November 2024 – Page 3 – Holy Blossom Temple

My Month in the Archives

By Eli Sol

This July and August, I had the absolute pleasure of working in the Holy Blossom Archives with the committee of volunteer archivists (Susan Cohen, Sheila Smolkin, Susan Mogil, Howard Roger, Michael Cole, Judy Winberg and Ruth Ellen Greenwood). The idea was first pitched to me in an academic context. For the final paper of my “History of the Jewish People” class this past April at the University of Toronto, I elected to write about the influence of lay leadership on Holy Blossom’s musical journey in the early days. The archivists were kind enough to accommodate my research needs and provided all the materials as well as an invitation to work there over the summer.

I travelled to Israel with Birthright in June and July, and once I returned to Toronto, I was ready to get to work in the archives. The main task was digitally cataloguing the mountain of musical materials left to us following Cantor Maissner’s retirement, which laid the groundwork for the new Cantor Benjamin Z. Maissner and Holy Blossom Temple Music Archive and Library. This new section of our archive library includes both digital and physical copies of posters, event programs, photographs, service plans, commissioned works, tapes, CDs, books, folders, pamphlets, and everything in between. The current plan is to store a selection of the physical materials in a designated cabinet of the Max Enkin Library on the main floor.

I had the privilege of interacting with an impressive scope of manuscripts. The materials mostly came from Cantor Maissner’s own 41-year career, not only as Holy Blossom’s cantor, but also as the head of the LACHAN community chamber choir, and a powerful, internationally recognized Jewish musical voice. Two of my favourite sources are Beny’s original, used, and annotated vocal score of Leonard Bernstein’s “Kaddish Symphony No. 3” and a Kabbalat Shabbat service of Hassidic tunes arranged for mixed choir by Sol Zim —the inside cover of which bears a lovely note to Beny from Sol Zim himself.

Many of the exciting musical documents in Cantor Maissner’s library predated him, revealing a wealth of inherited Jewish music dating as far back as the 1880s. Some highlights include:

a 1961 revival service made entirely of music composed by the Jewish Renaissance violinist and composer, Salomone Rossi;
Cantor Maissner’s predecessor, Cantor Sheldon Merel’s personal annotated 1955 Union Hymnal;
two of Sara Barkin’s personal copies of choral arrangements (she was our soprano soloist in the 1950s-1960s and sister to the celebrated Cantor Jacob Barkin who was at Holy Blossom from 1966 to 1969);
countless collected songs, prayers, and services by the internationally renowned Jewish liturgical composer Ben Steinberg (Steinberg was music director at Holy Blossom before moving on to Temple Sinai; we have an original piece in honour of his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah in 1987 and a piece he dedicated to Holy Blossom’s Rabbi Gunther Plaut);
Union Hymnals dating back to 1897;
a 1946 collection of Yiddish folk songs complete with musical score published in Toronto;
and a 1935 collection of German Jewish folk music for “everyday and festivals” with no indication of how it survived the war or how it ended up in Holy Blossom’s archive.

I would be remiss not to mention Jill Kamin and Gillian Rosenberg’s separate but related venture to digitally scan the complete corpus of Cantor Maissner’s musical career which will soon be housed in the National Library of Israel. Their project has been instrumental in filling out the digital side of The Cantor Benjamin Z. Maissner and Holy Blossom Temple Music Archive and Library and is more than deserving of praise.

If you are curious about exploring this new branch of the Holy Blossom archives, or about our exciting investigations into Holy Blossom’s extensive history, I encourage you to get in contact with our archivists. If you are just looking to dip your toes in, several artifacts of Holy Blossom history are displayed year-round throughout the Schwartz Reisman Atrium for exactly that purpose.

