Shalom everyone!
Our Torah portion this week begins with the words Elah HaDevarim, which means these are the words. The rest of the book of Devarim (words) records the stories Moses told to our ancestors when they were at the end of their forty-year journey through the wilderness. Those being addressed where the children and grandchildren of the ones who left Egypt. Moses was reminding them – and us – about who we were and who we are. They were about to start new lives and communities in the Promised Land.
I feel like I’m probably guilty of haking a tchinik (in Yiddish, beating a teapot or saying the same thing over and over again) – but – our portion again resonates with our lives at Temple Emanu-El. We are at the end and we are at the beginning. We too will be telling stories. This Shabbat the Settled Rabbi Search Committee will host the first of a number of opportunities for the telling of stories. They will want to hear about what you cherish about our congregation, what could use some work, and what you imagine for our future. I’m looking forward to hearing all of your stories –
this Shabbat and at other story telling times the Committee has planned on:
· Saturday, July 29, 12pm
· Wednesday, August 9, 7pm
· Tuesday, August 15, 7pm
· Wednesday, August 30, 7pm
· Wednesday, September 13, 4:30pm
Note: No Shabbat Shiur this week. Instead, join us for the first Focus Group Discussion.
A Look Ahead:
August 5
9:30am - Shabbat Morning Service with Mishkan Tefillah followed by Shabbat Shiur
7:00pm - Havdalah Under the Stars at Lynn Martin’s home – an opportunity to meet Rabbi Bogosian and for schmooze with each other
August 12
9:30am – Shabbat Morning Service with Sim Shalom and Israel discussion group
Here are some comments about Jewish story telling for this week:
Jewish tradition teaches that God dictated the written Torah to Moses during the day, and at night explained it to him.
Those explanations were later recorded in the Talmud, but for centuries the laws and legends were maintained as an oral tradition passed down through the generations, says Howard Schwartz, an author, storyteller and expert on Jewish mythology.
It’s the oral Torah, Schwartz contends, that opened the door for a rich lineage of Jewish folktales, fairy tales and mythology that he has devoted his career to collecting, preserving and retelling…
“There are some people who believe that other people have myths, but we [Jews] have truth,” said Schwartz, who prefers the definition of mythology offered by American mythologist Joseph Campbell. “He says myth is the collective dream of a people. What people would want to lose their collective dream? Are the Jewish people the only people that don’t have it?”
Schwartz said his role is to preserve stories, but there is an art to the retelling…
“I think of myself as a tailor. If it just needs a little bit of fixing up, you fix it. If it’s a shmata, you may need to do a little work on it,” he said. “It just depends on the condition.”
Drew Himmlestein, The Jewish News of Northern California, February 2016
There are differences between telling stories aloud and reading them… and Jewish culture reveres both. Much of our tradition is oral; the center of religious services on Shabbat, holidays, and Mondays and Thursdays — the point toward which they aim and from which they reverentially retreat, with pomp and velvet and silver and parades — is when the Torah is unscrolled and read aloud. For many centuries, many Jews were barely or not at all literate; even when they were able to read in their vernaculars, for much of our history only a small group could read Hebrew. Oral transmission was paramount.
And, of course, we read aloud from other texts as well — the haftarah on Shabbat, the megillot on holidays, the Haggadah on Passover. The written is transformed into the oral; each retelling is slightly different, filtered through the tropes and melodies and inflections of its teller and the teller’s culture. – Joanne Palmer, The Jewish Standard, November 2015
Have a good Shabbat!
Rabbi Bogosian
Our Torah portion this week begins with the words Elah HaDevarim, which means these are the words. The rest of the book of Devarim (words) records the stories Moses told to our ancestors when they were at the end of their forty-year journey through the wilderness. Those being addressed where the children and grandchildren of the ones who left Egypt. Moses was reminding them – and us – about who we were and who we are. They were about to start new lives and communities in the Promised Land.
I feel like I’m probably guilty of haking a tchinik (in Yiddish, beating a teapot or saying the same thing over and over again) – but – our portion again resonates with our lives at Temple Emanu-El. We are at the end and we are at the beginning. We too will be telling stories. This Shabbat the Settled Rabbi Search Committee will host the first of a number of opportunities for the telling of stories. They will want to hear about what you cherish about our congregation, what could use some work, and what you imagine for our future. I’m looking forward to hearing all of your stories –
this Shabbat and at other story telling times the Committee has planned on:
· Saturday, July 29, 12pm
· Wednesday, August 9, 7pm
· Tuesday, August 15, 7pm
· Wednesday, August 30, 7pm
· Wednesday, September 13, 4:30pm
Note: No Shabbat Shiur this week. Instead, join us for the first Focus Group Discussion.
A Look Ahead:
August 5
9:30am - Shabbat Morning Service with Mishkan Tefillah followed by Shabbat Shiur
7:00pm - Havdalah Under the Stars at Lynn Martin’s home – an opportunity to meet Rabbi Bogosian and for schmooze with each other
August 12
9:30am – Shabbat Morning Service with Sim Shalom and Israel discussion group
Here are some comments about Jewish story telling for this week:
Jewish tradition teaches that God dictated the written Torah to Moses during the day, and at night explained it to him.
Those explanations were later recorded in the Talmud, but for centuries the laws and legends were maintained as an oral tradition passed down through the generations, says Howard Schwartz, an author, storyteller and expert on Jewish mythology.
It’s the oral Torah, Schwartz contends, that opened the door for a rich lineage of Jewish folktales, fairy tales and mythology that he has devoted his career to collecting, preserving and retelling…
“There are some people who believe that other people have myths, but we [Jews] have truth,” said Schwartz, who prefers the definition of mythology offered by American mythologist Joseph Campbell. “He says myth is the collective dream of a people. What people would want to lose their collective dream? Are the Jewish people the only people that don’t have it?”
Schwartz said his role is to preserve stories, but there is an art to the retelling…
“I think of myself as a tailor. If it just needs a little bit of fixing up, you fix it. If it’s a shmata, you may need to do a little work on it,” he said. “It just depends on the condition.”
Drew Himmlestein, The Jewish News of Northern California, February 2016
There are differences between telling stories aloud and reading them… and Jewish culture reveres both. Much of our tradition is oral; the center of religious services on Shabbat, holidays, and Mondays and Thursdays — the point toward which they aim and from which they reverentially retreat, with pomp and velvet and silver and parades — is when the Torah is unscrolled and read aloud. For many centuries, many Jews were barely or not at all literate; even when they were able to read in their vernaculars, for much of our history only a small group could read Hebrew. Oral transmission was paramount.
And, of course, we read aloud from other texts as well — the haftarah on Shabbat, the megillot on holidays, the Haggadah on Passover. The written is transformed into the oral; each retelling is slightly different, filtered through the tropes and melodies and inflections of its teller and the teller’s culture. – Joanne Palmer, The Jewish Standard, November 2015
Have a good Shabbat!
Rabbi Bogosian
