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Gender Diversity in a Female Space

by Gillian Rosenberg, Communications Coordinator, Women of Holy Blossom

 

 

Androgynous is in some ways like men, and in some ways like women, and some ways like both men and women and in some ways neither like men nor women.

(Mishnah Bikkurim 4, sourced from keshetonline.org )

 

About 3 years ago, Women of Holy Blossom (WHB) embarked on a renewal journey that entailed new branding around the value of inclusion. In living up to that branding, however, we struggled with gender diversity. Particularly this: How do we, as a female group, welcome, embrace and celebrate those who identify as gender fluid, transgender, agender, and non-binary? While our challenge was initially intended to benefit individuals who have been, for the most part, marginalized from synagogue life, we soon recognized that WHB would be strengthened by such diversity, that we needed this community as much as they might need us.

 

So, we contacted Keshet. If you don’t know Keshet (meaning rainbow in Hebrew) and the exceptional work they do, you really should visit their website. In a nutshell, they advance the full and equal participation of LGBTQ+ Jews and their families in Jewish life, through education, advocacy, allyship, and leadership – primarily in the United States. At the end of November, WHB’s Leadership Council; our programming partner, Women’s Advocacy Group; and the Holy Blossom staff and clergy who support our work, met online with Rabbi Micah Buck-Yael, Keshet’s Director of Education and Training, for an enlightening, inspiring, and validating learning session.

 

The outcome? We now have a conceptual framework for gender diversity in a female context, known as affinity spaces. We understand WHB to be an affinity space for those who seek female experiences and are comfortable centering female voices and needs. Yet, within every affinity space, there is diversity regarding the many ways in which we identify, including gender. Whatever gender identity one brings to the WHB affinity space is an asset to WHB.

 

Additionally, we are more confident using the language of gender diversity; recognizing microaggressions against gender-expansive, genderqueer, and gender-nonconforming people; and engaging in difficult and uncomfortable discussion on where we fall short and how we can (and must) do better in supporting the needs of this community. We are primed for allyship, advocacy, and seeking justice at Holy Blossom Temple and in local and global Jewish communities.

 

Sisterhood was created at Holy Blossom Temple to provide opportunities for women to engage in and contribute to the synagogue community because women were generally marginalized from doing so at the organizational level. One hundred years later, Women of Holy Blossom is continuing this legacy by bringing another marginalized group into the fold. Our journey is just beginning and there is much still to learn and do. But we are driven forward by our obligation as Jews. Our sacred texts recognize multiple gender identities, and they instruct us, in various ways, to lift up the vulnerable. Taken together, these messages light a pathway to gender diversity in a female space. WHB is rolling up sleeves and digging in. Follow us on social media to see how.

 

It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.

(Pirkei Avot 2:16, sourced from Sefaria.org)

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Rabbinic Reflection: Rabbi Eliza McCarroll

Dear Holy Blossom Temple Family,

With this upcoming Shabbat being my installation, I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude to each of you – our congregants, lay leaders, and my colleagues – for the gifts that you have given to our entire community, as I’ve integrated into Temple life.

In your contributions of time and talent, you strengthen Holy Blossom each day and make it a place that has proven itself warm, welcoming, and full of wisdom, and a place that I am so proud to call home.

I am also extraordinarily excited to welcome a good friend of our congregation, Rabbi Karen Thomashow, back to her Holy Blossom home to be with us for my installation as Assistant Rabbi.

