Newsletters

September 1999 Jewish Holidays and Events

(At the Salvation Army Chapel unless otherwise indicated)

Rosh Hashana evening Friday Sep 10 6 pm

Kiddush with apples and honey follows

Rosh Hashana morning Saturday Sep 11 10 am

Picnic with the Rabbi Saturday eve Sep 11 6 pm

Preceded by Tashlich and Havdalah

At the Kahalu'u Beach Park Small Pavilion.

Pot-luck barbecue (no pork or shellfish). Everyone invited.

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Shabbat Tshuvah evening Friday Sep 17 6 pm

Pot-luck supper follows (no pork or shellfish)

Shabbat Tshuvah morning Saturday Sep 18 10 am

Kiddush follows

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Kol Nidre Sunday evening Sep 19 6 pm

Yom Kippur Monday Sep 20 10 am

Healing Service of Meditation & Song 4 pm

Yizkor

Neilah

Bagels and break-the-fast pupus catered by the WaKoBeS follows after sunset.

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Shabbat Sukkot Friday eve Sep 24 7 pm

At Karen & Morty Breier's (call 325-0944 for directions)

followed by vegetarian, pot-luck supper.

Shabbat Saturday morn Sep 25 10 am

Kiddush follows

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KBS Annual Meeting Sunday Oct 3 2 pm

followed by brief Board of Directors Meeting.

Simchat Torah Sunday Oct 3 4 pm

Admission to all the services is free of charge for all members of Congregation Kona Beth Shalom. Non-members who wish to attend are asked to make a contribution to help defray the costs of bringing the Rabbi to Kona, but no one will be turned away for inability to contribute. Your MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION / CONTRIBUTION FORM is included with this notice. Please call Barry Blum at 322-6004 or Michael Zola at 329-1333 for more information.

Rosh Hashana marks the time when Jews begin our annual process of renewal. We hear the sound of the shofar announcing the birthday of the world. We can use this special time to revitalize our connections with our families and friends. The concept is that we use our time in the Synagogue to ask God for forgiveness but to receive forgiveness from people, we have to ask for forgiveness and give forgiveness to those people personally. The greeting at this time is: L'shana tovah tikateivu (May you be written into the Book of Life).

Picnic! We honor Rabbi Wiener at this informal get-together at the Small Pavilion at Kahalu'u Beach Park. We will start with the observance of Tashlich when we cast into the ocean whatever lint and crumbs we find in our pockets to symbolically shed the accumulations of imperfect deeds and wrong acts of the previous year. Rabbi Wiener will lead us in Havdalah as we mark the transition at the close of Shabbat. Bring drinks and a dish as pot-luck to share for the barbecue supper (no pork or shell-fish please). Kosher hot dogs, buns and all the trimmings will be provided. Bring your musical instruments too, and be prepared to sing and dance. Kona's Traveling Jewish Wedding Band will be playing for the simcha.

Shabbat Tshuvah (between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur) is the "Sabbath of the (Re-) Turning." As is every Sabbath, it is a day of rest, contemplation and rejuvenation. This Shabbat, falling in the middle of the "Days of Awe," can be the awesome time to re-connect to our heritage and to the gifts we were given and have only to claim. Rabbi Wiener will lead us on both Friday evening and Saturday morning. There will be a pot-luck supper after Services on Friday night.

Yom Kippur is the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar. We start fasting at sundown on Sunday evening and continue until sundown Monday to enable ourselves to remain focused and free of distraction. We own up to our behaviors of the past year and we think about commitments we made, not just to others, but to ourselves and to our God. We start with chanting of the Kol Nidre, a prayer written in ancient Aramaic containing a formula that asks God's forgiveness for any oaths or vows we have made to God that we have failed to keep. Our greeting on Yom Kippur changes to: L'shana tovah tikateivu ve teichateimu, or Gemar chatima tovah (May you be sealed into the Book of Life), because tradition tells us that we have until sundown before the Book of Life is finally sealed for the coming year.

We reconvene for the Yom Kippur service at 10 am. There will be a break at around 1 pm and Rabbi Wiener will remain to be available for discussions. At 4 pm we reconvene. Rabbi Wiener will lead us in a Healing Service with meditation and song. Yizkor (Memorial) Service then follows. When you send in your Membership Application / Contribution Form, tell us the names of any family or friends you wish to have remembered so that Rabbi Wiener can recite their names at this time. Many people like to observe the tradition of donating tzedakah (charity) in the name of their loved ones. After Neilah, the concluding service, when the sun has gone down, we will break the fast together with light snacks hosted by the WaKoBeS (Wahines of Kona Beth Shalom) and Lorraine Highkin in memory of her grand-daughter, Talia Miller.

