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

For this quarterly message I have chosen to draw from a traditional text of this season, Pirke Avot.

Ben Zoma taught: Who is strong? Those who overpower their inclinations. My inclination these past months was to curl up with a book, but instead I managed to lead a variety of services both locally and globally. Closest to home, I had opportunities to conduct Shabbat evening and morning services at both the Los Alamos Jewish Center and HaMakom in Santa Fe, and I facilitated a memorable visit to the LAJC by the Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League, Suki Halevi. Sadly this event was prompted by an anti-Semitic bullying incident in the Los Alamos Public Schools, but it was great to hear about the excellent work of the ADL who are professionally equipped to address such behaviors. Another sad event was leading a service at Guaje Pines cemetery for a woman from the Los Alamos Jewish community whom I had the privilege to know and admire for over three decades, both in the synagogue context and at Los Alamos National Laboratory. May the family of Linda Ettinger be comforted among the mourners in Zion and Jerusalem.

Further afield, I participated in a state-wide Clergy Focus group as a follow-up on the recent New Mexico Jewish survey. Beverly and I traveled to southern California to fete my Mom on her 90th birthday, and I was honored with the Maftir, Haftarah and D’var Torah at Ner Tamid in Poway, sharing remarks both about the weekly parasha and our family simcha.

A birthday visit to the beach was a treat for my mom.

On the other side of the globe, I visited our beloved Kehillat Beijing for ten days, beginning the trip with a Friday night service followed by a glorious Tikkun Leyl Shavuot under the stars near the Great Wall of China. We had forty adventurous souls in attendance, most of whom stayed up at least until midnight when the heavens opened to accept our wishes. At the end of my stay, I conducted a wedding ceremony for two ex-pat members of the Beijing Jewish community who met at the Moishe House in the Central Business District and wanted to celebrate their union among friends and family in the city of their mutual discovery. Dozens of relatives journeyed from North America for the occasion, and we were all treated to an unforgettable party replete with Chinese ceremony.

Ben Zoma taught: Who is wise? Those who learn from everyone. I continued my Jewish education this quarter, delving into scholarly expositions on medieval Jewry in The Jews of Medieval France by Emily Taitz and Moses Maimonides: Physician, Scientist, and Philosopher – ed. Fred Rosner and Samuel Kottek. I also explored contemporary Jewish issues in The Life Worth Living by Byron Sherwin and in Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy by Samuel Heilman, an author whose work was introduced to me by my father, z”l.

Fiction in translation remains a favorite, and I enjoyed Night Games and Other Stories and Novellas by Arthur Schnitzler (translated from the German), Regrowth by Der Nister (translated from the Yiddish), and The Death of Lysanda by Yitzhak Orpaz (translated from the Hebrew). For the long flight to China, I finally read Ulysses by James Joyce, inspired by daughter Orli’s upcoming year abroad at University College Dublin. While not a “Jewish” book as such, the main character is Jewish, and references to Maimonides and other Jewish scholars abound.

Ben Zoma taught: Who is rich? One who is satisfied with one’s library. I’ve got work to do. Recent arrivals include several biographies in the Jewish Lives series from Yale University Press (Mark Rothko, Leon Blum, Albert Einstein), nine (9!) additional teenage Holocaust diaries among which are We’re Alive and Life Goes On by Eva Roubickova, The Janowska Road by Leon Weliczker Wells, and Ruthka by Rithka Lieblich, and the latest Torah commentary by Aviva Zornberg entitled Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers.

Ben Zoma taught: Who is honored? One who honors others. Thank you for honoring me by reading to the end.

B’shalom,
Rabbi Jack

Many of you reading this quarterly rabbinic missive celebrated Passover last month, the most widely observed holiday on the Jewish calendar. Regardless of how abridged your seder was, I suspect you recited the familiar passage “Why is this night different?” Much of Judaism is focused on raising our awareness of the gift of life; perhaps we should use every evening as an opportunity to look back with gratitude on the day just ended. Psalm 90 verse 12 says, “Teach us to treasure each day.” As I look back on the past three months, I am deeply grateful for the many rabbinic events I’ve experienced:

In front of New Mexico’s State Capitol, “The Roundhouse”

In addition to my routine of bouncing back and forth between Santa Fe and Los Alamos to lead various elements of Shabbat services, Beverly joined me as I conducted a Shabbaton weekend in Roswell. I had the privilege of offering the opening blessing at a session of the New Mexico State Senate again this year, and the legislators were reminded through Hebrew and English chant that they are each made in the Divine image. We didn’t have a minyan, but I was honored that they listened respectfully to three of the traditional morning blessings. I enjoyed leading not only the community seder in Los Alamos but also a Tu Bi Sh’vat seder marking the new year for trees. There was much joy for the entire Santa Fe community celebrating a birthday milestone for Rabbi Malka Drucker, the founding rabbi of HaMakom, and I tried in my remarks about her achievement to strike the right balance between solemnity and jocularity. Equally joyful, a few weeks earlier I got to welcome a new mother and her baby into the congregation with a blessing. The Los Alamos community came together in a moving display of support to a family sitting shiva as I led a service that memorialized a congregant with whom I had the pleasure of playing softball many years before. Teach us to treasure each day.

My teaching moments these last three months included a talk about Physics in Judaism at the annual Albuquerque Adult Jewish Education day. I also gave a Judaism primer to three humanities classes at Los Alamos High School, presented two Judaism talks in the annual Christian Lenten series in Los Alamos, spoke on Chinese New Year about our Beijing High Holiday experience at a fundraising event for HaMakom, and participated as a speaker at the annual Jewish-Christian dialogue in Albuquerque, focusing on environmentalism in Jewish texts.

