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Reflections on Cantor Rosen’s Installation

Click here to watch the recording of the Installation Service!

As I reflect upon last Shabbat, I am still overwhelmed with joy and gratitude for the wonderful installation service that official welcomed be as the Senior Cantor and Music Director of Holy Blossom Temple.

At the senior leadership meeting this week, I reflected that it felt as if the service actually took place in person, with many of you there joining in this historic moment for my family and for this community. I am greatly moved by all the wonderful emails and messages I have received and I have found myself pressing the refresh button on the livestream at various times throughout the week.

I am grateful to everyone who took part in this service as well as members of the Cantorial Search Committee who sponsored this event.

In my remarks, I commented about “Middah K’neged Migdah,” or the idea of Jewish Karma. In essence it is the notion that the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence are viewed as deciding factors in their fate of future existences. Despite difficult circumstances during my transition, it is become increasingly more apparent to me that Holy Blossom has an incredible ability to rise to any occasion, despite the obstacles and to provide meaningful opportunities for us to engage together as a kehilah Kedosha; a holy community that works together to create extraordinary things. In essence, this is a part of the DNA of our congregation.

As we move forward together towards the hope of coming out of the darkness of this pandemic, I eagerly look forward to the many wonderful events and celebrations we will enjoy together in the years to come.

Cantor David Rosen
Senior Cantor and Music Director

 

When we announced to the congregation that Cantor David Rosen would be the Senior Cantor and Music Director at Holy Blossom Temple, we were very excited for the future. The future has already delighted us several times, and none more so than Cantor Rosen’s installation service. Cantor Rosen skillfully wove together a collection of beautiful music and collaboration with a meaningful worship experience. Seeing and hearing Cantor Rosen alongside Cantor Maissner, Cantorial Soloist Lindi Rivers, and the incredible clergy team served as a reminder that a fantastic match was made. Including guest Cantors and our choir was innovative and beautiful.  We are blessed to have Cantor Rosen with us at HBT! We can’t wait to be part of many more experiences, especially when we can all gather together again for the amazing programs that Cantor Rosen has in store.

Rachel Malach & Jeff Denaburg
Co-Chairs, Senior Cantor Search Committee

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The ECC welcomes back students

The ECC continues to remain open and it was so nice to welcome staff and students back to school. We have many more holidays and celebrations to enjoy as well as many projects, exciting learning opportunities in the months ahead. With a relatively mild January, we are enjoying outdoor play and learning all about winter.

 

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Our Mother’s Piano

Our Mother’s Piano

Our Mother, Allie Herman, was born Alice Suroff in Toronto in 1911. She lived with her parents and six older siblings in a small home on Grace Street. As a child, she studied classical piano on her family’s modest upright piano and always hoped that one day she would have a piano of her own.

When she and our father purchased a home eight years after their marriage, the first piece of furniture she bought was an upright piano. Her dream of owning a Grand piano was realized eight years later when our family moved to a larger home.

Mother began studying piano again but this time it was popular music that became her music of choice. Scales and tunes played on that ebony Heintzman Grand were heard throughout our home as our Mother played and both of us practiced daily, in preparation for our weekly lessons.

After the passing of our parents, the seventy-year old piano became ours; however, its interior was in need of complete restoration. The Piano Technology Program at the Faculty of Music at the University of Western Ontario completed the work. For the past six years, the piano has been on loan at the Royal Conservatory of Music.

We are delighted that our Mother’s piano has found its permanent home at Holy Blossom Temple. We believe this to be the ideal venue to honour her memory for she was confirmed at Holy Blossom’s Bond Street site in 1927. Now the fourth generation of our family will enjoy the music emanating from their great grandmother’s piano.

Wendy Eisen and Carole Zucker

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Introducing Lisa Isen Baumal, Principal of Youth Education and Family Engagement

I am excited and honoured to take on the new role of Principal of Youth Education and Family Engagement here at Holy Blossom.  As a newly engaged couple, my husband Aaron and I joined Holy Blossom in 2001, and it wasn’t long before I began working as a grade 7 teacher in the Senior School. Over the past 13+ years, I have had the unique opportunity to work, pray, and raise our child in this congregation, allowing me the chance to develop meaningful and lasting relationships with many students and families, with whom I am blessed to count as friends. This is one of the many things that makes Holy Blossom such a unique and special place –it is a community, a family, and a home.  Over the past few years through my role as the Director of Youth Engagement, one of my goals was to instil that feeling in our young people – for them to feel and see Holy Blossom as their home, and this congregation as their extended family.

