This Week's Torah Portion-
This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Beha’alotecha (Bamidbar/Numbers 8:1-12:16). We read this week regarding the commandment to light the seven-branched Menorah in the sanctuary (differing from our Chanukah Menorah). We use light to combat the darkness of hatred and division. The number seven is a sign in Judaism of wholeness, completeness. We have light when our world is whole, when all voices are heard, and everyone is treated justly and with dignity.
Rabbi's Week In Review-
I had hoped this week to give a more lighthearted look at our own Jewish community via the ongoing discussion within our Kol Ami family on the book and series Unorthodox. Instead, the tragic killing of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer has occupied most of my time this past week and compels a response.
First, foremost and unfortunately, this is not a new or even unusual occurrence. We now have to add... click here to read the rest of Rabbi's blog.
Weekly Features-
Worship Event of the Week
This Friday, June 5, features our monthly Shabbat Speaker Series. Following our 6:45 p.m. service, we will welcome Stephen Eisele, the new executive director of PROMO, the LGBTQ advocacy and lobbying organization for the state of Missouri. Part of PROMO’s mission statement reads: “PROMO is Missouri’s statewide organization advocating for LGBTQ equality through legislative action, electoral politics, grassroots organizing, and community education.”
Eisele’s professional and personal experiences have given him knowledge of rural, suburban and urban Missouri. He understands Missouri’s political processes and the challenges to LGBTQ rights. He has seen attacks on the LGBTQ community and, in particular, on trans youth during the legislative session. With the PROMO staff, board and volunteers, he seeks to prevent the passage of discriminatory legislation and to work toward equality.
Most recently before PROMO, Stephen served as communications manager at Community Catalyst, where he supported and defended Medicaid across 12 states. He lives with his husband, State Rep. Ian Mackey, and their dog, Remy, in Richmond Heights, Missouri.
Weekly Feature
Kol Ami Book Club – a Discussion of Unorthodox
By Wynne Begun
The Kol Ami book club met May 26 via Zoom to discuss Deborah Feldman’s book Unorthodox, a memoir about growing up within the Satmar Hasidic community in Brooklyn, New York, and living under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing behavior. As a teenager, Feldman became trapped in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional, arranged marriage with a man she barely knew. Her personal difficulties with sexual intimacy and reproduction became an issue for her extended family and others in the community, and she was forced to accept this humiliation and invasion of her privacy. She was able to have a son at the age of 19, but as the tension between the author’s authentic self and her responsibilities as a good Hasidic wife grew more pronounced, she realized that, for the sake of herself and her son, she had to escape.
Discussion about Unorthodox was lively and passionate. For the most part, those of us who participated found the forced lifestyle repressive, cult-like and cruel. Although, as Lara Steinel said, Jews “come in all flavors,” the group wondered if the Satmar community would agree with that statement. Jewish people are thought to be “people of the book,” and study is central to Jewish practice. Deborah Feldman’s empowerment came through her reading of secular literature, which was forbidden by the rabbis. This insatiable thirst for reading revealed life outside her community. It was the publication of her own piece of literature that gave her the means to escape. The book group concluded that orthodoxy helps preserve Judaism but needs to be accepting of others and to not be insulated from the world. The Torah teaches us to “be a light unto the nations.” To shine that light, we must be a part of society, not isolated from it.
Congregants In The News-
Ellie, who turns 2 in August, says the Shema with full intentionality, with her classmates at the JCC’s Child Development Center. She’s the daughter of Kol Ami members Sarah Link Ferguson, who grew up in KC, and Matt Ferguson, originally from Dallas. This is Ellie’s first year at the JCC’s CDC, her mom says.
