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

A Message From Our President

Dr. Lance Strate

Exclusively Inclusive

Adas Emuno is a small congregation, as we all know, and that means that membership in our shul is something of an exclusive club. Of course, the final word on exclusivity was uttered by Groucho Marx, who famously said, "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member." This harkens back to a time when many private clubs had a policy of deliberately excluding Jews and other minorities from membership.

Marx's mocking aside, over the past century and a half, our congregation has never aspired to be one of those big, impersonal temples with many hundreds or even thousands of members. We embraced the approach so well expressed by the British economist, E. F. Schumacher, small is beautiful. I hasten to add that we do have room to grow, and we wouldn't mind a few more members.

In keeping things on a human scale, we don't force congregants to fit into predetermined molds. We remain flexible, able to tailor our expressions of faith, learning, and action to the needs and desires of our members. Ours is a shul that is personal, custom-made for our members.

In this sense, we are also an inclusive congregation, open to all who want to join together with us in the practice of our Reform Jewish faith. We are open to all who seek to worship, learn, and work together to heal our world.

We are exclusively inclusive, or maybe it's inclusively exclusive? Either way, if you think there are any ways we can do better, that we can improve in being open and intimate, warm and welcoming, inclusive and exclusive, please let us know. Let's make sure this is a club that we all want to belong to, that we all are proud to be members of, that even Groucho would be happy to join.

A Spiel in September

As we prepare for our autumal holiday season, we can take a moment to look back at this past spring's Purim spiel, performed on March 11, 2017.

The title of this year's Purim spiel is The Festival of Lots, and it is an original work. Any other congregations or Jewish groups out there who are interested in using it for their next Purim celebration, you can contact us via email: adasemuno at gmail.com.

The video recording is available on YouTube and right here on our congregational blog. Be warned that this is not a professionally produced video, just raw footage, with concomitant technical difficulties. And this is strictly an amateur performance, but we hope you'll agree it's one that has a lot of heart and soul.





Our last two Purims spiels can also be screened here on our blog, via the following posts from days gone by: A Purim Spiel Before Hanukkah (for last year's performance of Shalom Shushan), and A Summer Purim Spiel and A Winter Purim Spiel (for the two performances of The Schnook of Esther).  

The scripts of these two are available online for all to read via the following link: Shalom Shushan and The Schnook of Esther. Congregations and other groups can read it first, and are on the honor system regarding donations to our social action fund if they decide to use it. The script for The Festival of Lots will be made available online in the near future.

Hanukkah Here and There!

Where would you spend the eight-day festival of Hanukkah, if you had to choose? Tel Aviv or Jerusalem? Paris, the "city of lights"?  At home, here in New Jersey, or across the Hudson in New York City?  Well, here are Tom Lehrer's thoughts on the matter:





Where you spend Hanukkah may determine what your dreydel says.  If you're outside Israel, your dreydel should have the four letters:
 nun נ
gimel ג
hei ה
shin ש
which stand for Nes Gadol Hayah Sham, a Great Miracle Happened There!

But in Israel, the fourth letter is a
pei פ
which stands for Nes Gadol Hayah Po, a Great Miracle Happened Here!  

Which brings us to this jazzy video featuring Israeli rapper Sagol 59's "Take Five"-inspired Hanukkah melody:





And so, wherever you may be right now, we wish you a very happy Hanukkah!

A Purim Spiel Before Hanukkah

With hopes of warming your heart during these cold days of winter, and looking forward to springtime, we are pleased to share with you this recording of this year's Purim spiel performance, held on March 23, 2016. 

The title of this year's Purim spiel is Shalom Shushan, and it is an original work. Any other congregations or Jewish groups out there who are interested in using it for their next Purim celebration, you can contact us via email: adasemuno at gmail.com.

The script is available online for all to read via the following link: Shalom Shushan. Last year's script is also available online: The Schnook of Esther. Congregations and other groups can read it first, and are on the honor system regarding donations to our social action fund if they decide to use it.

As for the video recording, it is available on YouTube, and right here on the official blog of Congregation Adas Emuno:





This is raw footage, not a professional production, and there are some technical difficulties, and admittedly the players ought not to quit their day jobs. But it is a lot of fun to watch, and it's clear that it was a lot of fun to put on. And in case you missed them, or want to watch them again, here are two performances of last year's Purim spiel: A Summer Purim Spiel and A Winter Purim Spiel.   

