Virtual Backgrounds and High Holy Day Program
You too can sit in the sanctuary! Just download these backgrounds and plug them into Zoom. You can also download our High Holy Days program here.
You too can sit in the sanctuary! Just download these backgrounds and plug them into Zoom. You can also download our High Holy Days program here.
My mother was an excellent cook and baker who, unfortunately, never instructed my sister, Bambi, or me how to prepare her delectable dishes.
After her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and when she was no longer able to make my family’s favorite stuffing recipe, we got used to having a “Stove Top” substitute because somehow we subliminally believed that she would magically be able to provide us with the recipe.
After she died, the need to have this recipe and bring her memory alive, at least through food, became paramount. Bambi made the first attempt. It wasn’t bad but it just wasn’t the recipe. She tried again, and although we appreciated her efforts to have it on the table again it fell short of our expectations and made us sad that this wasn’t what we loved eating all of these years. But it did help us to realize just how important having her stuffing was to our family. So what to do?
Finally on one rainy fall day, I decided to buy an insanely large number of bags of Pepperidge Farm Seasoned Stuffing mix, the main ingredient, and was determined to keep making stuffing all day until it tasted like Mom’s Thanksgiving stuffing and deserved to be on our table.
So I rolled up my sleeves, and started to open up the first bag of stuffing when my eye caught some words on the back of the bag that seemed strangely familiar to me; and why not, it was Mama Schnall’s Thanksgiving Stuffing recipe on that bag, verbatim!
It has been a whirlwind, getting Open Mic up and running, something like now you don’t see it, and then yes, you do. You could have gotten whiplash. First there were not enough performers, now, our program is brimming with talent.
For a while, it was touch and go, thinking that we would not have enough acts to give it a go. I guess that people have summer brain, and suddenly they woke up, and climbed on board.
The most exciting thing to me, was the dry run on this past Tuesday night. In true Temple fashion, dry run was scheduled at the same time as a Jewish Cultural event. Lucky for us, we could test out Linda Feller early, so she could make the event, and then she signed back in, when the Jewish Cultural event was over.
Most everyone performing live, came to the dry run, including Cassi Kail from CA, and Penrose Hoover, father of Rabbi Heidi Hoover, coming from PA. Gail Levine drove home from a trip, 2 and ½ hours to make rehearsal. Jan Lisa Huttner, also needed to leave early, and had her voice check right after Linda’s.
It was great to hear the support and the camaraderie of the performers. Gene Guskin and Maria Deutscher had never met until the dry run and seemed to hit if off very well. Gene can talk a blue streak. Just wait until you hear him. I am thinking that Maria will make a good “second banana” to Gene. By the way, does that term have to be updated, and does anyone have suggestions?
Teddy Moskowitz is a gem of a guy, and very understated. He has an awesome reading voice and loves that book. Bill Schaffer is also reading from Dr Seuss and is very funny. Naz is so lucky to have such talented parents.
The Schaffer Family is making a great contribution of their talent. We look forward to the Schaffer Family Band, which will feature Naz. He certainly loves being a part of this event, with his family. Joanie has taught herself ukulele, and will also send us “Downtown” to the 60’s via Petula Clark, and Mama Cass with “Dream A Little Dream of Me. I can hear that song ringing in my ear.
Gail Levine is also playing guitar and singing a Yiddish song, and “Que Sera Sera”, made famous by Doris Day. In addition to bringing us Yiddish, she is honoring her mother by singing the song made famous by Doris Day. What a wonderful way to honor one’s parent.
Jane Gleiberman, who is a member of the choir is singing “Sunrise, Sunset”, as a tie in to one of Jan Lisa Huttner’s stories. Rusty, her parrot made an appearance, too. He is small, green and has a loud voice. I guess that’s why Jane is so quiet. During dry run, I said to Jane “Sing out, Louise” since she does sing so quietly, and I want you all to hear her.
Joel Moss, in his deadpan fashion, is bringing us comedy that is sorely needed, and looks good, in this setting. We were all laughing at his sample of jokes.
We will be brought back to Ireland, twice, once by Barry Katz reading a Yeats poem, and by an Irish Choir, of which Debra Davies is a member. Hurrah to them both. Look at the talent that we have imported.
Kyle McGee is performing a Rashtaman Chant, which will also carry us, via drum, to another dimension, and as of this writing there is a performance by Emma Tattenbaum-Fine of a little known Leonard Bernstein song. Looking forward to discovering something new by him.