The Jewish Community Center in Albuquerque hosted the annual “Taste of Honey” day of Jewish learning.

All my past training is supplemented by books I’ve read over the past quarter. Biographies (Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel by Anita Shapira, Hank Greenberg by Mark Kulansky, and Without Bounds: The Life and Death of Rabbi Ya’aqov Wazana by Yoram Bilu) topped the list, but I also explored autobiography (What I Meant to Say by Yosl Bergner), fiction in both Hebrew and German translation (Murder on a Kibbutz by Batya Gur, Viennese Romance by David Vogel, Rheinsberg by Kurt Tucholsky, and Job by Joseph Roth) and non-fiction (Farewell, Aleppo by local author Claudette Sutton, The Rabbis’ Advocate by David Nieto – tr. and ed. Meir Levin, Farewell, Babylon by Naim Kattan, and to prepare for Yom HaShoah in memory of the Holocaust, Auschwitz Report by Primo Levi with Leonardo de Benedetti). The shelves got even more crowded these last months with the acquisition of brand new works (Two Scholars Who Were in Our Town and Other Novellas by S Y Agnon, Rav Tzadok Hakohen on the Parsha, and Strong as Death is Love by Robert Alter) as well as long out-of-print books (Jewish Exegesis of the Book of Ruth by D.R.G. Beattie and a facsimile of the 1733 Darmstadt Haggadah).

Teach us to number our days, but don’t make us number our books.

B’shalom,

Rabbi Jack

Rabbi Elazar said in the name of Rabbi Yose ben Zimra, “Greater powers of understanding were given to women than to men (Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 18:1).” This quarterly installment of my rabbinic musings is dedicated to women in general, and to three in particular – my mother, Shirley Shlachter, my wife, Beverly Post, and my daughter, Orli Shlachter. Recently, Orli turned twenty years old (NO MORE TEENAGERS!!) She’s working diligently on a degree in International Relations at University of Colorado in Boulder.

B’Shalom, Rabbi Jack

Wangfujing Avenue, Beijing’s lively shopping strip

What do you get when you combine jet lag induced by a shift of 14 time zones, sleep deprivation from weeks of High Holiday preparation, and immersion in a foreign culture with a totally unfamiliar language? In the middle of our first night in Beijing, China, in mid-September, I woke up with an overwhelming feeling of anxiety. How would I navigate my way through our trip? Would Kehillat Beijing (http://www.sinogogue.org/), the congregation that invited us out, and I be suited for each other? Proverbs 12:25 says that anxiety in the heart weighs one down, and according to the Rabbinic commentator Malbim (1809-1879), “anxiety is one of the most destructive feelings a person can experience.” Malbim goes on to advise us to either suppress the feeling of anxiety when it wells up or evoke a positive image of hope and optimism to counteract it. I tried yet a different approach – I woke up Beverly to talk. Ultimately, we both felt truly privileged to become part of Kehillat Beijing during a most amazing and exhilarating 25-day visit.

The community of expats and guests in Beijing was unbelievably welcoming and generous, touring us around the city, treating us to meals, and inviting us not only into their homes but their lives. We thought our host was joking when she said that someone was coming by at 7 AM the morning after our arrival–a mere 15 hours after landing–to take us to our first sightseeing stop. It was the first of many fascinating and busy days, and we made what I hope are lifelong friends during our stay. In addition to guiding the congregation through services on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, I had the pleasure of conducting a unique Chinese-style Jewish wedding; a baby naming; Selichot services near the Great Wall; a Shabbat morning service in a hutong (traditional alley neighborhood of courtyard residences); several Friday evening and Havdalah services; and a pair of talks at the Moishe House in Beijing, where I was awestruck by the energy and vibrancy of the post-college Jews. See Beverly and me discuss physics and Judaism at http://www.moishehouse.org/houses/beijing/programs/53371/photos.

BOOKS: In the months leading up to our trip to China, I managed to read some wonderful books, both non-fiction (The Days Between – Blessings, Poems, and Directions of the Heart for the Jewish High Holiday Season by Marcia Falk, Making Prayer Real by Rabbi Mike Comins, Great Schisms in Jewish History – ed. Jospe and Wagner) and fiction (Stern by Bruce Jay Friedman, World Cup Wishes by Eshkol Nevo, Beautiful as the Moon, Radiant as the Stars – ed. Bark and Prose). I highly recommend the autobiographical Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart, and I even found significant Jewish content in Dave Barry’s You Can Date Boys When You’re Forty, with his extensive section on his trip to Israel. On my most recent book-buying splurge of both brand new titles and old classics, I acquired copies of A Bride for One Night by Ruth Calderon, In the Image of God – A Feminist Commentary on the Torah by Judith Antonelli, David Vogel’s Viennese Romance, Torah in the Observatory by Menachem Kellner, and Liona Finck’s graphic-style novel entitled A Bintel Brief among others.

Closer to home, my usual Shabbat and holiday rabbinic responsibilities over the past several months focused mainly on HaMakom in Santa Fe and the Los Alamos Jewish Center. For my Dad’s 24th Yahrzeit in August, my son Dov and I visited my Mom in California. There I had the thrill of having Dov come up for an aliyah while I leyned Torah at Ner Tamid in San Diego.

Rabbi Jack’s tallit bag

I’m currently preparing a presentation on our China experience – in the meantime, you can find photos of us as tourists in Beijing and Xi’an (hint: Terracotta Warriors) on my website www.physicsrabbi.com.

B’shalom,
Rabbi Jack