Archive for April, 2009

Library Dedication Held

April 27, 2009

On Sunday, April 26, Temple B’nai Israel dedicated its beautiful new Library. The Library was given to the Temple to honor two leaders, one past and one present: Maurice Stein, for many years President and Lay Rabbi, and Marc Perler, current Religious Leader.

Jack Cristil provided a moving and personal tribute to Maury Stein and his importance in the founding and growth of our Temple. Jack fittingly described Maury as a “giant” (to which others likely thought:  it takes one to know one).

Len Shane successfully took on the task of trying to summarize the enormous contribution and significance of Marc Perler to the congregation.

Don Kartiganer provided the playing, voice and musical spirit that have long served as soundtrack for our most important services and occasions.

Here is how the Dedication program described the honorees:

The new Temple B’nai Israel Library is dedicated to two people who have been essential to this congregation’s educational and spiritual life.

Their love of learning and teaching, their Jewish literacy and knowledge, and their commitment to the congregation and community truly allowed us to reach this milestone. This Library serves in small measure as our thanks and appreciation for all they have done.

Maurice Stein, of blessed memory, arrived in Tupelo and joined Temple B’nai Israel in 1942. He was a man of great Jewish learning and scholarship, and soon took on a leadership role in the congregation. He served as President from 1955 to 1967, and for many years served as Lay Rabbi for the congregation.

Marc Perler is the Religious Leader of Temple B’nai Israel. Over many years he has officiated not only at services and celebrations, but also at the life cycle events of our congregants and their families. His wealth of Jewish knowledge has made him a natural teacher and spokesman for our congregation.

Thanks to those who helped organized the event, to those who attended and participated, and to those who sent their e-mail and video messages of support to honor Maury and Marc.

Here is an excerpt from remarks on behalf of the Library Committee:

Above our beautiful ark hangs our ner tamid, our eternal light.

And now, at the opposite end of our Temple, we have another ner tamid, our beautiful new Library. We want to make sure that it is a light of learning that will never go out.

It would be disingenuous to say that we do not worry about the long-term prospects for congregations in Mississippi, not just our own. We know that congregations across the state have closed their doors. We should not ever let that happen here, and having a well-used working Library can be a part of that…

We hope to develop a Library that will serve as a learning resource not only for the Jewish community, but for individuals, students, scholars, churches and schools across the region.

That idea seems to resonate in the community. The day after the article about the Library exhibit appeared in the Daily Journal, I received an e-mail from a non-Jewish member of our community. This person was interested in learning more about Judaism, and even in learning Hebrew, and wondered whether the Library would be a place for that.

The Library can be a place for that. Our needs to help get there are many. We thank all of you who have already provided books. We continue to ask for books, whether donated or loaned, to fill our shelves to overflowing. We hope to put in place a computer library system, a small one, but one capable of growing. We hope to have media capabilities, so that, for example, we can run Hebrew-learning software.

We are Am Hasefer, People of the Book, which I take to also mean People of the Books. It is said that we should pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything depended on us. We know we have work to do. As for prayer, we read that the shehecheyanu was introduced to encourage Jews to offer thanks for new and unusual experiences. Well, I think this milestone in the history of our congregation counts as one of those:

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, Who has kept us in life, sustained us, and brought us to this moment.

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Torah Portion Tazria-M’tzora

April 24, 2009

Torah Portion Tazria-M’tzora
Leviticus 12:1-15:33

This portion is a detailed discussion of afflictions and bodily functions that constitute impurity, along with detailed instructions on their purification.

Reading this portion is, in a couple of ways, like watching a medical drama on television.

First, it contains a level of extremely graphic detail about diseases that may be better left to professionals who must deal with those kind of things; in this case, rabbis or doctors.

Second, it involves a medical mystery.

Actually, it’s a scholarly mystery about a medical matter. The portion includes references to a number of afflictions, including one identified as tzara’at. Leading commentators and scholars spend much of their analysis of these chapters trying figure out exactly what tzara’at really is.

It is widely agreed that despite being some form of skin disease, tzara’at is not leprosy. One thing that confounds interpreters is that tzara’at also afflicts fabrics and the walls of houses (leading to the conclusion that it may refer to mold or mildew).

Whatever tzara’at may be, an overall point of the portion is this: As in earlier chapters of Leviticus, there is the pure and the impure, the clean and the unclean, the sacred and the profane. The impure is the way of decay and death; the pure is the way of God and life. A bright line is drawn. All these years after Leviticus, modernity may have moved that line for some Jews regarding various items in this portion. But the existence of two spaces—the sacred and the profane—and how we choose to live in them are matters as current today as they were in the time of Moses.