So, I have to say, all sound checks were made and commented upon, and some lighting was worked out.
The reason that this worked so well is that, during the dry run, everyone pulled together by giving valuable and wanted advice for the sound and visual tech. All advice was greatly appreciated. It was wonderful to see everyone working together, striving towards one goal, to make everyone look and sound great. No divas here.
I love this team and can’t wait to see them on Saturday.
Looking forward,
Pam Glantzman
Last fall, my son’s third grade class did a unit on culture and family. One of the discussions in class centered around family recipes, and my son came home waving his assignment, asking if we had any family recipes. I paused. By the time I knew my grandmother, she was relatively elderly, retired in West Palm Beach, and passed the stage of hosting Thanksgiving and Passover, so I have no idea if she was a good cook. In fact, I only recall her having a legendary reputation for two dishes: Cream of Wheat (yes, the hot cereal) and rugelach.
I obviously couldn’t present Cream of Wheat to my son as a family recipe (although I think the amount of milk, salt and butter my grandmother used are far beyond any instructions on the box) so that left the rugelach as the one and only option.
Luckily, my grandmother’s rugelach are chewy bites of deliciousness, and I remember learning to make them from my mother, as she learned from my grandmother. They were always far more delicious than any store-bought rugelach, and since they were incredibly labor-intensive to make, we only did so once or twice a year, making them a very special occasion cookie.
I went looking for the recipe. You may be imagining some hand-written index card in my grandmother’s handwriting. Nope. My mother typed up the recipe in Word and emailed it out to me and my sisters in 2018. I also found a typed version I emailed to myself back in 2002. Perhaps I took dictation over the phone from my mom, or copied and pasted from her Word document while home for a visit. My son copied the recipe onto his homework worksheet, and I assumed my work was done.
The end of the culture unit arrived, and his class had a celebration, where each family was supposed to bring in homemade food from their culture. And my son was committed to bringing in the rugelach, even though he had never tasted them.
The weekend before the celebration we baked the rugelach together. I took over the role of my mother in mixing the dough, rolling it out and cutting it into triangles, and my son took over my childhood role, as I showed him how to roll the filling into the cookies. It was the first time I realized that my mother had of course once been the child, learning how to fill and roll the dough from her mother. It’s the essence of l’dor v’dor, of course (Hebrew for “from generation to generation”).
Even in this first effort, we were already having our own way with the recipe. For instance, the filling in my grandmother’s rugelach is sugar, cinnamon, raisins and walnuts. I detest raisins, and am not much of a fan of walnuts (almonds are so much better!) so when my mother baked the rugelach she would always make a handful with just cinnamon and sugar for my twin sister and I to eat. Now that I was in control of the kitchen, there were no raisins or walnuts in sight. But my son wasn’t keen on the idea of cinnamon and sugar, and asked if we could fill them with chocolate. I bought a bar of baking chocolate, which I chopped into tiny pieces, and we filled half the rugelach with chocolate, and half with cinnamon and sugar.
The chocolate version turned out delicious, as did the cinnamon-sugar, and they were a hit with the third graders in my son’s class.
Now in June, the days of bringing family recipes into a New York City public school have evaporated, but the hours available for baking have multiplied. My son has helped me bake many batches of soft rolled sugar cookies (seriously, there are no better sugar cookies out there), and I’ve started baking bread: challah, baguettes, and now rustic loaves from a book called “Flower, Water, Salt and Yeast.”
Through all of this baking I’ve built up knowledge on the chemistry of baking: what makes a cookie have a certain flavor or consistency, or how to get the right kind of crust on a loaf of bread. In contrast to last December, I feel like a fairly knowledgeable home baker.
Sadly, while my technical skills are improving, my emotional satisfaction from baking has slumped, knowing the result won’t go any further than my own kitchen. I’ve taken to driving over to my mom’s apartment and meeting her outside her building to give her a freshly baked challah, or zipping over to a colleague’s building to drop off coffee cake or cookies.
Meanwhile my son kept nagging me: When are we going to bake rugelach? I tried to explain that rugelach and quarantine don’t mix, because these rugelach are for sharing, giving as gifts, or serving at the end of a festive meal. They are far too much work to be an everyday cookie, eaten by the three of us at home.
Finally he wore me down, and I got out the recipe again. I also decided with all my honed baking skills, the time had come to print the recipe out and put some notes and adjustments on it.