As I begin my role as Principal, I am keenly aware of the many talented educators who have served, lead, and taught this congregation. They created lasting and meaningful experiences for students and families alike, developed engaging curriculum, and have created a community of lifelong Jewish learners.  I am honoured to join this line of Jewish leaders and bring my own ideas and passions to create and energize new ways students and families can engage with Jewish learning and Jewish living.

I am on the tail end of completing my Masters in Jewish Educational Leadership at the Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion, where I have had the good fortune to study with many of the same teachers our own Holy Blossom rabbis have learned with.  My courses have not only well-prepared me to take on this role, but they have also given me a stronger connection to why I am a Jewish Educator, as well as connecting me to a network of fellow educators with whom I can share and develop ideas, and keep up with best practices.

This pandemic has forced us all to live our lives in a whole new way.  We have developed new and different ways of approaching our world, and have had to re-imagine and re-evaluate every step of the way.  We have learned a whole new set of skills and tools for online learning, communication and connecting with one another. Even the way we use physical spaces to learn and gather in has shifted.  I know that we are all wondering what the ‘new normal’ will look like when this pandemic is behind us.  I am ready to work with my colleagues both within Holy Blossom and in the Jewish educational field, along with the committed and talented lay leadership, and you, our congregation’s families, to shape and create the next normal for Jewish Education and Family Engagement, here at Holy Blossom.

As we face more lockdown rules, extended school closures and the cold months ahead, we are fortunate that our Jewish calendar provides opportunities for celebration.  I hope that families with younger age children will join us on Sunday, January 24, as we ‘Unbox Tu B’shevat’ together (from home)– as part of a new UJA initiative, Unboxing Jewish.

This Saturday night, January 16, join our HABSTY teens who will be leading our congregational Mincha/Havdallah service at the end of Shabbat.   There is no better way to end Shabbat and welcome a new week, than with the voices of teens, and a little bit of guitar.

Looking ahead, the month of Adar is around the corner, which means Purim is fast approaching!  Watch for different opportunities for families and children of all ages to perform the mitzvah of Michloach Manot together, bake delicious Hamentaschen, and be entertained during this joyful holiday.

I look forward to getting to know more of you, our Holy Blossom families, and to continue to strengthen the relationships I already have with many of you.

I am excited for the day that we can greet one another in our beautiful atrium, and for now, I look forward to connecting with you through phone calls, emails and,  zoom meetings.

B’Shalom,

Lisa Isen Baumal

 

A message from Rabbi Jordan Helfman:

When I was in elementary school, I learned that the proper spelling of principal included the word ‘pal’.  Lisa is many things – an inspiring Jewish educator, a big thinker willing to question the norms that surround our education systems, an advocate for the systemically disadvantaged, and a true relationship builder.  From her time as our Director of Youth Engagement, she has many teens and young adults who look to her as a mentor and a guide, and I know that families will feel her magnetic pull, and be inspired to engage with Jewish education in new ways.  In these next few years, I personally look forward to how Lisa Isen Baumal, as our principal, will shape our community.  – Rabbi Jordan Helfman

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Rabbinic Reflection: Rabbi Jordan Helfman

Connection Amidst the Plagues

This week, as we stand in shock at the anti-Semitic vandalism attack in Montreal, as we brace ourselves for the increased loneliness of the lockdown, we turn in our Torah to the Plagues.  In that story, we seek lessons to help us survive today’s plagues.

We are all familiar with the list of ten chastisements which God visited upon Egypt.  And how after each, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart until things were unbearable for the Egyptians, and life was made harder for our people as well.

This week’s story contains the first seven plagues, saving the truly horrible for next week.  This week includes blood, frogs, hail, lice and more – all of which made life less convenient for the Egyptians.  And that was all – life was less convenient.

Next week’s plagues, according to Rabbi Mosheh Lichtenstein, mark a transition from the unbearable to the truly destructive.  From plagues that harry and annoy to those which demoralize and destroy.

The locusts destroy the economy and make sure that there is a coming shortage of food.  The darkness is not just a normal darkness, but a darkness so thick that people are in isolation and cannot see their neighbours.  According to the retelling of the plagues in Psalm 78, darkness was the capstone – this isolation was punishment enough.  But with the isolation, as we know, comes death.

This is bearing out in the world around us today as well and in our congregation.  For many of us the isolation at the beginning merely inconvenient – and now it is taking a harsher turn to be dangerous.

What can we do? 

The darkness of Egypt prevented all communication.  Our darkness is not so thick – and we can connect online or by phone.

I urge you to think of people you haven’t seen in a while and to reach out. Our clergy recently began a calling campaign for all of our members in long-term care facilities, and each conversation is priceless.