Rabbi Shohama Wiener is President and Mashgiach Ruchani (Spiritual Director) of The Academy for Jewish Religion in New York City, a pluralistic seminary ordaining rabbis and cantors. Prior to her appointment as President in 1994, she headed AJR in the role of Executive Dean for seven years.

Rabbi Wiener is a graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard University Graduate School of Education, an ordinee of The Academy for Jewish Religion, and recipient of the Doctor of Ministry degree from New York Theological Seminary. She is editor of "The Fifty-Eighth Century -- A Jewish Renewal Sourcebook" (Jason Aronson, 1996), co-editor of "Worlds of Jewish Prayer" (Jason Aronson, 1993), and contributor to "Meditation from the Heart of Judaism" (ed. Avram Davis, Jewish Lights, 1997). In addition, she is a nationally-known teacher of Jewish spirituality, meditation and healing. She devoted nearly twenty years as a learning specialist, community volunteer, wife and mother of three before coming to the rabbinate. She is a teacher of Jewish meditation and healing and has presented workshops at national havurah institutes, Elat Chayim, the Conference for Advancement of Jewish Education (CAJE), the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York, at JACS retreats and at numerous synagogues and conferences.

Rabbi Wiener has been conducting Shabbat and High Holiday Services at Reform, Conservative, Jewish Renewal and unaffiliated settings since 1984. She loves to sing and dance, meditate and play the guitar, she writes prayer songs and is a skilled story teller. Her services are lively and inclusive, participatory and joyful.

Shohama Wiener is married to Alan Dattner, a dermatologist and holistic physician. She is a mother of three adult children, stepmother to one, and "savta" to a granddaughter.

We look forward to 5760 as a good year for all of us. On behalf of all the members of Congregation Kona Beth Shalom, we wish you a

Annual Meeting - Sunday, October 3rd at 2 pm

To Precede Simchat Torah Celebration

Kona Beth Shalom will hold its Annual Meeting at the Salvation Army Chapel. All KBS members and friends are invited to come together to share ideas and plans for the coming year. It is the time when we elect our Board of Directors for two year terms of office. If anyone wishes to join our Board, please notify Barry Blum. The Annual Meeting is followed immediately by a brief Board of Directors meeting when we will elect officers for the coming year.

Starting at 4 pm we will conduct a very joyous Simchat Torah celebration as we unroll and reroll our ancient scroll. There will be music, singing and dancing as well.

One year ago Barry Blum, Ruth Bernstone, Morty Breier, Ruth Cawn, Joel Gimpel, Lorraine Highkin, Barbara Lewis, Erwin Myhre, Bob Rhée, Robert Salzberg, Rosemary Sevilla, Rebecca Weisser & Michael Zola began their 5759 terms as Directors of KBS. In June, Ed Sigler was elected to return to our Board. Working together as a group of volunteers, it has been these folks and their spouses who have put together most of the activities of this Congregation, including the Shabbat Services, the High Holiday Services, the Community Seder, the Varieties of Jewish Experience gatherings, as well as the mailings, and much of the activity you see below.

Rabbi Sheldon Kirsch and his wife Joyce led our High Holiday Services in 1998 for the third year in a row. That's when we returned to the Salvation Army Chapel after many years and it has felt good to continue to meet there each month for our Shabbat Service. Rabbi and Mrs. Kirsch have stayed in touch with us over the year and they send their warmest regards for a Happy New Year to all of us.

Rebecca Weisser and Morty Breier prepared a beautiful Annual Calendar for our use.

Al Beer joined our congregation several years ago and graced us with his melodic voice, his knowledge of Hebrew and of Jewish tradition. When he decided to make Aliyah to Israel at the end of 1998, we had an aufruf to honor that commitment at our November Shabbat Service.

Rabbi Yosef Leibowitz visited Kona and presented a talk in December sponsored by KAHEA. It was a fascinating presentation. KAHEA also hosted a lively Purim Party in March at the Kona Outdoor Circle, and offered Women's Torah Study Classes later in the year among other activities. Thank you, Sharona Lomberg, for enriching our community in so many ways.

In December 1998, Joe Rosner started a class in Hebrew after Friday evening services. Those who started learned the basics of the Hebrew alphabet. We appreciate Joe's availability and ability at that time. Todah Rabah. After the first few lessons, Morty Breier conducted some of the classes and the students soon started to speak Hebrew with a Yiddish accent. Thanks to Marshall & Caroline Blann and Harry & Lorraine Highkin for opening their homes to some of the classes.

