| Pardes Levavot |  |
Pardes Levavot, “Orchard of Hearts,” was formed in the spirit of creating conscious holy community. Our name expresses the spiritual blossoming of each individual heart within an inspiring and nurturing orchard.
For information on our congregation please call (303) 563-2110 and leave a message or send email to info@pardeslevavot.org. To join our congregation, please print a copy of our membership form, fill it out, and send it to our Synagogue.
Pardes Levavot gratefully acknowledges Allied
Jewish Federation of Colorado for their support of
our Circle of Family Education program. Thank you!
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Debra Kolodny, Executive Director, ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal DATE: August 29, 2008 Phone: 301-565-0719 Email: <mailto:DebraRuth@mac.com> Web site: www.aleph.org Dear All: Enclosed is the August 2008 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 Ruach Ha’Aretz Produce First ALEPH Winter Retreat 2. ALEPH Sponsors Second Jewish Renewal Pesach Pilgrimage, Istanbul to Jerusalem in 2009! 3. Kosher Meat by Unkosher Means 4. Third Kol Zimra Cohort Underway 5. OHALAH and ALEPH Support the Right to Marry Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or would like additional information. Sincerely, Debra Kolodny Executive Director ALEPH and Ruach Ha’Aretz Produce First ALEPH Winter Retreat Cultivating the Garden of our Souls: A Mid-Winter Celebration of Life, Love, Peace and Torah Jewish Renewalists looking for a meaningful retreat with some of the best teachers in the movement need look no further! Join ALEPH and four of its projects: CDEEP: The Center for Devotional, Energy and Ecstatic Practice, Sage-ing, Rodef Shalom and the Institute for Contemporary Midrash, along with Eshet Hazon Rabbi Hanna Tiferet Siegel for a week of immersion in deep spiritual practice, beautiful prayer and wonderful community. This first time event features five all day courses with master teachers in magical Albuquerque, New Mexico from February 2-8, 2009. Two courses are associated with certification programs in the ALEPH Sage-ing Project and the Rodef Shalom School for Peace, but all courses are open to those interested in attending just this one-week of training. The offerings are: Exploring the Landscape of Love Through the Song of Songs: A Workshop for Couples Rabbi Shefa Gold and Rachmiel O'Regan of CDEEP “The whole Torah is Holy, but The Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies…Had the Torah not been given, we could live our lives by the Song of Songs.” Rabbi Akiva What would it mean to place this erotic, sensual, sexually explicit and most beautiful poem at the center of our tradition? All committed couples are invited to enter the landscape of this Sacred Song and our path as Lovers through chant, meditation, and contemplation. Death As Homecoming: Life Is The Answer Rabbis Nadya & Victor Gross of Ruach Ha’Aretz People have been dying ever since the world began and yet each one of us clings to the illusion that death is something that happens to other people but not to us. ~Rabbi Jack Reimer When we recognize that life is finite we are challenged to live each moment fully and accept the gift of our soul’s breath as our most precious commodity. In this second part of ALEPH’s Sage-ing Mentorship Training, we focus on facing our mortality, reprioritizing and redefining the values in our lives. Seeking Shalom Bayit: Trouble in our Own Backyard, Eliyahu McLean and Ruth Broyde-Sharone of Rodef Shalom: This course is designed to encourage intra-faith peace building within the Jewish community, especially when dealing with the contentious issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Participants will learn tools to engage this issue in a positive unifying way and will seek common ground by jointly confronting the challenges we all face: an endangered earth, water shortage, hunger, poverty, and injustice. Embodying Torah Through Bibliodrama, Rivkah Walton of The Institute for Contemporary Midrash: Bibliodrama creates dynamic, living midrash through improvisational role-playing, where participants step into the shoes of our ancestral families and imagine their motivations, relationships, struggles and dreams. In this intensive entry-level training, you will develop your directorial skills through a sequence of carefully constructed exercises and you will take home lasting tools for midrashic inquiry in the classroom, the pulpit, or community settings. Va’ani Tefilati: I am My Prayer, Rabbi Hanna Tiferet Siegel, Eshet Hazon: The body is a Temple for the prayers of our whole being. During this Shabbat Shira week we will open to the song/prayers that flow through each of us and witness how the freedom to express our inner truth unites us. Hatha yoga will help make the prayers of our bones and muscles accessible to us. We will study the hidden meaning of words of Torah and liturgy and journal our insights to nourish our minds. Space is limited so register early! Go to <http://www.ruachhaaretz.com/> to register, and contact Rabbis Victor and Nadya Gross at info@ruachhaaretz.com with questions. ************************************************************************ ALEPH Sponsors Second Jewish Renewal Pesach Pilgrimage, Istanbul to Jerusalem in 2009! >From Monday, March 30th to Monday April 13th Rabbi Marcia Prager, Hazan Jack Kessler and Rabbinic student Nachshon Da-vid Mahanymi will masterfully guide an adventure starting in Istanbul Turkey, one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities, and concluding at a star-lit Passover seder in Eretz Yisrael. Visit Sufi and Jewish Istanbul. Experience the Seder in a ‘Bedouin” tent that resembles the wandering tents of our ancestors. Davven Kabbalat Shabbat with Nava Tehila- the emerging Jewish Renewal community of Jerusalem. Participate in a tzedakah project of Table to Table, a volunteer organization supplying foods to tens of Israeli soup kitchens. Those exploring Israel for the first time will experience the country deeply and meaningfully, as the group travels gently with time for prayer, reflection, celebration, meditation, learning and sharing. Together we will grow an enduring spiritual connection to the land and to the inner meaning of Passover as a time for liberation into new possibilities. We will meet with Israeli grassroots peace builders, artists, musicians and teachers, as we cultivate hope, and nourish relationships through joyful prayer, dialogue and reflection. We will tour the landscapes where our ancestors lived, studied, dreamed and wrestled, from the dry heat of the Negev desert to the refreshing waters of hot springs, visiting active archeological sites and delighting in cheese and wine crafted by local artisan farmers. Our