Debbie Friedman

Wrote a personal piece about Debbie Friedman's passing in my Oy Chicago blog post this month. 

Give a little bit...

Every year I try to provide a list of not for profits for you to consider giving to before the end of the year (and the tax year). Even if you don't give to these organizations, they are interesting to learn about. I wish all of my readers a Healthy and Happy New Year. Feel free to leave a comment with your favorite not for profit. 

General Recommended Not For Profits

Southern Public Defender Training Center

Interfaith Youth Core

The Night Ministry

Season of Sharing

Care International

H20 Africa Foundation

Big Brothers Big Sisters

Disabled Veterans Charitable Service Trust

Sierra Club Foundation

Rape Abuse and Incest National Network 

To Health

Many of my friends are fans of Doctors Without Borders

My friend Dana suggested this fund that helps people pay for transplants. 

My family has been impacted by Multiple Sclerosis. 

My cousin Robert Kinberg passed away last summer from a brain tumor. 

Friends and family have lost loved ones or a currently fighting the following diseases: 

ALS

Pancreatic Cancer

Juvenile Diabetes

Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

American Cancer Society

Ten Jewish Organizations

American Jewish World Service does good work throughout the world. 

Facing History and Ourselves is a great educational organization that teaches about the Holocaust and other genocides and more. 

Mazon is a Jewish response to hunger.

Hadassah is reinventing itself. 

Love the values taught by Panim.

Good volunteer work being done by Avodah, the Jewish Service Corps and Otzma.

My youth was greatly enhanced by the South Bend Hebrew Day School, Sinai Synagogue and the Jewish Federation of St. Joseph Valley. 

Ten  Jewish Organizations (Conflicts of Interest)

 I am happily employed by Shorashim an organization dedicated to bringing Jewish Americans and Israelis together via culturally based programs. 

Shorashim receives support from these stellar organizations JUF, JNF, CJP, and The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington D.C.

Shorashim received grants for a project I'm involved in from the ICenter and the Jewish Education Project.

Most of my work has to do with Taglit-Birthright Israel. 

I'm a member and some time employee of Anshe Emet Synagogue. I used to work at the Chicagoland Jewish High School. 

Letter to Miley Cyrus

My latest post in Oy Chicago is an open letter to

Happy Chanukah!

It’s Chanukah night four. Almost time to light the candles. And after listening to the Maccabeats “Candlelight” (2:05-2:30 is the best singing. Go Gingi!)  over and over (resistance is futile) and reading the hysterical (with a few anti-Semitic and anti-Israel) comments on Youtube, I think it’s time that a public declaration is made.

It’s time to stop being apologists about Chanukah.

Yes, you know who you are. The people who say, Chanukah is only a popular holiday because it’s near Christmas.  Perhaps the popularity part is true, but who cares? Chanukah has been an important Jewish holiday for over 1000 years. The reason the celebration of it changed in about 140 C.E. to focus on the “miracle of the candlelight” was because Judaism changed from a nationalistic religion to entirely a spiritual one. The holidays then that really mattered were the ones based on spirituality and time (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover, Shavuot).  The dreydel, as I learned as a kid, was created as a ruse for kids to grab quickly to play so they wouldn’t get in trouble in anti-Semitic societies if they were studying Jewish texts.  

It's the 21st century. There is a Jewish Nation State with modern day Maccabees (although most of them aren’t religious zealots like the original Maccabees. Chanukah is not just a story about fighting the Assyrian Greeks but it was also a Jewish civil war to wipe out elements of assimilation) living in Israel. We have a globally thriving Jewish community who shouldn’t feel that Chanukah is Christmas’ concubine.

Du du du du. Du du du du.

Also, the lessons from the Chanukah story are lovely. They commemorate perseverance during adversity, valuing of freedom of religion and being thankful for miracles.  And who wouldn’t mind a miracle right now with rising unemployment, two unwinnable wars, a lame and lame duck Congress, a State Department that has lost much of its international credibility, fires in Israel, etc. etc.?

So I’m going to go light my Chanukiah (menorah), say the blessings, and then limit myself to 10 more listens of Candlelight and the South Park Dreydel song (a little offensive).  Then I need to clean my apartment after last night’s work Shabbanica party because my parents are spending the night here tomorrow to celebrate Chanukah with their grandchildren, and remember my awesome Zadie who was born on the fifth candle. On the sixth candle, I hope my present is a good report from my dad’s doctor that he is three years Cancer free.

Happy Chanukah! 