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Shalom TV

April 24, 2009

If you live in Tupelo, you have access to one of the most innovative Jewish learning resources in America. In fact, 30 million viewers have access to this same channel: Shalom TV:

Shalom TV  is a mainstream Jewish cable television network covering the panorama of Jewish life. More than 30 million homes nationwide now have access to the free Jewish television service.

Programs on Shalom TV reflect and address the diversity and pluralism of the Jewish experience. The service does not represent any specific movement or organization in the Jewish community.

Shalom TV is directed to every Jewish person with a sense of Jewish identity, and for members of the Jewish community seeking their roots.

Televised offerings are also for anyone with a passion for learning and a desire to gain a greater understanding of Jewish tradition, Jewish life, and the land of Israel.

The founder of Shalom TV, Rabbi Mark S. Golub, was just named to the Newsweek list of the 50 Hottest Rabbis in America (that’s “hot” as in “influential”). Rabbi Golub is more than just a pioneering media maven; on his excellent series From the Aleph Bet, he teaches beginning Hebrew patiently and effectively.

There is a catch. While Shalom TV is available on Comcast and many other cable systems, it is not included on basic cable, and on Comcast is accessible only by those with On Demand (TV and Entertainment). Still, in places with big Jewish communities, small Jewish communities (like here in Tupelo), or no Jewish community at all, it is wondrous to find this television treasure.

Special note: Even if you don’t have access to Shalom TV, their Website includes many valuable videos and resources from the network.

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The New Library Grows

April 23, 2009

Books are arriving daily for the new Library, and we are always looking for more to fill our shelves. Please contact us at tbitupelo@gmail.com if you have books or questions.

One of the things we hear from those who are providing books from their own collections is that parting with books is like choosing which of their children to let go. We understand completely. For those considering helping us fill the Library shelves, please know that you may either donate books outright, or you may simply loan your books to the Library.

Continuing with books as children, we love all of our book acquisitions and all of our book donors equally. Just a few of the latest that deserve mention:

Union Haggadah (1908) – Passover is over, but haggadot continue to arrive. In our Century of Haggadot exhibit , the previous oldest haggadah was The Seder Service for the First Two Nights of Passover with Illustrations (1912), from Marc and Polly Perler. Now we have the Union Haggadah of 1908, from George and Alice Copen. This really gives us a hundred years of haggadot.

Beyond Hitler’s Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews by Michael Bar-Zohar and The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria’s Jews Survived the Holocaust by Tzvetan Todorov – This is the week of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) on April 20. The survival of Bulgaria’s Jews is one of the least-discussed stories of the Holocaust, and may be unknown to most of our congregants and to many others. It is a story of how goodness and decency can survive at a national level, in the face of the worst circumstances. Many thanks to the donor of these books for helping raise our awareness.

The Goldring Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life has donated a number of books, including some terrific volumes on Southern Jewish experience. These include Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History edited by Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg, and The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South by Eli N. Evans. Many thanks to the wonderful folks at ISJL for recognizing our new and growing Library as part of their mission of “promoting a Jewish cultural presence” in Mississippi and throughout the South.

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Torah Portion Shemini

April 17, 2009

Torah Portion Shemini
Leviticus 9:1-11:47

The text of each week’s Torah portion is very full and very long. With such a wealth of material, it is natural to focus on the biggest and most obvious subject. This week, that focus would be on the section of dietary laws found at Leviticus Chapter 11. Or so you might think.

This portion does include the laws of kashrut, which Jewish people have followed and wrestled with ever since. Of the various complex rules and reasoning, Frank H. Gorman, Jr. of Bethany College points out: “No single theory will account for all the rulings found in this chapter.” (HarperCollins Bible Commentary)

One small point: Beyond setting out the rules, the Torah specifically prohibits four animals by name: camel, rock badger, hare and pig. These are specified because a clever advocate might figure out a way to argue these animals to the dinner table. (Note for those who do not keep kosher: While there’s no problem finding recipes for the other three, including camel, I was unable to find a single rock badger recipe anywhere.)

But, all that being said, the dietary laws are not the focus today.

Instead, there is this passage in the middle of the portion:

Now Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it: and they offered before the LORD alien fire, which He had not enjoined upon them. And fire came forth from the LORD and consumed them; thus they died at the instance of the LORD. (Leviticus 10:1-2, JPS Translation)

“Alien fire” is elsewhere translated as “strange fire” or “unholy fire,” that is, fire not from the divine flame from the altar. The point is the same: this was not the exact kind of fire and not the exact kind of offering that God had authorized. Zero tolerance. The punishment for breaking the rules was swift and fitting: Nadab and Abihu were instantly killed, and having broken the rules by fire would die by fire.

One commentary draws this conclusion: “Crimes of trespass upon the sacred are automatically fatal.” (Jewish Study Bible). Gunther Plautt comments: “The priestly ideal is one of conformity, not of innovation.” (The Torah: A Modern Commentary)

The dietary laws are important and challenging, but the issue of conformity versus innovation is universal, in matters sacred and secular. Do you follow the letter, do you follow the spirit, or do you break away and try something new? And if you choose to go your own way, what is the price to pay?

