Poetry in the Garden

Please join us on Wednesday evening, June 11, at 7 PM for Poetry in the Garden. 

You can come just to listen, or to take turns reading poems. 

 

Bring your favorite works by Jewish poets, your own original poems, or any other poems you would like to read. 

 

And we will also feature the poetry of the late Maya Angelou. 

We will meet in the garden next to the Adas Emuno religious school, weather permitting (Rabbi Schwartz advises that you may want to use some bug spray). 

In the event of inclement weather, we will meet in the religious school building. 

 Poetry in the Garden is free and open to the public. 

Lance Strate 
Doris White

Ordination of Our New Cantor

Sandy Horowitz will be joining us at Adas Emuno this summer as our new Cantor and Religious School Director, and several representatives of our congregation's Board of Trustees, along with Rabbi Schwartz, were in attendance for her official ordination as Cantor by the Academy of Jewish Religion last month. The ceremony was both beautiful and moving, and while we can't share the experience of being there, we can share a few pages from the program. Let's start with the cover:

Sandy's mentor, Cantor Robin Joseph, made a special presentation on her behalf, and here is the page from the program devoted to it:

And following that page was a description of Sandy's life and spiritual journey:

And the program also included messages of congratulation from family, friends, colleagues, and congregations. Here's ours:

And with that we'll just reiterate, Congratulations Cantor Horowitz, and we look forward to you joining us next month!

Looking Forward to Shavuot!

The Festival of Shavuot begins on the evening of Tuesday, June 3rd, and Congregation Adas Emuno will be joining together with Temple Emeth of Teaneck and Temple Sinai of Tenafly in a collaborative service hosted by Temple Sinai, at 10:30 AM on Wednesday, June 4th.

It is customary to celebrate Shavuot by eating dairy, so here are some tips on cooking up some blintzes:





And be sure to join us on Friday night, June 6th, as we celebrate Shavuot on Shabbat with this year's Confirmation class.

Wednesday the Rabbi Played Ping Pong

Some of you may recognize that the title of this post alludes to the mystery fiction series introduced by author Harry Kemelman in 1964, with the character of Rabbi David Small in the lead role as detective. If you are unfamiliar with his novels, here are the first seven, in order of publication:

But it is no mystery nor at all a fiction that on Wednesdays, rain or shine, our Rabbi Schwartz heads over to the Leonia Recreational Center as a member of the Leonia Table Tennis Club. And he was instrumental in getting the Jewish Standard to feature an article on Sol Epstein, head of the club, in an article in their May 2nd issue entitled Table Tennis Anyone? The article, written by Lois Goldrich, naturally enough emphasizes the Jewish connection to the sport, and begins with the following:

Ping pong is what you play in the basement. It’s table tennis when you bring it upstairs. That’s what you call it “when you’re serious,” says Sol Epstein of Englewood Cliffs, head of the Leonia Table Tennis Club.

Mr. Epstein figures that he’s probably among the top 15 players in the group, which has more than 100 members.

That’s pretty good for a man who’s about to turn 90.

“I’ve been playing since my bar mitzvah,” said Mr. Epstein, who grew up on Norfolk Street on New York’s Lower East Side.

“It was a Jewish neighborhood,” he said, noting that he honed his skills at the Jewish settlement house on Stanton Street, challenging not only other locals but players from other Jewish venues, such as the Educational Alliance and the Henry Street settlement house.

In those days, Mr. Epstein said, players lived in cold-water flats. But today, “table tennis is not a poor man’s game. You can pay up to $300 for a racket.”

The table tennis maven — who, among other victories, won a tournament at New York’s Seward Park High School, and when he was in the Army came in second at a tournament in Fort Knox, Kentucky — said he always carries his paddle, in case he finds an opportunity to play. (He recalled that such a random opportunity arose once in Budapest.)

It is clear from Mr. Epstein’s many stories that table tennis is no laughing matter.

“I once won a tournament, beating the top-seeded player,” he said. “Later I went into the restroom, and he was in there crying.”

It it also clear that both the nature of the game and the equipment it demands have changed over the years. A 1902 postcard in Mr. Epstein’s voluminous collection of ping-pong-related items shows a man and woman — he in tails, she gowned — playing the game at the Waldorf Astoria. Their paddles — similar to a vintage set Mr. Epstein owns — are covered over with sheepskin, and the balls they used are smaller than today’s.

According to Mr. Epstein, the balls were enlarged to make the sport is easier to follow on television.

