While last Shabbat could have been called “Groundhog Shabbat,” this coming weekend marks the first of a series of “named” Sabbaths to help us prepare for the holiday of Passover. Shabbat Shekalim is followed in short order by Shabbats Zachor, Parah, and HaChodesh, and two weeks later we observe Shabbat HaGadol immediately preceding the first seder. As with the High Holidays when an advance period of self-evaluation is conducted, the rabbis encourage us to use this period of named Sabbaths to search and destroy the things in our lives which have fermented or turned sour. These can include bad habits and negative attitudes, for example, and this process of making a fresh start is part of the meaning behind Passover.

As I look back on the past three months, I feel especially blessed by the wide variety of rabbinic opportunities I’ve had. At HaMakom in Santa Fe, I’ve had the great pleasure to serve on the “left” side of the bench (as Chazzan with Rabbi Malka), on the “right” side of the bench (as Rabbi with Chazzan Cindy), and even in the “middle” of the bench when both members of the A-Team were away, while at the Los Alamos Jewish Center I’ve led services on the front and back sides of Shabbat (Friday night and Havdalah respectively).

Bringing other dimensions into the equation, I’ve also been truly privileged to perform life cycle events ranging from the joyous (conducting a wedding ceremony on the 21st floor of a downtown San Francisco hotel for an expat Los Alamosan whom I’ve known for decades) to the mournful (escorting the remains of a Los Alamos Jewish Center founding member to his final resting place). One of my favorite teens became an Eagle Scout last month, and I was deeply honored to deliver the invocation at his induction ceremony, even managing to sneak a little Torah teaching into my remarks before anyone knew what was happening.

My favorite rabbi-ing, however, is still teaching, and this past quarter was filled with teaching moments. The talk I put together over a year ago on Jews in Theoretical Division at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project got ample exposure with presentations to a Pittsburgh-based Jewish singles tour group, Santa Fe Hadassah, a Road Scholars (formerly Elderhostel) group, and the Los Alamos Historical Society, this last version captured on DVD for posterity. I also completed a year-long weekly discussion series at HaMakom on the Torah portion of the week as viewed through the eyes of five different medieval commentators.

For now, I am taking advantage of the extra hour of sleep, but I suspect that the pull of a willing group of students will eventually lure me back to a text-based program before Saturday Shabbat services. The Los Alamos High School Humanities classes invited me back again this year as part of their comparative religion unit, and I spent a good fraction of a day in December teaching Talmud (well, sharing a few passages) to seniors. Beverly and I were encouraged by a dear friend from New York to head for a warmer climate with her over Thanksgiving, and while enjoying unseasonably warm temperatures in Tucson, I was welcomed as Scholar in Residence at Bet Shalom, offering a D’var Torah and an after lunch talk entitled “Stuffing Ourselves with Torah: A Thanksgiving Postlude.”

There’s always time for learning as well – it gives me a feeling of satisfaction to stay on track with a page of Talmud a day in the world-wide Daf Yomi program, but I’ll be happy (I think) when we finally finish Tractate Shabbat. My other reading this quarter has again spanned the spectrum from the “quite” scholarly (Abortion in Judaism by Daniel Schiff, The Student’s Guide Through the Talmud by Zevi Hirsch Chajes) through the “moderately” scholarly (Jewish Mysticism by Rachel Elior, A Book Forged in Hell by Steven Nadler) to the “popular” (Kosher Sutra by Shmuley Boteach) with some Israeli fiction in English translation (Heatwave and Crazy Birds by Gabriela Avigur-Rotem and Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz) thrown in for good measure. Sadly, my book-buying has trickled to nearly zero this quarter, but I did purchase a copy of Arise!Arise! Deborah, Ruth and Hannah with illuminations and commentary by former Santa Fean and gifted artist Debra Band. Anticipate a HUGE list of recent purchases in my next quarterly missive when I make up for this dry spell, and have a Hag Kasher V’Sameach at the end of March.

B’shalom, Rabbi Jack

As I compose this quarterly message about my rabbi-ing adventures, we’ve left the month of Elul far behind. The rabbis have traditionally encouraged self-examination and reflection starting on Rosh Hodesh Elul. I intensified my focus on High Holidays by leading religious services at the onset of Elul, first on Friday night in Los Alamos and then on Saturday morning at HaMakom in Santa Fe. The following day, I shifted (brass) gears and conducted the steampunk-themed wedding ceremony for a lovely young couple in Los Alamos. Elul can be expanded as an acronym for “Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li” – “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine,” and the month is propitious for marriage.