Aliyah la'regel (pilgrimage) will culminate in extraordinary Passover Seder in a ‘Bedouin’ tent under the full moon of the month of Nissan. You will get a first hand experience of the setting that gave birth to one of the most powerful myths in human history: the liberation story that inspires freedom and justice workers the world over. The trip fee for this two-week tour is $3785 per person, airfare included, by credit card or $3685 per person by check. Please visit <http://www.aleph.org/> for more information, including how to register, after September 8, 2008. *************************************************************************************** Tikkun Olam Resolution and Call to Action issued by ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal and OHALAH: Rabbis for Jewish Renewal and The Rabbinic Pastors Association, an Affiliate of OHALAH KOSHER MEAT BY UNKOSHER MEANS Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof. Justice, justice pursue. Deuteronomy 16:20 Traditional Jewish Law prescribes precise actions and conditions required in order for food to bear a “Kosher” label. Likewise, Jewish Law has precise guidelines for allowed and forbidden actions and conditions for the treatment of workers, including immigrant workers. In situations where Jewish Law regarding the treatment of workers has been violated in the process of their preparing of food for “Kosher” certification, we believe that food must be denied “Kosher” certification. In The Fire Within, a biography of Rabbi Yisroel Salanter, the book's author, Rabbi Hillel Goldberg, relates that Rabbi Salanter advised his students that when they were preparing matzot for Passover, they should not overwork themselves or make excessive demands of the female workers who were kneading the dough and otherwise preparing for the matzah baking. That same account appears in a Hebrew volume titled Bikkurei Shai, written by a modern Israeli rabbi who has served as Chief Rabbi of Givatayim, Israel. If Chassidim making matzot for their own use and the use of the community must pay attention to worker rights, it is also incumbent upon us to treat immigrants the same under the Torah based halachah of treating the stranger as the home-born. Reports arising from the May 12, 2008 Department of Homeland Security raid at the AgriProcessors Kosher Meat Packing Plant in Postville, Iowa, establish that there are credible allegations that the owners and management of AgriProcessors committed serious violations of Jewish Law against scores of immigrant workers at the plant including sexual assault and harassment, rape, abuse, and use of child labor. Under these circumstances and credible allegations, we call upon our fellow clergy who provide Kashruth certification to suspend the certification of “Kosher” meat from AgriProcessors until the truthfulness of these allegations are determined in a proper legal forum where the workers, and the owners and management, have a hearing that complies with the requirements of due process of civil and Jewish laws. We also call upon our fellow Jews to boycott meat from AgriProcessors until this determination. If these allegations are determined to be true, the “Kosher” decertification and boycott should continue until full t'shuva and tikkun is done by the owners and management of AgriProcessors, including apologies to the workers, full compensation for their injuries, and the implementation of procedures and systems with effective monitoring to ensure that abuse of AgriProcessors workers never occurs again. The resolution will appear at http://www.ohalah.org/tikkunolam.htm ALEPH and OHALAH members are invited to add your name to the resolution and invite friends, colleagues, congregants and others to add their names as well. To sign on, please send your title, name, city and state or country to Rabbi Pam Frydman Baugh at pbfrydman@yahoo.com and mention the Kosher Meat Resolution. ************************************************************************************ Third Kol Zimra Cohort is Under Way The third cohort of Kol Zimra has begun with 28 new leaders from across the US and Canada. It will be working together refining leadership and energy skills and supporting each other's devotional practice until January 2010. The first retreat was held in Albuquerque in a beautiful setting that overlooks the Rio Grande and the Sandia Mountain Range. Kol Zimra is a training program offered by CDEEP, the Center for Devotional, Energy and Ecstatic Practices, run by Rabbi Shefa Gold and Rachmiel O’Reagan. ************************************************************************************* OHALAH and ALEPH Support the Right to Marry OHALAH: Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal and ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal just passed a “Right to Marry” Resolution, which states: Marriage has been a protected human right since time immemorial. The time has come to extend that right to same sex couples. We are inspired by the example of Canada, The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the State of California that extend the right of marriage to same sex couples. We applaud the leadership of Great Britain, Norway, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Iceland, France, New Zealand and the States of Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Oregon, Maine, Washington, and Hawaii that provide support for same sex couples by sanctioning same-sex registered partnerships or civil unions or by providing some form of spousal rights for gay and lesbian couples. We call upon the people of California to vote in the November election in favor of same sex marriage, which is in danger of being outlawed once again in that state. We call upon Americans who live in other states where same sex marriage will be on the ballot to educate themselves, and to vote against measures that state that marriage is between a man and a woman because that language--although traditionally linguistically correct--denies the human rights of the gay, lesbian and bisexual members of the community. Rabbi Chaya Gusfield, from Oakland, California says: “OHALAH rabbis want to marry you! With delight, we join in this historic moment, as people of all genders are free to choose marriage under California State Law. We look forward to accompany couples creating, affirming, and re-affirming their families through the act of sacred marriage as they walk to the chuppah as well as City Hall. We honor those who came before us who have paved the way for this important and precious time, begin the process of healing wounds that have waited a long time for healing.” Visit <http://www.ohalah.org/> to find out more about this resolution and locate a rabbi in your area to officiate at a same-sex ceremony. |