Tuesday, December 2, 2025
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Dick Goldberg's Davar Torah - Bereshit
Let There Be Light
Shabbat shalom. I am Dick Goldberg— and I have a suggestion for you.
If you are considering offering a d’var here at minyan Dorshei Derekh, sign up well in advance.
Not just because Rabbi Debrah Cohen, who manages the list of darshanim, would appreciate that but also...
Because it can mean, as it happened with me in connection with this d’var, you really get to mull.
You know, we often think of mulling as making things thick or cloudy— as in mulled cider or wine.
I’m talking about mulling that leads to clarity. Hold on to that: clarity.
Indeed, once I signed up to talk about B’reishit, I found myself awash in ideas about “In the beginning.”
How important beginnings are.
How exciting they can be. The day you are born. Which is to say, the day the whole world is born for you. Your first word. Your first step.
Think of all the promise inherent in those beginnings.
But beginnings can also be frightening. Your first day of school, your first day of a new job, the wedding night.
How the seeds that will grow into the full blossom can be there— there at the beginning.
I thought about the parshah on long walks, in the shower—I do my best thinking in water—pools, tubs, lakes and oceans, that sort of thing.
I thought about the parshah during our services—yes, while others are talking or praying.
When I rose up and when I lay down.
And then it came to me... I didn’t want to talk about “iIn the beginning.” I didn’t want to talk about the first thing God did—create heaven and earth.
I wanted to talk about what came next: “Let there be light.”
That I think is the primary advantage of mulling—reflection— it has the potential to get you where you need to go.
A process in which you fire up the synapses in your brain, shed some internal light on what you have within, and get not necessarily where you thought you would end up.
A process that is infused not only with creativity but also with light, and which led me to...
“Let there be light.” As I said earlier, clarity.
Think about it. When God began to create heaven and earth— the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep—let’s stop there.
Unformed, void, darkness, deep, I think you could say both impossibly frightening and unfathomable.
I can just imagine God—surveying so much dark nothingness — saying to themself, “Geeze, Louise, what am I going to do about this?”
Sit here and mope? Curse the darkness? Give up on this whole enterprise?
No, instead, they said, “Let there be light.”
Never mind, why was God talking to themself—and no, I don’t buy that they were talking to angels as some would have it.
No. I think God looked at the situation to the extent that they could see in all that darkness and recognized this as a problem. A big one.
And what does God—or the magnificence of the universe—which is how I view god—do? What do they do to fill in that emptiness?
Call forth light... enabling vision.
Create light... which fosters the aforementioned clarity.
Give us light... which is the difference between night and day.
Devise light... that reveals magnificence—magnificence— which not only is my word for:
1. What God is— but also
2. The process God undertakes for the next week and ever after, as well as
3. What God calls into being:
The magnificence of the separation of the waters,
The magnificence of the creation of the sky, the magnificence of the gathering of land, vegetation, fruit, the advent of time, the sun and the stars, humanity—magnificence indeed (actually, I’m not so sure about humanity).
I like the way our own Rabbi Sheila Weinberg captures this magnificence in a passage we recite almost every Shabbat:
“Who are holy beings?
They are beloved, clear of mind, and courageous.
Their will and God’s are one.
Raising their voices in constant gratitude, they marvel at every detail of life.
Granting each other loving permission to be exactly who they are.
When we listen for their sweet voices, we can hear the echo within our own souls....”
Isn’t that delicious?
I can just see God after creating the world and all that dwells within, well, beaming with... De-light. Pun intended.
Consider: where would be without light?
Unable to see for those of us fortunate enough to be sighted —unable to see and fully appreciate the magnificence.
But—and this is even more important, without the internal light—the light within...
Lost. Unenlightened—as in uneducated and unevolved.
Sad. With a permanent case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Morose.
---
Part two. Another key aspect of my exploration of the parshah usually is to see whether I have a personal connection to it.
If I’m going to speak about it, does it speak—or has it already—spoken to me?
Do I have a personal connection to “Let there be light?”
Oy!
Here it is:
In 1958, when I was 11 and living with my family in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, we trekked to Philadelphia for our annual summer visit to see my grandmother and other family here.
We got off the train—yes, the train— at the North Philadelphia Train Station at Broad and Glenwood and eventually made our way to Atlantic City.
To the boardwalk.
Where a very chubby, stage-struck pre-teen boy was taken to see “Dancing Waters” – a sound, water, and light show. Swaying and yes— dancing fountains of water moved to music—probably something shmaltzy like Strauss waltzes— as rainbowed colored lights—lights—kissed the delicate sprays emanating from the stage floor, fly space and wings.
It was gorgeous. It was thrilling. It was kitsch. And I loved it. Every kitschy minute.
