FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Debra Kolodny, Executive Director, ALEPH
DATE: Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Phone: 301-565-0719
Email: DebraRuth@mac.com

Dear Editor:

Enclosed is the September 2005 ALEPH News Service. We hope you run one or more of the following articles, and look forward to hearing from you if you do. This release contains:

1. ALEPH and Shalom Center Announce New Phase of Independence
2. ALEPH and Jewish Renewal featured on PBS's Religion and Ethics News Weekly starting Friday, September 30
3. ALEPH ordains two new rabbis at 2005 Kallah

About ALEPH: ALEPH acts as the headquarters of the Jewish Renewal movement by organizing and nurturing communities, developing spiritual leadership, ordaining rabbis, cantors and rabbinic pastors, creating liturgical and scholarly resources, holding retreats and festivals and working for social and environmental justice.

ALEPH has attracted and energized thousands of seekers returning to Judaism and thousands who are deeply engaged but looking to elevate their current practice. ALEPH has 40 affiliated communities and its projects include two biennial gatherings: the Kallah and Ruach Ha'Aretz; the Sacred Foods Project, C-DEEP: The Center for Devotional, Energy, and Ecstatic Practice, the Bet Midrash (producing siddurim, publications, videos and CDs from our founder Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and other Jewish Renewal teachers) and Kesher (supporting twenty and early thirty year old leaders). In addition to its projects, ALEPH also produces one day Jewish Renewal festivals in communities around the US and Canada called Caravans. It is home to Ohalah: The Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal and a Rabbinic Studies Program, educating future rabbis, cantors and rabbinic pastors.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or would like additional information. ALEPH looks forward to working with you,

Debra Kolodny /s/

ALEPH and Shalom Center Announce New Phase of Independence

On September 1, The Shalom Center, founded and directed by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, became an independent 501c3 organization for the second time in its formidable history. ALEPH was born in 1993 as a merger of the Pnai Or Religious Fellowship founded by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and The Shalom Center. For 12 years The Shalom Center worked very effectively with ALEPH projects like the Rabbinic Program, Jewish Renewal Life Center, Kesher Project (developing young leaders), and the ALEPH Bet Midrash, a publication and distance-learning center.

Now ALEPH and the Shalom Center will continue to collaborate on specific initiatives and also work independently to grow and strengthen the hand of Jewish Renewal. The new relationship will allow both organizations to flourish in the arenas where they have their specific expertise.

This year ALEPH and the Shalom Center will work together on ALEPH's interfaith "Sacred Food's Project" and The Shalom Center's "Beyond Oil Project". In addition to this work, the Shalom Center will continue to craft Jewish spiritual approaches to peace, justice and environmental sanity in ventures like:

• Co-leading the recent independent peace-focused Shabbat service and Interfaith religious service in Washington DC both before and after the March to End the War in Iraq on Sunday, September 25;
• Organizing the nationwide campaign called, "God's October Surprise," honoring the confluence of holidays for the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths. In Philadelphia there will be an Interfaith Festival of Festivals for a multi-religious Ramadan/Sukkah at Independence Park on October 23, which will include a program of music, prayer, poetry, and learning from the three Abrahamic traditions;
• Supporting the "Tent of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah," a group of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim leaders by holding retreats to explore common prayer, study, and action growing from our spiritual roots;
• Calling together multi-religious and secular leaders to reshape the twin diseases of dis-employment and overwork into sacred work/sacred rest: "Freeing Time & People";
• Working with Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel and North America;
• Reinterpreting Bible in study groups, articles, email, and books to explore its creative and progressive potential in our personal and political lives today.

You can find out about these projects and much more at www.shalomctr.org.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Ph.D is the author of The Freedom Seder, Seasons of Our Joy, Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, and the Rest of Life, Godwrestling and Godwrestling - Round 2. He is a coauthor of The Shalom Seders, Before There was a Before, and Tales of Tikkun: New Jewish Stories to Heal the Wounded World. In 1996, he was named one of forty Wisdom-Keepers by the United Nations to advise governmental delegates at the Habitat II conference in Istanbul.

