Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

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Category: Rosh Hodesh

Returning on August 19th – Elul begins

August 12, 2012 /

A week from today we arrive at Rosh Chodesh Elul – the beginning of the new Hebrew month of Elul. This is the month that leads up to Rosh Hashanah.  The Jewish New Year has a very different flavor to the secular New Year with its party hats, champagne and poppers.  The Jewish New Year in an invitation to reflect, turn and return, realigning ourselves with a spiritual center that is our God-given holy spark.  When we are paying attention, this is the spark that lights the path and helps us find our way through life, being the highest of what we have the potential to be.

For Rosh Hashanah to be a meaningful holiday, we need to prepare.  Elul provides a month of reflective preparation time.  In our modern age, there are many tools and guides available to us that enable us to set aside a little time each day for this reflective work of soul preparation.  One of my colleagues, Rabbi Phylis Sommer, has again suggested a theme a day for #BlogElul and #Elulgram, and I’ll be participating by blogging here on her listed themes.  The ‘#’ tells you that the various bloggers who join her can be easily found on Twitter if you search for #BlogElul – we’ll all be posting links to our blogs that way.  If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll also see the Elul postings there.  And, of course, you can sign up on the right side of this blog to receive an email in your inbox whenever I’ve posted a new blog piece.  An #Elulgram is a photo posted on Twitter, offering a visual interpretation of the day’s theme.

While you may let some of us provide a guide through the month of Elul by reading some of these postings, anyone can contribute.  If you have a blog, try writing some of your own reflections.  Or, use the comments box on my blog to add your own thoughts on the day’s theme, on the days that I post.  I don’t usually manage to post every day of Elul, but about once a week I’ll post my personal selection of the ‘best of’ #BlogElul with links to some of the pieces by others that I have found most thought-provoking in my own preparations for the High Holydays.

Elul – URJ Webinar series to prepare for the High Holydays

July 30, 2010 /

Tuesday, August 10, is Rosh Hodesh Elul.  This is the Jewish month that leads us to Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year.  This blog launched one year ago on 1 Elul.  This year we will once again post regular thought-pieces, meditations and practices to help in your own personal reflections, reviewing the past year, engaging with the path of teshuvah, enabling us all to enter the High Holyday season with greater intention and awareness.

In the meantime, the Union for Reform Judaism has a 4-part webinar open to all, beginning on Rosh Hodesh Elul, with some wonderful teachers involved.  I highly commend this program to you.  The details follow, with a link to the URJ page where you can register for the webinar.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

August 11, 2010 – Welcoming Elul: Spiritual Preparations for the Days of Awe

Part one of four part High Holy Days and Sukkot series with special guest presenter Craig Taubman.
Sue Levi EllwellLanie Katzew
The rabbis teach that ELUL is the month when Ani l’dodi v’dodi li: I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. Join us on the first of Elul for an hour of interactive study and exploration of how this phrase from the Song of Songs can inform our daily study, practice and reflection as we prepare to enter the Days of Awe and the New Year. 
 
Led by Music Specialist Cantor Alane Katzew and Worship Specialist Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell with special guest presenter Craig Taubman

Title: Welcoming Elul: Spiritual Preparations for the Days of Awe

Date: Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Time: 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EDT
Click here to register.

Standing Again at Sinai: Reflections 2010

May 17, 2010 /

This year, the Rosh Hodesh group at Congregation B’nai Israel was inspired by Merle Feld’s spiritual memoir and poetry collection, ‘A Spiritual Life.’  We dipped in to read many of the prose narratives and poems, adding our own personal stories to hers.  Inspired by her writing, we sought out and found the spiritual in everyday life, and found how our own everyday lives were enriched by the cycle of the Jewish year and ritual practices.  Last month, we read one of her most well-known poems, We all Stood Together.  Another author, Chava Weissler, wrote a response to this poem a number of years ago, which you can read here.  Taking these two sources as our text, the women in the group described their own ‘Standing at Sinai’ moment.  On the day before Shavuot, when we stand again at Sinai to remember and receive Revelation, I share some of these creative pieces with you.


I’m standing at Sinai.  I feel isolated and left out.  I’m supposed to feel something that everyone else is feeling. I don’t.  Is there something wrong with me?  I fake it, so I don’t stand out.  I’m 12.  I feel little.  Maybe some day, when I grow up, I’ll fit in better.

A young woman, I danced with Miriam at the shores of the Red Sea.  And I look up to Miriam as a friend and mentor.  And now I follow her to the foot of Mt. Sinai with curiosity and eagerness.  I find the trembling of the earth and noise overwhelming.  It’s awesome.  I feel that the God that Miriam spoke about is present.  I am excited and afraid at the same time.  