Once I printed it out, with the aim of adding more detail to the instructions, I started thinking about how strange the recipe looks to my modern eyes, starting with the order of her steps. Her recipe starts by mixing the eggs and half the milk into the flour. Most modern cookie recipes call for whipping the shortening together with the sugar, then adding the liquids (eggs and milk in this case) and only then mixing in the flour. These rugelach follow the style of scones, which also start with flour, and have a heavier, flakier dough.
Both scones and this rugelach recipe, even if they were being made on the opposite sides of Europe, come from a time and place where electric mixers weren’t available or common. How excruciating it would have been to “whip” the butter or mix the sugar with it, all with a hand whisk, or your actual hands. Impossible!
I rolled out half the rugelach dough and filled them with chocolate. My sous-chef son was nowhere in sight—perhaps he also prefers baking for an audience—so I was able to roll and bake them quickly. I think the dough needed more flour, but they were tasty. I ran out of steam halfway through, and froze the remaining dough.
A few weeks later, when I was inspired to bake for my extended family before a July trip upstate, I left the rugelach dough in the freezer and made two loaves of rustic rye bread. I’ll try to teach my son how to bake bread too—it can’t hurt to have more than one family recipe. One from late nineteenth century Eastern Europe, and one from the New York City Coronavirus quarantine.
Dear B’ShERT family and friends,
Jewish tradition prioritizes pikuach nefesh, saving a life, over almost everything else. In this pandemic, we have been urging our congregants and friends to stay home, be cautious, and practice social distancing. This week we have seen many in our city and country congregate in protest, catalyzed by the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police.
The protests are also about so much more. They are about the systemic racism that is built into our nation: the substandard healthcare, the systems that have prevented black Americans from building wealth, the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on African-American and Latinx communities, the disproportionate number of deaths of black Americans at the hands of police, the ways in which Americans are treated differently by the justice system, business owners, and individuals because of the color of their skin.
Those of us who are white cannot ever fully understand what the daily experience of people of color—Jewish and non-Jewish—is like. We can listen to and believe those who tell us what that experience is, we can read about it, we can learn, and we can stand with those whose lives are impacted daily by systemic racism, in ways large and small, obvious and subtle. I respect the grief, the rage, the sense of powerlessness, and the desire to be heard and acknowledged that led to the uprising of African-Americans across our country. I respect the allies—including some police—who have joined the marchers. I stand with them.
In this time of pandemic, it is risky to join protests in person. Should you choose to do so, please be as careful as possible not to expose yourself and others to the virus—wear a mask over your nose and mouth, and keep your distance from others. In your decision-making, take into account the others in your life who are at greater risk—older people and those with health issues.
There are also other ways to take action—write messages on your sidewalk with chalk; call elected officials and demand change; sign petitions; donate to organizations working for change; put signs in your window that reflect your beliefs; write an op-ed—these are some possibilities.
Black lives—both Jewish and non-Jewish—are not valued today in our country as much as white lives, and #BlackLivesMatter. Because our inherently racist systems lead to disproportionate, unjust deaths of people of color, working to change those systems also contributes to pikuach nefesh, to saving lives.
Please be safe and take care,
Rabbi Hoover
Dear B’ShERT Community,
We’re pleased to tell you that the June 2020 edition of the Voice of Truth is now available online.
Click or copy here: https://pubsecure.lucidpress.com/2020-06-VoT/
The Voice of Truth team is now on hiatus until the September issue. Yours truly plans to take a break from VoT editing duties by reading novels and tackling a number of writing and editing projects. (The irony does not escape me.) The deadline for the September issue is August 20th; I’ll give you plenty of notice. If you’re inspired, feel free to send your submissions earlier. As always, direct all submissions to news@bshert.org. You may also reach out to me directly at a1editor@bshert.org.
I wish everyone a peaceful, enjoyable and healthy summer. I look forward to seeing many of you on Zoom and, perhaps in the not-too-distant future, back in our beloved Temple building.
Best,
Adrienne Knoll and the Voice of Truth team
Welcome to our newly minted B’ShERT blog, “Being B’ShERT”!
I had the pleasure of joining Rabbi Heidi recently on B’Yachad and, over Zoom, I was struck by the amazing camaraderie within our community and the STORIES.
Stories that go back decades.
The same day, I led a Youth Group event about storytelling in the time of COVID. (I love stories, as you can see, and I look for them wherever I go, or in this case, wherever I stay.)