Equally, this Shabbat is a time to draw your attention to a few upcoming programs and initiatives that fall under my portfolios, which I hope will be of interest and meaning to join:

  • Monday, December 5, 7:30 pm: the Luke Sklar Mental Health Initiative is presenting an important panel entitled: Childhood Sexual Abuse in Jewish Spaces: A Panel Discussion with Author Stephen Mills, Dr. Guila Benchimol, and Tracy Doyle. Find out more and register here.
  • Shabbat morning December 10, 11 am: Family Services – Channukah edition! Family Services are always special, but even more so when we get to celebrate chagim together. Come along, bring your children, your grandchildren, and friends, for the joyous music of David Gershon and an interactive, relaxed environment featuring some Channukah fun!
  • Contact me at [email protected] for the following Bikkur Cholim mitzvah opportunities: our new Kugel Kindness program, where we are making kugels to deliver to congregants who could use a lift, OR, to visit our retirement facility partners with Jewish residents, such as Amica and Baycrest.

Our tradition teaches us not to separate ourselves from the community (Pirkei Avot 2:4).

As such, I would love to hear from you if you would like to be involved, and, mostly, I look forward to celebrating our congregation with you all this Shabbat, and to all the good work we will do together.

B’todah u’b’ahava,

Rabbi McCarroll

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Praying at the Kotel with the Women of the Wall

Praying at the Kotel with the Women of the Wall

By Phyllis Segal Denaburg

Whenever I am planning a trip to Israel I check the calendar to see if I can be in Jerusalem to join the Women of the Wall (WOW) for Rosh Hodesh, the beginning of the new month. As luck would have it, I was here to celebrate the month of Kislev at the Kotel this morning. A little background about the Women of the Wall. We are a group of Jewish women from Israel and around the world who strive to achieve the right to wear a tallit, pray and read from the Torah collectively and out loud at the Western Wall.  WOW also strives for recognition of our prayer service by the legal and religious Israeli authorities, for the sake of all Jewish women.

Today was one of the few times that I have experienced where WOW was actually able to pray aloud wearing a tallit, hear each other singing, and listen to the Torah portion being chanted. Fortunately this month, the loudspeakers broadcasting prayers from the men’s section ‘were not working’, there appeared to be better security within the women’s section to prevent the young school girls from blowing whistles in our ears, while they pushed and shoved us and it was raining! Over 50 women joyfully participated in the service, while numerous male supporters prayed just outside the women’s section, and unfortunately endured the taunts, shoving and whistles.

It was a joy to actually observe Rosh Hodesh with WOW at the Kotel, and we continue to pray that Israel will one day recognize that women have an equal right to pray communally at the Kotel, without the need for security.

PS I have offered to send WOW some ‘suitably decorated’ umbrellas.

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Rabbinic Reflection: Rabbi Samuel Kaye

Sharing the light this Chanukah

The first Toronto snow is falling and a few things are coming to my mind.

First are the memories I have of the happy snowy winters I’ve had here in Toronto while visiting my in-laws. We would pack up our bags in Atlanta, fill them with cold winter clothing, wrestling with zippers as we did our best to fit our warmest coats into our carry-ons. Taylor, in true Montreal fashion, would remind me that Toronto is not nearly as cold as her hometown. I would dutifully nod and remind her that, nevertheless, it was still winter in Canada. We would be thankful for these heavy coats when we arrived. And we always were! The blast of cold air as the doors at the airport opened was a physical reminder that now it was the season for light, family, and Chanukah!

As we are experiencing our first ‘full-time’ Toronto winter, I cannot help but think about the people of our city for whom winter is a time of danger and suffering. Those who are sleeping on the street, those who will struggle to pay for heating, those who cannot afford regular hot meals.

This Chanukah, Holy Blossom Temple is honoured to be partnering with Ve’ahavtah to provide our members with a chance to serve those in need face to face and to spread the light of hope and dignity to those struggling day to day. From December 19-22, Ve’ahavtah has reserved seats on their mobile service center for our members to pass out supplies, hot meals, and warm clothing to those in most dire straights.

You can sign up for a shift HERE. While space is limited for this exciting program, we look forward to launching it as a full-time initiative in early 2023. Please be in touch with me at [email protected] if you’d like to learn more about our efforts in Tikkun Olam.

