Holidays
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[Presented with thanks to HebrewBooks.org and to Aharon Varady of the Open Siddur Project.]
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by Mel Scult It is a very rare occasion when Jews all come together as one people. We talk about it much but it rarely happens. We are all too often painfully divided. In synagogue this past Memorial Day Shabbat, I experienced the joy of seeing us Jews as one united people, or at least…
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by Mel Scult Sukkot is a richly symbolic holiday. Ordinarily we say that dwelling in booths like our ancestors in the desert reminds us of our vulnerability. But there are other possible meanings. Mordecai Kaplan, the radical socialist, proposed that in the desert everyone was equal. Everyone dwelt in booths, no rich and no poor.…
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In the summer of 1956, Kaplan was thinking about a sermon for Rosh Hashanah. It was his custom every year to meet with Conservative rabbis, his former students, and help them with their High Holiday sermons. They would come to the Jewish Theological Seminary sometime in the late summer, and Kaplan would give them concrete…
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by Mel Scult One of Kaplan’s favorite verses, almost a mantra for him, is from Psalm 34. Verse 9 reads “Ta’amu u’reu ki tov Adonai”. The JPS translation is accurate: “Taste and see how good the Lord is.” In my conversations with Kaplan in the 1970’s, he repeated this verse often. “Taste God” – what…