Around my block, in my walks and bike rides, I see signs of the approaching “Holiday season”. Decorations are going up for Halloween, some stores have a “Red and Green” motif going on display and Costco is offering those super huge Pumpkin pies. But for me as rabbi, as we head into the first weekend of October, it will be the observance of Shmini Atzeret and Shimchat Torah. A time where we celebrate the completion of our Torah reading cycle and begin again. It brings to a close the Jewish Holiday season that in my mind began back in mid-summer with Tisha B’Av, leading to S’lichot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and finally Shimchat Torah.
It was a real joy for me to observe and celebrate the holidays with our community. I was delighted by the attendance and our gathering together to worship and enjoy fellowship. When I get asked about CAH, I often share that for me, a bonafide highlight is our dining as a community. On Rosh Hashanah sitting together and enjoying lunch in group as a community and breaking the fast together on Yom Kippur are delights for me. (It must be said, part of that enjoyment is Judy baking for us to enjoy and my having the job of performing ‘quality control audits’ on the baking. It’s a tough job but part of what I signed up for). There are two other highlights I like to share with you, that I truly enjoyed. On Yom Kippur afternoon, we very much missed Fran Lande and her teaching. Fortunately, Rabbi Light stepped up and offered a teaching from Mishnah and Talmud tractate “Yona”, that section of rabbinic text that discusses Yom Kippur. It gave Rabbi Light and me a chance to share text and our debate about it. He and I approached the text differently and I’m delighted we got to share that debate with the congregation. The other program I enjoyed and hope others enjoyed as me, was joining with Temple Beth Torah and Rabbi Lisa Hochberg-Miller for Sukkot. So lovely being in the sukkah there, sharing worship and words of Torah. We sing in the classic Hebrew song ‘henai mah tov, shevit achim…”… How good it is we sit together as siblings… We had the opportunity to live that in the Sukkah, bringing together both our communities in worship, learning and sharing the tradition of our faith and our people. Being the rabbinic nerd/geek that I am, having a chance to read from one of their Torah scrolls that was made in Italy in the 1700s, was extra cool.
My thanks to Brenda Rich for her leadership, to Neal Abramson and his committee for all their efforts to ensure the holidays progressed smoothly. A shout out of thanks to Mark Rich for all the audio and live streaming work and support. To all those who took part in services, from reading torah, to ark openings and more, I’m grateful to you for your taking part. Thanks to Fran Lande for your insights and encouragements and to Rabbi Stuart Light for sharing the bima with me and being an excellent partner.
My friends, thanks for the year that pasted. Looking so forward to sharing the year to come as a community. May we live the upcoming year together in such a way that we can say at the end of it, “the world is just a bit better, just a bit brighter, because I contributed to it”…
Looking forward to the year together at CAH!
Rabbi Ron