Tu B’Shevat, the 15th of Shevat on the Jewish calendar – celebrated this year on Wednesday, February 8, 2012 – is the day that marks the beginning of a “New Year for Trees.” This is the season in which the earliest-blooming trees in the Land of Israel emerge from their winter sleep and begin a new fruit-bearing cycle.

We mark the day of Tu B’Shevat by eating fruit, particularly from the kinds that are singled out by the Torah in its praise of the bounty of the Holy Land: grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates. On this day we remember that “Man is a tree of the field” (Deuteronomy 20:19) and reflect on the lessons we can derive from our botanical analogue.

One of the ways Tu B’Shevat is celebrated today is with a special seder. Developed in the 16th century by Kabbalists, or mystics, they used the Passover seder as their model.

At the Tu B’Shevat seder, along with the appropriate prayers, the Kabbalists would consume various types of food and drink, each of which would be given a symbolic meaning. Tu B’Shevat seders are still held today and have become quite popular, especially in synagogues, religious schools, community centers and retirement homes.

In Israel, Tu B’Shevat signals the coming of spring, as flowers begin to appear and the earth reawakens. Throughout Israel’s modern history, school children have celebrated the holiday with ceremonies for the planting of trees. Tu B’Shevat is also a day of national pride, when Israelis recall how the early pioneers worked the land and made the desert bloom.

by Beth Frank-Backman

Each Elul, the last month of the Jewish year, we prepare for the next. Traditionally, we prepare by a process known as teshuva, or in English repentance. But what exactly are we repenting of?

Most of us haven’t murdered anyone nor embezzled our employers nor slandered someone so badly that they wrongly lost both job and community. For most, our sins are very human everyday things: being too tired to care, losing our temper in a place where patience was needed, procrastinating or avoiding where action was needed. We repeatedly fall short of our most perfect ideals, but the reasons are usually understandable and forgivable, even by those we hurt. These are the kinds of things even the best people do from time to time. If our relationships are stable and strong, most likely we apologized months ago, talked it through and moved on.

When we view our lives in this light, it is hard to connect to the idea of spending a whole month contemplating repentance. Nor is it healthy. Self-forgiveness and letting go is necessary for our sanity and also for our ability to love others and be patient with their faults.

Yet everyone is supposed to be thinking about repentance during Rosh HaShanna, not just those with sins worthy of newspaper headlines.

So how do we connect? A hint might be in the symbols and words Judaism uses to jump start this process of “repentance”. On Rosh Hashanna, also known as Yom HaDin or “The day of Judgement”, we bring in the holiday with honey and apple. We drizzle honey on our bread. We listen to the triumphant sound of the Shofar. On the day of judgement, we are reminded of the sweetest things in life, of courage and hope and boldness. Some also celebrate a Rosh HaShanna seder. The seder is dominated by symbols of fertility and growth. Finally there are the prayers during Elul. If we pray daily in the traditional way, then each day we will say Psalm 27, which begins with these words “The LORD is my light and salvation. Whom shall I fear? … Though a host should camp against me, my heart shall not fear.”.

Strangely, the dominant theme of Elul and Rosh HaShanna is hope, not blame or guilt. Hope plays such an important role because hope helps us rethink teshuva. Teshuva isn’t about how we failed, but rather about what we could be. Hope is the foundation of teshuva. Teshuva means return and return is not possible without a destination.

We can only understand the true meaning of our shortcomings if we allow ourselves to hope for more than we are now. We can only plan a path to change if we believe that more is possible. We will walk the path to our highest hopes with unparalleled daring when we believe that something more than our own best efforts is possible – that God in God’s own self will be our light and will meet us along the road to wholeness and salvation.

Tzahal (the IDF) gave their approval to give the siddurim to soldiers attending BTI services in Tel Aviv. Imagine, a progressive Friday evening service and 3-4,000 IDF soldiers. We plan to give each soldier the siddur they use to take home. Click here to contribute… to the Soldiers Siddur project.

With more than 50 years of liberal Judaism in Israel, one of the biggest challenges was and is always how to influence and impact the Israeli large society. The Orthodox delegitimation of the Reform and Conservative Movements in Israel succeeded in blocking Liberal Jewish movements from the heart and mainstream Israeli society.

For the past few years, something is changing.  Many Reform and Conservative synagogues are blooming, and new and exciting unaffiliated indigenous Israeli liberal Jewish communities are emerging, attracting thousands of secular and traditional Israelis. One of these communities which became the flagship of the Jewish Israeli renaissance for the past few years is Beit Tefilah Israeli in Tel Aviv, which became famous for their Summer Kabbalat Shabbat at the Tel Aviv harbor, gathering 300-600 people every Friday night. (Click here to see a 2 min. video of the service.)

The homegrown nature of BTI enabled them to enter in to the core of the Israeli society, and today they are responsible for bringing Jewish liberal Shabbat services to the IDF! This is no less than revolutionary. Between 12-15 times a year, IDF officers courses and divisions are brought to Tel Aviv to experience a Tel Aviv Shabbat service, led by BTI spiritual leaders and musicians, with a liberal prayerbook.

The impact of this project is incalculable. Between 3000- 4000 IDF officers, who are the future leadership of Israel in any area, are exposed to a liberal way to celebrate Judaism. We feel that is our duty to use this powerful opportunity to give them a BTI Siddur as a present, for future use. We received the approval of the IDF Educational Office, to give this liberal Jewish-Israeli siddur which combines traditional prayers with new ones, Hebrew poetry, and spiritual Israeli songs.

For making this revolution happen, we need to raise $15,000 for printing the Siddurim, so we can give them as a present. This is a real opportunity to change things in the core of the Israeli Society, IDF officers.

KBY annouces its latest CD, Nishmat Shabbat, The Soul of Shabbat. 

