Dear Kol Rinah Family,
As Shabbat approaches and the new quarantined reality sets in, I want to thank each and every one of you for the myriad of ways you have been helping and connecting with one another. We have had a minyan over Zoom that has been able to do a full service nearly every day, people have been calling and video conferencing one another just to check in, and so many of you have been reaching out to help those around you, even when we cannot venture far from home. Our teachers, educators, and parents have been sharing numerous resources to keep children and families engaged and learning through these trying times, and their incredible efforts to keep learning and connecting with one another have been incredibly inspiring.
I wanted to wish hearty mazal tovs to Leah, Joel and Eli Frankel on the birth of a new baby, Noah Oren, and to parents Judi and Craig Agnello, grandparents Sherri & Eli Sadon, and great-grandmother Phyllis Hyken on the birth of their new baby, Archie Richard Agnello.
There are many other opportunities to connect with one another. Several months ago, Rabbi Arnow, Karen Kern, and I recorded several of our favorite Kabbalat Shabbat melodies from our Shabbat Rinah service. The music is now up on our website:
https://www.kolrinahstl.org/music-gallery
Throughout the weeks ahead, we will be recording some new songs, videos, and other content to help bring a little extra Jewish ruach (energy) and human connection into your lives and homes. We hope you will enjoy!
Tonight, we WILL be holding Kabbalat Shabbat services via Zoom starting at 6:00 PM. The information for the Zoom meeting is below, and you can call in over phone, tablet, or computer. Services will be slightly shorter than normal so that we can finish before candlelighting, which is at 6:56 pm tonight. There will be NO services on Shabbat morning or afternoon tomorrow. Havdallah tomorrow evening will be at 8:00 pm.
Here is the information to connect for Kabbalat Shabbat:
Topic: Kabbalat Shabbat
Time: Mar 20, 2020 06:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
Every week on Fri,
Mar 20, 2020 06:00 PM
Dial by your location
+1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 301 715 8592 US
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)
+1 253 215 8782 US
We also know there are many people who could use some help in our community and beyond. The University City school district is currently distributing meals to students who rely on school lunch to subsist from 10am-1pm at five of their school sites: BCJ, Pershing, Jackson Park, Flynn Park, and Brittany Woods beginning March 23rd. Volunteers are needed to help on those dates by handing out to-go meals to cars as they drive up. They most need support in either the morning setup/distribution shift (9-11:30am) or afternoon distribution/clean up shift (11:30-2:00pm). Gloves will be provided.Please sign up for shifts in the first week using this link:
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090a48aba828a3fb6-meal
If you are interested in other safe ways to help others or volunteer, please contact Jeremy Goldberg at the Jewish Federation - 314-513-1679.
The Jewish Educators Assembly has also put together a Sunday Jewish music series, and will be offering it as a weekly, 1 hour-long program, packed with Jewish music and interactive educational content, Every Sunday at 10:00 am Central Standard time as long as it is needed.
Here is the registration link for THIS Sunday, March 22 -
https://event.webinarjam.com/channel/2ndWorldwideSing
And now for a little Torah:
The Shalom Center, headed by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, sent an email recently with three reflections on being in the thick of this quarantine by three brilliant thinkers. I found them to be powerful and heartening and I hope they will bring you some needed comfort this Shabbat:
Rabbi Tamara Cohen has written the following poetic midrash in the light of the Torah portion that is read tomorrow morning. It includes a passage about Moses' calling the people to assemble, and saying that their gifts to build the portable House of the Holy Presence to be carried in the Wilderness have been enough, and they should bring no more. Rabbi Cohen is the Chief of Innovation for Moving Traditions, a national organization focused on teens, gender, and Jewish identity where she spearheaded the creation of Tzelem, a group for transgender and non-binary teens.
And they Assembled
And Moses said dayam, enough.
Enough: enough.
Stop, withdraw,
bring/do/perform/gather no more.
Let the silver glare of a silent sanctuary,
the gold blue of a plane-less sky
the garnet sheen of an empty concert hall
be our sacred offering,
meager gifts of absence from wise and less wise-hearted people.
Please God let our ceasing be enough.
Let our hospital beds be enough.
