“While your fire is burning, roast your pumpkin.” So said Rabbi Yohanan somewhat cryptically in Talmudic Tractate Sanhedrin (33b), but whatever he meant, I don’t think he was referring to a non-Jewish holiday at the end of October. It is the start of the month of Cheshvan as I write this message (Cheshvan being the favorite of rabbis the world over because it is the only month without any holidays)!

An anonymous rabbi in the Talmud is quoted as saying, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.” OK, maybe that’s not in the Talmud but rather attributed to Woody Allen. For me, there is no definitive Jewish answer to the question about what happens to us after we die, and this is consistent with the emphasis that Judaism places on life in the here and now. We celebrate life, and while death is inevitable, it is invariably a loss. I lost several friends and colleagues this past quarter; I conducted funeral services for Haskell Sheinberg and Pat Kristal; spoke at the memorial service for David Holtkamp; and led the unveiling ceremony for Louis Erhard. May their memories serve as a blessing. I hope my sole remaining visit to a cemetery this year is Kever Avot, the traditional visit before or during the High Holiday season. In addition to reminding ourselves of the end we, too, will face, we are reminded of the many lessons we learned from the lives of those who are no longer with us.

Into the Fullness of the Void – Dov Elbaum (translated from Hebrew)

I’ve always thought that Passover was a crumby holiday. Indeed, the floor is now littered with shards of matzah as I write this quarterly message on Day 6. I love the family aspects of the seder and the opportunity to see dishes and utensils that have been patiently waiting out the year in the garage as well as friends and relatives (this year, brother Ted) whom we’ve not seen for nearly as long.

Movie recommendation: For Your Consideration

This quarterly rabbi message is dedicated to the Jews of Brooklyn (and Beverly and I do own a copy of the book of that name edited by Ilana Abramovitch and Sean Galvin). Sadly, Beverly’s mother, Justine Flora Post, passed away in mid-December, and on very short notice, we flew back to New York where I conducted the funeral service and where Beverly sat shiva with her sister. The New Mexico community provided comfort to Beverly at a service I led on the day marking the end of sheloshim, the next phase in the traditional Jewish grieving process. Both shiva (7) and sheloshim (30) are counted from the day of burial, and partial days contribute as full, so both periods conclude after the morning service.

* one asterisk means make sure to put this on your list
** two asterisks means run out and get this now

I composed this quarterly rabbinic message immediately after dismantling our sukkah, and there is nothing quite like making me feel that the extended fall holiday season has come to an end as packing up the sukkah kit. Several years ago, Beverly wisely suggested that we buy a kit, and I’ve been delighted ever since with our purchase from the Sukkah Project (https://www.sukkot.com/). We also always buy a fresh lulav and etrog set through Sy Stange who handles the sales for members of the Los Alamos Jewish Center. Beautifying these two mitzvot, dwelling in a sukkah and taking the lulav and etrog have never been easier and can enhance one’s joy during this most joyous of holidays.

Of course, we didn’t start the holiday season with Sukkot. In fact, I had an unexpected trip to New Zealand this past quarter which reminded me that it is only in the northern hemisphere that we asso-ciate the period from Tisha B’Av through Simchat Torah as summer turning to fall. I arrived in New Plymouth, New Zealand, in mid-August the day after a snowfall, and it’s fortunate that Beverly re-minded me to take warm clothing. While I didn’t do any itinerant rabbi-ing on this short trip, I do hope to return and have made a connection with what seems to be a truly welcoming congregation, Temple Sinai, the Wellington Progressive Jewish Congregation.

The summer is not only an opportunity to begin the process of teshuva, examining our past year’s behavior in anticipation of Yom Kippur, it is also opera season in Santa Fe. This year we held “Wednesday Night is Minyan Night” at the Santa Fe Opera (see photograph), and offered people a chance to recite kaddish. Kudos to Beverly on her efforts to snag Jews in the crowd. Dov and I took a road trip transporting his belongings up to Vancouver, BC, where he is now relocated, and we spent a lovely Shabbat at Temple Emek Shalom in Ashland, Oregon under the leadership of Rabbi Joshua Boettiger. We also visited with a good friend at the Vancouver JCC (spelled “Centre” of course in Canada).

