Category: Featured

Judaism is all about the sacred time. To be sure, space matters too, but time – now that’s really important. Minutes, days, weeks – all of it matters tremendously – just take a look at the Jewish calendar, its’ beautiful, complicated precision. Just look at how carefully we monitor time – on March 6 Shabbat begins at 5:34 pm and ends on March 7 no earlier than 6:19pm… Does it really matter? Why do we obsess over such seemingly trivial details as minutes of an hour? Does it really matter if our Yom Kippur fast lasts full 25 hours, and do we really need to wait for the three stars to appear at the end? I’d like to suggest that we pay so much attention to those precise minutes not because they matter quite so much, but because they allow us to pay attention to an extremely important moment: that of transition. At the beginning of Shabbat, it is the lighting of candles that allows us to usher Shabbat in, creating an invisible divide between the long week we just had and a very special space in time we call Shabbat, the time of rest, of renewal, of family and friends, a Jewish space in our often very non-Jewish week… Havdalah allows us to mark the transition ‘back’ into the world of daily routine. Every time we mark the arrival of a festival with kiddush we mark that transition from the ordinary to the sanctified – and then back again. Both transitions are special, both are sacred! As I write these words, Temple Emanuel embarks on one of the most ambitious projects in over 50 years of our existence, the biggest such effort in over twenty years: to bring the entire TE community under one roof. We called this project OneCampus. The addition to our sanctuary building will contain 4 classrooms, a library/meeting room and some office space. It will enable us to bring to life our vision of TE members of all ages entering through the same doors to engage in learning, celebrating Shabbat and Festivals, working to make this world a better place through the acts of Tikkun Olam and enjoying all the wonderful things TE has to offer -all under one roof! And so I come back to marking the transitions. On Tuesday, March 10 at 11 am we will hold a ground breaking ceremony, allowing us to mark this moment in time, this moment in the history of our congregation, when we will officially begin to construct this new part of our campus. We will do so with the words of shehecheyanu, thanking God for sustaining our community for over 50 years, and allowing us to reach this very special moment. There will be many more opportunities for us to celebrate this wonderful new stage in our synagogue’s life. There are still plenty of opportunities to get involved in this wonderful project and to support it with your talents, and to donate money to help make it happen. But for now, let us just take this moment in, cherish it, and let the words ring in our ears: ‘Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech haOlam, shehecheyanu ve’kiymanu ve’higianu la’zman hazeh’. Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has sustained us, and kept us alive and allowed us to get to this very special moment.