Dr. Nate Charach: Resilience Building Workshop

By Jack Kugelmass with Arlene Roth

In the Spring of 2024, Holy Blossom Temple was approached by our Temple member Dr. Nate Charach, with a riddle. “What do you call a program that combines psychiatry with climate change?” The answer: “Psychiatree”! www.psychiatree.ca

Dr. Nate Charach, a psychiatrist and the founder of psychiatree.ca, briefed the L’Chaim Program and the Luke Sklar Mental Health Initiative Committee (LSMHI) about a 6-session group program he has created that serves to help build resilience to individual and group trauma. This program was offered to us for members of the Jewish community’s post-October 7 world when many of us are experiencing feelings of fear, helplessness, shock, and anger – both concerning Israel and the antisemitic environment at home. With the guidance of Rabbi McCarroll, the Holy Blossom Temple hosted the group program run by Dr. Nate Charach. Six Temple members signed up for the series.

In our time together, we were introduced to three themes, each of which weighs on our lives as Jews in a post-October 7 era. Dr. Charach noted that he was guided in pursuing this work by the teachings of authors Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone in their bookActive Hope: How to face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power.

First, even as we witness and experience the trauma of the October 7 pogrom, we have an opportunity to promote post-traumatic growth for ourselves and our world. We can work toward that goal by honouring our pain and the pain of all affected by trauma.

Second, rather than a personal journey, our pain is connected to the pain of others. Only through a community with a positive vision can we build the strength to act in the service of others in our world. Overcoming pain is facilitated with action or in Jewish terms, acts of loving kindness. It also involves “active hope” – a concept that suggests that hope has meaning only when we act in pursuit of a desired outcome.

Third, a path to “active hope” is for all of us to recognize that the earth and all that lives within it is at risk unless we come together to protect and heal our world with all our individual strengths. Healing comes with joining others in community efforts to preserve all that is good, and to understand and honour that which is causing destruction, and then acting to care for all that lives.

A fellow participant, Arlene Roth, shared her experience of the group as follows:

“Nate gathered universal truths about being human and the role of our precious Earth in our lives to teach us how to hope and bring about positive change for our world. When the course began, I was feeling helpless and full of grief over the war in the Middle East; however, during the time in our group, I grew increasingly less fearful and more confident that I could make a difference and become more connected to others and our planet. I do believe that although there is no quick fix for our troubled world, by taking small steps we can repair and improve it.”

The members who took the program thought that others in the congregation may want the opportunity to take this program (there is a fee). If there is interest among some in our own community who wish to participate in such a group, please contact Dr. Nate Charach at [email protected] or Rabbi McCarrol at [email protected].

Arlene summarizes her takeaways:

1. We must believe in more than ourselves.
2. Fear keeps us in “Business as Usual” mode. This is not conducive for change.
3. Humans are not central to our world. We are a small part of a self-regulating evolving system that Earth modifies to keep our world in balance. Indigenous cultures understand the natural cycles of Earth and how all life is interconnected in a delicate balance. They view themselves as stewards of the land to ensure it is whole for future generations. We would do well to learn from them.
4. Repressed emotions create anxiety. We need to learn to Honour our Pain, to free up space for hope, and use our energy to make wiser, more compassionate decisions for our future.
5. Instead of feeling fearful, we need to be strengthened by uncertainty. We need to believe change is possible.
6. Our culture emphasizes Power Against rather than Power With.
7. Building bridges with others by finding mutual goals through non-violent communication will lead to a more peaceful, healthier world.
8. Even in times of anger, sadness, and grief, feeling grateful for the gifts we have from Earth and those around us will build trust in our universe and our connections with others.

The idea of combining the movement addressing climate change with a psychiatric intervention was a new one for me until I noticed our Temple’s Schwartz/Reisman Atrium’s “Living Wall” which contains the 7 species of plant life associated with Eretz Yisrael. While I thought that this was a lovely design feature of the Atrium, I now wondered if the living wall could be connected to the subject of Dr. Charach’s proposal? What if the wall represented more than plant life? What if it pointed us in the direction of creating and sustaining all life on the planet, a tenet central to Jewish life? To do so requires knowledge and action that serves to create, grow and maintain all life with resilience and hope for us and future generations. The series offered by Dr. Charach seeks to help us to develop such skills and consciousness.

The combination of climate awareness and psychiatric knowledge may sound strange to many of us who feel weakened in the face of a broken world; however, writing on behalf of our group, I can state that the discussions and exercises we experienced, helped us emerge from the group series feeling strengthened and more resilient. Furthermore, it was highly informative and meaningful.