I managed to bounce around (the globe) for the holidays – Selichot with HaMakom in Santa Fe, and then Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur again with the wonderful folks at Kehillat Beijing. This trip was only two weeks long because of pressing business back at Los Alamos National Laboratory, but I thoroughly enjoyed meeting new congregants and reconnecting with people we met two years ago and last year. In addition to services at the Capital Club with assistance from several volunteers (Leon, Amitai, Zhu, Amy, and others), we conducted a staged reading of Merle Feld’s powerful play, The Gates Are Closing, and I spoke to a group at the Moishe House on the Ten Commandments. Upon my return, we celebrated various Sukkot and Simchat Torah services with the Los Alamos Jewish Center, HaMakom, and Kol Beramah in Santa Fe. Just before heading to China, I gave a talk at Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos in conjunction with a New Mexico Jewish Historical Society event. My presentation was entitled “A Manhattan Minyan – Ten Jews Who Were Part of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos 1943-1945.”

I’ve hardly bought any books lately (shocking), but I did acquire a copy of The Jews in Harbin as a treasured gift while in China. Below are some books I read this past quarter – my favorites are marked with an asterisk.

The joy of the end of the holiday season is always tempered by the reality that life is finite; this is one of the reasons that we read Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) on Sukkot. For the friends and family of Allen Cogbill, his unexpected death on Simchat Torah forced us to remember the teaching that each day is a gift. I was honored to officiate at Allen’s funeral and already miss his regular presence on Friday evenings. May his memory serve as a blessing.

B’shalom,

Rabbi Jack

Honor Thy Father and Mother – Gerald Blidstein
Hotel Savoy – Joseph Roth
Abraham:The World’s First (But Certainly Not Last) Jewish Lawyer – Alan Dershowitz
Where We Find Ourselves: Jewish Women Around the World Write About Home – Miriam Ben-Yoseph and Deborah Nodler Rosen
Adam Resurrected – Yoram Kaniuk
From That Time and Place: A Memoir, 1938-1947 – Lucy Dawidowicz*
Inside the Hornet’s Head: An Anthology of Jewish American Writing – Jerome Charyn
Becoming Freud – Adam Phillips
The 5 Love Languages: Jewish Marriage Initiative SPECIAL EDITION – Gary Chapman
Mystic Tales from the Zohar – Aryeh Wineman*
The Mezuzah in the Madonna’s Foot – Trudi Alexy
Arguing with the Storm:Stories by Yiddish Women Writers – ed Rhea Tregebov
Neuland – Eshkol Nevo*
The Character of Physical Law – Richard Feynman* (Not a Judaica book as such but wonderful and contains a thought-provoking passage about the roles of religion and science)

It seems like we just celebrated Pesach and now I’m starting to panic about High Holiday preparations; how time flies! Beverly hosted a home seder for 14 people ranging in age from 4 to 80 (and everyone seemed to survive my charoset). I followed up the next night leading a community seder featuring jumping frogs and lashes from scallion-wielding children. In preparation for Pesach, I gave a talk at HaMakom and at the Santa Fe Jewish Book Council’s Viva Pesach event in the Convention Center on the textbook for the seder, the Haggadah. I brought with me over two dozen different haggadot ranging from facsimile editions of manuscripts and early printed editions to handmade treasures by Dov and Orli created when they were barely able to write. I also brought the haggadah given as a gift to my dad at age 13 by Humboldt Boulevard Temple. The inscription cites him not only as a good student but also for doing the most for the school during 5698 (1937-1938).

I continue to find opportunities to grab books off the shelf and use them for one rabbinic activity or another. Often I select a story to share when I lead services at the Los Alamos Jewish Center on Friday evenings, and then I select a poem or other reading to incorporate into HaMakom services in Santa Fe on Saturday mornings as I co-lead with Hazzan Cindy. My books are also a resource for appropriate blessings and thoughts on such occasions as the last Shabbat service led at HaMakom by Founding Rabbi Malka Drucker before she moved to California, at the service honoring high school graduates at the LAJC, at a memorial tree planting for a deceased friend, and at a farewell service for a longtime Los Alamos resident who recently moved to Albuquerque. I even sang Rebbe Nachman’s Kol HaOlam Kulo (The whole world is a narrow bridge and the main thing is not to fear) at the Los Alamos Unitarian Church during a memorial for the Orlando nightclub victims.