Two weeks later, at the midpoint of Elul, Beverly and I were married in Brooklyn, New York, at a ceremony which lacked even a hint of steampunk but was unquestionably the most moving experience of my life. Having my two children, brothers, sister-in-law, niece, and mother safely arrive in time for the event was yet another demonstration that miracles still happen, and sharing in the love of all present including two of my dear friends from college and two of Beverly’s dear friends who held the four chuppah poles was literally heavenly.

We didn’t get to rest too long – Beverly and I headed off to Vienna, Austria, eight days later for the first of what I hope are several itinerant rabbi opportunities. Or Chadasch, the only progressive synagogue in Austria and my second home during my year in Vienna in 2008, invited me to lead High Holiday services this year. My preparation with both German/Hebrew and English/Hebrew machzors in front of me (couldn’t they have made the pagination the same?) led to a most rabbinically-satisfying enterprise from the beginning of Rosh Hashana to the end of Yom Kippur despite lingering hints of jetlag.

Credit goes to the wonderful members of Or Chadasch who willingly tried out all my spiritual experiments, tolerated my attempts at German, and listened and participated during my English sermons. Our worship together during the Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe) was an experience I will never forget and for which I am most grateful.

Back in New Mexico, my year-long Parashat Hashavua class is in its home-stretch, and we recently began the book of Genesis using Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, a 16th century Italian exegete, as our commentator-of-the-book. These hour-long weekly discussions have been intellectually stimulating for me, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know Rashi, Rambam, Ibn Ezra, and Rashbam along the way. Their books have been sitting on my shelf unused for far too long, so it’s great to dust them off and put them to work.

New tomes have taken up residence on our bookshelves, but with all the traveling, there have been only a few recent acquisitions. With a gift from the Los Alamos Jewish Center, I now have what I suspect is the only copy within 500 miles of The Logic of Gersonides, a philosophical work by one of the major 14th century Jewish intellects, and my standing order of the Yerushalmi, the “other” Talmud, resulted in a few new volumes, namely the tractates Rosh Hashana and Sanhedrin.

Daf Yomi – a 7 ½ year commitment

As for reading, it’s been hard to find the time, in part because I have embarked on a 7 ½ year journey to read a page of the Babylonian Talmud daily, with hopes that I, along with probably a few hundred thousand others, will celebrate completion of the entire work in January, 2020. I’ll share more about Daf Yomi in my next missive, assuming I stay on track. In the meantime, I do recommend the following books which I consumed mostly on plane flights and while sitting in the sukkah: The Other Talmud: The Yerushalmi by Rabbi Judith Abrams (highly readable and informative), The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal (a fascinating Jewish family saga), Three Cities by Sholem Asch (translated from the Yiddish and great for transatlantic travel), and Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt by Robert Gottlieb (the story of an amazing and amazingly modern persona).

B’shalom, Rabbi Jack

Dear Friends:

Today marks the saddest day on the traditional Jewish calendar, the observance of Tisha B’Av.  This 25-hour fast is as difficult to observe as Yom Kippur (maybe even more difficult because it occurs when temperatures are higher and days are longer) and commemorates the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem.  Yet even in our bleakest moments the seeds of hope are planted.  The Talmud of the Land of Israel teaches us that the birth of the Messiah is linked to this day (new Artscroll edition Berachos p. 25 b2), the message, I believe, being that we should always try to keep faith in a bright future even when we don’t feel particularly optimistic.

As I look ahead at the next few months, I am astounded at how blessed I am.  Over Labor Day weekend, Beverly and I will be married in Brooklyn, New York, sharing in the joy of this New Mexico → New York “destination wedding” surrounded by our families and a few local friends.  I constantly marvel at the miracle of our meeting almost three years ago at a Shabbat morning HaMakom service in Santa Fe, and I look forward to an ever deepening relationship with this amazing woman.

No sooner do we get back to New Mexico (and wash a few clothes) then we pack up and head out to Vienna where I’ll be leading High Holiday services with Chazzan Mitchell Ash and my dear friend, composer and keyboardist Jakob Sint.  These past several weeks have been focused on preparations for the Days of Awe – the Yamim Noraim – and I  am greatly excited (and have some trepidation because of my lack of familiarity with the Mahzor used in Vienna) to be spending two weeks with the wonderful members of Or Chadasch.

