Category Archives: Cheshvan
REQUEST FROM STUDENT RABBI ERIK L. URIARTE, BETH AARON, BILLINGS
Since August of 2017, I’ve been serving as the student Rabbi for Congregation Beth Aaron and I’ve been a resident of the state since May 2018. I am also currently in my final year of Rabbinic School at Hebrew Union College, the seminary of the Union for Reform Judaism.
In these last three and a half years of serving this community, I’ve come to meet, and learn a lot about, Jewish communities in Montana. I’ve been fascinated by the rich and amazing history of Judaism in Montana. I’ve been amazed at the tenacity of the Jewish spirit that has held many communities together for decades, and even over a century in some places; all while separated by hundreds of miles from major urban and Jewish centers in the rest of the United States.
It is with this in mind that I’ve decided that for my final thesis work to fulfill my educational obligations for ordination, that I will be engaging in a study of Jews and Judaism as it stands now in Montana. There have been many demographic studies of Jewish populations in the United States, including rural and historical communities, however, all of these have focused on communities in places like the South or the upper Northeast, where small Jewish populations still have support from larger urban Jewish communities and infrastructure an hour or two away. This is not the case here in Montana.
I would appreciate it very much if you could take 15-20 minutes to complete this online survey NO LATER THAN NOVEMBER 30th.
If you have any questions, you may contact me at (406) 413-5367, or by emailing me at uriarte.huc@gmail.com.
If you are unable to complete the survey online, but would still like to complete it, I am happy to schedule a time to take your answers over the phone if you contact me by phone or email.
Thank you very much for your time and participation,
Erik L Uriarte, MAHL
Student Rabbi and Director of Religious Programming
Congregation Beth Aaron – Billings, MT
Cell: (406) 413-5367
YAHRZEITS — NOVEMBER, 2020
RAM’S HORN POLICY FOR LISTING YAHRZEIT MEMORIALS:
Yahrzeit memorials are listed by consecutive Gregorian month, date, and year, if known, or at the beginning of the list for one calendar year following the date of passing.
Compiled by Aitz Chaim over many years, this list is maintained by the Ram’s Horn. Please send any corrections or additions to editor@aitzchaim.com
May the source of peace send peace to all who mourn, and may we be a comfort to all who are bereaved.
YAHRZEITS — CHESHVAN, 5781
RAM’S HORN POLICY FOR LISTING YAHRZEIT MEMORIALS:!
Yahrzeit memorials are listed by consecutive Hebrew month, date, and year, if known, or at the beginning of the list for one calendar year following the date of passing.
Compiled by Aitz Chaim over many years, this list is maintained by the Ram’s Horn. Please send any corrections or additions to editor@aitzchaim.com
May the source of peace send peace to all who mourn, and comfort to all who are bereaved.
| Name of Deceased | Hebrew Date of Passing | Deceased Relationship to Congregant |
| Gary Ray Holsclaw | 11 Iyyar, 5780 | Son of Arleen Heintzelman |
| Charlotte Weiss | 30 Kislev, 5780 | Mother of Laura Weiss |
| Queenie Crombie | 3 Cheshvan, 5753 | Mother of Arleen Heintzelman |
| Nathan Rapaport | 9 Cheshvan, 5686 | Grandfather of Nadyne Weissman |
| Vicki Sherick Hawkesworth | 9 Cheshvan, 5774 | Daughter of Jack and Diane Sherick |
| Martin Renne | 16 Cheshvan, 5761 | Father of Michael Renne |
| Celia Ross | 22 Cheshvan, 5733 | Great-grandmother of Ceecee Drew |
| Norman Handler | 22 Cheshvan, 5761 | Father of Wendy Weissman |
| Marvin Langsam | 23 Cheshvan, 5774 | Brother of Helen Cherry |
| Leonard Weissman | 29 Cheshvan, 5768 | Grandfather of David Weissman, father of Jeff Weissman, Patricia Philipps, Ted Weissman, Sally Weissman and Gale Rietmann |
MAJCo: AN INVITATION FROM BETH SHALOM, BOZEMAN — A WEEK END WITH THE RABBIS KULA
Congregation Beth Shalom in Bozeman invites you to celebrate Rabbi Mark Kula’s Installation with a weekend of special events, March 5-7
“Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life” presented by Rabbi Irwin Kula
Thursday, March 5th at 7:00pm
Montana State University, Strand Union Building, Ballroom D
Our desires for love, happiness, truth, goodness, creativity, and self-awareness define our lives. These yearnings, never fully realized, drive us, disappoint us, push us, frustrate us, elevate us, distort us, damage us, propel us, energize us and inspire us. How can our yearnings become sources of wisdom to help us know ourselves better, live more fearlessly and joyfully, act more ethically and purposefully, and love more passionately and unconditionally?
Rabbi Irwin is a disruptive spiritual innovator and rogue thinker. A 7th generation rabbi, he is Co-President of CLAL, The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a do-tank committed to making Jewish a Public Good. Named one of the leaders shaping the American spiritual landscape, he received the 2008 Walter Cronkite Faith and Freedom Award for his work “toward equality, liberty and a truly inter–religious community” and has been listed in Newsweek for many years as one of America’s “most influential rabbis.” Learn more about Rabbi Irwin here.