I had the pleasure of brainstorming story ideas with our teen community, hours after hearing from our adult community, and the net result was that, in one day, I heard the stories of a Jewish community spanning 8 decades in age.
I can’t be the only one to have this privilege! We all deserve to share and hear the incredible stories of the B’ShERT community.
This is the space for us to do that.
We’d love to hear from you. This blog can be a place to share your accounts of quarantine life, your memories of Brooklyn, this Temple’s rich history, or things that are making you laugh right now.
What we will end up with is a multi-generational, ongoing account of how we lived before, during, and after this pandemic.
Mike, Adrienne and I are looking forward to your submissions! Please send them to blog@bshert.org.
Till soon,
Emma Tattenbaum-Fine
Digital Media and Youth Outreach Coordinator for B’ShERT
Dear B’ShERT Family,
Our thoughts are with you as you care for yourselves and your families during this difficult and uncertain period. It feels like we’re in the wilderness, wondering how long we must wait to reach the promised land of being face to face in our beloved building. During this unprecedented period, however, we’ve still managed to be active and present in your lives. Our dedicated and creative clergy, staff, supporters and congregants have ensured that B’ShERT is here for you to provide spiritual, educational, and social opportunities to benefit all of us.
While sheltering at home, many people have attended our Zoom/Facebook Live Shabbat services, Seders, Passover and Yizkor services, B’Yachad discussion sessions, Torah Study, religious school classes and numerous meetings. We’ve mourned together at virtual funerals and shiva. I am encouraged by how many of you have been attending these meaningful gatherings and hope that your needs for spiritual and community connections are being fulfilled.
I realize that many of you are facing financial difficulties and uncertainties. B’ShERT is experiencing much of the same. We are losing significant income from our Banquet Hall and Aim High early childhood rentals. We’ve had to cancel our fundraising activities, including the Journal Luncheon (which we are postponing). These are critical sources of revenue that support Temple programs, operating costs, and building repairs.
If you are able, please make a donation to B’ShERT to help sustain us during this difficult time. Please support our warm house of Jewish tradition, our open and inclusive spiritual community, as we strive to strengthen ourselves, each other, and the community as a whole — not just during this challenging period but for the brighter days ahead.
If you or someone in your circle is in need of support, feel free to contact Rabbi Hoover, or Faye Levine Guskin (fayelg47@gmail.com), a retired community social worker, who will gladly refer you to community resources.
Sincerely,
Eric Platt, President
Dear B’ShERT family and friends,
I know this Passover is going to be really different for most of us, and very difficult for many of us. As one of our major family holidays, it emphasizes the pain many of us are already experiencing being physically separated from our family and friends.
The word “Mizrayim,” Hebrew for “Egypt,” literally means “from narrow places.” Using this interpretively, we sometimes talk about Passover as leaving the narrow places to freedom. Technology is what is allowing our spirits not to be completely trapped in the narrow places of our homes. Being able to telephone and video-conference is how we continue to have the freedom of sharing our lives with others.
That is how we are going to be able to celebrate Passover together this year. Our second-night community Passover seder will begin at 6 pm on Thursday, April 9th.
You may have heard that there have been some security issues with Zoom, the platform that we use for interactive video gatherings. Because of that, you will need to register in advance for the second night seder. Please use this link at OneTable’s Seder2020 project to sign up in advance (by Thursday at noon).
When you register, you will receive an email with a pdf of our Community Haggadah and instructions for what it would be good to have on your table for the seder (and ways to improvise if you can’t get everything).
We will also be streaming our Festival services for the first and seventh morning of the holiday; those services will be available at bshert.org/services/live & you can also check your email for details this week and next.
I look forward to celebrating virtually with you!
In community and in peace,
Rabbi Heidi
Machzorim for Yom Kippur
September 24, 2020 by miketrose • Features
Dear B’ShERT family,
Attached below are PDF files of the prayerbooks we’ll be using for Yom Kippur. If you have a physical Mishkan HaNefesh prayerbook from the synagogue, you don’t need these files. Otherwise, these might be helpful to you.
To keep file sizes manageable, there are three separate PDFs. They are numbered in the order of the services. Click each link to view or download the PDF.
File #1 includes Kol Nidrei (Friday 7:30 pm)
File #2 includes the Yom Kippur morning prayer service (10 am), then the Torah service on Yom Kippur morning, through to the end of the morning service (a continuation of the 10 am service).
File #3 includes Yizkor (5 pm) and N’ilah (6 pm).