Chanukah may still be a month away, but winter is here. Together, let us live up to our sacred responsibility. Both our constant obligation to care for our neighbours and the stranger and the call of this holiday to ‘publicize the miracle’ by sharing the light of hope and the possibility of redemption in the world.

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From the Holy Blossom Temple Archives

From the HBT Archives: Rabbi Isserman and Immigration

Holy Blossom Temple Archives Committee

United Jewish Farmers of Ontario, Organization meeting, Holy Blossom Synagogue Toronto, March 25, 1925

Ferdinand Isserman was our rabbi from 1925 to 1929. The historical exhibition on immigration, currently on the second floor of our atrium in the Garson/Baskin Gallery, reminded us of Rabbi Isserman who, from the moment of his arrival in Canada, concerned himself with immigration and the plight of refugees.

Writing in the Canadian Jewish Review on September 4, 1925, Rabbi Isserman warned Canadians not to follow the example of the United States in adopting restrictive immigration laws. His advice was timely, as the U.S. Secretary of Labor, James J. Davis, was at the time visiting Toronto and urging Canadians to enact legislation similar to America’s restrictive Johnson Immigration Bill. Rabbi Isserman’s description of that law was blunt. He called it “a product of bigotry and chauvinism … It exalts the Nordic race, despite the fact that sober scientists maintain there is no Nordic race. It assumes a philosophy of racial superiority which has no basis whatsoever in objective truth.”

Sadly, as Rabbi Isserman would quickly learn, Canadian immigration policy was not much different from that of the U.S. Immigration from Britain was encouraged. Quotas for persons from other countries could be granted, at the discretion of the cabinet minister responsible for immigration, and these went mostly to Nordic countries. There was also a special category for farm labourers.

In December 1926, Rabbi Isserman, together with Lyon Cohen, a founder of the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society, and S.W. Jacobs and A.A. Heaps, Jewish members of Parliament from Montreal and Winnipeg, headed a delegation that met in Ottawa with the Minister of Immigration, Robert Forke. The group made two requests: that a quota for Jewish immigration be renewed and that concessions be made for the admission of relatives of Canadian Jews. Regulations at the time permitted a Canadian Jew to bring over an unmarried child or brother, but not a married child or brother or a sister. In January 1927, it was announced that both requests were refused.

This still left open the possibility for Jews to come to Canada as agricultural workers. A Jewish Farm School had been founded in Georgetown, Ontario. The school (which ran from 1925 to 1930) was the creation of the United Jewish Farmers of Ontario, whose first organizational meeting (see photo) was held at Holy Blossom in March 1925. Morris Saxe, under whose direction and on whose farm the school was to operate, was elected president and Rabbi Barnett Brickner, our rabbi from 1920 to 1925, was elected honorary president.

In an editorial in the Canadian Jewish Review on June 24, 1927, Rabbi Isserman wrote about the first immigrant arrivals at the school. “Fifty Polish war orphans, constituting the entire population of an orphanage in Mezrich, Poland, twenty-two girls and twenty-eight boys, from the ages of nine to seventeen, are en route to the Jewish Farm School …” Fundraising for the orphans, Rabbi Isserman reported was being led by Edmund Scheuer, well known as a distinguished member of our board, and for many years Superintendent of our religious school. Rabbi Isserman pleaded urgently for members of the Jewish community to assist Mr. Scheuer: “In five days the orphans will be here. Will you help provide for them? Will you be father to the fatherless and plead the cause of the orphan?”

You may wish to visit the Archives Committee displays in the Temple atrium honouring Rabbi Marmur z”l and The Pioneering Women of Holy Blossom, and the Living Museum display in the atrium in honour of Remembrance Day.

If you have any items of archival interest to contribute to the Holy Blossom archives, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at [email protected].

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Rabbinic Reflection: Rabbi Eliza McCarroll

There is a beautiful saying in our Talmud that “the world only exists due to the breath of schoolchildren” (Shabbat 119b).

