Your rabbi is a banana. Your cantor thinks she\’sJohn Lennon. And the entire congregation is singing Beatlestunes.
A nightmare? A parallel universe?
No, it\’s just Purim at Sha\’arei Am: The SantaMonica Synagogue, and Rabbi Jeff Marx\’s megillah reading is just oneof many bizarre scenes that will play out as rabbi and congregantsrid themselves of cumbersome inhibitions for one silly day.
As Rabbi Allen Freehling of University Synagogue in West Los Angeles and a bus load of bishops and rabbis left the Rome airport for their hotel near the Vatican, one of the bishops read aloud a document that would soon spark a firestorm of controversy around the world: the Vatican\’s March 16 statement on the Holocaust, released just hours before. The group had just flown in from Israel, where they had spent a week worshiping together, learning about each other\’s histories, and beginning to understand, as only true friends can, what the other believes.
There was no question: Of the three rabbis sitting up on the dais at UCLA Hillel,Rabbi Shlomo Riskin had the toughest sell. After all, audiences who come to hear panels on pluralism usually bristle at Orthodoxy\’s seeming exclusivity.
From its beginnings in a storefront office behinda pizza shop in Encino, Chabad of the Valley has expanded into amultimillion-dollar operation with nine Chabad houses and 75 rabbisand staff members.
It\’s finally happened. Marketing gurus have gottentheir hands on Shabbat, taking it off dining-room tables and throwingit up onto billboards across the nation — in the hopes of bringingit back down to more tables.
Long obscured by its tongue-twister name andmisunderstood ideology, Reconstructionism is coming on strong.
There was noquestion: Of the three rabbis sitting up on the dais at UCLA Hillel,Rabbi Shlomo Riskin had the toughest sell.
As Shabbat ebbs next week, try Young Israel ofCentury City for something a little sexy — namely, a lecture on \”TheFacts of Life: How to Teach Yeshiva Students,\” led by Rabbi Baruchand Michal Finkelstein.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.