Purim Purim Spiel

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

Shalom Shushan 

Adas Emuno Purim Spiel 

Wednesday Evening, March 23 

What Does the Fox Say? Everything is Awesome in the new Purim Spiel written by our own temple president, Lance Strate! The musical director is Elka Oliver, and the cast is, well, a group of enthusiastic members (young and not so young) who are Born to Run and will be Dancing in the Streets (or the aisles, anyway!) to deliver a great show! We’re not Losing Our Religion and We Didn’t Light the Fire but we hope you’ll join us as we light up the room in celebration with song parodies, silly antics and a super story to boot (as in These Boots are Made for Walking!). So join us on March 23 at 6:15 for Pizza in the Social Hall, followed by a Purim Service, the reading of the Megillah, and Shalom Shushan! Hamantaschen and other treats will be served after the spiel. (P.S. A few songs from Shalom Shushan will be performed on Sunday morning, March 20 for our Religious School students and anyone else who wants to come!) 

Purim Time!

America's Zayde

Adas Emuno President Lance Strate's most recent op-ed for the Jewish Standard came out on February 12th, under the title of Zayde for President, with the subtitle of, "Grumpy, cool, fun grandpa speaks to millennials," and here it is for your reading pleasure:

When Larry David hosted Saturday Night Live on February 6, Bernie Sanders made a surprise appearance during a skit about a sinking ship — an apt metaphor, some might say, for the state of the union.

With David playing the part of a rich man arguing that his wealth earned him a spot in the lifeboat along with the women and children, Sanders was given the opportunity to deliver a few lines about the one percent “getting preferential treatment,” and the “need to unite and work together.” A brief exchange regarding democratic socialism followed, leading David to ask, “Who are you?” Sanders replied, “I am Bernie Sanderswitzky — but we’re gonna change it when we get to America, so it doesn’t sound quite so Jewish.” “Yeah, that’ll trick ’em,” David shot back sarcastically.

And certainly there is no disguising the fact that Sanders is Jewish, although this was one of the rare moments in media coverage of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination that any mention has been made of his ethnic and religious identity. And that arguably is odd, given how much emphasis was placed on the fact that Barack Obama became the first African-American president, and on Hillary Clinton potentially becoming the first woman to be president.

Maybe it seems that by contrast with African-Americans and women, Sanders becoming the first Jewish president would be less of a monumental breakthrough for the nation. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that some Americans believe that we already have a non-Christian president—that Obama is a secret Muslim. Or maybe it’s a matter of longstanding Jewish reticence, as reflected in the name change mentioned in the skit. Sanders is a traditional Anglo-Saxon name; interestingly enough, it originated in the same impulse that was prevalent among the Jews of antiquity, to name their children after Alexander the Great.

Of course, Sanders’ self-identification as a “democratic socialist” often is referenced by the news media, as it was on the Saturday Night Live skit, but would that make him the first socialist president of the United States if he is elected? Not according to Republican rhetoric, given that most Democrats have been accused of promoting socialist policies. More significantly, not according to Sanders himself, who positions himself in the tradition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and policies, as extended by John F. Kennedy and, significantly, by Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society initiatives. Those presidents avoided the label of socialist, however, given American opposition, from the Russian Revolution on, to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, even during the brief period we fought together to defeat Nazi Germany.

To get a sense of the brief moment in our history when socialism first represented a serious political movement, we might turn to another Sanders, Edward Sanders. Perhaps best known as one of the founders of the 1960s rock band The Fugs, Ed Sanders also has distinguished himself as an activist, author, and award-winning poet. And his extended poem, called Yiddish-Speaking Socialists of the Lower East Side, stands as a tribute to the likes of Meyer London, Morris Hillquit, Scott Nearing, Eugene Debs, and Emma Goldman:

To make a New World
inside the New World
at Century’s turn
the Yiddish speaking socialists
of the Lower East Side.

As the poem explains, they had, “a passion for Justice that never fades away,” although they failed in their efforts to translate their ideals into a successful political revolution. Ed Sanders, who is just two years older than Bernie, was an icon and leader of the counterculture of the ’60s and early ’70s. Although he was not Jewish, he took inspiration from the social justice activism of these early 20th century pioneers.