Recently I shared passages from Open Heart, Against Silence, and Ani Maamin, three of the 44 books on my shelves by Elie Wiesel, in memory of his passing. I have more books by Elie Wiesel than by any other single author. Wiesel truly used the time granted him to make the world a better place.

My spare time, as always, was spent reading. I’ve placed an asterisk next to my favorites from this past quarter.

Weeping Susannah – Alona Kimhi
Biblical Women in the Midrash – Naomi Hyman
Alexandrian Summer – Yitzhak Gormezano Goren*
Hasidic Parable – Aryeh Wineman
The Jews of Poland – The Rev. Myer S. Lew
David: The Divided Heart – David Wolpe*
Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism – Ithamar Gruenwald
Growing Up Jewish – Rabbi Jack Moline
Mitzvah Stories – edited by Goldie Milgram and Ellen Frankel
Torah Through Time – Shai Cherry
For Every Season – Jeff Bernhardt
Shalom in the Home – Rabbi Shmuley Boteach*
Saturn’s Jews – Moshe Idel
The Other Side of the Wall – Shaham
The Contract With G_d Trilogy – Will Eisner*
Desire and Delusion – Arthur Schnitzler*
Pledges of Jewish Allegiance – David Ellenson and Daniel Gordis
Jews in Old China – Sidney Shapiro

B’shalom,
Rabbi Jack

Shirley z’l’ and Jack Shlachter

On February 25 (16 Adar I) my mother, Shirley Shlachter, “breathed her last…and was gathered to her kin.” The Torah uses such phrases to describe the death of Abraham at the end of Parashat Chayei Sarah, a weekly reading that always reminded me of my mom because of its similarity in sound to her Hebrew name, Chaya Sarah.

In the weeks leading up to Mom’s death, I davened with multiple congregations in Orange County. Surf City Synagogue/Temple Isaiah was especially welcoming to me; congregants transported me to and from hospitals and even attended my mom’s funeral without having ever met her. Others, from my mom’s former synagogue, Congregation B’nai Israel, paid visits to my mom during her last month, prepared food for the meal of consolation after burial, and hosted the family members who managed to fly in on short notice for the late Friday afternoon ceremony.

Rabbi Nadav Caine from Ner Tamid Synagogue in Poway officiated with eloquence, tact, and humor, offering each of us an opportunity to share an anecdote and speaking himself of my mom, whom he’d met during her two years in an independent living center down the street from Ner Tamid.

When Beverly and I returned to Los Alamos, we were greeted by an outpouring of warmth and comfort from members of the Los Alamos Jewish Center, HaMakom, Kol BeRamah, Chabad, Temple Beth Shalom, and Beit Tikva. Not fifteen minutes after walking in the door of our house on Sunday evening, mitzvah angels began carrying in tables, chairs, siddurim, kippot, and food, and an hour later, we had over thirty people in our basement chanting the evening service and providing me with a chance to say Kaddish. Of course it is hard to lose a parent, but the support we received from Jews far and wide was a silver lining and a tribute to my mother’s proud identification with our Jewish heritage.

Despite numerous trips back and forth to California this past quarter, I squeezed in rabbinic experiences, from leading Shabbat, Tu BiSh’vat, and Purim services in Los Alamos and Santa Fe to offering an opening prayer at a session of the New Mexico State Senate to speaking about our Jewish-China connection in Albuquerque and Santa Fe to delivering a lecture entitled “Life with Spirits – Judaism and Alcohol” at a local church. My many hours in hospital-like settings also afforded me much reading time. The list included:

Etgar Keret’s memoir The Seven Good Years
Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
Yankel’s Tavern by Glenn Dynner
Groucho Marx: The Comedy of Existence by Lee Siegel
Worlds That Passed by A.S. Sachs
One Night, Markovitch* by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
Nine Essential Things I’ve Learned About Life by Harold Kushner
Yeshiva Boy* by Jacob Dineson (tr. Ruth Fisher Goodman)
Clarice Lispector – The Complete Stories – translated by Katrina Dodson
The Aleppo Codex by Matti Friedman
New Mitzvah Stories for the Whole Family, ed. Goldie Milgram and Ellen Frankel
Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul Mate by Letty Cottin Pogrebin
The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon by Richard Zimler

The books with asterisks will for me forever be associated with my mom; I shared with her brief plot summaries when she would awaken, and she seemed to relish hearing how the stories turned out. Following her death, I found solace in a work that had been languishing on my shelves for twenty years, Wrestling With The Angel by Jack Riemer, a non-denominational collection of essays about death in Jewish tradition.

