A few weeks ago I lost my chavruta, a study partner with whom I learned together throughout the rabbinical school and beyond. Rabbi Dr. Robert Ash was not just a close friend and a former roommate, he was a partner in thought and in learning. His sudden death following a post-surgery complication is a heavy blow for our family, and we are eternally grateful for the day we got to spend together in December – a day that began with a visit to a bookshop: where else would you meet a friend after a long period of being apart? In addition to his Rabbinic degree, Robert completed not one but TWO separate PhD programs, and was pursuing a law degree in his spare time. ‘Read the book’ was his response to just about any situation in life!
Jewish tradition has never imagined learning as a solitary act. From the beit midrash of late antiquity to the synagogue classrooms of today, Torah has always come alive in relationship – through voices in conversation, questions offered with curiosity, and disagreement held with care.
We are living in a time when conversations about Zionism, Israel, and Jewish identity can quickly become polarized. Positions harden. Debate replaces listening. People feel either defensive or silenced. And yet, these are precisely the moments when communal learning becomes most essential.
This spring, I will be teaching the Shalom Hartman Institute’s iEngage course, “Zionism in the 21st Century.” The goal of this class is not to win arguments or sharpen talking points. It is not about persuading one another toward uniformity. Rather, it is about deepening our understanding – of history, of ideas, of one another, and of ourselves.
In this eight-unit course, Hartman scholars invite us to explore the core tensions and values of Zionism in the 21st century, responding to the dominant critiques of Israel and Zionism in a post-October 7 reality. Together, we’ll explore frameworks for holding moral complexity, for talking about Israel in a time of war, and for engaging in conversation with courage, compassion, and clarity.
These are not simple questions. They are layered, complex, and at times uncomfortable. That is exactly why they require communal learning. I invite you to join me and fellow TE members on this learning journey — not because you already know what you think, but because you are willing to think more deeply. Not because you are certain, but because you are curious. Not to debate, but to discover.
Let’s learn together. Perhaps we will all form some new and meaningful chavruta relationships.
Earlier this year we celebrated 100th anniversary of the first American Bat Mitzvah, and many of TE members shared their personal stories of celebrating Bat Mitzvah as an adult. Some of our members grew up in Jewish homes but did not have a traditional Bar or Bat Mitzvah ceremony. Some have joined the Jewish people as adults. Over the years, some have expressed the desire to celebrate this milestone as an adult. This is your chance! Rabbi Farbman will be teaching this Adult B’nei Mitzvah class beginning in January – please sign up to join this class!
Sundays | Jan 15, 22, 29; Feb 5, 12; Mar 12, 19, 26; Apr 23, 30. 11 am – 12 noon.
Please join us on Friday, September 9 at 5pm for the Annual TE BBQ picnic (fun activities for kids open at 4:30 pm), followed by Shabbat Service Under the Stars at 6pm! Invite your family, friends and neighbors – spread the word! This event is open to current and prospective members.
Kosher BBQ will be provided by our great chefs and snacks and sides will be individually packaged.
Due to the increased COVID-19 infection rate in our area, the TE board has decided to change the format of High Holiday services this year. While we would very much like to gather in person, the Jewish value of Pikuach Nefesh, safeguarding life, inspires us toward caution as we strive to protect the health of our community.
High Holiday Services on Erev and Day 1 of Rosh Hashanah and all Yom Kippur services will be held virtually on both Zoom and YouTube, as we did last year. The service on Day 2 of Rosh Hashanah and the TE Rosh Hashanah family celebration, which we expect to be smaller gatherings, will be held in person outside, weather permitting. Family units will be required to maintain social distance during and after the services, and masks will be required. The outdoor services will be live-streamed. We will also meet in person on the first day of Rosh Hashanah at 4pm for Tashlich at Wright’s Pond in Orange. In case of inclement weather, we will notify you of a change to virtual services.
We are of course disappointed that we will miss out on much of our special season of gathering, prayer, music, food, and above all, community. We know that nothing can replace the sense of celebrating our Holy Days together. Yet we can use the available technology to maintain our traditions and our connections with each other. High Holy Days will look different at TE this year, but this will not change the nature of the Holy Days, or of our sacred community.
Our Board of Directors has made a decision to use this opportunity to practice our true hospitality and welcoming spirit. Our High Holy Day services will be open to all this year. If you are not a member of Temple Emanuel, but would like to join us for High Holy Days this year, please use this form to register in advance.