In January, Lorraine Highkin, chairperson of our Tzedakah Committee, hosted a showing of a video at Ruth Ader's home, brought to us by Jerry Lasensky of the United Jewish Appeal, about the plight of Russian Jewry.

In February, Rabbi Natan Segal visited the Big Island and we held an all day Shabbat Retreat at Keauhou Bay as part of our Varieties of Jewish Experience Series. It was a musically and spiritually powerful experience for us. Shari Berman & Alice Bratton catered the lunch with delicious Middle Eastern food.

At the end of February, Congregation Kona Beth Shalom conducted Shabbat Services at the home of Jacques and Renee Sebag in Hilo to celebrate the Bar Mitzvah of their son David. David conducted much of the service himself and chanted the Torah absolutely beautifully. We all agreed that the Sebag's home would make a perfect shul for KBS, if only it were in Kona.

In honor of the combined birthday of Jerry Rothstein and Gloria Blum in April, Kona's Traveling Jewish Wedding Band (including Jim Bill, Steve Tarjanyi, Gloria & Barry Blum, Robert Blum, Joel Gimpel and Jonathan Marmelzat) debuted at Kahalu'u Beach. They were so well received that the Band returned to perform at the Community Seder. Jonathan has since returned to Sebastopol, California.

One the highlights of the year was our Community Passover Seder, conducted at Sam's Beach Club (formerly the Makai Bar) at the newly renovated Aston Keauhou Beach Resort. There were 138 persons attending! Many called at the last minute and almost couldn't get in, but thanks to Agnes Mui and Sam Choy's valiant chef, Glen Yamashita, no one was turned away. The food was superb! Rebecca Weisser trained the cooks about the mysteries of the perfect matzoh-ball and Ruth Ader made the arrangements with the hotel. Michael Zola and Barry Blum conducted the Seder with their usual aplomb. A surprise guest was David Dolgen, one of the new owners of the hotel, and his wife. They live in Phoenix, Arizona, and they told us that they enjoyed our Seder most thoroughly.

Lorraine Highkin heads our Tzedakah Committee. In April, in response to the needs of the refugees in Kosovo, a considerable amount of money was raised and sent to the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

There is no Jewish cemetery on the Big Island. We have had discussions with Lionel Kutner who is working with the Kona Memorial Park, to see whether our Congregation wishes to reserve a section of the cemetery. We have not concluded any plans yet and we are still seeking input from the community to better understand what the needs truly are.

As she has for so many years, Barbara Lewis again represented us at Memorial Day Services led by Rev. Leon Sterling honoring Kona's veterans.

We bid farewell to Rebecca Weisser and Rosemary Sevilla at a party hosted by Joel Gimpel & Jan Rae which was funded with contributions from Lois-ellin Datta.

In behalf of our Congregation, Barbara Lewis sent letters of support to the Congregations in Sacramento that were bombed. It was at one of those synagogues that Barbara had been Bat Mitzvah.

Mazel Tov to Brent & Shannon Pliskin on the birth of their son, Devon Aaron, sister to Dylan. The Naming Ceremony was at Shabbat Services in July.

Last month our Varieties of Jewish Experience series presented Sometimes We Need a Story More than Food, a one man show created by Corey Fischer of San Francisco's "A Traveling Jewish Theater." This was a remarkable evening at the Kona Outdoor Circle. Corey is a masterful actor and his presentation was a work of art!

With great reluctance, we had to go to court to try to enforce the terms of a trust that left money to be used by Congregation Kona Beth Shalom for our Building Fund. Michael Zola, Joel Gimpel and Morty Breier have been serving as advisors to our attorney, Ken Ross, in this matter. This process is still moving forward and we look forward to a satisfactory resolution during the coming year.

Joel Gimpel & Jan Rae for having the new white Torah Cover embroidered, which was donated by Jerry & Joan Shapiro.

Erwin Myhre for taking care of our precious Torah scroll and bringing it back and forth to our Services; and for handling all our big mailings so expertly.

Captains Keith and Mona McRevy of the Salvation Army for your gracious hospitality.

Barbara Lewis for the beautiful Torah reading she provides at our Shabbat Services and her meticulous work each month as Kona Beth Shalom's Scribe (Secretary), a task she shares with Joel Gimpel.

Marshall & Carolyn Blann who have attended just about all of our Board meetings and have worked hard as volunteers at so many of our activities. We truly appreciate your help.

Ruth Bernstone for getting our financial statements into accounting standards format.

Karen Breier for consistently taking care of our "paper goods" needs after Services each month.