Movements like these seem to run in cycles, so it may well be that the socialism that arose at the turn of the 20th century and returned in the form of the counterculture over half a century ago is due to make a comeback now. Without a doubt, the counterculture movement also was a youth movement, and not surprisingly, Bernie Sanders has enjoyed widespread support among the youngest of our eligible voters, the generation referred to as Millennials. Indeed, this has been a frequently invoked theme in news coverage of the campaign, with the pundits often seeming at a loss as to why twenty-somethings would support a 74-year-old candidate.

The expectation that young people automatically should favor the youngest candidate perhaps has its roots in the fact that baby boomers venerated John F. Kennedy, who was the youngest person ever elected president, but this overlooks the fact that no one from that generation was old enough to vote in the 1960 election. As much as JFK’s appearance of youth and vigor seemed to resonate with the ascendancy of the boomers, we have no way of knowing how that generation would have regarded him had his career and life not been cut short by an assassin’s bullet. We do know that his successor, LBJ, was vilified for his escalation of the Vietnam War, and that happened despite his progressive domestic initiatives.

In the same sense that political movements may be cyclical in nature, so too are filial relationships. That’s why we often speak of traits and qualities skipping a generation. Millennial support for Sanders therefore should come as no surprise, as he easily fits into the role of America’s grandpa, or more accurately, America’s zayde. Often he comes across as a grumpy grandpa, as Amber Phillips of the Washington Post suggested last July. But Emma Roller of the New York Times labeled him “your cool socialist grandpa” in December, and just a few weeks ago, People profiled him as a “fun grandpa,” according to his own grandchildren.

Jeb Bush, who had been struggling to gain the slightest bit of traction, recently had his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, venture out into the New Hampshire snow to help him in his primary campaign. The news media has made frequent reference to her enormous popularity, referring to her as “America’s grandmother.” And there is no question that she fits the image, and did so even back when her husband was president. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has included the fact that she recently became a grandmother as part of her campaign rhetoric, but she has not been able to come across as particularly grandmotherly, drawing criticism this past December for comparing herself to an abuela (Latina grandmother).

Grumpy, cool, and fun are not mutually exclusive traits, and there is something about the image of older Jewish men that plays well in contemporary American culture, and especially on television. It is indeed a mixture of idealism and humor, impatience with injustice, and infinite patience with the young. Whether this is a wining formula for the Democratic primaries remains to be seen, but the source of his appeal to Millennials, as a socialist zayde, should not be a mystery.

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

From the desk of …                    

 Rabbi Barry Schwartz

    

The Gift Of Laughter

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

—Victor Borge

I write this column the same week as the passing of the incomparable comedic actor Robin Williams. While we are so saddened by the circumstances of his death, we can only say “thank you” for the life of the man who made us laugh so much. Back in 1992, Williams was the hysterical voice of the genie in Aladdin. My kids were young then, and they must have watched that movie a hundred times, laughing every time. He was that good. In the words of the Italian writer Rafael Sabatini, “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”

Why is it that we laugh? The English social critic William Hazlitt wrote that, “Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.”

Mark Twain opined that, “The human race has only one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.”

Our human propensity to laugh uniquely empowers us to face life’s adversities. When we laugh we know that not all hope is lost and that joy still exists. When we laugh we know that we are not taking ourselves so seriously. When we laugh we are creating the space for bonding with others.

One of my colleagues, Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, wrote that Williams' incredible gift, like that of all the most gifted artists, arose not just from his prodigious talent but from the fact that he was a mensch “and a mensch only becomes a mensch because he/she struggles.” We admire what Williams accomplished all the more knowing what he battled. Would that we be inspired by his example… bringing joy to others even when our challenges are great. As we approach this Jewish New Year, let’s ask ourselves: Did I smile enough during the past year? Did I laugh enough? Did I do enough to bring smiles and the great gift of laughter to others?

When Robin Williams died I dimly recalled a poem I had quoted in a sermon by the poet Danny Siegel. I dug out the sermon (from twenty years ago) and share it with you now, not only in William’s memory, but in wishing you a new year of much laughter:

And the Lord created man

And man begot laughter

And laughter begot joy

And joy begot a multitude of children

Not the least of whom is love.