This “breath” is interpreted to mean the recitation and study of Torah because no one brings as much innocence and joy to their days – breathes life into Torah – like a child.

Yet, it is upon us, the adults, families, and friends of our youngest members, to cultivate their innate spirituality, and convert this inherent curiosity and energy into action.

Whilst it is amazing to see our YEC thrive every Sunday morning, did you know that there is the opportunity to partake in this mitzvah on Shabbat, as well?

We do this on approximately the second Saturday of each month, Holy Blossom Temple holds Family Services upstairs in our Youth Chapel, where children come together to sing, to pray, to play, and to enjoy each other’s company both in the chapel and in special breakout rooms.

In other words, they have the chance to live and breathe Torah, and to find joy within it, as is their nature in our tradition.

Additionally, for their families and adults, it is an invaluable chance for them to experience the connection and closeness that community brings.

Our next Family Service is on Saturday, November 12, at 11 am, and they are co-led by renowned children’s musician David Gershon, and myself.

All are invited, and all are welcome to join the rest of the congregational family for our Kiddush lunch following.

Additionally, if you are interested in learning more about cultivating your child’s spiritual life, on Shabbat and every day, please CLICK HERE to learn more about our Parent Education Course, “Raising a Mensch”, team-taught by Rabbi Splansky and myself, starting Sunday, November 6, 9.30-10.30 am, and continuing for the next three weeks.

If Shabbat is known as a delight, then it is even more delightful to bring that Shabbat and Jewish spirit to our children and families. We look forward to seeing you there!

L’shalom,
Rabbi Eliza McCarroll

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The Joan Beckow Legacy Project

The Joan Beckow Legacy Project

Joan Beckow grew up in music in an era when female composers/instrumentalists weren’t really given a platform, Beckow’s undeniable ability to convey complex emotion in melody, and her mastery of harmony, has so far, fallen under the radar.

Growing up in suburban Chicago, Joan moved to Los Angeles with her dad. Joan was exposed to a variety of music from a young age and she enrolled in the Music Program at UCLA. She composed many musicals during her time there and eventually moved to the west coast of Canada with her husband, Jack.

Beckow’s work has been performed on-stage hundreds, even thousands of times, but never in her 50+ year career was her music professionally recorded in-studio.

Later, Joan earned a Music Therapy degree from Capilano College and became a long-time faculty member. She continued to build her prolific catalogue of musicals, choral works and stand-alone pieces inspired by Jewish liturgical text.

In celebration of the contributions of Joan Beckow, the Joan Beckow Legacy Project was launched including 22 songs; 30 musicians, recorded live off the floor on both sides of the country to produce a double-disc album, under the mother/daughter music-direction duo, Wendy Bross Stuart (Vancouver, via New York), and Jessica Stuart (Toronto, via Vancouver). Joan has been adjacent to exceptional artists-turned-celebrities throughout her career, starting with her long-time musical collaboration with best friend and 1950s UCLA roommate, Carol Burnett, but remained modest in the pursuit of her own work.

Holy Blossom has always been a supporter of Jewish Music. We continue to celebrate composers of Jewish Music of various genres and are thrilled to partner with The Joan Beckow Legacy Project for the Toronto debut of this incredible collection of music on Saturday, November 19th at 7:30 pm following our congregational Shabbat Mincha service. The evening will include a short film outlining the life and musical contributions of Joan Beckow followed by an incredible concert. I am thrilled to be joined by a cadre of various vocalists, including Temple Singers and cellist, Beth Silver.

Please enjoy this trailer for Joan’s piece, “May the Words.”

We hope to see you on November 19th at 7:30 pm for this spectacular program, which was recently featured on CBC radio. Click here to register: holyblossom.org/joan-beckow/

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Founded in 1856, Holy Blossom Temple is Toronto’s first synagogue with a rich history of tradition and modernity in our religious and spiritual expression.

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