst.” Our tradition cries out with its demand that we take moral responsibility for the evils around us. In the words of the Talmud:
Whoever has the ability to protest against the members of his household but does not protest is punished [for the transgressions of]the members of his household [Whoever has the ability to protest against] the people of his town [and fails to do so] is punished [for the transgressions of] the people of his town [One who can protest] against the whole world [and fails to] is punished for the transgressions of the whole world. [ (Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 54b-55a)
But it is not the transgressions of others, only. Throughout the rest of this dry season, we have the equally difficult work of launching the archeological dig into our own, individual, buried shortcomings, trespasses, weaknesses, sins. That is a process the tradition engages us in all the way through the dry month of Elul, the turning of the new year, the Day of Atonement, to Hoshanah Rabbah and Shmini Atzeret at the end of Sukkoth. It is only then, when the entire process is completed, that we have earned the right at last to pray for the blessing of renewal, fertility, growth, for ourselves, for our earth -- the blessing of rain.
|
Everyone is invited!