So much so that when I returned to Winston-Salem and started trying to figure out how I was going to raise spending money for camp—I went to Camp Blue Star, where a lot of bourgeois Jewish kids in the south went—I decided that I would create my own Dancing Waters show, charge folks to attend, and use the resulting proceeds to buy my stash of sodas, candy bars and comic books.
I decided that in my version of the show I would substitute narration for music.
What should be my text? Genesis! I was planning on inviting the rabbi and figured he’d love it. I was also at that time—age 11—fantasizing about becoming a rabbi, but that’s another story for another time.
Flash forward to opening night.
Our backyard was rigged with hoses connected to spigots.
The hoses snaked this way and that. Y splitters allowed for more hoses. Some were draped over tree limbs, bushes and lawn furniture, ending in sprinklers, nozzles, and sprayers.
I was stationed, seated in my bathing suit, behind a two-foot high plywood barrier so that the audience wouldn’t see the narrator—I would be... A “disembodied voice.”
My bible was on my lap, open to B’reishit—in English-- covered by Saran Wrap to keep the pages from getting wet.
The stage crew took their positions at the aforementioned spigots—my mother at the backyard spigot, my father in the front, my sister at the outdoor light panel.
My sister turned off the patio lights, plunging into darkness the area where the rabbi and other audience members were seated facing the backyard, where I and all my paraphernalia were.
...the audience chatter ceased.
I waited a long dramatic moment then intoned, “In the beginning...” And my mother turned on her spigot. A delicate spray of droplets arose from a perforated hose on the ground.
And as the waters swayed and danced, I continued: “God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
And God said, “Let there be light!”
Another dramatic pause. The proverbial calm before the storm....
“Let there be light” I said again.
The audience’s eagerness to see how light would manifest itself as water was palpable.
“Let there be light” I repeated, a hint of concern creeping into my voice.
And... And... And we all just sat there. Fidgeting. Nervously.
Nada. Not a drop. Nothing.
Then finally my mother yelled, “Milton, let there be light!”
My dad finally heard, turned on his spigot, the water raced through the hose— and the sprinklers dangling above my head came alive, spinning, swirling, and yes, dancing!
My sister flipped on the backyard lights for the full effect.
Showtime!
And in that very moment, I bagged the idea of becoming a rabbi and decided I need to pursue a life in the theatre.
All because of light. And the very dramatic, very unexpected way it had almost not—then manifested itself in my show.
Which is to say, my creation. My beginning.
I’ll leave it to the Freudian and other therapists in the room to sort out the absent, unhearing impotent father; the dominating, powerful mother who comes to the rescue, and the other Oedipal dimensions of the story.
The point for me was that the manifestation of light—preceded by a grace note of anxiety-ridden inaction— was climactic, transformative, and life-changing....
"But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? / it is the east, and Juliet is the sun.” Light is love.
"How far that little candle throws his beams!/ So shines a good deed in a naughty world” says Portia in The Merchant of Venice. Light is goodness.
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness,” said Desmond Tutu. Light is hope.
“I will hold you in the light,” say our Quaker friends. In your time of need, I will call God's love, wisdom, and peace to surround you. Light is empowering, nurturing, and wonderfully, wonderfully good.
We get that from our tradition too—that wonderful connection between light and goodness. What does it say after each of their creations? “And God saw that it was good.”
And once all is complete, what does God say? “It is very good.” When you have many things, each saying a variation of the same essence in its own way, and they’re all in harmony, then it’s beautiful, very good. The ultimate light.
The biblical scholar and noted translator rabbi Nachum Sarna—who several of us in this room encountered at Brandeis— wrote that “light banishes the ancient pagan notion of inherent, primordial evil, a cosmos built on a mythological brew of fates and evil forces. In the biblical view, creation” he said, “is infused with divine goodness.”
The Lubavitcher rebbe— Menachem Mendel Schneerson — goes one step further, proposing that God means both light and darkness have the potential for goodness. “All the world — even the darkness — should become a source of light and wisdom,” He said.
In our tradition, rather than the physical light from celestial bodies, the initial light on the first day is seen as the fundamental energy from which all matter and energy—including the later-created sun, moon, and stars—would form. The force that in my lexicon is itself God.
You might also think of light as fairy or pixie dust— the magical, glittering substance used by Tinker Bell to achieve flight for herself and Peter and Wendy. Because indeed, light is also magic.
This light that God calls forth is primordial light, incredibly powerful, universe-filling light. And what does our tradition call on us to do?
Sit there and enjoy the show?
No, bring more light into the world by performing mitzvot.
Indeed, we are commanded to do that. The word "mitzvah" comes from the root "Tzav," meaning "to command".
