In This Section:
The 2009 Week of Study
Week of Study Class of 2009
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We have invited several of the attendees of the 2009 Week of Study to share their thoughts with us. We are delighted to present some thoughts here by Susan Z. Kasper, Executive Director of Tiferet Bet Israel, in Blue Bell, PA (shown in the photo above, second row, fifth from the left).
We thank our colleague David Rothenberg, FSA, ATz, for sharing his candid photographs with us as visual reminders of the intense and lasting experience you see depicted here.
A Personal View: Creating the Magic Moments
Earlier this summer I had an opportunity to attend the Week of Study at JTS as part of my goal to become a Fellow in Synagogue Administration. It was a time of personal renewal through study and an extraordinary opportunity to learn with highly respected faculty in the company of my outstanding peers.
Noted faculty for the week were Rabbi William H. Lebeau, Rabbi David Ackerman, Rabbi Neil Gillman, Nigel Savage and Rabbi Marc Wolf, with Dr. David Kraemer, author of Jewish Eating and Identity Through The Ages, (a fabulous read) as our Scholar In Residence. For each of us as Jews and human beings, learning for the purpose of expanding our minds and spiritual cores is critical. The theme of the week was “Eat and Be Holy: Food, Identity and Social Responsibility in Jewish Tradition.” What a fascinating, and, as I was to learn, broad topic. Our discussions encompassed everything with from the politics of Kashrut, to the mitzvah of Kashrut, to Hazon, to "spirits and spirituality" (wine in Judaism), to Hekhsher Tzedek, always with an eye to our sacred texts.
Part of my charge was to write a paper about a topic that particularly spoke to me during that time of study. I eagerly chose the mitzvah of Kashrut. What follows is a document that hopefully provides "food for thought" (sorry - I just had to say it) for each of our congregations. The paper is entitled “Creating the Magic Moments”, and I am honored to be able to present it here.
“The Mitzvah of Kashrut: Creating the Magic Moments”
What is a mitzvah? A mitzvah is, according to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitzvah, “…a word used in Judaism to refer to the 613 commandments given in the Torah. The term can also refer to the fulfillment of a mitzvah. The term mitzvah has also come to express an act of human kindness, according to the teachings of Judaism.” One of those 613 mitzvot is the mitzvah of keeping kosher.
Food is essential to sustaining life and is an important part of human interaction and celebration. It is imbued with meaning in all cultures. Judaism is no exception: from Torah law to rabbinic law to regional and family customs, food is surrounded by ‘rules’ which elevate it from simple sustenance to a symbol of our belief and practice. Eating is a gift from God for which we should show gratitude and mindfulness.
To quote Rabbi Lebeau, “Spiritual moments in Judaism (being in harmony with God—holiness) come about not just in spontaneous/unexpected ecstatic moments, but as experiences that we actively create for the purpose of drawing closer to God.” We know that one of the ways Jews (and all human beings) remember is through the course of ritual behavior and experiences. We can create these experiences around Kashrut: part of our mission as Jewish communal leaders is to create those magic Judaic moments, connecting our congregants to their Jewish identity and reframing our community perspective.
Beyond the commandments, Kashrut is a vehicle that enables us to be God’s partners and to contribute to the harmony of the universe. It tells us how to interact with food and with the sources of food, and by implication how to interact globally with humanity and with the earth. Kashrut is also the basis for personal discipline, defining how we take food into our bodies, not just what we eat but how we behave. Kashrut teaches us restraint (needed to live among other human beings). It guides us to find a modest place for ourselves in the world, not allowing us to indulge our desires for food indiscriminately.
Rabbi Neil Gillman poses the following question, “How do we make the case for kashrut to conservative Jews who are nonobservant?” He goes on to say that “we don’t know how to teach Kashrut and are not able to cultivate Kashrut for a generation of adult Jews who are not familiar… It is no longer good enough to say ’because God said so.’” Rabbi Gillman had no canned answers. No, this challenge is ours as leaders in our synagogue community.
How do we lead and guide our fellow Jews to experience, understand and observe Kashrut? There will be no flashing lights, no fanfare. To quote Rabbi Lebeau once again, these experiences should not be “spontaneous/unexpected ecstatic moments, but... experiences that we actively create...”. We need everyday experiences that are spiritual yet concrete, instructive, and engaging, whetting their appetites for more. How can we achieve this in the synagogue context? Here are some of my thoughts:
- We could provide basic classes in Kashrut as part of our Religious School and Family Education programming. It is wonderful to do the teaching and have some experiences in the school but Kashrut needs to be brought home and put into action for the family. The overriding force in that is the parents. Of course we need to give history and background tradition as materials for digestion but we should also dispel the myths of difficulty and inconvenience that are tied to the notion of Kashrut.We should speak to the issue that kosher food, especially meat, can be more expensive; but let’s think out of the box and create a consortium for our congregants, or join with other synagogues, if necessary, to cut expenses and offer the kosher meat/ foods options at a fair cost.
- We could have classes for parents of upcoming Bar/Bat Mitzvah students exploring the ease, actual cost effectiveness and beauty of having a kosher affair in the synagogue. Our caterers have offered to create a panel discussion around this very topic. We need to encourage our congregants to appreciate the beauty of continuing the mitzvah of their child’s day with a kosher meal. Just this past Shabbat, we had a Bar Mitzvah service followed by an extended kiddush luncheon and klezmer music, in our auditorium, sponsored by the family. There was nothing that was missing in my mind; the room was simply and beautifully decorated, the band was amazing, the food was abundant, delicious and full of variety, and the people (the guests included family and friends as well as congregants who attended services that morning) were dancing, eating, smiling and totally feeling the ruach. As I observed all of this, I approached each of the parents individually to thank them for including the congregation in their joyful celebration. The reactions were amazing and truly telling. First I spoke to Dad, who by the way is a non-Jew. His answer was, “This congregation has given so much to me by accepting me that I really wanted to give back.” Mom couched their reasons, interestingly, in terms of Dad as well. She said that they wouldn’t have had it any other way than “traditional” as she put it because it was really important to Dad that his non-Jewish family experience the Bar Mitzvah in its purity and with the absolute attention to Kashrut, rules of Shabbat and tradition.
