Notes from Cantor Avima

Here's a little quiz for you:

What do we have 1.5 of in the Haggadah? 

Where is the number 2 mentioned in the Haggadah? 

What do we have 3 of in the Haggadah? 

What do we have 4 of in the Haggadah? 

What do we have 5 of in the Haggadah? 

What do we have 6 of in the Haggadah? 

What do we have 10 of in the Haggadah? 

What do we have 14 of in the...Read more...

     I have always enjoyed reading Megillat Esther "The Scroll of Esther". I first learned to chant a small passage of Megillat Esther in my teens and have made it a personal challenge to read more through the years and now I can say that  I have chanted the "gantze" megillah with trope (cantillation) many times.  I do  find I have to spend quite a bit of time every year refreshing,...Read more...

What makes a synagogue or school or organization work? This week's parshah, Vayakhel, describes the construction of the Mishkan (The Tabernacle) that the Israelites carried with them throughout their travels in the wilderness. The people are all asked to contribute all kinds of building materials: precious metals, linen, wool, ram and dolphin skins, oils, precious stones. However, one small phrase stands out to me. The words "And all of...Read more...

Have you noticed brighter skies in the morning? I walk my dog every morning and I can't help but notice an increase in bird chatter as well.The angle of the sun has changed as too.  And, I noticed on my calendar that in just a few weeks we change the clocks. It is still cold and crisp, I am still wearing winter coat, hat and gloves, but....  there is a feeling of transitioning into  spring.  I have to say that for...Read more...

Can you believe it is Adar again so soon? Well, not so fast, because if you are looking for Purim we still have to wait a few weeks as we are only about to begin Adar Rishon, the added month of the leap year. Purim is celebrated in Adar Shaynee which won't begin for several weeks.  I have to admit, that although we are supposed to increase our joy in the month of Adar, I am not quite ready for the silliness and antics of Purim....Read more...

The Day of Chesed was a big success!  Our students together with students of the Religious School of Temple Beth Am made close to 200 (?) bags for nourish.nj,  made butterfly suncatchers to give as gifts to residents of Arbor Terrace, made cards and pictures to donate to  organizations that distribute them to hospitals, foster homes, assisted livings, etc.... We also baked cookies for the Dover Faith...Read more...

The Religious School is sponsoring a Day of Chesed (Day of Kindness) on Sunday, January 14th. One of our projects will be to pack Purposeful Acts of Kindness Kits for nourish.NJ.We are requesting donations of the following items by January 14. Please place your donations in the large marked bin in the lobby. 
We need the following: pocket size hand sanitizer, bottles of water, protein bars, baggie filled with...Read more...

Each Jewish holiday has an anthem associated with it, a  melody which serves as the leitmotif which is woven throughout the liturgy. Maoz Tsur, a poem written as early as the 13th century and the melody linked to it has been the anthem for Chanukkah for centuries! We sing the hymn in Hebrew and in an English translation as we watch the candles burning, we feature the melody in our hallel service and insert it in other parts of our...Read more...

Hanukkah or Chanukkah? Passover or Pesach? For that matter, Rosh Hashanah, Roshashanah  or Jewish New Year?

I have a bit of a pet peeve to air. It is time to take back the names of our own holidays. When did the name of our holiday, lose its most important sound... the "ch" of the first letter of the holiday... ? I mean just because non Jews have difficulty pronouncing the word, does that mean we should drop the most Jewish...Read more...

Sometimes we focus so much on what is happening inside our sanctuary that we might not notice the beautiful moments that happen outside our sanctuary. Yes, the sanctuary is truly the central focus of what brings us all together. Our Beit Knesset - our house of gathering, our Beit Tefillah, house of prayer is the reason we exist. But, what we do in our sanctuary is hopefully an inspiration for all the moments we spend outside of...Read more...

We are all familiar with the beautiful prayer for the State of Israel we recite weekly and I am sure many of us have started reciting it on a daily basis. However, there is another beautiful prayer that was composed by the late Chief Rabbi and Chief IDF Rabbi, Shlomo Goren, asking God to protect the soldiers of the IDF and strike down their enemies. The accompanying song features popular Israeli artist Gad Elbaz’s musical rendition of...Read more...

This year I set a goal for myself to read Hebrew literature in an effort to exercise my skills. We have many works of literature in our library to choose from from childrens books to short stories and a few novels. However, this last few days have found that facebook has provided me a lot of material. And it is not the kind of Hebrew  material I had planned to use to exercise my language skills. My feed has been flooded with...Read more...

Rosh haShanah and Yom Kippur differ from Sukkot. On the Jewish New Year’s festival and Yom Kippur we are judged. We confess. We resolve. We feel defensive, vulnerable and fragile.

