Newsletters

Worship Event 
of the Week

Shabbat Blessings
At 6:45 p.m. this Friday, May 24, we meet on Zoom for Shabbat blessings and a little Torah. This is always a wonderful way to connect with one another, make Shabbos together and have a leisurely Shabbat dinner at home. For the Zoom link, click here.

Community Event

Tony Award-Winning Play Opens
This Week 
May 22-June 9, Kansas City Actors Theatre presents The Lehman Trilogy (a Tony Award winner for best play in 2022) at City Stage Theater at Union Station (30 W. Pershing Rd.). The story follows the Lehman brothers and their descendants, from the 1840s to the early 2000s. Patrons of The J can get $30 tickets using the code JCC30, redeemable online or by phone. Call the box office at 816-361-5228. For more info about the play, click here.

Kol Ami Event 

Bring Joy (Oneg) to a First-Friday Shabbat Service
We invite volunteers to bring simple vegetarian treats the first Friday-night service of the month for our Oneg Shabbat. (Kol Ami provides challah and grape juice.) Please respond to  worship@kolamikc.org to get on the Oneg Shabbat calendar.
— Kol Ami Worship Committee

Yahrzeit
This Week

​​​​​​​May 25
Sylvia Begun – mother of Wynne Begun

We Wish
Mi Shebeirach
A complete healing of mind, body and spirit to:

Karen Chisholm
Robert Clinton
Kenneth Dantzler
Renée Dietchman
Harriet Greenwald
Karla Jacobs
Melvin Michael Slater
Robert Allen Slater

If you would like a name to continue to be listed or if you have a
new name to include, please send an email to healing@kolamikc.org. 

Rabbi's Week in Review



Over the past weekend, I attended a rally in support of a cease-fire in Gaza, uplifting the rights of Palestinians, seeking full humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza, and uplifting the work of the Palestinian American Medical Association, which has been working in Gaza to save Palestinian lives under the most challenging and dangerous circumstances. I did not agree with every viewpoint expressed at the rally, but I do believe in the ... Click here to read the rest of Rabbi Doug's blog post.

This Week's Torah Portion
Parashat Behar (Vayikra/Leviticus 25:1-26:2)



We read this week about the sabbatical year and the jubilee year. These two events are both an obligation and an opportunity to relinquish control and ownership, to retool and re-evaluate the place of our lives in creating a better world, and creating a space where the powerful and greedy do not hold sway over those not born with the proverbial silver spoon.

Weekly Feature

Yiddishe Kop and Alfred Nobel
By Ellen Karp

Last summer’s blockbuster (and Oscar-winning) movie Oppenheimer showcased a number of Jewish scientists. That film and last year’s Nobel Prize announcements got me thinking about Jews in the STEM fields: Science, Technology, Engineering, Math.
 
According to the Nobel Prize Foundation, there have been 208 Jewish Nobel laureates in the science fields. The first was Adolf von Baeyer in 1905. Most recent additions include Drew Weissman, who, along with his colleague Katalin Karikó (a Hungarian immigrant), won the prize for their years of work on mRNA, leading to the COVID vaccines. For her work in economics, Claudia Goldin joins 10 previous Jewish women prizewinners.

Jewish refugees and immigrants have been among key scientific players, whose breakthroughs were instrumental in the development of the atomic age — for good and for not-so-good. Some were lauded, and some were discriminated against for their Jewishness or their gender. 

The New York Times reported that Karikó (not Jewish) was told that she was not “faculty quality,” and she kept her research alive by working alongside more senior scientists. Famously, Rosalind Franklin was never credited for her role in the discovery of DNA. And physicist Lise Meitner (profiled in The New York Times, October 3, 2023) was passed over during the Manhattan Project. Her co-worker Otto Hahn won the Nobel Prize for discovering nuclear fission, as portrayed in Oppenheimer.  

Our Talmudic tradition challenges us to take multiple perspectives, and to respect and honor the difficulty inherent in thinking about new and serious ideas. That seems fertile ground for those who want to test their understanding of the world — who are willing to propose hypotheses, design experiments to test them, and demonstrate the courage to acknowledge results and persevere, no matter what.