Leonia’s is not the only table tennis club in Bergen County. Fair Lawn has had one for many years, and Mr. Epstein, who used to live there, won a trophy there in the 1960s. Some 25 years ago, he helped former Leonia athletic director and table tennis player Eli Krackower create the club in Leonia.

Now, the 12 tables at the Leonia Recreation Center host 75 to 80 men and women every Wednesday night, and 50 to 60 players on Saturday mornings. While the players’ ages range widely, no one is under 18. Not surprising, Mr. Epstein is the club’s oldest member. What is surprising is his vitality, trim build, and exuberant personality. This he attributes to playing twice a week for two hours — a practice that also burns off two pounds every Wednesday and Saturday.

The games played at the club are both athletic and competitive, Mr. Epstein said, although everyone has his or her own style of play. And while the group now has a waiting list, casual players who always thought they were “pretty good” at basement ping pong soon find out what it means to play a serious game.

The Leonia team is a lot like the United Nations, he said, noting that players hail from — among other places — Russia, China, Peru, South Korea, India, Japan, and the Philippines. One regular, Rey Domingo, has been U.S champion among table tennis players over 40.

Marty Reisman

Many of the players are Jewish, Mr. Epstein said, pointing out that some of the greatest players in the country have been Jews. He cited, for example, the late Marty Reisman, the 1958 and 1960 U.S. Men’s Singles champion and the 1997 U.S. hardbat champion. (Hardbat rackets do not use sponge rubber, so the style of play is different.)

Like Mr. Epstein, Mr. Reisman honed his skills on the Lower East Side. In addition, he became the oldest player to win an open national competition in a racket sport by winning the 1997 United States National Hardbat Championship when he was 67.

For Mr. Epstein’s 85th birthday, the Leonia club brought Mr. Reisman to play against him.

“I won one game, although I don’t know if he was just being nice,” Mr. Epstein said.

Mr. Epstein, who worked in men’s clothing for 31 years, has proved his mettle in other areas as well. He joined the Army when he was18, fighting as part of the 104th Infantry Division, “which had some kind of record for 195 days of continuous combat.”

Mr. Epstein has as many war stories as he has tales of table tennis games won and lost. For example, he said, after climbing into a bed in a German tenement — which, he noted, resembled the tenements he remembered from the Lower East Side — he caught German measles. Yes, he smiled, German measles in Germany. He also recalled the time he recoiled from a particular meal and advised his fellow soldiers not to eat it. As it happened, those who did came down with dysentery.

Still, most of his stories revolve around table tennis, and after his wife, Molly, the sport is the great passion of his life.

Sol Epstein, about to turn 90, never leaves home without his ping pong paddle.

The veteran player, whose prowess has been profiled on NBC’s “Today Show,” among other places, said he took up the game because “I had an overprotective Jewish mother. She said I should pick a sport where if you get hit by the ball, it shouldn’t hurt. So I picked table tennis. It’s the greatest thing in the world.

“I love the sport.”

At this point, the article turns to our own Rabbi Schwartz:

Barry Schwartz, rabbi of Congregation Adas Emuno in Leonia — whom Epstein describes as an “excellent” player — says he has been playing avidly for 30 years.

Rabbi Schwartz joked that his regular Wednesday night games “help keep me sane.

“They enable me and others to venture out from our circle and the little world we inhabit to interact with people from all walks of life, and from all over the world,” he said.

Rabbi Schwartz said that when he goes to the recreation center, he particularly enjoys chatting with other players. He has become friendly not only with Mr. Epstein but with a number of Russian players.

“You start off with a simple thing in common, but while you’re waiting around for games to begin, you start to chat,” he said. “I’ve had interesting discussions with a Jordanian player who works with the U.N., with another Muslim player from Pakistan, and one from Syria. It shows that people have common interests and it doesn’t matter that I’m a rabbi and he’s a Muslim diplomat. We enjoy playing together and discovering what we have in common.”

Rabbi Schwartz said that another player, a Chinese woman, has a daughter who attends Duke University. When he told her that he too had gone to Duke, they started to talk.

“She works in the food service business and is employed by a kosher caterer,” he said. “That was an interesting connection.

“She was surprised that I was talking to her and would play with her. The people she works with are strictly Orthodox. She said I don’t look like a rabbi. Her conception of a rabbi was clearly changed.”

Rabbi Schwartz said that ping pong — one of the most popular sports in the world in terms of active players — was introduced as an Olympic sport about 20 years ago.