There is not a single movement—religious, political, social, cultural—that has not faced that moment. For that matter, there isn’t a family that hasn’t known a member who broke away. Even in this portion, it is not some strangers who challenge God; it is Israel’s first family, the son’s of Aaron, the nephews of Moses.

This portion contains a dire warning to those who might consider messing around with orthodoxy: Conform or die. And it is true that there are innovations that are no more than novelties and gimmicks, motivated mostly by ego and arrogance. Yet over the centuries, Jewish thinkers and leaders have dared to innovate, have dared to offer a strange fire, even as they paid a price. For many of us, some of those innovations have made all the difference.

Bob Schwartz

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The People of the Comic Book: The Jewish Heroes Behind the Superheroes

April 12, 2009

At this week’s seder, I mentioned that there was a connection between Passover and Superman, expecting maybe someone to know what I was talking about. Instead, there were blank stares. That’s what happens, I suppose, when you are a fanatic in a world of normal people.

In 2003, the theme for our son Jonathan’s bar mitzvah was The People of the Comic Book: The Jewish Heroes Behind the Superheroes. In posters, party favors, and especially in a small booklet I created, we told our guests how the superhero comic book world was built by Jewish businessmen and creators, and especially about how one of the world’s most iconic characters was created out of Jewish history and culture.

Following is the text of that booklet. It barely scratches the surface of this fascinating story, about which there are hundreds of books and articles, but for those who don’t know the story, it is a start.

Bob

The People of the Comic Book: The Jewish Heroes Behind the Superheroes

Along with jazz, the comic book is one of America’s few indigenous art forms, but unlike jazz it’s a specifically Jewish contribution to American culture…

Comic books are to art what Yiddish is to language, a vulgar tongue that incorporates other languages into its mix, a vital and expressive language that talks with its hands.

—Art Spiegelman, artist and writer, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book Maus: A Survivor’s Tale

It is said that God created man because God loves stories. Comic books are the great storytelling medium of the 20th Century, and from the beginning it was Jewish publishers, editors, writers and artists who helped create the comics we know and love.

In the 1930s and 1940s, comic books were a disreputable and low-class business. So it was natural that ambitious and creative young men would flock to the industry and turn it into a successful mass market art. Many of these men were Jewish, immigrants or sons of immigrants, and they brought with them unique cultural sensibilities and traditions.

Only a Jew would think of calling himself Clark Kent.

—cartoonist Jules Feiffer

When two Cleveland teenagers, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, created Superman in the 1930s, they were telling a story that was thousands of years old: a refugee baby sent far away in an interplanetary basket made by his parents, a stranger in a strange land who had to hide his identity and origins, who wanted only to use his powers for good. Even his Kryptonian name—Kal-El—is Hebrew for “Voice of God.”

These and other  traditional Jewish characters and themes appear again and again—sometimes literally, sometimes as subtext—and they continue in comic books today. With acclaimed contemporary Jewish creators such as Art Spiegelman (Maus), Neil Gaiman (Sandman), Harvey Pekar (American Splendor), and Ben Katchor (The Jew of New York), the storytelling connection between Jews and comic books remains unbroken.

Featured Creators:

Stan Lee (Stanley Lieber)
Head of Marvel Comics, who along with Jack Kirby (Jacob Kurtzberg) created Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, and many more legendary characters.

Bob Kane (Bob Kahn)
Creator of Batman

Dedicated to Will Eisner

Will Eisner is the heart and mind of American comics.

—Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics

Will Eisner is considered by many the greatest figure in the history of comics. From his creation of The Spirit in the 1940s, he went on to pioneer the appreciation of comics as a visual medium (through his courses and his groundbreaking book Comics & Sequential Art). The major award for achievement in comic books is named for him.

In 1978 Will Eisner broke the boundaries by creating a book length comic book called A Contract with God—stories of growing up poor and Jewish in the Bronx tenements. To interest book publishers, he gave this work the fancy name “graphic novel.” The revolutionary new form of comic book he had invented changed the industry and the art. Will Eisner is in his 80s and still at work in his studio in Tamarac, Florida.

[Note: Will Eisner was invited but could not attend the bar mitzvah. He did kindly send a treasured gift, greetings  for Jonathan in the form of a drawing of The Spirit. Will Eisner died on January 3, 2005, at the age of 87.]

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Temple B’nai Israel and the White House Seder

April 10, 2009

What is the connection between Temple B’nai Israel and last night’s White House seder?