Rashi, in his commentary on the Talmud says that “Without light, there can be no peace.” Light also enables peace.
Indeed, the creation of light, as part of the creation of the world, in our tradition, is considered to be a continuous process, renewed daily.
Every day god bestows light on the world and its inhabitants.
It’s there. A truly renewable source of energy. And we certainly need as much light as we can get in these dark times, no?
Light. Not kings.
But what do we do with that light? That is the question....
What do we do with that light?
Indeed, that’s the last of the three I’d like you to discuss:
The first two being:
What is light to you?
Then... Where do you need more light?
And then...
What are you doing with yours?
1. What is light to you?
2. Where do you need more?
3. What are you doing with yours?
Shabbat shalom. I am Dick Goldberg— and I have a suggestion for you.
If you are considering offering a d’var here at minyan Dorshei Derekh, sign up well in advance.
Not just because Rabbi Debrah Cohen, who manages the list of darshanim, would appreciate that but also...
Because it can mean, as it happened with me in connection with this d’var, you really get to mull.
You know, we often think of mulling as making things thick or cloudy— as in mulled cider or wine.
I’m talking about mulling that leads to clarity. Hold on to that: clarity.
Indeed, once I signed up to talk about B’reishit, I found myself awash in ideas about “In the beginning.”
How important beginnings are.
How exciting they can be. The day you are born. Which is to say, the day the whole world is born for you. Your first word. Your first step.
Think of all the promise inherent in those beginnings.
But beginnings can also be frightening. Your first day of school, your first day of a new job, the wedding night.
How the seeds that will grow into the full blossom can be there— there at the beginning.
I thought about the parshah on long walks, in the shower—I do my best thinking in water—pools, tubs, lakes and oceans, that sort of thing.
I thought about the parshah during our services—yes, while others are talking or praying.
When I rose up and when I lay down.
And then it came to me... I didn’t want to talk about “iIn the beginning.” I didn’t want to talk about the first thing God did—create heaven and earth.
I wanted to talk about what came next: “Let there be light.”
That I think is the primary advantage of mulling—reflection— it has the potential to get you where you need to go.
A process in which you fire up the synapses in your brain, shed some internal light on what you have within, and get not necessarily where you thought you would end up.
A process that is infused not only with creativity but also with light, and which led me to...
“Let there be light.” As I said earlier, clarity.
Think about it. When God began to create heaven and earth— the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep—let’s stop there.
Unformed, void, darkness, deep, I think you could say both impossibly frightening and unfathomable.
I can just imagine God—surveying so much dark nothingness — saying to themself, “Geeze, Louise, what am I going to do about this?”
Sit here and mope? Curse the darkness? Give up on this whole enterprise?
No, instead, they said, “Let there be light.”
Never mind, why was God talking to themself—and no, I don’t buy that they were talking to angels as some would have it.
No. I think God looked at the situation to the extent that they could see in all that darkness and recognized this as a problem. A big one.
And what does God—or the magnificence of the universe—which is how I view god—do? What do they do to fill in that emptiness?
Call forth light... enabling vision.
Create light... which fosters the aforementioned clarity.
Give us light... which is the difference between night and day.
Devise light... that reveals magnificence—magnificence— which not only is my word for:
1. What God is— but also
2. The process God undertakes for the next week and ever after, as well as
3. What God calls into being:
The magnificence of the separation of the waters,
The magnificence of the creation of the sky, the magnificence of the gathering of land, vegetation, fruit, the advent of time, the sun and the stars, humanity—magnificence indeed (actually, I’m not so sure about humanity).
I like the way our own Rabbi Sheila Weinberg captures this magnificence in a passage we recite almost every Shabbat:
“Who are holy beings?
They are beloved, clear of mind, and courageous.
Their will and God’s are one.
Raising their voices in constant gratitude, they marvel at every detail of life.
Granting each other loving permission to be exactly who they are.
When we listen for their sweet voices, we can hear the echo within our own souls....”
Isn’t that delicious?
I can just see God after creating the world and all that dwells within, well, beaming with... De-light. Pun intended.
Consider: where would be without light?
Unable to see for those of us fortunate enough to be sighted —unable to see and fully appreciate the magnificence.
But—and this is even more important, without the internal light—the light within...
Lost. Unenlightened—as in uneducated and unevolved.
Sad. With a permanent case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Morose.
---
Part two. Another key aspect of my exploration of the parshah usually is to see whether I have a personal connection to it.
If I’m going to speak about it, does it speak—or has it already—spoken to me?
Do I have a personal connection to “Let there be light?”
Oy!
Here it is:
In 1958, when I was 11 and living with my family in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, we trekked to Philadelphia for our annual summer visit to see my grandmother and other family here.
