2024 Archives - Temple Shalom Reform Congregation

Newsletter Post – December 19, 2024

August Adelman — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 23:28:28 +0000

As we approach Hanukkah, which begins next week on Wednesday evening, coinciding with Christmas Day, I’ve been thinking about the miracles in our Hanukkah story. Tradition teaches that there were two miracles: first, the miracle of the military victory, the small scrappy band of Maccabees triumphing over the fearsome Greek army – not by might, not by power, but by spirit alone. This military victory is of course followed by the miracle of the oil, as the Maccabees returned to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem to clean and rededicate it, finding only one small jug of oil – enough to last one night, but miraculously burning for all 8.

While our story is full of miracles, our reality may be a little more lacking. At this time of year, especially as Hanukkah coincides with Christmas, we may feel more and more like a tiny insignificant group, unable to mount a victory against a powerful hegemonic force. Or we might feel like our inner resources are running low, approaching empty, with no sign of a miracle to ward off the imminent burnout.

Hanukkah’s overlap with Christmas this year offers us an opportunity – as our secular schools and workplaces close down for a week or two, we have the opportunity to refill our own cups. To not rely on a miracle to help us last longer than we should, but to rely on the tried and true formula of rest, of family time, of quiet, to reenergize ourselves, and to build up our own inner spiritual resources.

In this spirit, I will be away and off email for two full weeks, from December 22 through January 5, spending time with family, reading, and resting. While I am away, I am of course available for life-and-death pastoral emergencies – please email August at info@templeshalom.ca if this is the case.

I wish all of you and your families a light-filled Hanukkah, and if you are celebrating Christmas or any other holidays over the next couple weeks, I hope it is a joyous time!

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Newsletter Post – December 12, 2024

August Adelman — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 23:20:45 +0000

Check out this article from Rabbi Miriam printed in the Hamilton Jewish News:

https://www.hamiltonjewishnews.com/home-page/voices/when-chanukah-and-christmas-overlap

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Temple Shalom Featured on WR Food Bank site

August Adelman — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:26:19 +0000

Mazel tov to the Social & Environmental Action Committee, who were featured on the Waterloo Region Food Bank website for their hard work and dedication to fundraising for the Food Bank within Temple Shalom. You can read the article here.

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Newsletter Post – November 27, 2024

August Adelman — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:24:21 +0000

By now, you may have heard, either in the news or from Rabbi Goldman’s email, of the murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan last weekend. Rabbi Kogan was a Chabad shaliach, emissary, serving the Jewish community in Dubai, and was murdered by terrorists. Whenever any Jew is murdered in an act of hateful antisemitism, our hearts break, whether or not we knew them personally, whether or not we find common ground in our theology and ritual practice.

Over social media these last few days, I’ve seen multiple posts uplifting the work that Chabad does in the farthest flung corners of the Jewish world. My own experience of this important work draws from my years in Singapore, where the Progressive synagogue I served shares a cool but neighbourly relationship with the Chabad community. It is because of the Chabad rabbis and their families in Singapore that my community and my family had access to kosher food – including grape juice for Shabbat, matzah at Pesach, a variety of kosher ingredients for cooking Singaporean dishes, and of course, the beloved Israeli snack, Bamba. It is because of Chabad that we had enough lulav and etrog sets each year. It is because of Chabad that there is a vibrant and excellent Jewish day school in Singapore, and I am tremendously appreciative of the education, love, depth of Yiddishkeit, and respect that my children received there. None of this eliminates the real theological and ideological differences that we may have – but as I spoke about over the High Holidays, we share a Jewish tent with many people with whom we disagree, and yet, we are all in that same noisy tent.

I want to share here Rabbi Goldman’s words, shared over email earlier this week, on what an appropriate response to such a hateful act might be:

“By doing precisely the opposite of what these wicked and immoral people would like us to do. They want us to be fearful, anxious and muted. They want us to tone down community gatherings, tone down our practice of Judaism and stop expressing our love for Israel. Instead, we must be calm and fearless. We will gather more often, in greater numbers, and with greater focus and resolve. I am sure they wouldn’t mind if we split ourselves into groups and fought against each other – we must take special care to do the opposite of that as well. We are truly living through historic times, and it is a time for everyone to dig past fear and discover what lies beneath it – courage. By increasing your practice of mitzvot at home, increasing your loving kindness towards your fellow Jew and to all you encounter, and participating in Jewish communal events, you are part of the solution as you dismantle and disprove the terrorists’ entire agenda.”

I invite each of you to join me in being part of the solution, by living proudly as Jews, grounded in our values, including a deep sense of lovingkindness to all of Am Yisrael and all of humanity.

