As you read this, I hope you take note of the new format for jewishsacredaging.com.
The time has come for us to amp-up the vision of the site and what we can do, and so this month represents the first roll out of the revised web site. We hope to make it more inter-active and add additional guest contributors. This transition also reflects the growing interest in many of the issues we look at. This is especially true for the challenges associated with care-giving.
Rabbi Edyth Held Mencher, LCSW Associate Director, URJ Department of Jewish Family Concerns
Many people, perhaps all people, are experiencing heightened anxiety, insecurity and doubt as troubling economic events are unfolding. Some of us have already been directly affected as we or a family member has lost a job, others fear they will be next, still more are concerned and confused about pensions, mortgages, investments and diminished resale values of homes. Within our tradition and in models of response to trauma there are particular responses that can help to sustain hope and rebuild confidence. Read more
The underside of the leaves are lit by the early morning light, as we enter the month of Iyyar. This is the month the Bible calls Ziv (shining), which, in Israel and here in California, is a bright, shining, and radiant month.
Rabbi Ann Brener, LCSW
While the air is filled with scents of honeysuckle and sounds of birds, I know that Spring awakens more slowly elsewhere, and even here, with an uncertain succession of very hot and very cool days, there is an anxio us undertow to this month, signaling the discomfort of the unknown and of being in the wilderness. Because of the uncertainties, which define life in 2009, Iyyar’s predictable anxiety is heightened this year.
Adar is a month of surprises and provides a wonderful template through which to view healing. Looking at the swollen buds on thetree, about which I have written in the past, I can’t help but fulfill the traditional mandate to “be happy, it’s Adar.” Not only do I delight in the rebirth of nature it signifies, but also I blush as I celebratethe tree’s sensual display of tumescence!
The tree is sexy, and it makes me smile. However in a time of so much financial uncertainty, Adar’s “happiness directive” may be counterintuitive. It is hard to “put on a happy face” when we know that so much is changing and our fears about what those changes may look like are hard to control.
President Obama’s inauguration
January 20th was a day that I could not have imagined as a young Jewish girl growing up in the Jim Crow New Orleans of the 1950’s. My childhood expectations rose from a world illustrated with images which included a sign in the window of a Laundromat that read, “Whites Only. Maids in Uniforms Accepted” as well as signs over water fountains and lunch counters designated separate areas for “Whites” and “Coloreds.”
Rabbi Ann Brener, LCSW
I watched my Uncle Mose and Cousin Josh walk into the sanctuary of their Orthodox schul, where they got to pray and to touch the Torah, while I accompanied my Cousin Leah and Aunt Sarah up the stairway to the hot balcony where we sat with the women, barely able to see or hear the activity below. Could the girl that I was in 1958 have envisioned a morning when an African-American was inaugurated as President of the United States or an afternoon when I was welcomed as a member of the Los Angeles Board of Rabbis? Read more
I live in Southern California, where the seasons match those in the land of Israel. Therefore, my own moods and sense of time are often congruent with the Jewish calendar and its days of observance. This allows me to insert myself into the mindset of our ancestors in an effort to decode their world view in my search for their secrets of faith and healing.
Rabbi Ann Brener, LCSW
Calendars mirror their civilizations, and the Hebrew calendar, rising out of the societies from which the Jewish people emerged, reveals wisdom about the Jewish cultural psyche. Read more