Installation, Shabbat Service, and Purim Celebration
Friday, March 6th at 6:00pm
Congregation Beth Shalom, 2010 W Koch St.
Join us in a celebration of our new Rabbi, Rabbi Mark Kula, with a service officiated by Rabbi Irwin Kula, followed by a catered dinner hosted by Beth Shalom. “The Sanctuary” open bar with live music and Purim festivities kicks off at 8pm. Give a “l’chaim” toast to our Rabbi with a “Kula-tini”!
RSVP to amber@bethshalombozeman.org by Friday, February 28.
Torah Study led by Rabbis Mark and Irwin Kula
Saturday, March 7th at 9:30am
Congregation Beth Shalom, 2010 W Koch St.
Join us for great conversation and company. Bagels and coffee provided.
For more information, visit www.bethshalombozeman.org.
Rabbi Irwin Kula: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life
Rabbi Irwin Kula: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life
Editorial Review from Amazon
“This sagacious book will be a blessing to all who read its teachings on the value of spiritual yearning.”
“At a time when religion is too often associated with absolutism and extremism, Kula combines ancient Jewish teachings and contemporary insights to articulate a practical, spiritual path that embraces uncertainty, complexity and tolerance.”
“This wonderful book does what so many like it fail to do: it embraces the magic of day-to-day living, the spirituality that can be found in our questions, our mistakes, our passions and our doubts. Life is indeed messy, but as Rabbi Irwin Kula shows us, sorting through it is what transforms us to higher ground, and there is wisdom in how the heart approaches what it yearns”
“Provocative, engaging and transforming, Yearnings is a shofar blast of a book that will open your eyes and stir you, inspiring you to break free of inertia and move forward in your spiritual evolution.”
“Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life” was selected by Spirituality and Health Magazine as one of the 10 Best Spiritual Books of 2006.
About The Book
The host of PBS’s Simple Wisdom and The Wisdom of Our Yearnings explores life’s most defining human experiences.
A perfect love, enduring happiness, discovering our purpose. Yearning for these experiences accompanies us through life, leading us to both joy and disappointment, and to a powerful vision of who we are, and who we can become. Far from being a burden, our yearnings can themselves become a path to blessing, prompting questions and insights, resulting in new ways of being and believing.
In Yearnings, renowned Rabbi Irwin Kula explores and celebrates seven of our deepest desires. He opens the spiritual toolbox of Jewish wisdom — it has much to teach about the ambiguities and uncertainties we all encounter — and takes us on an excursion into our age-old questions, merging ancient wisdom and stories with contemporary examples and insights. Whether it’s a woman struggling with a breach in her marriage, a child wondering about the tooth fairy, or Moses yearning for answers in the story of the burning bush, Yearnings offers a broader perspective to enrich our search for meaning.
The practices and insights in this book are based on teachings that have evolved for over three thousand years, as generations have wrestled with the messiness and complexities of the human experience. Rabbi Kula invites us to do the same, urging us to seek answers to our deepest questions, to search for spiritual and personal fulfillment while knowing we will never finally get there, and to celebrate the discoveries we’ll make along the way.
About the Author
Rabbi Irwin Kula has appeared on Oprah and Frontline and serves as a consultant to corporate and family foundations, as well as to federations, synagogues, and agencies on issues of leadership and change. Fast Company has named Rabbi Kula as one of the new leaders shaping the American spiritual landscape and he has been featured in national publications such as the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Chicago Tribune. He lives in New York City.
Rabbi Irwin Kula is an eighth-generation rabbi, nationally known speaker and teacher, and the president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. A repeat guest on Oprah, he is also the host of the public television broadcast called The Wisdom of Our Yearnings. Rabbi Kula lives with his wife and daughters in New York City.
MISSOULA: STATEWIDE INVITATION TO CHANUKAH CELEBRATION
The annual city wide Chanukah celebration has become a Missoula tradition. All are welcome to celebrate Chanukah with family, friends, and Mayor John Engen!
Sunday, December 22
4:30-6pm
At the DoubleTree Hotel
100 Madison Street
FREE ENTRY
Enjoy an LED JUGGLING SHOW, as well as the traditional Latkes, Doughnuts, Dreidel games and Arts & Crafts.
Fun for kids, and fun for kids at heart.
KOSHER FOOD ORDER: AN OFFER FROM BOZEMAN
Dear Friends,
We’ll be making our next food order soon as we’d like it to arrive in late December or so. Please see the list below and send in your order’s by Tuesday, November 26th, at noon. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks much!
Rabbi Chaim Bruk
Director/Spiritual Leader
Chabad Lubavitch of Montana
8755 Huffman Lane
Bozeman, MT 59715
Phone: 406-585-8770
SHABBAT PROJECT
Dear Friends
It is my pleasure to share with you some reflections on this week’s Torah portion. Feel free to print it before Shabbat and share it in your shuls and at your Shabbat tables. Forward it to friends and colleagues – as the world gears up for another Shabbat of Jewish unity and celebration.