The project is a joint effort by KBY, Beit Knesset Moreshet Yisrael and Ahuva Batz.  The selections for the CD are prayers and psalms sung during Shabbat morning services at Moreshet Yisrael, Jerusalem’s flagship Conservative synagogue. The music is warm, spiritual and uplifting.   Experience the warmth of the music, recall Israel and Jerusalem, and perhaps remember a Shabbat service in Jerusalem.

Ahuva Batz’ s passion for Talmud, Torah and Tefilla (prayer) has blossomed into her work as a teacher and ritual leader.  She teaches cantillation and B’nai Mitzvah lessons, leads prayers and chants megillot and is a prayer leader at Moreshet Yisrael.  Her music blends enchanting world-Jewish melodies with Israeli soul.  Ahuva was born in Israel.

Moreshet Yisrael was founded in 1972 in order to serve as the spiritual center for Conservative Jews in Israel and from around the world.  Moreshet Yisrael is an eqalitarian congregation, affliated with the Masorti-Conservative Movement in Israel.

Click here to visit the Nishmat Shabbat (The Soul of Shabbat) album page 

This past year KBY commissioned and completed the writing of a Torah Scroll based upon a gift from a donor.  KBY granted the scroll to the  the Conservative Congregation in Zichron Ya’akov last Simhat Torah.  This of course was as close as we may come to the “giving of the Torah”, clearly a highlight of the year. 

The Torah Scroll was delivered with a hand full of letter incomplete.  A ceremony was held to complete the writing of the scroll and a festive procession, through the streets of Zichron Ya’akov, to deliver it to the congregation. 

 

The final letters were added to the scroll in the pictures below (Click on image for a larger view):

Note closely the image of the scroll.  The letters toward the bottom are not as clear as those at the top.  Several of the letters are incomplete in this picture.  They were completed at a ceremony marking the completion of the scroll.  Friends, family and congregants completed individual letters until the scroll was finished.  They scroll was paraded through the streets of Zichron Ya’akov until it founds its new home at Kehillat v’Ahavta. 

KBY is grateful to have participated in this project and is appreciative of our donors, David and Michael Fruchtman who along with the scroll contributed an Aron Kodesh, Rimonim (silver ornamentation), and scroll covers.

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On May 14, 1948, on the day in which the British Mandate over a Palestine expired, the Jewish People’s Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum, and approved the following proclamation, declaring the establishment of the State of Israel. The new state was recognized that night at 11:00 AM Israel time by the United States and three days later by the USSR.
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ERETZ-ISRAEL (the Land of Israel) was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses. Pioneers, ma’pilim (immigrants coming to Eretz-Israel in defiance of restrictive legislation) and defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving community controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country’s inhabitants, and aspiring towards independent nationhood.

In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country.

This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home.

The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people — the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe — was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the community of nations.

Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.

In the Second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed its full share to the struggle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations against the forces of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and its war effort, gained the right to be reckoned among the peoples who founded the United Nations.

On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.

This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.

ACCORDINGLY WE, MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE’S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL.

WE DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15th May, 1948), until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948, the People’s Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State, and its executive organ, the People’s Administration, shall be the Provisional Government of the Jewish State, to be called “Israel”.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and representatives of the United Nations in implementing the resolution of the General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947, and will take steps to bring about the economic union of the whole of Eretz-Israel.

WE APPEAL to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building-up of its State and to receive the State of Israel into the comity of nations.

WE APPEAL — in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months — to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

WE EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.

WE APPEAL to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream — the redemption of Israel.

PLACING OUR TRUST IN THE ALMIGHTY, WE AFFIX OUR SIGNATURES TO THIS PROCLAMATION AT THIS SESSION OF THE PROVISIONAL COUNCIL OF STATE, ON THE SOIL OF THE HOMELAND, IN THE CITY OF TEL-AVIV, ON THIS SABBATH EVE, THE 5TH DAY OF IYAR, 5708 (14TH MAY,1948).

David Ben-Gurion Rabbi Kalman Kahana Aharon Zisling Yitzchak Ben Zvi Saadia Kobashi Daniel Auster Rachel Cohen David Zvi Pinkas Mordekhai Bentov Moshe Kolodny Eliyahu Berligne Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Levin Eliezer Kaplan Fritz Bernstein Abraham Katznelson Rabbi Wolf Gold Meir David Loewenstein Felix Rosenblueth Meir Grabovsky

David Remez Yitzchak Gruenbaum Zvi Luria Berl Repetur Dr. Abraham Granovsky Golda Myerson Mordekhai Shattner Nachum Nir Ben Zion Sternberg Eliyahu Dobkin Zvi Segal Bekhor Shitreet Meir Wilner-Kovner Rabbi Yehuda Leib Hacohen Fishman Moshe Shapira Zerach Wahrhaftig Moshe Shertok Herzl Vardi

Other items of interest:

     1.  Receive a free copy of the KBY Jewish Calendar
     2.  A beautiful poem, “What is a Congregation?”

What is a Congregation?

A congregation is a harbor into which an anchor is cast
At a moment of inevitable silence
Before or after a storm.

A congregation is a seashell
Where one can hide
When the soul sinks down into the depths of the ocean.

A congregation is a song, a prayer, a dream
Where the spirit can sail forth, heavenward bound.

A congregation is a voice that calls out,
To reach up to the heavens
It tries again and again to cause us to make the decision
Between indifference and activity.
Between spiritual improvement and oblivion.
Between kindness and sinfulness.

A congregation is togetherness from within.

A congregation is the place from where we are commanded to enact the most simple
and most difficult of all things — loving the other.

By Annabelle Hertziger-Tanzer, Kehillat Har-El
Published in the Har-El Bulletin July-August 2004