We got off the train—yes, the train— at the North Philadelphia Train Station at Broad and Glenwood and eventually made our way to Atlantic City.
To the boardwalk.
Where a very chubby, stage-struck pre-teen boy was taken to see “Dancing Waters” – a sound, water, and light show. Swaying and yes— dancing fountains of water moved to music—probably something shmaltzy like Strauss waltzes— as rainbowed colored lights—lights—kissed the delicate sprays emanating from the stage floor, fly space and wings.
It was gorgeous. It was thrilling. It was kitsch. And I loved it. Every kitschy minute.
So much so that when I returned to Winston-Salem and started trying to figure out how I was going to raise spending money for camp—I went to Camp Blue Star, where a lot of bourgeois Jewish kids in the south went—I decided that I would create my own Dancing Waters show, charge folks to attend, and use the resulting proceeds to buy my stash of sodas, candy bars and comic books.
I decided that in my version of the show I would substitute narration for music.
What should be my text? Genesis! I was planning on inviting the rabbi and figured he’d love it. I was also at that time—age 11—fantasizing about becoming a rabbi, but that’s another story for another time.
Flash forward to opening night.
Our backyard was rigged with hoses connected to spigots.
The hoses snaked this way and that. Y splitters allowed for more hoses. Some were draped over tree limbs, bushes and lawn furniture, ending in sprinklers, nozzles, and sprayers.
I was stationed, seated in my bathing suit, behind a two-foot high plywood barrier so that the audience wouldn’t see the narrator—I would be... A “disembodied voice.”
My bible was on my lap, open to B’reishit—in English-- covered by Saran Wrap to keep the pages from getting wet.
The stage crew took their positions at the aforementioned spigots—my mother at the backyard spigot, my father in the front, my sister at the outdoor light panel.
My sister turned off the patio lights, plunging into darkness the area where the rabbi and other audience members were seated facing the backyard, where I and all my paraphernalia were.
...the audience chatter ceased.
I waited a long dramatic moment then intoned, “In the beginning...” And my mother turned on her spigot. A delicate spray of droplets arose from a perforated hose on the ground.
And as the waters swayed and danced, I continued: “God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
And God said, “Let there be light!”
Another dramatic pause. The proverbial calm before the storm....
“Let there be light” I said again.
The audience’s eagerness to see how light would manifest itself as water was palpable.
“Let there be light” I repeated, a hint of concern creeping into my voice.
And... And... And we all just sat there. Fidgeting. Nervously.
Nada. Not a drop. Nothing.
Then finally my mother yelled, “Milton, let there be light!”
My dad finally heard, turned on his spigot, the water raced through the hose— and the sprinklers dangling above my head came alive, spinning, swirling, and yes, dancing!
My sister flipped on the backyard lights for the full effect.
Showtime!
And in that very moment, I bagged the idea of becoming a rabbi and decided I need to pursue a life in the theatre.
All because of light. And the very dramatic, very unexpected way it had almost not—then manifested itself in my show.
Which is to say, my creation. My beginning.
I’ll leave it to the Freudian and other therapists in the room to sort out the absent, unhearing impotent father; the dominating, powerful mother who comes to the rescue, and the other Oedipal dimensions of the story.
The point for me was that the manifestation of light—preceded by a grace note of anxiety-ridden inaction— was climactic, transformative, and life-changing....
"But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? / it is the east, and Juliet is the sun.” Light is love.
"How far that little candle throws his beams!/ So shines a good deed in a naughty world” says Portia in The Merchant of Venice. Light is goodness.
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness,” said Desmond Tutu. Light is hope.
“I will hold you in the light,” say our Quaker friends. In your time of need, I will call God's love, wisdom, and peace to surround you. Light is empowering, nurturing, and wonderfully, wonderfully good.
We get that from our tradition too—that wonderful connection between light and goodness. What does it say after each of their creations? “And God saw that it was good.”
And once all is complete, what does God say? “It is very good.” When you have many things, each saying a variation of the same essence in its own way, and they’re all in harmony, then it’s beautiful, very good. The ultimate light.
The biblical scholar and noted translator rabbi Nachum Sarna—who several of us in this room encountered at Brandeis— wrote that “light banishes the ancient pagan notion of inherent, primordial evil, a cosmos built on a mythological brew of fates and evil forces. In the biblical view, creation” he said, “is infused with divine goodness.”
The Lubavitcher rebbe— Menachem Mendel Schneerson — goes one step further, proposing that God means both light and darkness have the potential for goodness. “All the world — even the darkness — should become a source of light and wisdom,” He said.
In our tradition, rather than the physical light from celestial bodies, the initial light on the first day is seen as the fundamental energy from which all matter and energy—including the later-created sun, moon, and stars—would form. The force that in my lexicon is itself God.