How to keep synagogue education relevant

If you want to know the answer, or at least my opinion, check out my post in OyChicago. They titled it Synagogue 2.0

http://www.oychicago.com/blog.aspx?id=8038

May his memory be for a blessing

It is just shocking to me to think that he was just 27 when he was a principal at the South Bend Hebrew Day School. With the help of my dad, and other businessmen and doctors in the community, he built a Jewish Day School in the city known for Touchdown Jesus, not the 5 books of Moses.  I only knew him as a preschooler and a family friend until I was 22, living in Israel on Otzma, and being hosted by him and his wife for several Shabbat meals in Jerusalem.

He was a big fan of my dad’s and the feeling was mutual. They were two good men along with other good men and women fostering Jewish education in a community that would benefit greatly from it. He had a great laugh and a big smile.  He had three great loves: his family, Jewish education and Israel.

Recently when he reconnected with my brother on Facebook, who was a star pupil in 1982, he quizzed him on the shoreshim (roots) from the Tanakh.  My brother, at age 40, still remembered them and I’m sure Rabbi Schwartz beamed across the ocean as he did when he clicked “like” on half the pictures from my niece’s bat mitzvah a few weeks ago.

Facebook. Such an interesting place. Rabbi Schwartz would reconnect with his students from 30 years prior from South Bend, Indiana. He would see that some became ultra-Orthodox, were liberal Jews married to other Jews, some were in same sex relationships, some were married to gentiles, some were still 34 (or 39-you know who you are) and single. I wondered, as he became friends with all of these people, if he would eventually defriend them because they did not meet his Orthodox standards. On the contrary, he commented on all of our walls when we wrote something he liked or if someone had a birthday or announced the death of a parent or grandparent or the birth of a child. It’s not that I don’t think that he had an opinion on our lifestyles, but what was most important was that we were his students, his now adult children and he was literally virtually apart of our lives again.

Today in my religious school class, my lesson was from Panim and it was about the differences between Tsedek, Tsedakah and Chesed.  In summary,  tsedkah is giving, tsedek is more thoughtful giving and chesed is the giving of your time. Rabbi Schwartz definitely fell into the chesed category. Part of being an Orthodox Jew for him was dedicating his life to teaching Jewish kids from many different backgrounds without judgment of their family lifestyle or overzealous kiruv. He exemplified derech eretz - behaving honorably and because of that his impact was vast.

 In an age when we talk about how to be pluralistic in the Jewish Community, Rabbi Schwartz lived it with his work at small town Day Schools across North America since the 1970s. He made an indelible imprint on my family, as I’m sure he did on so many families during his 40 plus career in education here and in Israel.


I work at a pluralistic Jewish organization that employs and teaches religious, liberal and secular Jews in Israel and the U.S. While my own beliefs are liberal, I feel most comfortable with Jews across the religious spectrum rather than in a place that disavows or embraces one dogma over the other.   I appreciate the beauty of Orthodox Judaism while recognizing that for me, it just isn’t how I want to express my religiosity. However, that appreciation has propelled me to walk to the kotel at 5 a.m. from Har Nof, visit a settlement in the West Bank, hear Hatikva at the Great Synagogue on Yom Kipur while refusing to join even a modern Othodox Synagogue because I am a feminist and support gay rights.

 I don’t know that Rabbi Schwartz would agree with my paradox, but I know he would have been happy to see me and hear about the work that I do on my next trip to Israel in December.  Sadly, he passed away this weekend.  I’m glad he was able to see what we were up to virtually, as well as many of his other students. I’m happy he saw my parents recently in a visit to South Bend, as there was much mutual admiration.

One funny thing is recently I was sent to Rabbi Schwartz’s website as a model for doing a project I’m working on. I was told that he might be a good person with whom to collaborate.

And it made me think, we don’t collaborate with projects, we collaborate with people. In the end, it might matter less how we learn or what we learn, but from whom we learn.

We were all very lucky to be students of Rabbi Schwartz, of blessed memory.

To his wonderful family, May the Omnipresent comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. 

Glossary:

• Otzma: one year volunteer program in Israel
• shoreshim (roots) from the Tanakh- The Tanakh is the Five Books of Moses, the Books of the Prophets, and the Writings of the Minor Prophets. Every Hebrew word has a three letter root. Shalom = slm.  The same is true in Arabic. Salaam- slm. They mean the same thing: peace.
• Panim - Jewish organization that teaches about social justice among other things
• kiruv - Jews reaching out to other Jews to introduce them to more traditional aspects of Judaism. Depending on the context and who you are defined whether it is negative or positive.
• Har Nof- and ultra Orthodox section of Jerusalem
• kotel- the Western Wall, wall of the Second Temple still remaining
• Hatikva- Israel's national anthem
• May the Omnipresent...- traditional words to say to those in mourning. 

Why bullies and MTV suck

You can read why here. Thanks for reading:

http://www.oychicago.com/blog.aspx?id=7814&blogid=142