During sheloshim, the thirty days following interment, it is customary to refrain from cutting hair – our focus as mourners is on our grieving, not our appearance. Twenty five years ago, when my dad died, my beard was dark. This time the bulk of what I removed when this phase of mourning ended was white with hints of brown, not the other way around. The wisdom of Jewish tradition with regard to cutting hair was borne out on multiple occasions. Colleagues at work knew something was different and gave me a natural entree to discuss my mom’s death. Each day I faced (pun intended) a reminder that I had suffered a loss, and I was confronted with my own aging and mortality as well. And I could recall, both with sadness and with some laughter, how my mom would chide me if my mustache wasn’t well trimmed. I credit my mom with instilling in me a love of reading and a love of lifelong learning, a sense of humor, and a strong Jewish identity. May her memory be a blessing.

I think I’ve finally solved my book storage problem! Over Thanksgiving I visited daughter Orli who is spending an exchange year abroad in Dublin, Ireland, and my sightseeing included the Trinity College Library Long Room. Nearly 65 meters in length, this room houses 200,000 of the Library’s oldest books. I’ve now tasked Orli with getting a set of architectural prints for an addition to our home. Among the many books that I bought during my annual end-of-year binge were memoirs by Etgar Keret (“The Seven Good Years”) and Lucy Dawidowicz (“From That Place and Time”), the Lieberman Open Orthodox Haggadah, “Chinese Jews” by William Charles White, “Nine Essential Things I’ve Learned About Life” by Rabbi Harold Kushner, and the fictional “Einstein’s Dreams” by Alan Lightman, recommended to me by a congregant whom I met at the progressive synagogue in Dublin. Dawidowicz’ title echoes Einstein’s discovery of the interdependency of space and time.

Both time and space were involved in some precious memories while in Dublin. I had a wonderful, nearly three-hour personal tour by Edwin Alkin of the Irish Jewish Museum, housed inside a former synagogue; his sister, coincidentally, lives in Northern New Mexico. I also attended services conducted by Rabbi Emeritus Charles Middleburgh on Friday night and Saturday morning, receiving the honor of an aliyah during the Torah service. And Orli and I spent a lovely, albeit somewhat rainy, day visiting museums, eating Asian fusion food, and watching a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest.

Traveling overseas gave me significant reading time, and among this quarter’s features were “The Exiles Return” about the Jewish experience in Vienna after World War II by Elisabeth De Waal, a depiction of the Shanghai Jewish escape route during the Holocaust entitled “Ten Green Bottles” by Vivian Jeanette Kaplan, “Humboldt’s Gift” by Saul Bellow, “Two Novellas: In the Sanitarium and Facing the Sea” by David Vogel, translated from the Hebrew by Philip Simpson and Daniel Silverstone, and “Leonard Bernstein: An American Musician” by Allen Shawn.