You might also think of light as fairy or pixie dust— the magical, glittering substance used by Tinker Bell to achieve flight for herself and Peter and Wendy. Because indeed, light is also magic.
This light that God calls forth is primordial light, incredibly powerful, universe-filling light. And what does our tradition call on us to do?
Sit there and enjoy the show?
No, bring more light into the world by performing mitzvot.
Indeed, we are commanded to do that. The word "mitzvah" comes from the root "Tzav," meaning "to command".
Rashi, in his commentary on the Talmud says that “Without light, there can be no peace.” Light also enables peace.
Indeed, the creation of light, as part of the creation of the world, in our tradition, is considered to be a continuous process, renewed daily.
Every day god bestows light on the world and its inhabitants.
It’s there. A truly renewable source of energy. And we certainly need as much light as we can get in these dark times, no?
Light. Not kings.
But what do we do with that light? That is the question....
What do we do with that light?
Indeed, that’s the last of the three I’d like you to discuss:
The first two being:
What is light to you?
Then... Where do you need more light?
And then...
What are you doing with yours?
1. What is light to you?
2. Where do you need more?
3. What are you doing with yours?
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Thanks, Dorshei Derekh, for a Wonderful Launch to 5786
R' Avruhm Addison
Joyce Silverman
R' David Teutsch
R' Simkha Weintraub
Service Leaders
R' Avruhm Addison
Alex Avelin
Bobbi Breitman
R’ David Dunn Bauer
Mikael Elsila
Sheila Erlbaum
R’ Dayle Friedman
R’ Beth Janus
Naomi Klayman
Ruth Loew
David Mosenkis
Dina Pinsky
R’ Jacob Staub
R’ George Stern
R’ Bob Tabak
R’ Leah Wald
R' Deborah Waxman
Torah and Haftarah
R’ Avruhm Addison
R' Debrah Cohen
R’ Dayle Friedman
Michelle Friedman
Miriam Goldberg
Mikaela Kessler
David Mosenkis
Robert Mosenkis
Barb Pearson
Betsy Teutsch
Divrei Torah and Teaching
Jennifer Paget
R' David Teutsch
Deborah Weinstein
R’ Simkha Weintraub
Shofar
David Mosenkis
R’ Nahariyah Mosenkis
R’ George Stern
Special Thanks
Noah Boyer, composer
Chorus
Jeffrey Alexander
Bret Boyer
Miriam Goldberg
David Mosenkis
Heather Shafter
Sonia Voynow
Divrei Torah and Teaching
Jennifer Paget
R' David Teutsch
Deborah Weinstein
R’ Simkha Weintraub
Shofar
David Mosenkis
R’ Nahariyah Mosenkis
R’ George Stern
Special Thanks
Noah Boyer, composer
Chorus
Jeffrey Alexander
Bret Boyer
Miriam Goldberg
David Mosenkis
Heather Shafter
Sonia Voynow
Torah Holders for Kol Nidrei:
- Betsy Teutsch for her leadership of the Mazkirut
- Rabbi David Dunn Bauer for leading services and sharing his beautiful voice with us
- Deborah Weinstein for her commitment to DD by serving on the Mazkirut and her willingness to bring her thought-provoking drashim to us
- Mikael Elsila for bringing his musical talents to GJC and enhancing our joint services
- Rabbi Debrah Cohen for leyning throughout the year and sharing her knowledge of Jewish texts with us
- Mark Pinsky who works diligently every week to gather all the information we need to know about DD services, activities, and the participants in them, and still has strength to do Hagbah.
Their variety of contributions to DD exemplifies the power of individuals that make our minyan a welcoming spiritual home for us all. We are proud to honor them as Torah holders.
Monday, July 7, 2025
Team Organize!
 |
| L to R: Helen Feinberg, Merle Berman, Betsy Teutsch, Simone Zelitch, and Serena Eisenberg |
Around a decade later, a fundraising campaign resulted in
both the Temin and the Maslow acquiring lovely book shelves and storage
cabinetry. While there’s no running water in the Maslow, we were able to equip
it with a refrigerator and a small kitchenette for prepping kiddushes and other
functions.
Many groups use the Maslow. Staff eats lunch there, bridge
games are held, the ECP and Religious School hold programs in it, Children’s
High Holiday Services take place in it, and classes and Board Meetings take
place there, too, all harmoniously co-existing.
About 15 years ago, our beloved Donald Joseph introduced
Schnapps Shabbat, a monthly happening. We quickly noticed that the schnapps
would disappear over the course of a month, so we added a cabinet lock. Why did
all the other cabinets also acquire locks? No one remembers.
