Shabbat Shalom ~ Shoftim 2024

Shalom WJC Families,

It is a week of firsts! The first day of school (for most students), the first day of our regular synagogue programming calendar, and the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, which we celebrated on Wednesday morning. Elul is a month about love – it’s for Hebrew letters, .א.ל.ו.ל, are said to be an acronym for the famous quote from Song of Songs, “אֲנִ֤י לְדוֹדִי֙ וְדוֹדִ֣י לִ֔י, I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” As we approach the High Holidays, it is the loving relationship between God and the Jewish people that we start focusing on.

Of course, this year that is all the more challenging—how do we focus on love when our hearts are breaking? The news this weekend of the brutal murder of six hostages, including Hersh Goldberg-Polin, has cast a pall over everything, even our loving relationship with the Almighty. Indeed, Elul is about healing our relationship with God, but also with the world – perhaps that is why the High Holidays start with Rosh HaShanah, the birthday of the world. This month is dedicated to healing our broken hearts. More than ever, we pray that this month of Elul brings us peace and wholeness and healing, especially for Hersh’s family and the families of all those murders and still being held hostage. In this month that we come home to our relationship with God, bring them home, we pray.

Starting this Shabbat afternoon, as an addition to the prayers we add at each morning service and the seat we save in the sanctuary and chapel for Liri Albag who has been held hostage by Hamas since October 7th, we are planning to dedicate our Saturday afternoon/evening learning sessions in the name of different hostage each week. We will start with a few sentences about the person being held captive in Gaza and a prayer for their release, then we will learn together. I hope you will consider joining us for one of these learning sessions – they are usually pretty active discussions about the upcoming Torah portion or an event coming up on the calendar.

This week the cantor will be teaching at the Shabbat mincha-maariv service, which is starting at 7pm. In fact, he will also be on for Friday night and Saturday morning. Rabbi Dalton and I will miss this first Shabbat morning returning to the sanctuary as we staff our 2024 Family Retreat at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires. We are excited to spend Shabbat with ten WJC families (60 or so people), even as we miss seeing those of you in shul. If you are not coming on the retreat, we look forward to seeing you in the sanctuary  next week.

One last, but important note. Earlier this week I sent a letter to the known Kohanim and Leviim of the congregation. It is about a proposed change in policy that will be discussed at the Spiritual Life Committee meeting on Sunday night. The note read:

Recently, the question arose of whether or not a woman can participate in the communal Kohanic blessing (dukhaning). It has been our policy to give the rights of a kohen or levi to the daughters of kohanim and levi’im with regard to the Torah blessings. Until now delivering the Kohanic blessing or participating in the hand washing ritual has been reserved for only men (sons of kohanim and levi’im). The suggested policy change is to now offer the invitation to participate in the ritual to daughters of kohanim and levi’im, as well. This would not effect the status of a woman’s children – in other words, the status of kohen or levi would continue to be passed to children only through the father’s lineage.

The general rationale being employed is the same one used to include women in the privilege of the kohen aliyah and levi aliyah, which has been the custom at WJC for decades. In other words, the rules governing taking the kohen or levi aliyah and those governing who can deliver that blessing are the same. Therefore, the reason for the distinction is unclear.

At the Spiritual Life Committee meeting on Monday night, September 9th at 7:45pm, the first agenda item is for the clergy to present perspectives on this with the intention of instituting the policy for this Yom Kippur. You are invited to attend this first part of the meeting to ask questions or make comments. If this timing does not work for you, please feel free to reach out to me directly through email to discuss the issue.

I mention it here because 1) This issue impacts the whole congregation and 2) We may not have all of the kohanim and leviim, especially daughters of kohanim and leviim, in our database. So, 1) if you have feedback on the change, please let me know before Monday evening and 2) please send along anyone you know whose name we should add to our list.

See you in shul (or at camp!),