“Everywhere I’ve lived I’ve sought out a club,” he said. “When I moved to Leonia, I found that the Leonia Recreation Center had a wonderful club that’s been there for decades. I play every Wednesday night.”

Noting that the club has a sizeable contingent of Jews, he pointed out that in Europe before the war, “many European champs were Jews, some of the greatest players of all time. [The sport] was very much identified with Jews in Europe.”

His fellow players in Leonia belonged to clubs in their own countries, he added, noting that in Europe, “there are table tennis clubs in every city and major town.” He likened its popularity to that of bowling in the United States, when the sport was in its heyday. “All over the world it’s taken much more seriously as an organized league sport. We’re playing catch-up, just like with soccer.

“The beauty of table tennis is that you can continue to play at a high level at an advanced age,” he continued. And you can find pick-up games all over the world.

“My wife Debby and I were in Nepal,” he said. “Debby had a conference in India and we decided to go to Mt. Everest. We had landed in a little village outside Katmandu way up in the mountains. We were passing through the village to get to the trail.”

Suddenly, he said, he heard a familiar sound. Turning the corner, he looked up.

“On the side of the mountain, teenagers were playing ping pong. I told the guide we had to stop.

“I unloaded my backpack and played with the Nepalese teens for 20 minutes at an altitude of 14,000 feet. It’s the highest I ever played tennis.

“They started laughing. They thought I was just some tourist.” As might be expected, the rabbi won the game.

While Rabbi Schwartz does not have an official table tennis ranking — he never has played in a sanctioned tournament because they take place on Shabbat — he believes his approximate ranking would be about 1,700.

“Really advanced players start at 2,000, and world champions range from 2,600 to 2,800,” he said. “I’m a respectable player, but not top tier. The average person has a ranking of 900 to 1,000.” He said that at the Leonia club, there are only a handful of players ranked over 2,000.

He noted that on any given table tennis night in Leonia the tables are filled, with five to 10 people waiting.

“Northern New Jersey is a hotbed for table tennis, one of the most active regions in the country,” he said. “Westfield has a longstanding club, there’s a group in Fair Lawn, and one in an Asian church in Palisades Park. That’s nice to know.”

He said that although some people in the Leonia club register for tournaments, “the majority come just for fun and recreation.”

And that brings us to the end of the article. 




So, the next time someone asks you if ping pong is kosher, you'll know that the answer is yes!

The Rabbi’s Top 10 Zionists

On May 8th, following the celebration of Yom HaAtzma'ut, Israel's Independence Day on May 6th, Rabbi Schwartz devoted his  online column for the Times of Israel to the ten most important individuals in the history of Zionism.  Here now is The Rabbi’s Top 10 Zionists:

Having just celebrated Israel’s 66th birthday this week, here is my list of the greatest Zionists. among so many deserving:

  1. Theodore Herzl—Visionary and a genius for political advocacy and organizing.

  2. Eliezer Ben Yehudah—Reviver of Hebrew as a spoken language.

  3. Chaim Weitzmann—Finest Zionist diplomat and first president of Israel.

  4. David Ben Gurion—The Israeli George Washington.

  5. Yigael Yadin—Soldier, scholar, archeologist: Masada, Dead Sea Scrolls.

  6. Golda Meir—Prodigious fundraiser and diplomat before Prime Minister.

  7. Moshe Dayan—Swashbuckling general and epitome of the new Israeli.

  8. Menachem Begin—Right-wing Prime Minster who made peace with Egypt.

  9. Abba Eban—Urbane diplomat and voice of Israel to the world.

10. Yitzhak Rabin—Soldier-turned-Prime Minster who shook Arafat’s hand.

Previous posts in this series include:
  
The Rabbi’s Top Ten: The Best of Everything Jewish

The Rabbi’s Top 10 Jewish Foods

The Rabbi’s Top 10 Jewish Modern Events 

The Rabbi's Top Ten Israeli History Events 

From Amusing to Amazing

In case you missed it in the Jewish Standard, published in the May 2nd issue, here is a news item by editor Joanne Palmer on the recently published book by Adas Emuno President Lance Strate. The article is entitled From Amusing to Amazing, and you can click on the link to read it on the Jewish Standard's website, along with seeing the photos and any comments that were posted there (and if you are so moved, add your own). Or read it here.

Here's how the article begins:

Was Neil Postman right nearly 30 years ago, when he said that television had trivialized nearly everything about our lives? That our ability to apply reason to make sense of the world had begun to atrophy in the overwhelmingly visual, no-delayed-gratification-necessary world we saw by its blue-flickering light?