Let our slow awakening to the interconnectedness of every living being be enough
Let a pillar of stillness rest at the entrance to every home and prison.
Let this plague pass over us, enough of us.
Enough.
Shabbat Shalom dear chaverim, far and wide,
------Tamara
# # #
[Kristin Flyntz wrote the following poetic letter from the Virus to us all. She is the Content Editorial Director for Ascensus. -- AW, ed]
STOP: An Imagined Letter from Covid-19 to Humans
Stop. Just stop.
It is no longer a request. It is a mandate.
We will help you.
We will bring the supersonic, high speed merry-go-round to a halt
We will stop
the planes
the trains
the schools
the malls
the meetings
the frenetic, furied rush of illusions and “obligations” that keep you from hearing our
single and shared beating heart,
the way we breathe together, in unison.
Our obligation is to each other,
As it has always been, even if, even though, you have forgotten.
We will interrupt this broadcast, the endless cacophonous broadcast of divisions and distractions,
to bring you this long-breaking news:
We are not well.
None of us; all of us are suffering.
Last year, the firestorms that scorched the lungs of the earth
did not give you pause.
Nor the typhoons in Africa,China, Japan.
Nor the fevered climates in Japan and India.
You have not been listening.
It is hard to listen when you are so busy all the time, hustling to uphold the comforts and conveniences that scaffold your lives.
But the foundation is giving way,
buckling under the weight of your needs and desires.
We will help you.
We will bring the firestorms to your body
We will bring the fever to your body
We will bring the burning, searing, and flooding to your lungs
that you might hear:
We are not well.
Despite what you might think or feel, we are not the enemy.
We are Messenger. We are Ally. We are a balancing force.
We are asking you:
To stop, to be still, to listen;
To move beyond your individual concerns and consider the concerns of all;
To be with your ignorance, to find your humility, to relinquish your thinking minds and travel deep into the mind of the heart;
To look up into the sky, streaked with fewer planes, and see it, to notice its condition: clear, smoky, smoggy, rainy? How much do you need it to be healthy so that you may also be healthy?
To look at a tree, and see it, to notice its condition: how does its health contribute to the health of the sky, to the air you need to be healthy?
To visit a river, and see it, to notice its condition: clear, clean, murky, polluted? How much do you need it to be healthy so that you may also be healthy?
How does its health contribute to the health of the tree, who contributes to the health of the sky, so that you may also be healthy?
Many are afraid now.
Do not demonize your fear, and also, do not let it rule you.
Instead, let it speak to you—in your stillness,
listen for its wisdom.
What might it be telling you about what is at work, at issue, at risk,
beyond the threats of personal inconvenience and illness?
As the health of a tree, a river, the sky tells you about quality of your own health,
what might the quality of your health tell you about the health of the rivers, the trees, the sky,
and all of us who share this planet with you?
Stop.
Notice if you are resisting.
Notice what you are resisting.
Ask why.
Stop. Just stop..
Be still.
Listen.
Ask us what we might teach you about illness and healing, about what might be required so that all may be well.
We will help you, if you listen.
------ Kristin Flyntz
# # #
[And this poem, "Lockdown," is by Richard Hendrick, OFM -- a Franciscan friar. -- AW, ed.]
Lockdown
Yes there is fear.
Yes there is isolation.
Yes there is panic buying.
Yes there is sickness.
Yes there is even death.
But,
They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet
The sky is no longer thick with fumes
But blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi
People are singing to each other
across the empty squares,
keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
Today a young woman I know
is busy spreading fliers with her number
through the neighbourhood
So that the elders may have someone to call on.
Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples
are preparing to welcome
and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary
All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting
All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way
All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
To how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
To Love.
So we pray and we remember that
Yes there is fear.
But there does not have to be hate.
Yes there is isolation.
But there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is panic buying.
But there does not have to be meanness.
Yes there is sickness.
But there does not have to be disease of the soul
Yes there is even death.
But there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic
The birds are singing again
The sky is clearing,
Spring is coming,
And we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul
And though you may not be able
to touch across the empty square,
Sing.
-------- Richard Hendrick, OFM
Shabbat Shalom; stay safe and healthy everyone,
Rabbi Scott Shafrin
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Phone: 314-727-1747