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 20th 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