I am a 50 year old woman and I am taking my place up front, not only for myself, but for the other women and those on the margins in order to witness God’s message.  I feel, though, not totally a part of the community.  I am only observing, contemplating the happenings; communing with God.

My children cling to me, and I am afraid they will be lost in the crowd.  I keep them close as we women proceed slowly, surrounded by our children, always worried – do they need food or drink? Will they stay close?  The oldest may stray.  I remind her to watch her little brother.  Maybe I will hear the message too.


I’m standing next to a friend.  But we’re not talking.  We’re comforted by the security of knowing the other is standing there next to us.  I’m trying really hard to understand – to comprehend the moment.  But I’m confused.  The sounds and sights are disorienting, and I can’t figure out what the essence of this Revelation is. Should I close my eyes and let the sounds wash over me?  Will I find enlightenment in the stillness in the midst of the chaos? Or have I misunderstood? Perhaps the essence of Revelation is about what we’re all doing here together – perhaps its all about this mass of people.  Perhaps I should open my eyes and take in who we all are – is it the connections that invisibly bind us all together that is the true essence of Revelation?  Eyes open or eyes closed? Sight or sound? Inside or in-between?  I’m hear the sights and seeing the sounds.  Perhaps it is all ECHAD – ONE.

The skeptic:  What is going on here? What’s with the pushing and the shoving?  We’ve been shlepping around for years and nothing happens and today we’re supposed to Get the Message? Yeah, right.  I’ll get the news second-hand.  Why ruin my shoes?


The mother with two absent boys is thinking of others – while the business executive wants the mother to fully experience and the mother with three little children says she is too busy and can’t fully benefit.  While I am deeply emotional and hope to have the answers for the rest of my life.

I am hiking.  I stop.  Here.  This is the place.  Picking up a stone, I stare at it.  Everything is here.  Holy, holy, holy.


I am afraid of the unknown.  We are foreigners in someone else’s land.  The immenseness of the place is overwhelming. I’m a stranger in a strange land.

Women of the Wall update – Anat Hoffman interrogated by police

January 7, 2010 /

It was reported today in The Forward that Anat Hoffman, founding member of Women of the Wall and Director of the Israel Religious Action Center, was interrogated by police in relation to the group’s prayer gathering at the Kotel in December for Rosh Chodesh Tevet, the month after Nofrat Frankel had been arrested at the wall.  The article begins:

The leader of Women of the Wall, a group of women who gather monthly to pray at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, was questioned by police, fingerprinted, and told that she may be charged with a felony for violating the rules of conduct at what is considered Judaism’s most sacred site.

Inked: On January 5, Israeli police interrogated and fingerprinted Anat Hoffman.
Anat Hoffman, director of the Israel Religious Action Center, said that police interrogated her for more than an hour on January 5 about her activities during Women of the Wall’s last monthly service in December. Speaking by phone from Jerusalem, Hoffman said she did nothing differently that day than she had for the 21 years of her group’s existence… (continue reading here)
Apparently the crime being investigated was the wearing of tallitot by some women while praying (something which some women do beneath their jackets in a way that is not visible to others).  When the Supreme Court ruled a number of years ago that Women of the Wall must move to Robinson’s Arch for their Torah service each Rosh Chodesh, they also ruled that women could not been seen wearing tallitot at the Kotel.
This police action is outrageous and quite clearly intended to intimidate the leadership of Women of the Wall.  After the arrest of Nofrat Frankel there were calls for events around the world to demonstrate Jews standing in solidarity with Women of the Wall.  At B’nai Israel our Rosh Chodesh group responded with and evening of study which led to 8 blogs in solidarity with Women of the Wall, published here at the end of December. 
In light of this ongoing intimidation, we must voice our disgust at the treatment of these women and call for action to be taken to ensure that the Kotel – a holy site and heritage for all Jews – does not continue to be controlled in its use as an ultra-Orthodox synagogue.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz


Once in a blue moon – Blessings for 2010!

December 31, 2009 /
If you’ve been paying attention the last couple of days, you’ll have heard some fuss being made about this New Year’s Eve being a ‘blue moon.’  This phrase has changed its meaning over the centuries, but these days it is defined as the second full moon in a single month, or as the third full moon in a season that has four full moons.  Tonight’s moon is the second full moon of December; the first occurred Dec. 2.