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Newsletter Post – November 20, 2024

August Adelman — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:22:49 +0000

Originally posted November 20, 2024

It’s no accident that this week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, opens with the death of our matriarch Sarah and segues quickly to the story of the next generation. Abraham ensures that Isaac marries, sending his servant Eliezer back home to find someone fitting to be Isaac’s partner, to give life to the next generation in the family. When Isaac first meets Rebecca, Torah tells us that the very first thing he does is to bring her into the tent of his mother Sarah. This is kind of a weird verse! Sarah has died – what does it mean that Isaac brought his beloved, soon-to-be-wife, into the tent of his mother of blessed memory? Midrash offers us an answer, teaching us that while Sarah was alive, her tent, her home, was a special, almost magical place. The cloud of the Divine Presence rested upon the Tent. The doors of her tent were always open wide. Sarah’s challah dough was blessed – such that every week when she baked challah, abundant loaves came out of the oven, no matter how little flour she used. And the Shabbat candles that Sarah lit – they burned from one Shabbat to the next. But all of these miraculous blessings stopped when Sarah died. I imagine that without Sarah’s presence, her home – Isaac’s home – was a pretty dismal place. Until Rebecca arrives, with the promise of a new family – the family that Isaac and Rebecca will create, a family that will continue Sarah’s legacy into the future. All of the blessings of Sarah’s tent return in abundance with Rebecca’s presence. We can imagine a bereaved, falling in love Isaac telling stories of his mom to Rebecca – how special her Shabbat dinners were, how safe and loved he felt in her tent. And Isaac and Rebecca have the potential, just as each of us in our own homes and families, and in our community, to create the next generation of Jewish life, the next generation that will cherish the memories of what a vibrant Judaism can be, and seek to build it for themselves.

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Newsletter Post – November 14, 2024

August Adelman — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:07:11 +0000

I spent the first part of this week attending the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly gathering in Washington, D.C. This annual event brought together 2000 Jewish communal professionals and lay leaders, from throughout North America and Israel. The overarching theme, heard over and over again in workshops and from the stage in large plenary events was, “UNITY.” That unity of the Jewish people is what is necessary to move forward into the Jewish future.

Unity messaging actually does our community a disservice, both on the macro level at events like JFNA’s General Assembly, and in smaller spaces like our own. I attended the General Assembly as a participant in the Summit of Belonging, celebrating the launch of JFNA’s Center on Jewish Belonging – a convening of different Jewish organizations and leaders who firmly believe that we are not all the same, that our differences matter, and indeed, that the diversity of the Jewish community – the presence of Jews of colour, of LGBTQ+ Jews, of Jews embracing a wide range of Jewish religious practices, and Jews in and from interfaith families – is one of our greatest strengths as a people. The work of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley talks about the difference between “othering” and “same-ing” – othering is when we deny someone’s humanity based on their identity, and same-ing is when we act as if we all have the same needs within a community. True belonging exists between those – when we can lift up that which we do have in common, and celebrate that which makes us different.

Too often, especially in the past year, when I hear calls for Jewish unity, it is not a unity of belonging, but a unity of “same-ing” (and unfortunately, also sometimes of othering). It is a unity that ignores our differences, and privileges one voice, one vision of our Jewish future. It ignores that we have different spiritual needs and aspirations, different visions for the future of the Jewish people and the future of the State of Israel. How powerful might our Jewish people be if we could instead acknowledge our differences, hold the tension that comes with healthy disagreement, to do so without denying the humanity of any person.

No doubt, the coming weeks and months will give us plenty of opportunities to disagree, and they will test our unity. My prayer for all of us is that we, as a community, can hold that disagreement, to create space for each of us to show up as our full selves, with all of our values, commitments, identities, and dreams for the future. That we can hear others in our community who have different values, commitments, identities, and dreams for the future. And together, we can continue to build a Jewish community at Temple Shalom and in the world more broadly where each of us finds a sense of belonging.

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Newsletter Post – November 7, 2024

August Adelman — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 21:19:50 +0000

Over the last couple days (and weeks, and months), the messages I’ve received from dear friends and loved ones in the United States sound something like, “Well, at least you’ve already moved to Canada.” This theme echoes our persistent Jewish response, honed across the generations, to ensure that we always have an up-to-date passport (more than one, if possible), and a plan to leave if and when Jewish life becomes unsustainable in our home countries. And yet, we know that there is no place, no utopia, no country without its problems, challenges, and brokenness, including our own country of Canada. Our task, as Jews, is to do everything we can in the place that we are to build a more just and a more safe society, for ourselves and for our neighbours.

Last week, the Government of Canada and the office of Deborah Lyons, Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, released the long-awaited Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. Statistics Canada data on hate crimes for the first half of 2024 shows that Jews are the most targeted group – 17.6% of hate crimes have targeted Jews and Jewish communities, although we make up less than 1% of Canada’s population. This handbook is intended to be one of many tools in the fight against hate and antisemitism, to be used by law enforcement, community organizations, local government, the media, schools, and more.

This is one tool of many. At times like these, it is easy for our first instinct to be to turn inwards – to our own families, our own loved ones, our own communities. But in order to create the world we imagine, to create a world of belonging for everyone, we must turn outwards, to form relationships with our neighbours across the lines of race, class, and faith. The world as it should be is not a guarantee. This week, bookended by the English anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995, and the anniversary of Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938, the pogrom often considered the start of the Holocaust, we know all too well the lived consequences of hate and political violence. Together, maybe, just maybe, we can imagine a different future.

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Member Appreciation Night

August Adelman — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 17:21:07 +0000

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Holocaust Education Event: Film & Speaker

August Adelman — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 17:16:13 +0000

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The Canadian Reform Adult Education Academy Adult Learning for Small Congregations

August Adelman — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 17:05:29 +0000

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