Our kehillah has developed a wonderful minhag over the years: for us, Simkhat Torah is a time to celebrate what is truly central to our learning
congregation – the Torah! Along with welcoming Shabbat, we’ll be dancing seven hakafot with our Torah scroll, and then opening it up completely
(ever seen a completely unrolled Torah scroll? it goes around the room much more than once.) We’ll read the end of the Torah and follow that
immediately with the beginning again. We’ll take breaks between hakafot to have a drink or a bite of something to keep our dancing strength up.
The music will be fantastic, with more instruments and more voices this year.
Please bring wine, beer, or a nosh to share.
Dancing shoes are required; prepare to blow off some High Holy Day Steam.
Everyone is welcome.
Archive for September, 2010
Build a Sukkah!
Monday, September 20th, 2010
Building a Sukkah is an ancient ritual practice that puts us in touch with the way our ancestors lived in the days when we worked hard to harvest our fields, and since we didn’t have time to come all the way home at night, we made a little temporary structure with half a roof for ourselves until the harvest was over.
What makes a Sukkah kosher?
1. has to have 4 sides and a roof,
2. has to be big enough to fit in,
3, has to be free-standing, and
4. you can’t steal the material for it (or your lulav, either!)
The whole family can help build!
Want to build a Sukkah yourself?
Join the Shir Tikvah members who are building a sukkah in their own back yard – and let us know if we can send you other Shir Tikvah members who’d love to fulfill the mitzvah of building, or at least being in, a Sukkah for the Harvest Festival of Sukkot, and don’t have a place for their own.
All you need is some two-by-fours, a hammer, and a sense of humor! (There are also sukkah building kits on the web.) We start building right after Yom Kippur in order to be ready by Sukkot, four days later. So call your friends, have a sukkah-building party, and on erev Sukkot (weather permitting!) you too can fulfill the mitzvah of LEY-SHEV BASUKKAH, “dwelling in the Sukkah” for at least a meal, with family and friends.
Nicely decorated, but not exactly kosher. Can you tell why?
A sukkah with space for many guests
Ushpizin
There is a custom of inviting ushpizin-symbolic guests–each day to join us in the sukkah. These honorary guests are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and David. One is invited each day. This custom was popularized by the kabbalists of Safed, who composed the short formula that is recited. For the kabbalists, each guest represented one of the sefirot-the spheres that make up the universe-in the kabbalistic system. By inviting them, they were adding a different mystical significance to each day.
Recently, some people have invited the matriarchs and other important women of the Bible to also be ushpizin in the sukkah. One list includes Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca, Leah, Miriam, Abigail, and Esther.
Sephardim set aside an ornate chair for the honored guest and recite, ‘This is the chair of the ushpizin.’
There is another connection between the ushpizin and Sukkot. All of the ushpizin were wanderers or exiles: Abraham left his father’s house to go to Israel; all three patriarchs wandered in the land of Canaan, dealing with the rulers from a position of disadvantage; Jacob fled to Laban; Joseph was exiled from his family; Moses fled Egypt for Midian and later, together with Aaron, led the people for forty years wandering in the desert; and David fled from Saul. The theme of wandering and homelessness symbolized by the temporariness of the sukkah is reflected in the lives of the ushpizin. (Exerpt from Michael Strassfeld’s The Jewish Holidays)
Yom Kippur 5771
Monday, September 13th, 2010
You may have noticed the goat theme of Yom Kippur – the morning’s Torah reading, the special guest star of our Family Tefilah….
for more about the significance of the goat on the holiest day of the Jewish year, some background into its religious role in antiquity for the Israelites:
Scapegoating: Scapegoating
Scapegoating: JOFA article (pdf)
A message from Rabbi Ariel:
Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish year, the most religious of all Jewish holidays. Its practices echo those of the period of the second Temple (20 centuries ago) in which the high priest on behalf of the whole community would engage in rituals of purification and confession prior to entering the holiest place in the Temple, and upon exiting would pray: May this year be a year of blessing, a year of rain and no rain, a year of dew, a year of crops bearing sweet harvest, a year of repentance for our sins, a year in which you’ll bless the fruit of our bodies and the fruit of our land, a year in which you’ll bless our bread and our water by giving peace amongst us and a blessing in the deeds of our hands. Yom Kippur is the last of the ten Days of Awe which began with Rosh HaShanah.
On Yom Kippur the fasting, the haunting melodies and the poignant words of the Makhzor offer us the opportunity to enter the feeling of awe which is an important part of the spiritual experience of this day. The words of the prayers and the themes of this holy day invite an awareness of our mortality. Together with others, we confront the human condition and explore our vulnerability, faith and hope.
The words are very old but many of the themes are contemporary. At the end of Yom Kippur we begin the year renewed. We have looked at our lives and viewed our actions, relationships and directions. Some people hasten to begin the building of the Sukkah at this moment, preparing for Sukkot, the joyous holiday that is around the corner, and so the cycle continues.
Here is a list of services for Yom Kippur:
September 17
8 pm Kol Nidre**
September 18
9:30 am Yom Kippur Morning Tefilah
12:30 pm Family Tefilah
2 pm Rabbi’s Discussion
3:30 pm Afternoon Services, including Yizkor and Ne’ilah
**Evening services are limited to members and their guests only, with regrets, due to limited space in the sanctuary.
All services will be held at the Bridgeport Building, 621 NE 76th Street. Please see the calendar for complete details of each service.
A reservation is required for all members and guests to attend any service.
Members: contact the office with your number of attendees for each service.
If you have not already made reservations, we are at capacity for both morning and family services. We invite you to attend our Rabbi’s discussion at 2 pm and the afternoon tefilot beginning at 3.30 pm. A dairy potluck break-fast meal will be held at the conclusion of services.
Three other congregations hold services that are open to the public.
P’nai Or (pnaiorpdx.org) holds services at the Unity Church, at the corner of SE 45th and Stark.
Havurah Shalom (havurahshalom.org) will be holding services at the Tiffany Center.
Rabbi Michael Paley and Cantor Vitells are holding services at the Mittleman Jewish Community Center. Kol Nidre begins at 7 pm; morning services begin at 9.30 am; RSVP to vitells@comcast.net
Traditions
Eating a large lavish meal on the eve (erev) of Yom Kippur; fasting from sundown to sundown; wearing white (which stands for purity as well as burial cloths) and refraining from wearing leather (because of its source). Wearing one’s tallit for the only time all year at night on Kol Nidre (erev Yom Kippur). Lighting a Yahrzeit candle in memory of family members who have passed away. Hearing the book of Jonah chanted. Staying in shul all day long, praying, talking, learning. Making havdalah and breaking the fast with those who’ve observed the holy day all day long with you is a very special experience.
There are five services conducted on Yom Kippur: Kol Nidre, “all vows”, the evening service named after its opening prayer; Shakharit, the “morning” service; Minkhah, the afternoon service named for the ancient afternoon sacrificial ritual; Musaf, the “additional” service; Yizkor, “Remember”, the memorial service, and Ne’ilah, the concluding service which ends at sundown with a final blast of the Shofar.
At Shir Tikvah we will also hold a discussion with the Rabbi on Yom Kippur afternoon; we’ll consider the theme of Memory and how it relates to our lives as Jews personally, in relationship, and the current events of the world around us. Responding to the world around us by examining our own lives leads to a special invitation for us in Portland, as we strive to fulfill the mitzvah to “take care of the earth, to till it and tend it”:
Take the Eco-Challenge at:
What Will Your Eco-Challenge Be?
g’mar hatimah tovah, May you be sealed with a good seal in the Book of Life and Blessing,
Rabbi Ariel