- We could provide programmatic pieces such as Rosh Hodesh Girls and Our Family Room in which people come together, with food as a part of their “curriculum” experience so they must be attentive to the Kashrut of the food.
- We could offer weekly kosher cooking classes for year round cooking as well as Passover. Let’s consider the logistics and offer one in the morning during preschool hours and one in the evening for working parents. The food cooked could be donated to a mitzvah food pantry or local soup kitchen if perishable. Teams delivering food should include both parents and children.
- We could expand the synagogue’s Kashrut Committee to include a “Kashrut Crew” and a “Kashrut Hotline.” The crew is a group that would be willing to actually come into a home, when the family is ready, and be hands on in creating a kosher kitchen with them. The hotline folks are always available for advice and further knowledge. They would be teachers who could also write appealing and perhaps anecdotal articles about Kashrut for the synagogue’s newsletter.
- In this day when we look to greening and sustainability, we could present a speaker and program on the topic of “eco-kosher”. As we consider this topic let us also include the Hekhsher Tzedek initiative. In a piece on www.MyJewishLearning.com, Rabbi Arthur O. Waskow tells us that “In recent decades, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and others have advocated a broadening of the concept of Kashrut to include restrictions on consumption based on ecological consideration.” In that article Rabbi Waskow quotes Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi (from the “Jerusalem Press”) as one of the most articulate representatives of the Jewish Renewal Movement, who argues the case for eco-Kashrut in the form of a commentary to the Torah portion Shemini (Leviticus 9:1-11:47). This is some of what he says:
- Indeed, in the last few hundred years, the human race has invented the most brilliant act of work in all of its history. We have affected the planet--its very biology and chemistry--in ways no species ever has before. And we have invented the Holocaust, the H-bomb, global warming. strange fires, all of them. Fires through which a few people can now kill billions, a few corporations can now kill thousands of species.
What can we learn by renewing the ancient text? For shepherds and farmers, food was what they ate from the earth. For us, it is also coal, oil, electric power, paper, plastics, that we take from the earth. For shepherds and farmers, Kashrut was the way of guiding their eating toward holiness. For us, eco-Kashrut should do the same.
- We could create a Shabbat Buddies or Twinning Program to connect families who do and do not observe Kashrut, bringing them together around the Shabbat or even holiday experience. I envision opportunities for them to have a Shabbat dinner experience (perhaps along the way, cook that dinner together or even if the non-kosher family becomes kosher, reversing the hosting) and service experience together. This speaks to understanding Kashrut and Shabbat in a hands on, non-threatening way but it also speaks to building community and creating hevruta.
- We could create a Kosher Cookbook, engaging non-kosher congregants to contribute and assisting them to modify their non-kosher recipes to meet standards of Kashrut.
- Let’s highlight the availability of kosher products in our local supermarkets. Take a trip together to, for instance, Trader Joe’s and walk the isles, identifying the hundreds of kosher products and the huge variety of kashrut certifications.
- A topic that I find very interesting to explore would be kosher perceptions: What statement are we making to the world when we present fake crab (pollock) or mock meat and cheese lasagna (made with soy) to both Jewish and non-Jewish guests in our homes? Unless we are completely transparent either verbally or with signage, are we communicating that we are okay with what appears to be non-kosher food? Is that acceptable? I am not going to answer this here but instead invite you to read further.
Teachers, students, presenters... a community of learners
I have mentioned ten practical concepts for our kosher and non-kosher congregants to experience Kashrut together, experiences for our Rabbi and Cantor and even, yes, our Executive Director to facilitate. The notion about perceptions, Mar’at Ayin*, has me personally fascinated, so let’s play out that potential experience. Let’s form a small group of observant and non-observant individuals and take an excursion to a supermarket for the purpose of building such a meal; one that uses the mixture of truly kosher foods in seemingly forbidden, non-kosher combinations. Crab cocktail! Cheeseburgers! Spinach and bacon salad! The next step would be to create these dishes in a kosher kitchen; after which we would sit down to experience this meal together. The final piece would be the discussion focusing on the key question, “Is this appropriate and right?” We can add text study (Talmud Shabbat 147B) for good measure, and ask one or more of the group to chronicle our dialogue for the synagogue newsletter.
As it is my intention to present this paper to our DVASA group, I plan to execute a version of the scenario I last described. I will be inviting my peers to our home and together we will engage in such a meal and see where our study and dialogue takes us. That study with our holy community will take us back to where we started, with a mitzvah, making magic moments.
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NOTES:
There is a second type of mar’at ayin, that is where the Rabbis did not institute a specific ruling against an act, yet one becomes aware that if he performs a particular deed then people will mistake it for a forbidden deed, and may in turn come to do that forbidden act. In effect, though one actually does nothing wrong, he may appear to be doing wrong and therefore may tempt another person to do wrong. An individual must refrain from such a misleading action. This, of course, is only applicable when there are others that may see, and is not applicable in a private area.
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My first Week of Study only served to whet my appetite. At our yearly NAASE conferences we learn together, but focus mostly on tachlis, action items: facilities management, leadership training, membership initiatives, among many more. But this week was for a deeper type of learning, one that refreshes our minds and souls.
I am hooked! Please join me next year for the 2010 Week of Study!
