Lomdim is a project of the Centre for Jewish Living and Learning @ Temple Emanu-El

From 2010-2011 onwards, students from Grade Three upward will study one hour per week with their peers for a class entitled, “Foundations.”  This class will ensure that all of our students engage with the necessary foundational learning upon which to establish a strong Jewish identity, while strengthening their friendships with their peers.

As well, students will be required to study Hebrew twice a week (also in peer groups) in the Mitkadem program, a course of Hebrew study designed by the Reform movement to allow students to progress at an individual pace. We have increased the teacher/student ratio and have included a conversational Hebrew component!

These students will also have the opportunity to use what they have learned during our school-wide T’filah, a brief Tuesday afternoon prayer service. Of course, we will continue to offer our very popular elective classes that emphasize “non-traditional” modes of learning, including those based on the arts, music, sports and a book group.

Sundays will run as usual, from 9:30 am until 12:30 pm. On Tuesdays we’ll be together from 5:00 pm until 7:30 pm.

Don’t worry! Registration packages are coming mid-August. Students will have the opportunity to choose their first term electives then. But for now, here is a sneak preview of our fabulous 2010-2011 program:

Yesodot (Grades K-2)

Sunday mornings, including alternating hours of Art and Music, and weekly hours of Hebrew and other things Jewish!

K’tanim (Grades 3-6)

• Sunday mornings & Tuesday afternoons
• 1 hour foundations: Torah (stories and mitzvot), prayer/theology, Israel, Holidays, Jewish History and life cycle.
• 2 hours Mitkadem (in grade 6, 1 hour Mitkadem, 1 hour Torah Chanting)
• 1-2 hours electives

Grade 7 –The B’nei Mitzvah Preparation Year

• Tuesday afternoons, plus individual times for Torah and Haftarah portion learning, and community service
• 1 hour foundations, a year-long Torah Study and D’var Torah Workshop with Rabbi Landsberg
• 1 hour elective

Grades 8-10 – Culminating in Confirmation

• Tuesday afternoons
• 1 hour foundations, part of a 3-year course helping the students make sense of themselves in the modern world
• 1 hour elective
• Each grade will enjoy their own exciting end-of-year class trip!

Looking forward to a wonderful year…if you have any questions, just call!

Well, I’m now the Interim Director of our Temple’s Centre for Jewish Living and Learning! I must say that I have enjoyed a warm welcome and lots of support from staff and families. It has been a wonderful beginning to this new chapter in my life and in the life of Temple Emanu-El. I look forward to an extraordinary year!

I am so pleased to report that we have hired an amazing complement of teachers for the 2010-2011 school year. These professionals are all committed to Reform Jewish learning, Hebrew study, and to building a warm and trusting community. I hope to formally introduce each one of these wonderful individuals over the coming weeks.

We have some very special events planned. We’ve planned a fun, multi-disciplinary, educational programme that will run during the 2nd half of the morning services on Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur. We have confirmed the attendance of some famous scholars and musicians for many of this year’s family JAM! services! (Stay tuned for more information!)

We are also assembling an enthusiastic group of madrichim, our teaching assistant crew. And there is still room for more! I would be very pleased to speak with your teenager about this exciting opportunity to gain important community service or paid work experience while contributing to the vitality of our school.

If I haven’t spoken with you already, please call! I would love to talk about your child’s unique gifts, about your family’s wishes for the coming year, and to hear how the Centre can help you and your children realize your goals within our vibrant Temple Emanu-El community.

We have all heard the old adage “Two Jews, three opinions,” and chuckled to ourselves knowingly. After all, since the days of the Exodus from Egypt, we Jews just love to express our opinions, positive and otherwise. In fact, one could argue that expressing opinion is probably Judaism’s most observed tradition throughout our history.

This state of being might make us loveable but it also makes us durable.

Think how strong one must be to speak one’s mind!

Think then how much stronger that same person must be to listen to another’s point of view.

And then think how much stronger still both individuals must be to work through differences peacefully and either come to some kind of consensus or agree to disagree. The best example of this could be found in the culture of makhloket (rabbinic dispute) amongst the Sages, where majority and minority opinions were equally respected.

The Reform movement is numerically the majority Jewish movement in North America. However, sometimes, Reform Jews find themselves speaking out on behalf of the minority on certain issues. And whether you agree or disagree with the movement’s “party line,” one cannot understate how important it is that our movement speaks at all. Our movement does not remain silent on the salient issues of our day. The voice of progressive Judaism is heard.

As you might have heard from the pulpit, we are organizing in order to call our government to account on Iran. A petition is circulating at the Temple to encourage our elected officials to act resolutely on Iran and their nuclear program.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie wrote a piece in May 28th’s issue of The Forward, calling on the Jewish community, Reform and otherwise, to speak out on this issue:

The dangers of a nuclear Iran are real, and the time has come for American Jews to wake up. We need to act and to act now, but to do so in a way that is smart, strategic and effective.

We should heed this call. It is an important one. Here are two easy (and effective) steps you can take to make your voice heard as a Reform Jewish Canadian:

• sign the petition the next time you are at the Temple.
• find your member of Parliament here and send them an email urging them to support the Iran Accountability Act, otherwise known as Bill C-412.