Recently someone tried, unsuccessfully, to match the ancient
key hidden on a high shelf to the cupboard locks. In frustration, they asked
me, Dorshei Derekh’s present chair, to try to straighten out the locked cabinet
situation.
After consulting with our synagogue office staff, we
discovered they had presumed Dorshei Derekh stored important things in those
locked cabinets. And Dorshei Derekh had likewise presumed that GJC used them.
As it turns out, neither of us used them in any systematic way, and they had
just slowly filled up over the decades with random stuff. This is unsurprising,
given how many different people use the space.
On an appointed June Tuesday at noon, I asked for volunteers
to help me with a clean-out. I pretty much expected I would be doing this
solo…. Who wants to come clean out cabinets? People don’t even want to clean
out their own cabinets, right? Imagine my surprise when I walked in to find
Merle Berman and Simone Zelitch already flinging open the cabinets and cleaning
them. And it wasn’t even Pesach!
Within a few minutes Past-GJC President Helen Feinberg and
Serena Eisenberg also arrived. Our team of five included one PhD, three social
workers, a rabbi, and two lawyers. We dove in and in no time flat we removed
all the contents of the cabinets, sorted them, and figured out what to do with
each category. With Jose and Kate’s help, endless items were moved on to new
homes.
Simone was reunited with her Deviled Egg carrying case. We
chuckled over the archeological records of our minyan’s commitment to
sustainability: glass kiddush cups (too heavy for the weekly dishwasher to
shlep), small metal cups (too light to stay on DW shelves), and an enormous
collection of Dollar Store ware – bowls and trays for a lifetime. Plus the
synagogue’s pre-composting accumulation of plates, cups, and cutlery in dozens
of sizes, all of which we sorted. (We were very good at that, as it happens.)
We were delighted to donate our vintage IKEA plastic plates,
forks, and spoons to the ECP. We used those for about a decade. One fine day,
Dayle Friedman opined that she was tired of eating on nursery school plates
every Shabbat, and we upgraded. But the old stuff remained in, you guessed it,
one of our locked cabinets.
Within 90 minutes, we were done. There aren’t many jobs
where after 90-minutes you can see gratifying
results from your efforts. (Ever been to a Committee Meeting?). We are all just
compulsive enough to love looking at the newly empty closets and cupboards, with
the shelves we actually use looking so orderly.
The biggest surprise? The vast majority of what was stored
in the cupboards wasn’t there for any particular reason, except someone once
put them there. Fixed!
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
Mark Pinsky: Parshat V'Yikra - And He Called
We begin Nisan & Leviticus this week with parashah Vayikra… And He called.
The Israelites are riding high, so to speak, or at least as high as Israelites can ride. Sure, there was that Golden Calf incident, but Adonai had rescued and freed them from slavery, parted the Reed Sea for them, and given them His Commandments. Then He promised to dwell among them in the mishkan. And the cloud lifted—in the narrative, at least.
How were the Israelites feeling? How would we be feeling? Grateful? Absolutely! Elevated? Sure. Divinely selected? Probably. Chosen? It would have been tempting… hubris is seductive.
A traditional reading of Vayikra says the small aleph ending the word “vayikra” is a reminder of Moses’ humility, and so a kavanah for all of us to live and lead with humility. That lesson seems particularly important now in the face of unprecedented Presidential hubris.
Let’s don’t forget that hubris is the first giant misstep toward failure. Because are several steps from hubris to failure, though, we know there is time and space there today for humility. We do not have to succumb to hubris–not in ourselves and not in our President. Humility is a step toward hope. And change.
Our own Bobbi Breitman offered a drash at Minyan Dorshei Derekh in late 2020 (that Evolve published soon after) on the “Ethical Imperative of Hope.” She asked and answered a question, which I am paraphrasing today: How do we go on when everything around us feels hopeless? She drew her answer from a midrash she had heard about Noah, Moses, Joseph, and Mordechai: “It was because they could see a new world.”
Another teaching I have leaned on for decades is the Stockdale Paradox.
Admiral Jim Stockdale was the ranking U.S. military officer in the Hanoi Hilton—the North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp—during the Vietnam War. By the way, if you’re in need of some humility, the Vietnamese call it the American War.
Military protocol made it Stockdale’s primary responsibility to help his men survive. What he learned and practiced—what became the Stockdale Paradox—is that the men who survived saw the harsh reality in front of them with brutal honesty yet never stopped believing that they would prevail.
“Oh,” someone once asked him, “you mean the optimists?”
No, Stockdale explained, the optimists all died of broken hearts. They kept telling themselves they would be released soon—by Pesach or by the 4th of July or by Christmas. The pessimists, meanwhile, could not imagine that things might get better; they died of despair, the absence of hope.
Those who survived could envision a different, better world.