Beverly and I will then return in time, barely, to erect our sukkah and enjoy some relaxation during Sukkot in Los Alamos. Meanwhile Dov will have returned to University of Washington where I am proud to say he is now officially a student in the Computer Engineering Department. Orli will be busy as usual; she’s entering her senior year at Los Alamos High School, juggling rugby, hockey, lacrosse, bicycling and a score of Advanced Placement classes.

Outside of struggling with a German-Hebrew Mahzor, rabbinically I’ve managed to introduce two more commentators into my weekly Torah class at HaMakom, namely Abraham Ibn Ezra and Rashbam, and we’ve worked our way through the Book of Numbers with the former and started Deuteronomy with the latter.

At the Los Alamos Jewish Center, I had the privilege of leading the service honoring our High School graduates, and I reflected on how quickly time flies – it seems like only yesterday that we were honoring Melissa (now Rabbi Melissa) Klein as she headed off to college. Rabbi Klein was a star student in all my years of teaching the Post Bar & Bat Mitzvah classes, and I am delighted that she’ll be leading services over the High Holidays in Los Alamos while I’m in Vienna. Squeezed in during off hours, I’ve done some teaching for a conversion class and for a High Holiday trope class, and I’ve still found time to escape into some books.

The bookshelves are, as ever, bursting, and subsequent to my last rabbinic message, I’ve acquired Passover-motivated haggadot including “The Holistic Haggadah” by Michael Kagan, the “Israel Passover Haggadah” by Rabbi Menachem M. Kasher, and the recently published “New American Haggadah” edited by Jonathan Safran Foer with a new translation by Nathan Englander. I’ll try to peruse these additions to my library to find appropriate selections for inclusion in next year’s seders.

As for actual reading, after years of near-vegetarianism, last month I thoroughly enjoyed one of Beverly’s recommendations, “Vegetarianism and the Jewish Tradition” by Louis Berman. A few months ago we attended a rock musical in Santa Fe about the turn-of-the 20^th century Jewish anarchist, Emma Goldman, and this inspired me to read “Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life” by Vivian Gornick, part of the excellent Yale University Press Jewish Lives series. Finally, also worth your consideration is Esther Kreitman’s novel “Diamonds,” published in Yiddish in 1944 and now available in an English translation by Heather Valencia. Three guesses why diamonds might be on my mind!

B’shalom, Rabbi Jack

Dear Friends:

We just passed the halfway point in the Omer, our annual countdown to Shavuot and the anniversary of receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai, and I feel grateful as I count all the wonderful and diverse rabbinic opportunities I’ve had of late. In February I enjoyed leading the Tu B’shvat seder at the Los Alamos Jewish Center (LAJC) while eating an abundance of fruits appropriate for this New Year’s Celebration of the Trees.

Also Los Alamos-related, a young woman from our community who is now in college contacted me for some assistance on her National History Day project exploring Reform Judaism during its formative years in America, and I had a vicarious thrill when the project received high honors. And an independent film maker from Santa Fe dropped by my place one Friday to record my advice on his multi-year passion and laudable goal– a film about how halacha and Muslim religious tradition can be used to help address the conflict in the Middle East.

In the more conventional worship arena, I utilized some Saturday morning services in Los Alamos as teaching moments to examine the closing prayers, including Alenu, and to review the intricacies of

Passover. These discussions led to the Pesach holiday itself, and Beverly and I had the privilege of conducting the first seder with my Mom, brother Ted, and Beverly’s Dad in attendance with a dozen dear friends. I thought it particularly shrewd to “allow” my boss’s wife to find the Afikomen, thereby assuring myself of a healthy raise this year. We recuperated the next day and were ready once again to eat matzah at the Los Alamos Community seder where my role as leader included providing the text to the Four Questions in multiple languages, my favorite being “Valley Girl.”

Teaching, as always, has kept me busy. My friend, Zoe, who serves as Religious Director and teacher of the teenagers at the LAJC, parked me in the hot seat for nearly an hour while her students grilled me on topics ranging from G_d to nuclear weapons to why we don’t eat pork, with dozens of challenges in between. In my weekly early Shabbat morning Torah study at HaMakom in Santa Fe, we finished the weekly portions in Exodus where our focus was on the medieval commentator, Rashi, and have been immersed in an examination of Leviticus through the eyes of Ramban. Soon we’ll segue to Numbers, and I think we’ll become acquainted with Ibn Ezra; the intent is to gain a new perspective book by book for an entire year.