Download and print here
Stars and sand
“I will surely bless you, and I will make your descendants numerous like the stars of the heavens and like the sand on the seashore.”
In this week’s parsha, Vayeira, we read this famous blessing that G-d gives to Abraham.
There’s an obvious question here. According to current estimates, there are around 7.7 billion people in the world, of whom approximately only 14.6 million are Jews – children of Abraham. We make up roughly only 0.2% of the world’s population. How, then, do we understand this blessing of being great in number – numerous like the stars of the heavens and like the sand on the seashore – when clearly, we are not, and never have been? And even G-d Himself, later in the Torah, tells us that He did not choose the Jewish people “because you are the most numerous of the nations… since you are [indeed] the fewest”.
Rav Yaakov Zvi Mecklenberg, a 19th-century German commentator, finds a clue in an unusual rendering of a very similar blessing found in last week’s Torah portion, Lech Lecha. The verse says: “I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, then your offspring too can be counted.”
He explains that the Hebrew word used here for “to count” – limnot, actually means “to ascribe importance to”. G-d blesses Abraham’s descendants not that they will be as numerous as the dust of the earth, but rather that they will be important to the world in the same way that the earth is important. He blesses them that their contribution to the world should be significant and tangible.
Rav Naphtali Tzvi Berlin, dean of the great Yeshiva of Volozhin, takes a similar approach. He explains that, like the stars, Abraham’s descendants will have a special power to illuminate the world, their contribution radiating across history and pointing the way forward for human progress.
The Kli Yakar takes a different approach. He says the blessing that we will be like “the sand of the seashore” is a reference not to the future impact of the Jewish people, but to our endurance as a nation.
The sand on the seashore is constantly subjected to the waves that come crashing down on it, threatening to wash it away – and yet, while its grains shift, the seashore remains, unmoved, unmovable. The analogy is clear. Throughout history, the Jewish people have faced enemy after enemy – Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Crusades, Cossacks, Communists, Nazis – yet we remain steadfastly in place, holding the line, not washed away.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (Germany, 1808-1888) discusses how Jewish history has always defied the laws of nature, how our very origins are enveloped in miracles. Take the birth of Isaac, mentioned in this week’s parsha. Abraham was 100 years old, Sarah was 90, and they had an only son. What were the chances of this little family becoming a great nation? Yet, from these rickety beginnings, the Jewish people emerged, thereby expressing so clearly the Divine blessing and plan for our nation. Isaac’s name comes from the Hebrew word for ‘laughter’, which reflects how, through G-d’s eternal blessings given to Abraham and his descendants, Jewish destiny has laughed at the laws of history and transcended the usual trajectory of nations and defied the odds, time and again.
In 2011, I attended the Conference of European Rabbis in Warsaw, the largest gathering of rabbis in Poland since the Second World War. It stirred something deep within me. To witness such a huge gathering of Jewish leaders from all over Europe in a city that had literally caged its Jewish population and then shipped them off to death was to understand the miracle of Jewish endurance. It was a loud declaration that we Jews, thanks to Divine providence, are still here.
The miraculous enduring vibrancy of the Jewish people is a key theme of this year’s Shabbat Project, which will see Jews of all backgrounds uniting in more than 1 600 cities and 105 countries around the world to keep and celebrate Shabbat.
The call to sign up and jump together is a call to define our Jewish identity by inspiration rather than force of circumstance, uniting in joy and celebration around our Divine values, rather than pain and persecution. It is a call to embrace Shabbat, which is the vibrant source of our connection to G-d, family, community and even to ourselves. It is a call to unify as Jews, as brothers and sisters who love each other, and who are bonded together by our shared Divine destiny.
Let’s jump together, shake the dust of the earth and live the miracle of our ongoing vitality. Let’s shine our light to the world.
Let’s not just endure, let’s flourish.
Here’s to keeping it together.
Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein
theshabbosproject.com
CHRISTMAS AT THE MERCY HOME
The holidays are just around the corner, which means we need to start thinking about staffing the Mercy Home for Christmas. If you are interested in helping out, let me know. We may have to combine shifts this year if we don’t have enough volunteers, so let me know if you are able to help and what day and I will figure out what shifts we can do for them.
For those who don’t know what this is, our Jewish community runs the Mercy Home – the domestic violence shelter for women – on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so that their staff can spend time with their families. If you are new to volunteering, you will take a quick training – either I can do it or a Mercy Home staff member can do it. Volunteering is easy and a great use of your Christmas Eve/Day. The shelter has been full for the last few years, and it is great to be able to help out these women in crisis on their very special holiday.
Hope to hear back from you! E-mail me at wendy@weissman.com or text or call me at 868-5712. I hope to get both days filled!
Wendy Weissman
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Welcome to Congregation Aitz Chaim, the Great Falls Hebrew Association, the only organized Jewish community in Northcentral Montana. We are a member of the Montana Association of Jewish Communities and the Union for Reform Judaism. We hold regular services and events throughout the year. -