However, (and here’s where the second Jew expresses a third opinion), it seems that the URJ does not necessarily agree with Rabbi Yoffie. …Not on acting to curb Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Nuclear weapons in the hands of anyone is a bad idea, and in the hands of Iran’s mullah-cracy especially.

The URJ disagrees with Rabbi Yoffie on his zero-sum approach to confronting injustice.

Before reaching his conclusion about acting on Iran, he urges the North American Jewish community to unite behind the cause because:

I have also watched in dismay as these voices obsess over America’s position on settlement disputes, which – however sensitive and complicated – are simply not the central issue at a moment when Iran threatens Israel’s very existence.

In other words, since Iran is a bigger threat to Israel’s security than “the settlements,” we should put the settlement issue on the back burner for now.

The URJ Board of Trustees disagrees.

If you have a look at their call to action on the Middle East, they do not state that Israel should freeze settlement construction, dismantle illegal outposts and act to curb settler extremism (points 7-8) as long as there is no Iranian threat. The threat from “fringe settler groups who challenge the authority and legitimacy of the Israeli government and courts” and the Iranian threat (point 10) must be confronted simultaneously as both, according to the URJ Board, are impediments to a real and just peace in the Middle East.

If two Jews can galvanize the energy to express three opinions, then surely two Jews can easily organize to confront two threats to Israel’s secure and peaceful future. This is our talent and this is our strength. So let’s get working.

* * *
With the close of Centre programming in May, I will end my tenure as the Centre’s founding director.

The past three years have been the realization of a vision of Jewish learning that I developed over many years previous and I hope that, in some way, will continue into the future under the guidance of the Centre’s next director, Robin Leszner.

For the opportunity to take academo-theory and make it real, I would like to thank Paul Leszner and Baila Goldfarb, the fearless Chairs of the Religious Education Committee, as well as Rabbi Landsberg whose vision of and passion for Jewish learning provided inspiration and guidance.

And I would like to thank all the Emanu-Elniks who came out to Centre programs throughout the years. I hope you all had a nice shmooze and maybe even learned a little about our tradition and our history.

But as Rabbi Tarfon said in Ethics of the Fathers, though “you are not required to finish the task, but you are not free to desist from it.”

L’hitra’ot!

Parshat Naso from G-dcast.com

More Torah cartoons at www.g-dcast.com

Hava Nagilah, What Is It? from Katahdin Productions on Vimeo.

Parshat Bemidbar from G-dcast.com

More Torah cartoons at www.g-dcast.com

Remember the Milk.

Months and months ago, a good friend recommended that I sign up with Remember the Milk.  This handy web-based app would help me manage my life.  I would never forget the milk again!

Though the webapp’s logo was eye-catching and disarming, did I really need yet another app to assist me in coping with being a father of three, Centre director, itinerant blogger, and nudnik Jew?   So far, I have managed to do all this quite capably … and without an iPhone!  (Gasp!)

But with the approach of May, I began to think about milk in broader, metaphorical terms and the reminders they evoke…

Mother’s Milk
May is the month of Mother’s Day.  Although many have argued it is a “Hallmark holiday” manufactured to bolster card sales, Mother’s Day, like any Jewish holyday, has a commemorative purpose.  On one day a year, if we have not considered them on any day before or after, or zoned out during the weekly singing of “Eshet Chayil”, we should pause and think about our mothers.  We should consider the woman who carried us inside her, who shared her body with us and sustained us when we were most vulnerable.  Even when we could stand on our own, we could always count on her support – be it physically, emotionally or spiritually.   So, if you have not done so this week, take a moment to consider your mother and show her a little appreciation.  Hallmark cards optional.

Milk Products
May is also the month of Shavuot.  Shavuot, for many Jews, is all about milk products, particularly blintzes – the spring holyday’s most popular foodstuff.  But Shavuot, like any Jewish holyday, has a commemorative purpose.  Shavuot is the celebration of the giving of the Torah.  In broader terms, it is the day which the Jewish People as a people signed on the dotted line of the Covenant forged generations before between God and Abraham.

With each iteration of the Covenant, God’s promise of reward (and threats of punishment if we do not comply) change.  This makes sense as each time the Covenant is renewed, the signatories are different.  The needs of one man for a home, or the desires of one clan differ from that of a whole nation in search of autonomy.   What never changes is what God wants.  God wants us to behave ourselves!  It does not get any simpler than that…

For millennia, this covenant between God and the Jewish People was the animating force behind Jewish history.  Jews conceived of their place in the world through the prism of the Covenant and understood current events as a realization of the Covenant in their own lifetimes.

So, if you have not done so this week, take a moment to consider the Covenant and consider whether we continue to “shun evil and do good”, and how effective we have been in realizing our movement’s vision of righteousness in the lives of our families, communities and society.

May is also the month in which Centre programming concludes for 2009-2010.  For more on what’s in store for next year, stay tuned to the June column!

Hag Sameakh and come out and join us for a raucous Tikkun Leil Shavuot on Tuesday, May 18!

Parshat Behar from G-dcast.com

More Torah cartoons at www.g-dcast.com