My annual presentation at A Taste of Honey, the Albuquerque-based Jewish adult education event held each February, provided a controversial approach to conversion in Judaism through an exploration of rabbinic texts. I also tried to generate some debate with my talk for the Los Alamos Lenten series entitled Birth Control: In the News and the Views of the Jews. By contrast, I felt like the blind leading the blind when I spoke recently at the Los Alamos Methodist Church on the Apocrypha using a translation of these extra-canonical books given to me nearly thirty years ago by my parents who sensed that my library wasn’t yet extensive enough.

I do manage to keep finding interesting items when I browse my shelves. Over the past few months I worked my way through a trilogy of studies on the Talmud, absorbing some modest fraction of the wisdom from “Charting the Sea of Talmud” by Yisrael Ury, “New Talmudic Readings” by Emmanuel Levinas, and “The Talmud as Law or Literature” by Irwin Haut. I also was totally engrossed in two books by Mitchell Chefitz, “The Seventh Telling” and “The Thirty-Third Hour,” both of which I recommend highly.

One of these days I hope to tackle “The Tree of Life” by Chava Rosenfarb for which I will need a big block of time. Thanks to the incredible generosity of my dear friends at Or Chadasch in Vienna, Austria, that block of time could well be the plane flight Beverly and I will take this September when I have a most amazing privilege of leading that congregation in High Holiday services. That Omer seems like it’s going by too quickly, and I’d best start thinking about appropriate High Holiday sermon material!

B’shalom, Rabbi Jack

Dear Friends:

My last three rabbinic months have been busy but generally joyous, and I write this latest installment of roughly quarterly missives to you before the crunch of Purim and Passover. “Generally” but not exclusively joyous – the shortest day of the year brought with it the loss of Jay Wechsler, a truly unique source of daylight to the Jewish community of Los Alamos and to the entire town. I felt deeply fortunate to spend a few hours with Jay on Shabbat afternoon right after Thanksgiving, Beverly and I traveling straight up to Wyoming immediately after I co-led the LAJC-United Church Thanksgiving celebration with senior pastor Rev. David Elton. It was a wonderful visit, and Jay was in great form, regaling us with stories of the early days while surrounded by his children and grandchildren. I was greatly saddened and shocked to learn of Jay’s death, and I tried to pay back a small fraction of my debt to Jay by conducting the remembrance service attended by hundreds of his friends. Jay Wechsler had no equal, and may his memory serve as a blessing for us all.

Speaking of equals, in preparation for the trip I learned that Wyoming is called the Equality State because of the rights women have traditionally enjoyed there, and I chose to speak on the topic of Women and Equality in Jewish Tradition at the synagogue in Cheyenne after Friday evening services, thanks to the logistical arrangements provided by Rabbi Harley Karz-Wagman. This talk was perhaps less controversial than my description of Ghosts and Goblins in Rabbinic texts delivered after Halloween in the historic former synagogue in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Truth be told, I think those who attended were simply being patient while waiting for Beverly to teach some Israeli folkdancing.

My teaching was not restricted to adults this past quarter – I spent most of a day lecturing on Judaism to approximately 70 students in three different Humanities classes at the Los Alamos High School. It would not be an exaggeration to say that 70 people got their first taste of Talmud study while listening to the story of the prospective convert and Rabbis Shammai and Hillel. Our study at the Los Alamos Jewish Center in conjunction with my monthly Shabbat weekends in town has focused on the prayer book and Torah service mechanics, and we’ll be continuing this series this weekend with an exploration of the closing passages of the service. The series was beautifully interrupted when I officiated at the Bat Mitzvah ceremony for the charming and newest adult member of the Los Alamos Jewish community, Kayleen Lederman. At HaMakom in Santa Fe, I delivered my annual contribution to the monthly adult education lecture series with an examination of Jewish Ethical Wills, a largely hidden but beautiful literary genre. Also at HaMakom, we celebrated with food (and even hard liquor) upon completion of an extended set of weekly Talmud classes focused on a passage in tractate Baba Metzia. Our new classes started a few weeks ago and use the weekly portion as an introduction to the father of Torah commentary, Rashi.  My plan is to switch commentators with each book, shifting (I think) to Ramban for Leviticus. These classes are a real joy and motivate me to study parshat hashevua.