And if he was right, what have the technological advances that make TV seem so very old-school done to us since then?

One of Dr. Postman’s disciples, Dr. Lance Strate of Palisades Park, has undertaken the challenge of examining both Dr. Postman’s life and worldview and the accuracy of his predictions.

In his new book, “Amazing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman’s Brave New World Revisited,” Dr. Strate, who was Dr. Postman’s student at NYU and now is a professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University in the Bronx, continues his teacher’s analysis. His book follows up on Dr. Postman’s best-known work, “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business,” which first was published in 1985. (Dr. Postman died in 2003.)

We will interrupt at this point to remind you that you can always order books and other material from Amazon through our site, and a percentage will be donated to our temple. You can find the general order box on the left, but here are some links for the two books being discussed:

And now to continue with the rest of the article:

Dr. Strate, who is president of his synagogue, Congregation Adas Emuno in Leonia, thinks that both Dr. Postman and his arguments are profoundly influenced by the Jewish world in which he grew up.

Dr. Postman, who was born in 1931 to parents who grew up on the Lower East Side, spent his own formative years in Flatbush. “One of the things that we kind of have a leg up on when we grow up in a Jewish neighborhood in New York is that it is multicultural and multilingual,” Dr. Strate said. “When you go to Hebrew school, you learn a different alphabet. When you go to shul, you are exposed to a different kind of book—a scroll. You really learn to be sensitive to the differences between different media, different modes of communication.”

That sensitivity, Dr. Strate continued, is at the heart of a discipline called media ecology, which Dr. Postman pioneered and he now champions.

Dr. Strate knows about such sensitivities firsthand. The son of Holocaust survivors, he is from Kew Gardens in Queens, another heavily Jewish neighborhood.

“The idea is that different media or forms of communication influence the way we feel, we perceive the world, and we behave, and on a larger scale the ways in which we organize ourselves as a society and as a culture.

“Something very profound that Dr. Postman pointed out is that the second commandment doesn’t just say there should be images of God. It says no images.”

That, Dr. Strate said, is because “with words, we can think much more abstractly.” Images are emotional and evocative, but “you can’t make an argument with images.

“Reasoning by analogy is very much at the heart of Jewish learning, and it involves a balance between the spoken and the written word,” he continued. “You can look at ancient Israel as the first great culture to come out of the alphabet. The Semitic alphabet first was introduced in around 1850 B.C.E.

“We are not clear on the history, of course, but within a few centuries we have the Exodus and the law. You can’t have written or codified law without writing. Judaism was the first religion to be based on a sacred written text, the first to venerate the book.

“Monotheism itself—the idea of one God—requires an abstract kind of thinking. God is a God of words—d’varim—not of images, and images are what we see in other religions all the time.”

Once the Semitic inheritance of abstract thought met with Greek philosophy—which itself needed the Semitic alphabet it got through the Israelites’ cousins, the Phoenicians—“that trajectory takes us through Western civilization,” Dr. Strate said. “It was amplified by the printing press, which brought on the modern world.

“The American republic was very much printing, particularly on pamphlets and broadsides. It was the first nation ever to be argued into existence. And one of the places that the Founding Fathers turned to for inspiration was the Torah.”

So what does this have to do with his argument about television, the Internet, and beyond?

“Postman, like many New York Jews, came down on the liberal side of things,” Dr. Strate said. “He was a defender of the potential of American democracy, and he came to the conclusion that television was completely undermining it.

“Building on that, and looking at the expansion of television through cable and satellite, and with the addition of the Internet—we know that there are great benefits that these technologies bring, but the problem is that all we tend to talk about are those benefits.

“Nobody talks at all about what they are costing us, and it is foolish not to look at the price tag. That’s what Postman wanted us to do—to ask, ‘Well, what is all this going to cost?’”

In his own book, Dr. Strate looks at four areas that Dr. Postman tackled first—with the new technology, what happens to journalism? To politics? To religion? And to education? Those four pillars of our culture all were built on words. “All have been damaged by the electronic media,” he said.

Religion, for example, often is broadcast, but religious services need a sense of the sacred, and that sense is hard to come by when you watch it in the profane space of your own home. “When you have religion on television, it is the preacher who becomes the focal point, not God,” Dr. Strate said. “And most religious services look awful on television because they are designed for real spaces, so the most successful kinds of televised religious services use entertainment formats. And when you do that, you lose all sense of what religion is about, and it becomes entertainment.”