When I said that hubris is the first step toward failure, I did not mean that as an abstraction.
I am an avid student of Jim Collins, who studies success and failure. During the the Great Recession, he published a book on organizational failure following success called “How the Mighty Fall.”
They fall in five steps:
First, they embrace hubris born of success. Can you think of a kid who inherited millions of dollars as well as his father’s successful housing business but tells everyone he lifted himself by his bootstraps?
The second step is the reckless pursuit of “more.” Elon Musk keeps coming up for me here.
Third, denial of risk and peril. The Republican Party.
At this point—and this is the point I assume we all fear we as a nation are today or will soon be—recovery is still possible.
The fourth step toward failure is grasping for salvation. Panic is not a strategy.
Some of us fear that we as a nation are already grasping for salvation. But the fact that we are talking, writing, resisting, and protesting about the risks and perils is proof that we are not giving in.
Organized people can and will make the difference.
The final, fifth step to failure is capitulating to irrelevance.
So How DO we Reconstructionist Jews keep ourselves relevant?—Boldly relevant, in fact! How do we hold onto hope?… and What hopes do we hold on to when we see, with brutal honesty, the irrevocable harm being done to people we know, people we don’t know, our economy, our nation, and all the people and nations who rely on us?
I believe that experience is not what happens to us but what we do with what happens to us. We are humble, we are responsible, we see the facts before us with brutal honesty, and we never stop believing that we will prevail.
As we prepare for Pesach—and so for ALL the times when impossible things are possible—I offer Bobbi Breitman’s words as a blessing:
“May the light of these holy days help us see with new eyes, as we find the strength and courage to bring forth the world in which we hope to live and pass on to our children and grandchildren, an olam hadash,” a renewed World.
Dibarti.
Mark Pinsky serves as Treasurer to the Board of Directors of Reconstructing Judaism
Monday, March 24, 2025
Purim 2025/5755
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| Purim elves Sheila Erlbaum, Eleanor Brownstein, and Naomi Hirsch Several decades ago, Minyan Dorshei Derekh revamped our
Mishloach Manot approach, the giving of goodies to one another on Purim. In the
interest of cutting back on waste (how many hamantaschen can one household
absorb?) and increasing the amount of our resources going to support others, we
collectivized our baking and our donating. That first year our goal was to raise enough cash to cover a
Heifer Fund cow, which then cost about $500. We succeeded, and then some. Heifer
Fund presents a cow to a low-income farming family, along with training, and a expectation
that they pass along each calf to another struggling family. The cow provides
nutrition, surplus milk provides income, and the cow also contributes
fertilizer to improve soil productivity. While it’s not possible to confirm how
many families were given offspring from our original donation, it is nice to
visualize that kind of exponential impact. Cows live, typically, 15-20 years,
so that’s a lot of milk! We used to buy the baked goods for our baskets, which we
playfully presented in clementine crates. Eventually two changes needed to be
made. The first is that clementine crates went extinct. The second
game-changer was COVID, when it was ill-advised to go shopping in person. We pivoted and came up with a new system which has worked
even better. We recruit volunteer bakers, who drop off goodies at an appointed
time and place. Volunteers gather to assemble baskets which are left on the
porches of two members’ homes for pick up. We make extra, and bring them to
share with the GJC staff, in appreciation for all their hard work. Our minyan strives to generate zero waste, so we were happy
to discover that coconut fiber plant liners make perfect baskets. They can be used
for their intended purpose, as containers, or composted, but even better – some
of our members return them to be reused for the next Purim. For several years, our baskets have been graced by Fair
Trade lace mats, which make nice challah covers for small challot, donated by a
Linda Egle. She ran a Fair Trade company, Eternal Threads, and commissioned the
lace from a cooperative in India. When she closed her business, she had a lot
of leftover inventory, some of which she has kindly donated to our project. During COVID, receiving home-baked treats was an especially
heart-warming experience, helping us bridge the chasm created by suspending
in-person services. As COVID traumas recede, we have kept this new approach.