Not to worry, I still found time over the past few months to both purchase and read books. New additions to the bursting bookshelves include the six books in the Jewish Lives series published by Yale University Press (Sarah Bernhardt, Emma Goldman, Moses Mendelssohn, Solomon, Leon Trotsky, and Hank Greenberg so far), New Talmudic Readings by the French philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, and The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt edited by Ruth Andrew Ellenson. I had an added dose of reading time as the secular calendar came to a close, and this gave me the opportunity to compare three separate Israeli autobiographies, Life on Sandpaper by Yoram Kaniuk, My Russian Grandmother and her American Vacuum Cleaner by Meir Shalev, and Curriculum Vitae by Yoel Hoffmann. Three more diverse memoirs would be hard to find, but I recommend all of them unabashedly. Despite the crowded shelves, I also welcome your suggestions for new books.   

B’shalom, Rabbi Jack

Dear Friends:

Rabbis around the world love Cheshvan, the month we have just begun, because it has NO HOLIDAYS!!  This past month was quite busy, as expected, with High Holidays at the Los Alamos Jewish Center, the congregation to whom I am so grateful, followed by Sukkot followed by Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah (I attended five different synagogues in three days), and to top it off, Beverly and I decided to “end” the season by going to Roswell, New Mexico, for one of my semi-regular Shabbatons.

I enjoy greatly visiting with my Jewish friends from Roswell and Carlsbad, and I think we all had fun with the discussion topic for Shabbat afternoon of Ghosts and Goblins in Rabbinic texts. Nevertheless, I’m now looking forward to some rest and relaxation.  My current focus is on a planned Friday evening/Saturday morning Shabbat back at the Los Alamos Jewish Center on December 9-10 when I’ll be leading the congregation and providing a review on the mechanics of the Torah service – when do we rise, how do we recite the blessings for an aliyah, what is the etiquette surrounding the scroll, etc.

I began turning my thoughts to teshuva this year by teaching a class up in Taos, New Mexico, at the start of the month of Elul on the liturgy for this season – I’d forgotten how much I like offering educational programs at the Taos Jewish Center. My mother then joined us for Rosh HaShanah, and I dedicated my evening sermon to her, speaking on rabbinic parallels to the teachings of my parents during my youth (how does Pirke Avot address the concept of waiting an hour after eating before going swimming?).  The highlight of Yom Kippur for me, unquestionably, was listening to Orli chant Kol Nidre – the only comparable thrill in past years was hearing Dov blow shofar.  I thought Orli’s singing lifted the entire congregation to the level of the angels – one of the goals and images of Yom Kippur – but you’ll have to ask another congregant if you want an unbiased opinion of the beauty of that moment.

I concentrated my cantorial energies during the holidays, as usual, on evening services and Musaf, and as a result I had those tunes running through my head for weeks afterward.  The formal end to the holiday season, Simchat Torah, started off on a wonderful, spiritual level with a service led by my dear friend and colleague, Rabbi Malka Drucker, at HaMakom congregation in Santa Fe.  Rabbi Malka graciously allowed me to assist her as we unrolled the entire scroll in a circle of congregants and shared insights on individuals based on the parsha at his or her fingertips.

One of the great joys of being a rabbi has been conducting wedding ceremonies for former Bar and Bat Mitzvah students, and I was treated to this opportunity again in August when I served as the officiant in New York for one of my favorite “kids.” Perhaps I’ll receive phone calls from her two brothers when they decide to get married in the future!

My rabbi-ing duties often extend outside the synagogue – a notable recent example being a presentation at the annual conference of the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society on the Jews in Theoretical Division at Los Alamos during World War II.  I hope to reprise this talk in the future through the Los Alamos Historical Society – it was a lot of work preparing the talk but thoroughly entertaining to learn about some of the giants of physics.  

Of course I just had to buy a few books to gather the information I needed – one recent purchase was a copy of The History of the Los Alamos Jewish Center by Rabbi Abraham Shinedling (1958).  Keeping it company on my increasingly crowded bookshelves are a few other newcomers including A Torah Commentary for Our Times by Rabbi Harvey J. Fields (1995) and The Study of Judaism: Bibliographical Essays by Richard Bavier (1972).  Lest you think that all my purchases are highbrow, I also now have a copy of Old Jews Telling Jokes by Sam Hoffman (2010), and please don’t ask me about Dr. Drobkin (he’s on page 183).