For the 28th consecutive year, T.E. will again be holding its High Holy Days Food Drive, donating much-needed food to the food pantries of both Jewish Family Service and the Town of Orange. Unfortunately, due to Covid restrictions, we will once again be employing a hybrid model, giving congregants a variety of choices or options as to how they would like to participate. 1. For folks who would prefer to donate actual tangible food items, you can give your food donation to the T.E. “Honey Bee” when they come to your house to deliver your honey and calendar. Important: Please make sure that the cans and boxes are labeled, unopened, undamaged, and that the expiration dates are pretty far away. And for transportation safety, no glass jars, please. 2. For folks who would prefer to donate by check to the JFS Food Pantry, you can give your check to the T.E. “Honey Bee” when they come to your house to deliver your honey and calendar. Checks should be made out to JFS Food Pantry and please make sure you write Temple Emanuel on the memo line as that’s how we’ll be credited. If you prefer to mail your check directly to JFS instead, please mail it to: JFS Food Pantry,c/o JFS of Greater New Haven, 1440 Whalley Ave., New Haven, CT 06515. 3. For folks who would prefer to donate by check to the Town of Orange Food Pantry, you can give your check to the T.E. “Honey Bee” when they come to your house to deliver your honey and calendar. Checks should be made out to Treasurer, Town of Orange, and please make sure you write both Food Pantry and Temple Emanuel on the memo line as that’s how we’ll be credited. If you prefer to mail your check directly to Orange instead, please mail it to: Denise Stein, c/o Orange Food Pantry, 525 Orange Center Road, Orange, CT 06477. Please be as generous as you’ve always been in the past. This has certainly been a tough year. Thank you! Will Sherman, Coordinator, Food Drive
The Memorial Torah Scroll #1178 from Horazdovice is now proudly back in Temple Emanuel Ark!
Temple Emanuel houses in our Ark the Holocaust Memorial Scroll #1178, a scroll that belonged to the destroyed Jewish community of Horazdovice, Czechoslovakia, a community that perished in the flames of the Holocaust. This scroll is one of several hundred Czech Torah scrolls that survived the Holocaust, eventually coming to the Westminster Synagogue in London, and from there distributed to Jewish communities around the world. A young Temple Emanuel of Greater New Haven was fortunate to receive the Horazdovice Torah back in 1967.
The Horazdovice Torah at Temple Emanuel
This scroll was part of every Bar and Bat Mitzvah at Temple Emanuel from 1967 – 2007. A deeply meaningful Torah, this Holocaust scroll brought our community into the direct line of European Jews who were murdered by the Nazis and could not themselves perpetuate the Jewish people. As we read from and touched this sacred scroll, we carried out the laws and commandments of our faith, and we remembered and honored the Jews of Horazdovice whose voices were stilled. In 2007, the scroll was retired from service because it was damaged, fragile and deemed non-kosher. We placed the scroll in a case visible to all as we entered the synagogue, to preserve its meaning and connection to our history.
The Restoration of the Horazdovice Torah
In 2019, a Torah scribe inspected our Torah scrolls, those in the Arc and also the Holocaust scroll in its display case. The scribe found that 2 of our scrolls in the ark required some repairs to remain kosher. To our great surprise and delight, he found that the Horazdovice Torah scroll could be repaired and once again be made kosher! Many TE members were excited that this wonderful and important scroll might again be made kosher, and be returned to our ark. TE students researched and presented information about the Horazdovice Torah and its history. Temple Emanuel members rallied support and contributed funds to not only restore and rededicate this scroll but also to repair the other TE Torah scrolls and establish a small fund to support the continued maintenance of our Torah scrolls, and mounted a successful campaign to raise the funds needed to restore and rededicate this important Torah scroll. Each TE family had the opportunity to write a letter in the Torah scroll with the scribe, a meaningful fulfillment of the mitzvah. The now-kosher scroll was re-dedicated and returned to the ark. This scroll, connecting us to the hundreds of years of Jewish life from the lost community of Horazdovice, brings Jewish practice and tradition to new generations of Jews at Temple Emanuel. This rededicated kosher scroll now is once again being used at Temple Emanuel for Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and for special Torah services.
The Story of our Holocaust Torah Scroll
Our Holocaust Torah was first endangered when the Munich Agreement was signed on 29 September 1938. Britain and France agreed to Hitler’s demand to be given the German-speaking border regions of Czechoslovakia, and the Germans marched in. The Jews from about sixty congregations in the prosperous industrial and commercial towns in the Sudetenland had 2 or 3 days to flee to the interior, which was still a free and sovereign country. They left behind their synagogues, which were in German hands in time for the destruction of the Pogrom of November 1938, when synagogues across the expanded Germany, which now included the Sudetenland, were burned or vandalized and looted. In almost every case the ritual treasures of these Sudetenland synagogues were destroyed or lost.
In the remainder of Czechoslovakia, which included Prague, the synagogues and their swollen congregations were safe for the time being, and there was no program of destruction, even when the Germans invaded the rest of the country in March 1939. In 1940, the congregations were closed down, but the Jewish community administration was used by the Germans to execute their stream of decrees and instructions. In 1941 the first deportations started and the mass deportations of the Jews took place throughout 1942 and into January 1943.