On Sukkot, the harvest festival, we rejoice. Anyone who has gardened knows this feeling many times more. Not only is there a thrill in seeing your garden’s yield—purple eggplant, orange carrots, green lettuce, red cabbage—but fruit of a home-grown...Read more...

When one has only one brief Religious School lesson in which to teach about the High Holidays, the holiest days on our calendar, what to we teach? That is the challenge with which we were faced this year with the challenge imposed by this year's Jewish calendar. I had a 30 minute period...Read more...

Would you eat Latkes on Rosh Hashanah? You might, because, well, hey, latkes! But most of us might feel that eating latkes on Rosh Hashanah would just be weird. Why? Because the aroma and taste of latkes brings to mind all things Chanukah including the memories associated with Chanukah. How about eating matzah on Chanukah? More holiday confusion!! Our traditional melodies, called"nusach" calls for different melodies for different...Read more...

There is a beautiful passage that we recite in our morning prayers found on p.68 of our Sim Shalom Siddur.  It is a rabbinic teaching on lovingkindness, "chesed". This paragraph describes a conversation between the great Rabbis Yochanan Ben Zakkai and his disciple Rabbi Joshua as they  lamented the ruins of the Temple. Rabbi Joshua says "Alas for us! The place which atoned for the sins of the people Israel through the...Read more...

My morning spiritual practice begins with the recitation of the traditional words of gratitude that many of us learned as children: Modeh (modah) Ani. The 12 words can be found on p.61 of our siddur. "I am grateful to You, living, enduring Sovereign, for restoring my soul to me in compassion. You are faithful beyond measure." Saying those words and taking a few moments to actually list things for which I am grateful in a little journal...Read more...

Shalom, 

I will be attending the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education  ( known as NEW CAJE) in Montclair this week. I am looking forward to several days of connecting with educational colleagues and attending workshops. Here are some of the titles of the workshops I will attend: "What's the "new normal" in our post-Covid world?", "Help, I need Guidance to Reimagine Jewish Learning in My School", "The Future...Read more...

Among the many wonderful programs offered by the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest is the Diller Teen Fellowship program. 

Diller Teen Fellows is a premier leadership development program for Jewish 10th and 11th graders in Greater MetroWest NJ. The yearlong fellowship invites a select group of 20 teens to explore their Jewish identity and develop leadership skills towards social action and community...Read more...

I had an opportunity recently to visit the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. I would definitely recommend this museum which covers the America Jewish Experience from the Colonial period through our own day. The gift shop alone is worth a visit! (I do love gift shops and I love Judaica... so what is not to like?). I lived in Philadelphia while in art school in 1981 and the following year (after I quit art...Read more...

Pirkei Avot teaches us: "Al Tifrosh min hatzibbur", "Do not separate yourself from the community".

The name of our congregation is "Adath Shalom". The Hebrew word "Adath" means community (of). Some synagogue names begin with the word "Beit" or "Beth" meaning house (of). We are more than a "house". We are a community. 

This past shabbat was a demonstration of how joyful it can be to be among community. In fact, for me this...Read more...

One of the biggest challenges for Torah readers is mastering the reading of the Ten Commandments. If you look at some printed texts of the Torah which include trope symbols (te'amim), you might see what appear to be more than one trope symbol for each word in the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments appears in two places in the Torah. One is in the book of Exodus (chapter 20) and then again later in the book of Deuteronomy (chapter 5). I...Read more...

     May 7 was the last day of Religious School for this year. There are so many people to thank for our successful year. As I drove to school early in the morning I mentally planned my closing message. The word that continuously came to my mind was "B'yachad" - Together. This year could not have been successful without the guidance and help of so many. Our teachers, madrichim, parents, committee members, Pam in the...Read more...

I have been reading Torah for many, many years. For a long time it felt like an exercise in memorization since the vowels and the trope do not appear in the Torah. As you know, one prepares a Torah reading by using a book called a tikkun. The tikkun shows each column in the Torah in two ways: one without vowels and trope markings and one "dressed" with vowels and trope markings. The reader must not only prepare the correct...Read more...

Guest contributor: Rabbi Allen Darnov

     Adath Shalom can boast a host of Torah readers able to leyen (read) Torah on sabbaths and holidays.  These individuals have not only superb Hebrew skills, they have also mastered the “accents” or ta’amim attached to the Torah’s words which have crucial importance. Look at a line of Hebrew in the Bible: the signs that don’t appear to be vowels are musical...Read more...

    In the mid 1990's, I served a congregation in Westchester, NY. In those years the ground breaking Jewish singer/songwriter Debbie Friedman was leading Passover seders for women. These sedarim inspired many communities to create their own womens sedarim (seders). Haggadot were compiled incorporating women's themes. In 2000, the first edition of  "The Journey Continues"  Haggadah   was published by...Read more...

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     Last week I wrote about the end of the seder, but today I want to write about the beginning. Probably the best known part of the seder is the singing of the 4 questions. For generations one rite of passage for a Jewish child was the recitation of this text. I was the youngest of four children and I remember the thrill of being able to take my turn to lead the four questions. I still remember the voice of the boy soprano...Read more...

     I am writing this on Purim day, but you will probably not read this until Shushan Purim. Those of us who live in walled cities get to continue our celebration on Shushan Purim. What is Shushan Purim? Shushan was a walled city and according to the megillah, the fighting in Shushan which was a walled city continued through Adar 14th, so they celebrated the following day, the 15th of Adar. Do you live in a walled...Read more...

For myself and my husband, Allen, the phrase "Mishenichnas Adar marbin b'simchah" (When Adar begins, our joy increases) has special meaning. Our first born son is named Adar. Although we didn't know if we would be planning a bris or simchat bat, the baby's arrival...Read more...

     The Talmud instructs us that Jews should recite 100 blessings a day. We begin our day with many blessings as part of our daily liturgy. B'rakhot are a device to focus our awareness of the miracles great and small in our lives. When we pause to acknowledge the miracle of a morsel of food or the ability of our body to function, we bring holiness to the moment. So, what is a b'rakhah? Yes, I am sure you can recite many...Read more...

If you are an early arriver to shabbat morning services, then you might catch the string of 15 blessings known as "Birchot Hashachar" (The morning blessings). They are recited quickly, maybe too quickly to completely process the message of each one. These blessings, which originated in the Talmud corresponded with the actions we all do in the morning. There is a blessing for opening our eyes, for getting dressed, putting a kippah on our...Read more...

Adon Olam is everyone's favorite prayer, right? It signals the end of the service and the next activity which is the Oneg or Kiddush! It is usually sung to a bouncy, happy tune or a melody stolen from pop music and hardly reflects the spiritual essence of this poem. Adon Olam has been ascribed to the poet Solomon Ibn Gabirol who lived in the 11th century. It might shock you to learn that in most traditional siddurim, including...Read more...

Last week I challenged you to "go on a hunt for Chanukah music that moves you either emotionally or spiritually". Every holiday provides so many opportunities for us to express our Judaism. There are rituals, there is food, there are sights, but for me, I don't feel I have fully taken in the holiday unless I have fully saturated my ears with the music. The sounds go straight from my ears to my heart. Yes, the Adam Sandler song is fun......Read more...

     Recently, I was trying to encourage a student to come to services in the months leading up to their becoming a bar/bat mitzvah. The student said "why do I have to come to services, I already learned all the prayers in religious school". Yes, indeed, if one  were to wander through the halls  and overhear our vav and zayin students "practice" their tefillot (prayers) with Morah Nurit, you might be pretty...Read more...

Gratitude is a main theme of Jewish prayer. In fact, Jewish prayer has often been summed up by the words: Thank you, WOW and Please. Upon waking up we begin our day by thanking God for our souls, our bodies and our Judaism. One of the first prayers taught to Jewish children was always the prayer "Modeh Ani". "I am grateful to You, living and enduring Sovereign, for restoring my soul to me in compassion. You are faithful beyond measure. The...Read more...

It was a glorious, sunny fall day!

Our pets, including about 15 dogs, 1 cat and 1 bird, assembled to be 

appreciated and celebrated for the special gifts they  give to us. 

Dr. Ron Bucher, a holistic veterinarian spoke to us about holistic animal care, 

a blessing was recited and doggie-goody bags were distributed. 

Donations were also collected for the 11th hour...Read more...

When I was trying to think of a Jewish inspirational  quote for my article, I was reminded of something that I heard from Sheila Adler. Sheila Adler was one of the most successful  Jewish educators I have been privileged to work with.  She received her Masters Degree of Jewish Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1986 and served as the President of the Jewish Educators Assembly. She was the Religious School...Read more...

     The first mitzvah after Yom Kippur is to build the Sukkah to prepare for the festival of Sukkot which is only 5 days after Yom Kippur. I now realize that my penchant of over scheduling myself may have roots in my Judaism... but I digress... Sukkot is a multi sensory holiday... a feast for the eyes, ears and I would argue it is the best smelling holiday.If you want to know more about sukkot please click on...Read more...

Each year, in partnership with the Jewish Agency for Israel, Federation brings a delegation of emissaries to Greater MetroWest to educate children, teens, and adults through the community about Israel, its people, and its culture. The   "Rishonim" are a cohort of teens  who are in their gap year between high school and army service. They are partnered with  synagogues and schools  such as ours to...Read more...

THE JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER METROWEST: What an amazing resource!! I am still getting to know the strengths of this community. This week I had the pleasure of participating in a meeting of Religious School Directors hosted by the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest. I had the opportunity to hear about all the programs  being offered in support of  our Jewish community. As I listened to the many presentations of...Read more...