If you yourself are looking for a connection, come and join us as our community meets daily for services and schmoozing.   There are also ways of volunteering to be a caller, such as this program that allows you to make a weekly commitment and matches you with someone with similar interests.

And if you feel like you need more help than our community can provide, please ask for that help.

In the midst of this plague, even with a vaccine in sight, we remember that in the Exodus from Egpyt, after each bit of progress, life was made increasingly hard, until eventually –  we were free.  May the time of freedom come soon.

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Colum McCann

Colum McCann

Please join us for two evenings of compelling discussion about an inspiring Israeli Palestinian story

We have a very stimulating two evening event coming up later this month!

I’m a real fan of the Irish American author Colum McCann who will be joining us, via Zoom, on January 28th. McCann is the author of seven novels, including the National Book Award-winning, Let the Great World Spin.

The Holy Blossom Centre for Contemporary Jewish Literature and our Israel Committee are welcoming Colum to talk about his most recent novel, the masterpiece, Apeirogon. It takes its inspiration from the real-life friendship between a Palestinian, and an Israeli: “An Israeli, against the occupation. A Palestinian, studying the Holocaust.” The men are united in their grief – they lost their daughters to terrorist attacks.

The novel is the moving and inspiring story of the two men, Rami and Bassam, and it employs a fascinating method to tell the story – the novel is divided into 1001 sections, like the Arabian Nights.

On January 27th, the night before Colum’s live appearance, we will discuss another way of telling the story – through the award-winning documentary, Within the Eye of the Storm. Guided by Dr. Gillian Helfield we will discuss the form and content of the film, and show Gillian’s interview with the director.

These two nights give us the opportunity to consider important issues around Israeli/Palestinian relations, and how these matters can be presented in two different, compelling art forms.

Colum McCann will be interviewed by the Globe and Mail Arts Reporter Marsha Lederman, and he will also read from Apeirogon and answer your questions. I encourage you to join us for these two nights of thoughtful discussion exploring the true stories of inspiring men.

 

“…Apeirogon is a masterpiece, a novel that will change the world.” – The Observer

“Colum McCann loves a high-wire act, and Apeirogon is a powerful, political tightrope walk of a novel. It’s the story of modern Israel and the story of modern Palestine. This beautiful, deeply felt book is first and foremost an extraordinary act of listening.”—Nathan Englander

We are making charitable contributions to Combatants for Peace, an organization one of the men helped to found, the goal of which was to bring Israeli and Palestinian soldiers together in the hope of finding common ground and putting an end to the violence. And to Narrative 4, Colum’s charity for sharing important stories around the world.

Please register at https://holyblossom.org/colum-mccann/

I look forward to seeing you on January 27 and January 28 at 7:30 pm!

 

Cynthia Good

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Rabbinic Reflection: Rabbi Jordan Helfman

We the People

“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

This past Wednesday night, I couldn’t sleep, as blood was spilled over the sacred halls where I, as an American, have made pilgrimage.  As Insurgent loyalists, encouraged by their sovereign, tried to disrupt the peaceful transition of power in the heart of modern democracy.  As police reacted differently to this protest than to peaceful protests of black and brown Americans. As police fell back again and again before the crowd mixed with white supremacist, Antisemitic, and neo-fascist messaging, playing at patriotism until they caused chaos and symbolically threatened democracy.

In the proceedings which followed, some lawmakers threw in their lot with the insurrectionists, seeking to disenfranchise voters and claim the Republic for themselves.  Other lawmakers, who had previously flirted with sedition, seemed frightened enough to withdraw their entreat with treason.  They looked into themselves and remembered the Constitution.

That document, written on yellowed paper and signed as a negotiated wish for prosperous posterity, enshrined many of the values which became models of good government around the world.  It is not perfect (see the 3/5th Compromise).  But it points to something higher, and ideal bigger than any of our ambitions – that all humanity are B’tzelem Elohim– created equal.

While not all American ideals are Canadian ideals, and not all Canadian ideals are Jewish ideals, we can all align over the idea that individuals over the age of majority have a duty – a sacred obligation – to participate in the life of our communities. Any who stand in the way of the performance of this duty are committing a reprehensible act – one that is seen as against the foundational principles enshrined in our sacred documents.

I pray that as the blood is bleached, the statues of state repaired, the image of liberty and justice slowly refocused – that mournful memory does not soon fade.  The shock and the terror, the images of flags and shirts meant to cause pain being paraded – the broken glass and feet on desks.  That these rekindle within us the lamp which seeks to spread light into the darkness.  That we can seek out the silenced voices and ask them to speak louder.  That ideals enshrined in sacred documents need us to come to life.

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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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