ALEPH and Jewish Renewal featured on PBS's Religion and Ethics News Weekly

ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, its founder, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and those who call the movement for Jewish Renewal home will be a featured segment on PBS's Religion and Ethics News Weekly. The show will begin airing on Friday evening, September 30 on the PBS web site: www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/. It will be shown in 250 media markets throughout the United States during the following week. The schedule for those markets is listed at www.pbs.org/religion. Because the Religion News Service wire will be running the script for the segment, a much broader distribution is possible.

Producers interviewed leaders of the Jewish Renewal movement at the ALEPH Kallah in July and taped extensively at the event. They also taped a Washington DC area gathering in September, where participants prepared for the High Holy Days by deepening their personal tshuvah (repentance) work during the Jewish month of Elul. Recent and long-time Jewish Renewal participants were interviewed about their experiences and beliefs about the special approach that Jewish Renewal has to tikkun olam work (healing the world/social justice), prayer, chanting, meditation, text study, holiday observance, community connection and more.

Pardes Levavot note: you can find the transcript of the story on the PBS web site, or watch the video, at: www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week905/feature.html and longer interviews at www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week905/interview.html www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week905/interview1.html

ALEPH ordains two new rabbis at 2005 Kallah

At the opening evening of its July biennial gathering, ALEPH ordained its two newest rabbis: Shalom Schachter and Chava Bahle. The ordination followed a service dedicated to prayers for peace where the local Johnstown imam, Fouad El-Bayly blessed the gathering of over 700 people. The moving combination of events was identified by many as the highlight of the week long retreat.

Rabbi Shalom Schachter is Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi's oldest son. After leaving rabbinic studies through the Lubovitz tradition in 1967 he resumed studying in a serious way through ALEPH in 1999. In the interim he engaged in lay rabbinic activities for small Jewish communities in Canada. His professional employment for the past 25 years, which he will continue, is as a labor lawyer with the Ontario Nurses Association. Shalom is married to Marcia Gilbert and the couple has two children, Matya and Cliel.

Rabbi Chava Bahle is the rabbi of Congregation Ahavat Shalom in Traverse City and the Director of the Or Tzafon Retreat Center, a center for the study of Jewish mysticism, spiritual practice and contemporary worship in northern Michigan. Chava teaches courses in religion, spirituality, writing and non­profit leadership at Northwestern Michigan College, where she helped found the non-profit leadership certificate program. Chava lives in Suttons Bay and is married to Karl Bahle.

Chava and Shalom join eight rabbis and two rabbinic pastors ordained in January at the 7th annual Ohalah conference, for a total of 12 ALEPH ordinations in 2005. The January ordinees were:

Rabbi Eli Cohen, JD serves Congregation Shir Tikveh in Troy, Michigan and Chadeish Yameinu in Santa Cruz, NM.

Rabbi David Jonathan Cooper co-founded and has served East Bay's Kehilla Community Synagogue since 1984.

Rabbi Dr. Andrew Vogel Ettin, MS, JS, PhD has served Temple Israel in Salisbury, NC, Temple Emanuel in Winston-Salem, NC and Havurat Olam in Concord, NH.

Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan Kaplan, PhD, recently began her service as the rabbi of Or Shalom in Vancouver, BC.

Rabbi Dr. Robert Saunders, DDM served as student rabbi at Temple Emanuel, and founded Congregation B'nai Or in Pueblo, CO.

Rabbi Dr. SaraLeya Schley, MD served as spiritual leader of Or Shalom in San Francisco.

Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Seidel, PhD currently serves Light of the Garden Jewish Community in Eugene, OR.

Rabbi Dr. Louis Sutker, PhD served as interim lay rabbi of Kehilla Community Synagogue in Berkeley, CA and is currently helping found a new Kehilla on upper Vancouver Island.

Rabbinic Pastor Ellen Weaver, LCSW serves as core residential faculty at Elat Chayyim, a Jewish spiritual retreat center in Accord, NY.

Rabbinic Pastor Pinchas Zohav is a Jewish chaplain.