Similarly, “more television channels have not given us a more serious form of television. Instead, they have given us more outlets for entertainment.

“They used to argue that we couldn’t get news in depth because there was only 20 minutes for it each night. Today, we have 24-hour news channels—and they still don’t do extended stories. Instead, they concentrate on people yelling at each other, or on sensational stories, and there is a lot of repetition. So the format really hasn’t changed dramatically.

“Politics has not improved much with the electronic media, even with blogs, YouTube videos, and news aggregators. All they have given us is more verbiage.

“And there is a lot of attention paid now to online education, to massive open online courses, but I think the best way to understand what makes for a good education is to look at what rich people do.” People who can afford just about anything “opt for very low teacher/student ratios and real face-to-face contact,” he said.

He explained the subtitle of his book by talking about the difference between the two dystopias imagined by two British writers more or less midway through the last century—George Orwell’s “1984” in 1949 and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” in 1931.

One more interruption, in case you would like to get a hold of copies of either of these novels, here are the Amazon links:

“Orwell was not as prescient as Huxley,” Dr. Strate said. “Orwell’s future was totalitarian. Huxley’s was about complete control by technology. We have allowed technology to be a kind of governing force. It is about doing things as efficiently as possible, so other human values get pushed away as a result.

“The reason for the decadence in ‘Brave New World’ is to keep everyone happy and functioning, so they will continue to be productive, and society will continue to roll on.

“That’s one side of the coin now. The other is that we are drowning in information. We don’t know how to say no to any new technology.” Not all new products catch on, he added, but the technologies behind them do.

“At the end, the question that the book raises is whether there is a future for us,” Dr. Strate said. “Is there a way for us to take control of things?”

Judaism had that idea long ago. Jews have known since the beginning that once a week, it is necessary to take a break. Some secular Jews have adopted the idea of “technology Shabbat” from more observant ones; it is a time for them to disconnect from all their devices and interact with the world directly.

Despite the many virtues of our electronics, that occasional and regular disconnection is necessary if we are to continue to advance, Dr. Strate suggests.

If you are interested in another point of view, here is a link to a book review published in an online Christian journal.

from the pages of Kadima, the newsletter of Congregation Adas Emuno:

From the desk of …                    

 Rabbi Barry Schwartz

    

A Tribute to Our Teens

I know teens can be tough. I raised three of them myself. Adolescents can be adversarial. They can be insolent, insubordinate, and impudent (among other adjectives I can think of—all good SAT words).

But you’ve got to love ‘em as well. You can see them maturing (slowly) before your eyes. You can see the glimmer (occasionally) of thoughtful, caring human beings. You can’t help but appreciate their energy (when they are not sleeping late) and their passion (when they are not distracted). It’s even possible to have a good conversation with them (when they are not on their cell phones).

In all seriousness I want to pay tribute to our teens, because they enrich the life of our congregation in ways you may not appreciate.

Members of our Confirmation Class make a three year commitment past bar/bat mitzvah, and study with me on a bi-weekly basis. Our madrichim (Religious School teaching assistants) provide invaluable support to our teaching staff. They are quite popular with our students and serve as great role models. Our talented readers and singers enhance our celebration of the High Holidays and Purim. Behind the scenes teens help with the maintenance of our house and grounds (and there sure was a lot of snow to shovel this year).

I’m going to name names in the list of activities below, all accomplished by our teens in the past year. It’s quite a list. Let’s just say it’s a collective thank-you to all our fine young people. We add special thanks to our graduating seniors as they move on to college—we will miss you.

Confirmation Class:

Rianna Rosenberg, Ethan Irby, Gabi Capote, Max Samoilovich, Oliver Raciatti, Julian Pecht, Drew Noorily, Steven Chartoff, Sasha Terentiev, Tate Irby, Ava Fisher, Skylar Oliver

 
Religious School Teaching Assistants:

Louis Fischer, Natalie Hayot, Sandy Pecht, Rianna Rosenberg, Steven Chartoff, Julian Pecht, Oliver Raciatti

 
High Holiday Torah and Haftarah Readers:

Rianna Rosenberg, Natalie Hayot, Sandy Pecht, Julian Pecht, Oliver Raciatti, Alex Bien, Emma Schuller.

 
Shofar (and video operation): 

Elliot Fisher

 
Purim Spiel:
 

Skylar Oliver, Steven Chartoff, Ulla Goldstein

 
Snow Removal:
 

David Johannesson, Max Capote.

 
Garden: 

Michael Cohen