As for reading in my spare time, I’ve gotten great pleasure of late from a relatively recent Israeli novel called Thera by Zeruya Shalev translated from Hebrew into English, a memoir entitled In Search of Memory by the Nobel chemistry prize winner and Viennese-born Eric Kandel, and the graphic novel The Cardboard Valise by one of my favorite artists, Ben Katchor.

I hope the month of Cheshvan brings you (and me) some welcome reading time, and may your prayers from these past High Holidays all be answered.

B’shalom, Rabbi Jack

Dear friends:
Let me begin this next installment in my series of ~quarterly rabbi-ing updates by thanking the many people who responded to my pre-Pesach missive. All of your ideas for improving these e-mails were read carefully, and I hope this message reflects your suggestions.

Our weekly Talmud study at HaMakom in Santa Fe has taken on a life of its own – we are exploring an extended passage in B. Bava Metzia 83a ff., and the discussions have been wonderful. Who would have guessed that Jewish texts provide so much insight into the sex lives of corpulent rabbis?

My shabbatons in the southeastern part of the state have also continued with visits this past few months to both Roswell and Carlsbad. I’m hoping to become a regular presence at these two small but special congregations, and in addition to conducting services, I’ve delivered talks on Romantic Love in Jewish texts and The Messiah from a Jewish Perspective, the latter to address a growing concern with Messianics (Christians who adopt many traditional Jewish practices) in these areas of New Mexico.

Over Memorial Day weekend, my most supportive and significant other, Beverly, and I participated in Limmud Colorado, an intensive three day adult Jewish retreat and educational festival (see http://www.limmudcolorado.org/). I was privileged to teach a class as well as chant Torah at one of the services, and I found the talks by some of the other presenters to be absolutely inspirational.

It seems like every time I turned around there was another opportunity to offer a brief rabbinic text to suit an occasion. Hadassah held its 2^nd annual Israel Independence Day celebration, and I shared a few Talmudic words about the importance of medicine in our lives. Jay Wechsler, iconic leader of the Los Alamos Jewish community for nearly 60 years, was honored at this event, and then only a few months later, with his family surrounding him, my son Dov blew a shofar and I chanted the Priestly benediction to wish Jay a safe journey to Wyoming where he is now recuperating and living with his son.

My European home away from home, Vienna, was my destination for a 10-day excursion in conjunction with a scientific conference, and it was an indescribable delight to worship again with my dear friends at Or Chadasch. I got to chant a bit of Megillat Ruth, and we studied together (in German, English, and Hebrew) on Erev Shavuot; it was probably just fatigue at a late hour, but I thought I even understood some of what we were saying!

The Los Alamos Jewish Center renewed and expanded my contract starting on July 1, but the Las Conchas fire (which began just as Dov, Orli, and I joined many members of the Los Alamos Jewish Center in a surprise birthday celebration for a dear friend) forced us to spend the first shabbat in forced evacuation in Santa Fe while we feared, once again, for our town. All the Santa Fe (and several Albuquerque) Jewish institutions rallied to our support, and we arranged an impromptu ceremony on July 3 when the town was reopened as we escorted the Torah scrolls safely back into their Los Alamos home.

Almost 80 people, with a wonderful balance between Los Alamosans and Santa Feans, joined in a potluck thanksgiving this past Friday evening as Los Alamos said “thanks” to our Santa Fe neighbors.  (The August issue of the monthly publication of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, a.k.a. the New Mexico Jewish Link, is posted at http://www.jewishnewmexico.org/section.aspx?id=3 and has an article about our experience).

My rented apartment continues to fill up with more books – some highlights of the past three months were the latest JPS volume (Numbers) in The Commentator’s Bible series, a used copy of The Jews of Poland by Meir Lew (1944) and The Cardboard Valise by the brilliant Ben Katchor. And yes, I have been reading as well. A few of my favorites these last few months were Sacred Trash (Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole), a truly fascinating account of the treasures and personalities associated with the Cairo Geniza, Tales of the Ten Lost Tribes by Tamar Yellin whose writing continues to captivate me, and the massive Memoirs of Elias Canetti (those overseas flights are good for something), this last tome a suggestion from an alert reader of my previous message who wanted to feed my hunger for descriptions of fin de siecle Vienna.