The Nazis decided to liquidate the communal and private Jewish property in the towns, including the contents of the synagogues. In 1942 Dr Stein of the Juedische Kultusgemeinde in Prague wrote to all Jewish communities, instructing them to send the contents of their synagogues to the Jewish Museum in Prague. Thus the Torah Scrolls, gold and silver and ritual textiles were sent, along with thousands of books. The remaining Jews were deported in 1943 and 1944, but quite a number survived.
The inventory of the Prague Jewish Museum expanded by fourteen times as a result, and a large number of Jews were put to work by the Germans to sort, catalogue and put into storage all the items that had come from over one hundred congregations in Bohemia and Moravia. It needed over forty warehouses, many of them deserted Prague synagogues, to store all these treasures. When the task was eventually completed, the Jews who had been put to this work were themselves deported to the Terezin concentration camp and death. There were few survivors.
It was once accepted that the accumulation of this vast hoard of Judaica was intended by the Nazis to become their museum to the extinct Jewish race. There is, however, no evidence that any such museum was ever planned. The Prague Jewish Museum had been in existence since 1906, and was not created in order to house the Judaica collected in 1942. In 2012, the Prague Jewish Museum published “Ark of Memory” by Magda Veselska, a history of the museum that includes a clear explanation of how it was the Jews of Prague that worked before, during and after the war to protect a legacy that was threatened with destruction.
After the defeat of Germany, a free and independent Czechoslovakia emerged, but it was a country largely without Jews. Most of the surviving Jews in Prague and the rest of Bohemia and Moravia were from Slovakia and further east from Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Prague, which had had a Jewish population of 54,000 in 1940, was reduced to under 8,000 by 1947, and many of these were to leave. On 27 February 1948, after less than 3 years of post war freedom, the Communists staged a coup and took over the government of Czechoslovakia. The Prague Jewish Museum came under government control, and was staffed mainly by non-Jewish curators.
In 1958 the 18th century Michle Synagogue became the warehouse which housed hundreds of Torah Scrolls from the large Prague Jewish community and what was left from the smaller communities of Bohemia and Moravia. The collection did not include scrolls from Slovakia, which the Germans had put under a separate administration. Eric Estorick, an American living in London, was an art dealer who paid many visits to Prague in the early 1960’s. He got to know many Prague artists, whose work he exhibited at his Grosvenor Gallery. Being a frequent visitor to Prague, he came to the attention of the authorities. He was approached by officials from Artia, the state corporation that had responsibility for trade in works of art, and was asked if he would be interested in buying some Torah Scrolls. Unknown to him, the Israelis had been approached previously with a similar offer, but the negotiations had come to nothing. Estorick was taken to the Michle Synagogue where he was faced with wooden racks holding anything up to 2000 Scrolls. He was asked if he wanted to make an offer, and replied that he knew certain parties in London who might be interested.
Rabbi Farbman carrying the MST#1178 scroll at a historic gathering of Holocaust Memorial Torah scrolls in New York
On his return to London, he contacted Ralph Yablon, a well-known philanthropist with a great interest in Jewish art, history and culture. Yablon became the benefactor who put up the money to buy the Scrolls. First, Chimen Abramsky, who was to become Professor of Hebrew Studies at the University of London, was asked to go to Prague for twelve days in November 1963 to examine the Scrolls and to report on their authenticity and condition. On his return to London, it was decided that Estorick should go to Prague and negotiate a deal, which he did. Two lorries laden with 1564 Scrolls arrived at the Westminster Synagogue on 7 February 1964. After months of sorting, examining and cataloguing each Scroll, the task of distributing them began, with the aim of getting the Scrolls back into the life of Jewish congregations across the world. The Memorial Scrolls Trust was established to carry out this task.
Each Memorial Scroll is a messenger from a community that was lost, but does not deserve to be forgotten. Temple Emanuel’s restored Horazdovice Scroll carries that message to our congregants and to our future.
As part of TE’s social action program, Nancy Weber and Max Case have (in the past) organized a group of TE members to serve dinner one night each month at The Beth-El Center soup kitchen in Milford.
While this program has been temporarily suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic, The Beth-El Center is still on our minds. The need for food assistance is more evident now, with greater numbers of food-insecure individuals, families and veterans.
Hopefully in Spring of 2021, we will get the all-clear, and we can resume our monthly dinner service. Until then, you can help by donating directly to The Beth-El Center by visiting their website:
Hopefully in Spring of 2021, we will get the all-clear, and we can resume our monthly dinner service. Until then, you can help by donating directly to The Beth-El Center by visiting their website: