The Festival of Northern Lights

This marvelous video, Hanukkah in Alaska, with well known actress Molly Ephraim reading from the children's book by Barbara Brown, illustrated by Stacey Schuett, is an absolute delight! Wonderful for children, but a pleasure for everyone, of all ages, we promise you will never look at Hanukkah, or Alaska, the same way again!





Hanukkah in Leonia may not be quite as exotic, or exciting, but we do hope you are having a happy holiday nevertheless, and don't forget about our nightly five-minute outdoor menorah lighting, tonight and every night of Hanukkah, at 7 PM sharp! No moose sightings so far, but you never know...

A Hanukkah Direction

And now for another kind of parody, here's the Manhattan Jewish Experience doing a mash-up entitled, A One Direction Hanukkah:






So, once again, Happy Hanukkah from Congregation Adas Emuno, and join us for our nightly outdoor candle lighting at 7 PM!

Hello Hanukkah!

As we continue to say Hello! to Hanukkah, here's a parody of the hit Adele song, entitled Shalom (warning, this really does make fun of the original, while also continuing the latke theme of yesterday's post):





And here are the lyrics by Ari Blau:

Shalom, it’s me
I was wondering for Chanukah, would like to meet
To go over everything
The miracle of Chanukah and Judah Macabee
Shalom, can you hear me?
I’m in Synagogue dreaming about when you’d play with me
Light the menorah and eat
I remember you and I would made delicious latke treats
When you see Christmas amongst us
It is Chanukah time
Shalom from the other side
I must’ve spun a thousand times
To tell you I’m sorry for beating you at this game
But I promise to go easy when we play dreidel again
Shalom from the Kosher aisle
We used to shop, we used to smile
We’d get onions, eggs and potatoes with starch
Matzo meal, veggie oil, and applesauce on the top
We need more…we need more applesauce
Shalom, how are you?
It’s the festival of lights, we need to celebrate together
The Jews, beat King Antiochus
And they shooed the Greeks right out of town like nothing ever happened.
And the biggest miracle
Oil lasted 8 nights
Shalom from the other side (other side)
I must’ve spun a thousand times (thousand times)
To tell you I’m sorry for beating you at this game
But I promise to go easy when we play dreidel again
Shalom from the Kosher aisle (Kosher aisle)
Now we shop, And now we smile (now we smile)
We get onions, eggs and potatoes with starch
Matzo meal, veggie oil, and applesauce on the top
We need more
We need more, ooooohhh
We need more, ooooohhh
We need more applesauce, ooooohhh
We need more, I love this applesauce
We need more, We need moreeeee
Shalom from the other side
I must’ve spun a thousand times
To tell you I’m sorry for beating you at this game
But I promise to go easy when we play dreidel again
Shalom from the Kosher aisle
Now we shop, And now we smile
We get onions, eggs and potatoes with starch
Matzo meal, veggie oil, and apple sauce on the top
We need more…
Mmmm, latkes and applesauce
Happy Chanukah, everyone…
SHALOM!

And we echo that sentiment, Shalom you all on this happy season of Hanukkah, and Shalom to all, all over the world! And don't forget our outdoor candle lighting at 7:00 PM!

The Festival of Latkes!

What would Hanukkah be without its special culinary delights? By which, we mean... LATKES!!! And sure, there are all kinds of different recipes out there for making them, but how about this musical Latke Recipe? 





This new song by The Maccabeats sure is a great way to enhance our appetite for celebrating Hanukkah! And a reminder once again, that our outdoor menorah lighting will be held at 7:00 PM sharp tonight, and you are invited to join us for five minutes of blessings, songs, and stories.

Happy Hanukkah!

Our Hanukkah holiday begins tonight at sundown. If you're in the neighborhood, come join us as we light our outdoor menorah promptly at 7:00 PM, tonight and for the seven nights that follow. we spend five minutes saying the blessing the blessings, and maybe a song or two, and a story. Join us... but don't be late.

And to get in the mood, here's a music video by Jewish a cappella group Shir Soul, entitled Lift Yourself Up: 





And with that, we wish you a very happy first night of Hanukkah!

Our Garden of Zen

Here are some photos from the latest addition to our Adas Emuno Garden, a Zen Garden! Here are Michael Cohen and Rabbi Schwartz working on the garden, pictures courtesy of Michael Fishbein:

And here is the finished garden, pictures courtesy of Rabbi Schwartz:

 

 

The perfect setting for a moment of Zen, prayer, and meditation, or simply a bit of quiet relaxation!

 

The Jewish Trinity

Another op-ed by Adas Emuno president Lance Strate was published in the Jewish Standard on October 30th, inspired by and referencing the High Holy Day services at Adas Emuno. The title of the piece is, The Jewish Trinity, and here it is:

This past Rosh Hashanah, as I was sitting in the sanctuary at Congregation Adas Emuno, listening to the Torah portion known as the Akedah or, the binding of Isaac, my thoughts turned to the Avot prayer, and the phrase God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob.

It occurred to me that the patriarchs constitute a trinity, but we never call them that. We shy away from that word, trinity, no doubt because it is so strongly associated with Christian Trinitarianism, which posits one God taking the form of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Christians do not have a monopoly on divine trinities, however. The Hindu religion also includes a doctrine of three-in-one, in which the divine Godhead is composed of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer. And then there is the Triple Goddess, a New Age notion based on ancient polytheistic beliefs, in which the three manifestations of the Goddess are referred to as the Virgin or Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone or Wise Woman, corresponding to three main stages of life.

Apart from religion, we encounter countless other trinities in many different realms, from Sigmund Freud’s id, ego, and superego to the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth; from Alexander Dumas’ Three Musketeers to the three little pigs of fairytale fame; from Julius Caesar’s veni, vidi, vici, to the French Revolution’s liberté, egalité, fraternité; from Abraham Lincoln’s government of the people, by the people, for the people, to Kellogg’s Rice Krispies’ Snap! Crackle! Pop! Lists of three are psychologically satisfying, conveying a sense of completion. They are especially quotable and easy to remember: blood, sweat, and tears; sex, lies, and videotape; and stop, look and listen.

The Jewish trinity, especially as expressed as God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, is certainly memorable in being a list of three, and even more so through the poetic technique of rhythmic repetition. Also, from an anthropological perspective, our trinity uses the motif of family to represent relationships between peoples, so that the Children of Israel share a degree of kinship with the other descendants of Abraham via Ishmael, and the other descendants of Isaac via Esau.

Of course, there is another trinity, of Noah, who, like Abraham, hears God’s voice and follows his commands, along with Shem, one of the three sons of Noah and the ancestor of the Semitic peoples, and Arpachshad, the father of the founders of the city of Ur and the ancestor of Abraham. But we don’t invoke that list of three in our prayers.

From a theological perspective, the parallel structure of God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob is interpreted to mean that each of the patriarchs had to form his own individual relationship with God. So, from a purely subjective standpoint, the God of Abraham is not the same God as the God of Isaac, and both are distinct again from the God of Jacob (referring to each person’s own personal conception or perception of the Divine).

So what are the differences? Abraham, who hears God’s voice commanding him to leave home and go forth to a foreign land, is a model of obedience. That is never more true than when he demonstrates his willingness to follow God’s command and sacrifice his son Isaac. A religion that follows Abraham alone would be one of submission. Submission alone, obedience to a higher authority, may include license to kill, without question, in God’s name. That is why a religion of Abraham is incomplete.

Isaac also submits to God’s will, but does so by playing the part of the martyr. The religion of Isaac therefore is one of sacrifice as well as submission. Certainly, Abraham also demonstrates a willingness to sacrifice by offering up his own son, but there is a world of difference between being the one who wields the knife and the one who is the sacrificial lamb.

Sacrifice alone threatens to privilege death over life, and rituals of sacrifice suggest that the appetite for such forms of submission may never be satiated or appeased. That is why a religion of Isaac also is incomplete.

Jacob does not reject submission and sacrifice, but adds the all-important element of struggle. His religion is one that is not only about a voice that commands, but also about a vision that inspires, of a stairway to heaven that suggests the possibility of reaching for a higher state of being. His story is one of laboring for love—he worked for 14 years to earn the right to marry Rachel. And as the patriarch who wrestles with God, he is renamed Israel, becoming the eponymous ancestor of the Israelites, the Jewish people.

Jacob adds the vital third element of struggle, not blind obedience, but questioning, grappling, reasoning, a raising of awareness, of consciousness, and that is what makes the religion of Jacob complete.

The Jewish trinity is an altogether human one, consisting of three different and distinct individuals, not in any way consubstantial, not a three-in-one, but rather three patriarchs who simply are related to one another by direct line of descent. And yet they point to what might be considered a divine trinity in Judaism, what might be thought of as three faces or aspects of God, but more appropriately as three relationships to God: submission to God in the religion of Abraham, sacrifice for God in the religion of Isaac, and struggle with God in the religion of Jacob.

Perhaps, then, there is a message of caution against the varieties of religious experience that include submission and/or sacrifice alone? Without the third person of Jacob, without the struggle, there is no Israel, and Judaism as a religion would not be complete.