Good Morning America Weekend has a Sunday segment called Your Three Words. Quoting from their website, “If one word can convey a lot about your state of mind, think how much three words could reveal.” Well, my three words are Temple Beth Sholom. These words and the many more words that I grouped together throughout this speech are more than a state of mind.
Click for October 2009 Bulletin. Will open with Adobe Reader
One of the great Broadway musicals is Man of La Mancha, which concerns, if you’ll pardon my lack of a Spanish accent, Miguel de Cervantes and perhaps the greatest novel of all time, Don Quixote. In this play within a play, we see how the Spanish Inquisition persecutes Cervantes and we also see his character Don Quixote, the man who has read so many books about chivalry that he thinks he’s a knight, roaming the countryside with his squire Sancho Panza, tilting at windmills because he thinks they are giants, calling a serving girl the great lady Dulcinea.i
I’d like to talk today about our relationships with our loved ones and the people in our lives, and I’ll start with a quick Hebrew lesson that symbolizes what I want to say.
When I was nine years old, I saw a movie, in what was called Cinerama, a three-paneled, wide-screen panorama, called The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. I loved that film. The exciting parts were three fairy tales, filled with special effects and great dancing. The boring parts were about the twin brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and their lives, how the practical Jacob devoted himself to serious scholarship while the dreamer Wilhelm was consumed with fairy tales.
An Israeli satirical video posted on the Internet became a hit in the very countries it criticizes. The video was produced and posted by latma, a Website criticizing Israeli and international media outlets. It was produced in the wake of a report by the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet which alleged that the IDF harvests organs of Palestinians killed in conflict for transplant in Israeli patients. The writer of the report has since admitted he had no way of ascertaining its veracity. Israel called the Aftonbladet report a "new blood libel." Last week, Norway announced its divestment from Elbit, an Israeli Hi Tech manufacturer which is a world leader in the defense industry. Norway announced it would divest from Elbit because of the company's work on the security barrier in the West Bank. Click triangle to start ...
We want you to have a sweet year. But in my case, I’ve begun to have a tweet year. On the advice of my technical advisers, I have gone on Twitter. Twitter is a way of communicating through short messages by which one can send a message to many people at the same time. The challenge for me is to say what I want to say in two sentences; it’s sort of a new art form. So if you’d like to receive my messages, some personal, some thoughtful and some just fun, go to www.twitter.com/rabbiscolnic.
Bonim is a group of clergy, officers and lay leaders of Conservative synagogues who are dedicated to building the movement through the advocacy of change in the relationship between United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the umbrella group of the organization, and its member synagogues. You can read and join the discussion in the Bonim Google Group at http://groups.google.com/group/bonim?hl=enSeptember 15, 2009Pasted below is a statement that is being released by Bonim inresponse to the USCJ Board meeting this past weekend. As you haveread in other postings, while we were very hopeful with the potentialleadership and impact that Rabbi Wernick could provide towardsubstantively changing the organization, the result of the meetinglast weekend fell significantly short of our expectations and priordiscussions with USCJ. We have two choices, we can watch and waituntil Rabbi Wernick makes further headway or until a new President iselected or until Hayom issues its report or until the new…
Israel and Sweden At Odds Over “Blood Libel” Accusation of IDF Organ Thefts
Israel has urged the Swedish government to condemn an article recently published in a Swedish newspaper that accused the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of harvesting organs from Palestinians wounded or killed by soldiers. (more…)
On the job for barely two months, the new chief executive of the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism, Rabbi Steven Wernick, is announcing a restructuring of the organization. For some critics, United Synagogue has been a poster child for the movement's ills and Wernick, who spoke to JTA in our offices Thursday morning, wants to make it smaller and better, reducing the number of regions from 15 to six and eliminating five positions in the main office, with more layoffs likely to come.Synagogues have complained for some time that they don't get enough value for their dues to the organization, and Wernick says he is determined to change that. He also wants to reform an unwieldy organization that is "over-institutionalized," with a bloated board and insufficient accountability. On this front, the organization's board will be voting this week on proposed governance and structural changes aimed at granting Wernick more authority,…