Though the expression “once in a blue moon” is used to describe extremely rare events, blue moons aren’t all that unusual, occurring every 21/2 years or so. But a New Year’s Eve blue moon is somewhat more remarkable — we haven’t had one since 1990.  Another titbit of information – Blue moons of this sort aren’t actually blue in color (which I was a bit disappointed to learn).
Wikipedia informs us that: The earliest recorded English usage of the term “blue moon” was in a 1528 pamphlet violently attacking the English clergy, entitled “Rede Me and Be Not Wrothe” (Read me and be not angry): “Yf they say the mone is belewe / We must believe that it is true” [If they say the moon is blue, we must believe that it is true]. (From this we also learn that the ancestors of my homeland had terrible spelling!)
Some interpret this “blue moon” as relating to absurdities and impossibilities, and a similar moon-related adage was first recorded in the following year: “They would make men beleue … that þe Moone is made of grene chese” [They would make men believe … that the moon is made of green cheese].


One thing that this little splurge of media attention has done is to bring many more people’s attention to what the moon is doing on any particular night – how many thousands will look up and notice (hopefully, if the sky is clear) a beautiful part of our night sky this evening?  They are getting just a taste of something that, if we are tuned in, is a gift of the rhythm of Jewish time each and every month – we run on a lunar calendar.  Each announcement of the new month brings us a dark sky with the merest sliver of light, waxing to its fullness in the middle of the Jewish month (note that our major holiday of Pesach begins on a full moon – 15 Nisan), and then waning again.  We bless the month in our liturgy, and some Jewish communities practice the ritual of Kidush levana – Sanctification of the Moon – about a week later when the moon is fully visible.  At B’nai Israel, our monthly Rosh Hodesh group – a women’s spiritual study group – honors the tradition of the new moon being a ‘holiday’ for women, and a time to come together to connect and engage.

Tonight is the 14 Tevet, in a month with 29 days.  Look up at the moon tonight, and the next night, and the next… feel the rhythm of turning, ebbing, flowing, spiraling… onward and into 2010.
Blessings for health, happiness and wholeness to all.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

To Pray in a Tallit. In Solidarity with Women of the Wall

December 20, 2009 /

Part of a solidarity blog series for Women of the Wall.  Each piece is written by a member of the Rosh Hodesh group of Congregation B’nai Israel.


Wrapped in the ‘arms’ of God
Embraced in love and intimacy …
Easing into the secure comfort
I am free to pray with all my heart …

God’s voice pours out of me
as I feel the Breath fill my body …
Sometimes there are tears of joy or sadness
But always there is a feeling of ‘coming home.’

One of the most powerful times of prayer was in the beautiful space of a chapel at a Christian Retreat Center.  This was clearly a sacred place.  God was in this place and, yes, I did know it.  Freedom to be who I am, a Jewish woman of faith … welcoming sisters.

How ironic that Jewish women do not have that freedom to pray so safely in ‘our homeland’, at one of the most sacred sites of the Jewish people.  How sad to realize that ‘my people’ would not honor my right to pray, abuse me and treat me as less than human.  Maybe they are not ‘my people’.  Does God listen to and answer their prayers?

Praying with Women of the Wall, Rosh Hodesh Tevet, Dec 18, 2009

December 20, 2009 /

Lisa Grant is a member of Congregation B’nai Israel, and Associate Professor of Education at Hebrew Union College, New York.  Lisa is currently in Israel and, after seeing last night’s blog entry dedicating the coming week to solidarity blogs with Women of the Wall, she sent me this eye-witness report of being one of the women praying this Rosh Hodesh, on Friday morning at the Kotel.

I arrived in Israel on Thursday night and woke up early Friday morning to attend Rosh Chodesh Tevet services with the Women at the Wall.  In the pouring rain, we were well over 100 strong, with women of all ages, students, mothers, grandmothers.  We gathered at the back of the Women’s section at the Kotel, clustered tightly under umbrellas and joined together in prayer surrounded by a chorus of voices shouting out bitter epithets ranging from the rather mild “Shame” and “scum” to the more shocking “Die” and “You’re the reason why the Intifada happened.”  We were not deterred by either weather or curses and managed to raise our voices together in prayer.  There were a number of police in our midst, who mainly kept telling us to keep our tallitot under our coats.  When we finished Hallel, we began a slow walk out of the Ezrat Nashim towards Robinson’s Arch for the Torah service.  On the way, we sang songs of faith and strength in support of our right to freely express ourselves as Jews in the Jewish state.  We were joined by a couple dozen men who walked with us in solidarity.  Other men continued to shout at us and spit on us while the police looked on.  

I shared my umbrella with two young women who kept saying “this is so sad. It just makes me want to cry.”  A sad statement indeed, that there were men (and some women) who found it more important to throw insults and slurs our way than to direct their hearts into their own prayer. On this 7th day of Hanukkah we sang out for religious freedom and the right to pray peacefully and respectfully in this most holy of sites that belongs to the entire Jewish people. 

Lisa D. Grant
Associate Professor of Jewish Education
Hebrew Union College – New York

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