In a recent post, we highlighted a new exhibit from our Library collection, A Century of Haggadot. We made special mention of our collection of different versions of the Maxwell House Coffee Haggadah, dating from 1937 to 2006. Here is how Maxwell House explains this Passover phenomenon:

The haggadah has been offered by Maxwell House continuously since the early 1930s…Maxwell House coffee has been recognized as a friend of the Jewish community since 1923, the year the well-known brand became certified as Kosher for Passover – the first coffee to seek this important designation.

Then, about a decade later, working with Joseph Jacobs Advertising and an Orthodox rabbi to ensure accuracy, Maxwell House printed their first haggadah. More than 70 years later, Maxwell House is still partnering with Joseph Jacobs to deliver the longest running sales promotion in advertising history. To this day, over 50 million haggadahs have been printed, making it the most widely used haggadah in the world.

No sooner did we mention this then we learned that at the historic Passover event, the Obama family and their guests used the Maxwell House Haggadah at their White House seder.

Is this related to our Temple B’nai Israel Library and site? Okay, probably not. As Maxwell House points out, it is the most widely used haggadah in the world (at least Maxwell House says so), so the odds are in their favor. Still, Jews everywhere are kvelling about the First Seder, Maxwell House is probably kvelling about being the First Haggadah, so as proud exhibitors of the haggadah Obama used, we can’t be blamed for kvelling a little too.

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Community Seder

April 9, 2009

The Temple B’nai Israel Community Seder was a sold-out success. People from all over the community joined members of the congregation to retell the Passover story, sing the songs of the holiday, and of course eat wonderful food.

Thanks to:

Jane Litke for organizing the seder and for making the charoset.

Leslie Mart for promoting the seder.

Al and Marilyn Cohen for making sure we had  all the necessary Passover food.

Kathleen Kennedy and Tracy Wolfe for the chicken soup and matzo balls.

Skylar Wolfe for his excellent Four Questions.

Marc Perler, our Religious Leader, for guiding us masterfully through the seder, making it both a spiritual and educational experience, and making sure that even the most reluctant participants took part in the readings.

Don Kartiganer, our Cantor, for his voice, his guitar, and his leading us all in song.

Park Heights Restaurant for providing beautiful accommodations, terrific food, and the most friendly and efficient service.

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Passover: A Century of Haggadot

April 8, 2009

As Temple B’nai Israel prepares for the upcoming dedication of our new Library, we have had the opportunity to dig deep into our archives and to ask our congregants to do the same. One of the things we discovered was a treasure trove of haggadot, covering a period of almost a century.

This diverse collection is a reminder of how many ways there are to celebrate Passover, and for some is also a nostalgic reminder of seders past.

Of special note is the oldest haggadah in the collection, The Seder Service for the First Two Nights of Passover. Also of note are the many Maxwell House Coffee haggadot, which a number of seder participants grew up using. One of these Maxwell House haggadot contains what may be the strangest line of ad copy in any Passover promotion: “As long as there are four questions and children to ask them, Maxwell House Coffee will be good to the last drop.”

An article about the Library collection of haggadot appeared in the Daily Journal.

Here are the haggadot on exhibit for Passover at Temple B’nai Israel, which can be seen by arrangement:

The Seder Service for the First Two Nights of Passover, with Illustrations
Revised and edited by Dr. Herman Klopper
Music composed, selected and arranged by Rev. Henry A. Russotto
1912

Union Haggadah
Central Conference of American Rabbis
1923

Passover Entertainments: A Handbook
Union of American Hebrew Congregations
1924

Hagadah
Maxwell House Coffee
1937, 1949

The New Haggadah
Mordecai Kaplan
1941

Haggadah of Passover
Barton’s Candy
1944, 1995

The Haggadah of Passover
General Israel Orphans’ Home for Girls
1949, 1960

The Passover Haggadah
For Jewish Personnel in the Armed Forces
1952

Hagadah for Passover
Streit Matzo Company
1956

Passover Haggadah (Deluxe Edition)
Maxwell House Coffee
1965, 1987, 1995, 2006

Haggadah for the American Family
Martin Berkowitz
1966

The Passover Haggadah
Rabbi Morris Silverman
1975

The Passover Haggadah
Nahum Glatzer
1979

The Passover Haggadah
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin
1983

The Concise Family Seder
Rabbi Alfred J. Kolatch
1987

The Passover Haggadah
Rabbi Menachem Hacohen
1987

A Passover Haggadah
Elie Wiesel
1993

A Passover Haggadah
Central Conference of American Rabbis
1994

The Family Haggadah
ArtScroll Mesorah Series
1994

The Women’s Haggadah
E.M. Broner
1994

Gates of Freedom
Chaim Stern
1999

The New American Haggadah
Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation
1999

The ArtScroll Children’s Haggadah
Shmuel Blitz
2000

The Open Door
Central Conference of American Rabbis
2002

The Promise Haggadah
Nanci J. Freedberg
2007

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