This past quarter has involved many changes, most notably a transition for Beverly and me from northern New Mexico to eastern Long Island, New York. My science (mostly program development) is now based at Brookhaven National Laboratory where I often see wild turkeys, geese, deer, and even woodchucks (outdoors, not in the Lab buildings).
Rabbinically, I am now serving as the spiritual leader at The Jewish Center of the Moriches (JCM) https://www.jewishcenterofthemoriches.com. JCM holds weekly Friday night services, and monthly Saturday morning services, so Beverly and I have made the rounds to four other synagogues so far on Shabbat mornings, and we expect to try out some others in the future.
As a means of attracting families with younger children on Friday nights, once a month the Friday evening service at JCM is held earlier than usual, often with a fun oneg theme. Following in the JCM tradition, the November oneg involved making your own ice cream sundae (apparently ice cream has an appeal all year long, not just in the warmer weather).
To prepare for the service, I discovered that Ben and Jerry’s, Haagen-Dazs, and Baskin Robbins were all started by Jews. The latter, I learned, adopted the “31 flavors” slogan to suggest that each day of the month could be a different flavor. The multiple synagogues which Beverly and I have been attending imply that there might be “31 flavors” to Judaism as well. Each shul we go to offers different tunes, different teachings, a different physical layout, different leadership, a different liturgy, different prayer books, and a different congregational feel. Yet each has some things we enjoy and from which we derive satisfaction and fulfillment.
Especially in these times of divisiveness, I try hard not to think of Judaism as a set of disparate denominations but rather as a large array of flavors. All are legitimate, and all have something worthwhile to offer if we remain open-minded in our approach to the particular style of worship in which we find ourselves.
Over the course of the last four or five months I have led Shabbat and holiday services in Los Alamos, Santa Fe, and Center Moriches, and I’ve been the officiant at events honoring wedding anniversaries, special birthdays, and Bat Mitzvahs. I’ve also shared songs, stories, teachings, and even reprised my slideshow talk on the Jews of China for a Hadassah meeting. My hope is that those in attendance enjoyed the “flavor” of what I presented and extracted some pleasure (though not any calories) from the experience.
Despite the chaos of moving, I did manage to squeeze in some reading, and I provide my reading list below. An asterisk denotes a particular favorite, but each book was “tasty” in its own way.
B’shalom,
Rabbi Jack
After One-Hundred-and-Twenty* – Hillel Halkin
An Egyptian Novel – Orly Castel-Bloom
Six Memos from the Last Millenium* – Joseph Skibell
Collected Poems – Avraham Ben Yitzhak
Yiddish for Pirates – Gary Barwin
Number Our Days – Barbara Myerhoff
Maimonides’ Principles: The Fundamentals of Jewish Faith – Aryeh Kaplan
One God Clapping* – Alan Lew
Yom Kippur Readings – Dov Peretz Elkins
Submarine Z-1 – Lon Chanukoff
Whose Little Boy Are You? – Hanoch Bartov
The Quitter* – Harvey Pekar (and Dean Haspiel)
Hazor: The Rediscovery of a Great Citadel of the Bible – Yigael Yadin
Julius Rosenwald: Repairing the World – Hasia Diner