Rabbinic highlights for the past quarter were both time- and space-centric. Beverly and I jointly led a Friday night service at the Los Alamos Jewish Center (LAJC), and I had the usual opportunities to lead services at HaMakom in Santa Fe and the LAJC. The progressive synagogue in Vienna, Austria, celebrated its twenty fifth anniversary, and while I couldn’t attend, my words about how much Or Chadasch meant to me, especially in 2008 when I lived in Vienna, were captured in their commemorative booklet. I was also unable to drive up to Salida, Colorado, to help light a Hanukkiah for the first night of the holiday (I got to spend that night with my Mom and lit candles outside in balmy southern California). Nonetheless I sent the Salida Jewish community some thoughts for the occasion which were read at their public hanukkah lighting. I also offered teachings and blessings after meals on a variety of occasions including a Hanukkah party and the annual Santa Fe Jewish Film Festival’s Flix and Chop Stix event where I gave a quick summary of our China Jewish experiences. With Beverly’s slides as visual aides, I presented an hour-long talk on this topic at the LAJC with attendance from the non-Jewish community as well thanks to publicity from our local radio interview and a press release featured in the local papers. I’ll be reprising this talk next month at the annual Albuquerque Taste of Honey Adult Jewish education event. The Santa Fe Jewish Book Council invited me to speak at the Santa Fe Jewish Book Fair, and I described the process by which I assembled my Jewish library. I’ve written up that talk and hope to publish it soon. Beware – you’ll need lots of book shelf space if you follow the guidance (but Orli might offer you a set of architectural plans, too).

B’shalom,
Rabbi Jack

Traditional prayer books often include a listing of blessings for various occasions. With this quarterly message, I’d like to introduce you to some you may wish to use when the opportunity arises.

On seeing the wonders of nature – Praised be the Eternal, Ruler of the Universe, who reenacts the work of creation.

This was the blessing that struck me as Beverly and I watched the lunar eclipse from our sukkah at the very beginning of the holiday of Sukkot. What an amazing sight, and how fortunate we feel to live in an area with such clear skies. Building the sukkah (even with a kit) was a challenge because we returned on the day after Yom Kippur from two weeks in Beijing and only had a small window in which to do the construction. Nonetheless our time with Kehillat Beijing was again fantastic, and I hope we’ll be invited back to provide rabbinic support. The community is just wonderful, and we felt truly honored to be welcomed so graciously. In addition to leading the usual High Holiday services, I led two Friday night services, offered some rabbinic counseling, shared a few teachings at meals, directed a Torah-portion skit at lunch and an evening discussion at the Great Wall retreat over Shabbat Shuvah, and even hosted a game of G_d Bingo (my invention!) at the Moishe House. The latter was really just an excuse to eat M&Ms.

Over the past quarter I recited blessings at several special events, chanting a birthday blessing for Beverly’s Mom in Brooklyn, belatedly welcoming into the world the two grandchildren of our dear friends, the Benjamins, wishing a friend from the Los Alamos Jewish Center well on her relocation journey back East, and closing the HaMakom annual membership meeting in Santa Fe. The two synagogues closest to our home have kept me busy, especially during the extended fall holiday season, and I particularly enjoyed teaching the religious school kids how to shake the lulav and prognosticating for congregants holding up the completely unfurled Torah scroll on erev Simchat Torah. Although we had a large crowd by Santa Fe standards, it wasn’t quite up to the group needed for the blessing recited upon seeing 600,00 or more Jews together (Praised be the Eternal, Ruler of the Universe, Knower of secrets).

What with our traveling, I had some time to read both fiction and non-fiction this quarter. Highlights from the fiction section of our library included Memories and Scenes by Jacob Dinezon and Poor Matza by Avrom Reisen, both collections translated from the Yiddish, Infiltration by Yehoshua Kenaz and Murder Duet by Batya Gur, both translated from the Hebrew, and a recent work by Stuart Rojstaczer entitled The Mathematician’s Shiva (warning – some knowledge of fluid mechanics is helpful!). On the non-fiction side, I enjoyed Sacred Treasure – The Cairo Genizah by Rabbi Mark Glickman, Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy, 1180-1240 by Daniel Silver, Einstein: His Space and Times by Steven Gimbel (warning – some knowledge of relativity could be helpful!), Between the Lines – selected essays by Gary Rosenblatt, editor of the Jewish Week, The Lost Matriarch – Finding Leah in the Bible and Midrash by Jerry Rabow, and reaching farther back in time, Revealment and Concealment – Five Essays by Haim Nahman Bialik, and Treatise to Salah Ad-din on the Revival of the Art of Medicine by Ibn Jumay, a contemporary of Maimonides. I suppose that when Beverly calls me to say that another huge load of books has arrived, I should recite the blessing on hearing good tidings (Praised be the Eternal, Ruler of the Universe, who is good and does good.

Amen and b’shalom,
Rabbi Jack