May your month of Av be followed by introspection and celebration, and may all your experiences be re-Jewvenating.

B’Shalom, Rabbi Jack

Dear friends:
As one of the special Jewish people in my life, you are a recipient of this message, the first in what I hope will be an ongoing, ~quarterly series of updates on my rabbi-ing (OK, not a real word but one I enjoy) in many venues. Your feedback is most welcome.

As always, my greatest love as a rabbi is in teaching adults; highlights for me over these past several months were talks I prepared and delivered on Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll in Jewish texts, The Sinai Covenant (or Take Two Tablets and Call me in the Morning), Can Aliens be Part of a Minyan? (in conjunction with my roughly bimonthly itinerant rabbi-ing in Roswell, New Mexico) and a semi-scholarly lecture I gave on Maimonides and Judah HaLevi, the Polar Opposites of Medieval Jewish Philosophy. I am continuing a weekly Shabbat Talmud class with HaMakom in Santa Fe at the hideous hour of 8:45 AM, but the group is so dedicated and receptive that I almost don’t curse the alarm.

On the more somber side, I had a difficult period in late 2010 which found me conducting three funeral services in as many weeks, following on the heels of numerous hospital visits. It was hard to be unaware of my own mortality amidst all this sadness, but as always I appreciated the opportunity to help some families find comfort through our Jewish traditions. Not for the first time in my life did I find myself singing Psalm 121 in a hospital room, but this time I had a nurse come by and say it sounded nice out in the hallway. I think I was getting a message to shut the door.

Other rabbinic visits were a bit different though no less thought-provoking and included trips to the Santa Fe Juvenile Detention Center and the Los Alamos County Jail. At this Pesach season when we are commanded to be thankful for our freedom, it is valuable to remind ourselves that even in our society we are not all free.

Life cycle events continue to play a role in my rabbinic life, and I felt privileged to conduct a trio of weddings last summer. The one in Princeton, New Jersey, was especially enjoyable for me because my daughter, Orli, accompanied me on the trip. At that wedding she got to see her Dad outnumbered by dozens of physicians, several of whom (bride, groom, best man, maid of honor, groomsmen, bridesmaids,…) were under the chuppah. How many doctors does it take to….?

I found time to conduct Friday night services and even chant part of Megillat Esther at my favorite European synagogue, Or Chadasch in Vienna, Austria.  Particularly memorable was when the subway decided to stop running and I had to hoof it to the shul, arriving 20 minutes late.  The congregation started without me, yet they welcomed me most graciously to the bimah (as soon as my eyeglasses unfogged). I get the best part of the deal in Vienna – in return for my involvement with a truly wonderful community, I received a copy of their brand new siddur with my name inscribed in gold lettering on the spine. I never knew before that I was a Rabbiner!

I had great fun when HaMakom held a social event at my apartment called “Jack in the Books,” and I got to show off my library to over two dozen book lovers. In addition to my new siddur, I’ve recently acquired the last volumes of the ArtScroll Yad Avraham Mishnah series and am finding it a valuable rabbinic text tool. A full shelf was recently filled with the second edition of Encyclopedia Judaica – the articles written after 1971 are certainly most welcome, but I miss all the lovely pictures from the earlier edition.  Another recent arrival was by my teacher, Rabbi Gershon Winkler, who wrote “The Judeo-Christian Fiction” which promises to be provocative.

I haven’t just been BUYING books – my numerous trips to Vienna have afforded me a chance to catch up on some reading as well. Especially noteworthy were “Maimonides, Spinoza and Us” by Rabbi Marc Angel (the inspiration for my aforementioned Maimonides and HaLevi talk), “Dybbuks and Jewish Women in Social History, Mysticism and Folklore” by Rachel Elior (the choice inspired by my active involvement with HaMakom), and “The Road into the Open” by Arthur Schnitzler. This last book gave me an even greater appreciation than I’d had before of fin-de-siecle Vienna and its debt to Jews.

If you’ve managed to read this far, I applaud you and hope to send you another message in this vein in three or four months.

May your Pesach be joyous, restful and re-Jewvenating.

Chag kasher v’sameah,

Rabbi Jack