People contribute to our minyan treasury, and our loyal Treasurer, Arnold
Lurie, splits the total between our two tzedakah recipients. We love contributing to FBHS, the Female Benevolent Hebrew Society,
a venerable Philadelphia philanthropy. “Guided by Jewish values, the Female
Hebrew Benevolent Society of Philadelphia has been providing immediate
assistance to local, Jewish women in financial crisis since 1819, always
upholding the privacy, dignity and self-respect of those we serve.” Our funds (this year, more than $500) go specifically
for Passover food supermarket cards. We contributed an equal amount to combat hunger right near
us, via the Germantown Community Fridge. Community Fridges took off during
COVID, when hunger increased but foodbanks were closed. Right on the street,
they provide direct, respectful access to food for those in need. Our gift goes
towards refilling the fridge with staples. They responded: “Check received. Many thanks to all who organized, baked, assembled, and
contributed to our 2025 Mishloach Manot. Chairs: Ruth Loew, Betsy Teutsch Assemblers: Eleanor Brownstein, Sheila Erlbaum, Naomi
Hirsch, Betsy Teutsch Bakers: Merle Berman Phyllis Berman Michelle Friedman Ruth Loew and Bob Tabak Jennifer Paget Simha Rosenberg Sonya Voynow The Weinmartin Family Donation of lace covers: Linda Egle Treasurer: Arnie Lurie Origami: Sheila Erlbaum, Eleanor Brownstein |
Thank you to your
congregation for the continuing generous support.”Monday, December 23, 2024
The Significance of a Tambourine: Betsy Teutsch Speaks at Brandeis with Lori Lefkovitz & Susan Weidman Schneider
This program was really a celebration of Jewish feminism’s evolution in the U.S., featuring the contributions made to Jewish feminism, and to the archives, by three Brandeis alumnae: Dr. Lori Lefkovitz, whom many of us know as the wife of former GJC Rabbi Leonard Gordon; Susan Weidman Schneider; and GJC’s (and Dorshei Derekh’s) own Betsy Teutsch. Betsy, a trailblazer in Jewish feminist art, donated to the archive an assortment of her signature tambourines. These tambourines are unusual in that many of them are painted with illustrations of Jewish women (think of Miriam and the other women playing their tambourines and dancing to celebrate the crossing of the Red Sea).
On reflection, Betsy reports that she found participating in
this program especially meaningful as “an opportunity to reflect on how life
choices are often a combination of ‘roads’ available at the time we seek a way,
what map we have available to give us access, and what roads just haven’t even
been built yet.”
In 1974, when Betsy graduated from Brandeis, there were few
Jewish feminist role models. The U.S.’s
first female rabbi ordained by a seminary, Sally Priesand, had just graduated
in 1972. Jewish Studies programs were
few and far between, and Women’s Studies programs were even harder to find.
Although Betsy had majored in Near Eastern and Judaic
Studies, she didn’t know anything about Jewish artists. The Jewish Catalog,
which was then hot off the presses, contained instructions on how to make
Jewish objects; but nobody was yet creating tambourines as Jewish ritual
objects, much less as Jewish women’s objects.
During the 70’s and early 80’s, Betsy focused on creating ketubot (marriage
certificates), other certificates, announcements, and invitations. She also illustrated Michael Strassfeld’s “TheJewish Holidays.” In 1986, she and her
husband, Rabbi David Teutsch, moved to Philadelphia, joined GJC, and eventually
became founding members of Minyan Dorshei Derekh. In the late 80’s the Reconstructionist Prayer
Commission invited her to create art for the movement’s new prayerbook.
In the early 90’s Betsy heard about an upcoming invitational
art show, curated by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, called “And the
women danced.” She thought of the tambourine as a possible image for Jewish
feminism, created one, and submitted it. According to Betsy, although her
tambourine wasn’t accepted for the show, some of the students who worked on the
show recognized the tambourine’s potential.
Commissions followed, and their numbers increased rapidly.
At this point she was painting each instrument by hand on
parchment. Because the parchment tended
to shrink after it was fitted to the frame and painted, Betsy found a company
that could make tambourines with synthetic heads and could also print her images
onto them. She eventually came up with
about 12 different designs, most with feminist themes. Some were sold through Jewish organizations;
the GJC Little Shop also sold the tambourines.
They became popular because women had never seen themselves on ritual
objects before. Also, as Betsy pointed out, who typically buys all the
gifts?
In the infrequent images of Jewish women in Jewish art over
the years, up through the late 20th century, women had seldom been
distinguished from one another by age, attire, and the like. Often they appeared
static. Betsy, on the other hand, likes
to represent Jewish women as individuals -- different in attire, facial
features, body type, color, and age – and in action and interacting with one
another. One of her tambourine designs
features a woman soaring over the Wall in Jerusalem; others show women dancing
at the Red Sea.
In all, Betsy sold about 11,000 tambourines. About 10 years ago, she decided to stop and
turned to other pursuits. However, her
tambourines remain ubiquitous, indicating changes in Jewish women’s status as
reflected in art. Yet another GJC member
has impacted modern American Judaism far beyond this congregation!
(Betsy notes that GJC members Dr. Kathryn Hellerstein and
Penina Berdugo were students at Brandeis at the time that she too was a student
there. In fact, in 2016 Hellerstein was a Fellow at the Hadassah Brandeis
Institute, which hosted the event.)
~Ruth Loew
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