Everyone who presented their d'rash during our Shabbat Services this past year, including Morty Breier, Joel Gimpel, Ed Sigler, Barbara Lewis, Caroline & Marshall Blann and Ruth Bernstone.

Michael Zola, Joel Gimpel and Morty Breier for their work on legal matters of vital interest to the Congregation.

Gloria & Barry Blum for hosting KBS's monthly Board of Directors meetings (and Morty & Karen Breier when the Blums have been away).

Joel Gimpel & Jan Rae have moved into a beautiful home in Kona Heavens. It looks like a perfect place for musical gatherings!

Jerry & Joan Shapiro are moving to their new home on Maui in order to be closer to their grandchildren.

Morty Breier's daughter Nicole married Steve Carter, and his son Damien married Hilary Strom.

The Trial of Sarah, a radio play written by Gloria Blum, was presented as a staged reading to open the Aloha Performing Arts Center's Sixth Annual Play Festival this August. The capacity crowd gave the cast and Gloria a standing ovation for this midrash created to help bring about Jewish-Arab healing. CD's and audio cassettes are available.

Morty Breier's web site now features Kona Beth Shalom (www.aloha.net/~morty/kbs.htm) and his talk group, The Cutting Edge Symposium is now in its fifth year.

In last year's newsletter we wished Get Well Soon to Rosemary Sevilla, Rebecca Weisser and Ray Rosenthal. They did! So did Judy Rothstein, Karen Breier and Janice Baxter. Baruch HaShem!

In Memorium

We donated trees to be planted in Israel in memory of former KBS member Goldie Olney, who passed away in December 1998.

We marked the passing of Mickey Bowman, the sister of Barry Gitelson, with a memorial service at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau.

More recently Lorraine Highkin's grand-daughter, Talia Miller, died. Lorraine is helping to host the Kiddush after Rosh Hashana in her memory.

May the Source of peace send peace to all who mourn, and comfort to all who are bereaved.

Since our last newsletter we have met four times, one to two months before the High Holidays, Chanukah, Purim and Passover. We made plans to help implement the festivities around these special events. Our next meeting will be on November 11, at Jan Rae's home when we'll begin to prepare for our Chanukah celebration. Please come and help us plan this special fun and latkes-filled party.

We said Aloha to three of our members this year. Rebecca Weisser recently moved to Portland, Oregon; Rutika Gaber has moved back to Israel for a while; and Rosemary Sevilla has temporarily relocated to Waimea before her move back to the mainland. We will surely miss their energy and all that they have done for the WaKoBeS.

We're looking for future projects for our group. If you have any ideas... concerts, readings, discussions, plays, cooking/baking classes or something for the community, please attend one of our meetings and share your thoughts.

Hate crimes are on everyone's mind. Why do they occur? Why do people think that way? What drives them to act out their hateful thoughts? Why our country? Is it getting worse? Should we Jews be particularly wary?

Let's face it, the United States has always been an experiment. It is one of the first nations to ask different ethnic groups, cultures, religions and races, all separated for thousands of years by suspicion and hatred, to cooperate on a grand scale. The experiment, this lofty goal of cooperation, especially in a free society, will sometimes have its failures. My take on it is that the percent of successes increases over time, but since our standards also improve upward, we think we are standing still or even moving backwards. The lonely desperation exhibited by those who fail this goal and the global reaction by those who try to succeed at it, confirm this take.

We Jews have throughout our history been asked to transcend a formerly held position. Our classic story of transcendence is our escape from Egypt, our crossing the Red Sea, our being given the Torah and our 40 years of wandering before entering the Promised Land. We left a narrow place, immersed in the doubt that HaShem parted, realized the "One God" lesson to be learned and spent 40 years trying to integrate that lesson so that we might transcend our previous narrow mentality and enter a new, more inclusive one. The old mentality is always so comforting. Look how our ancestors wanted to return to slavery in Egypt rather than keep faith in the new, freer, world into which they were being led.

Many of us want to retain selected pieces of the old world view, or are alienated by all this change. It is a difficult fulcrum to negotiate. There are the walking wounded everywhere. There are also those who, successful at transcending the previous world view, are busy trying to re-integrate the pieces into a larger, more inclusive whole. But there are many who haven't yet given up on the last stage of consciousness when exclusivity counted and suspicion and even hatred of "other" was the rule. And there are many more who, having given up the former navigational charts, are still wandering in the desert wilderness, with no Promised Land in sight.

We have both the right and obligation to express our version of tikkun olam, our healing vision. But we must ultimately, I believe, trust in this strange and awful process that history, HaShem's Classroom, subjects us to. We must suffer this wandering in the desert of our present valueless wilderness in order to reach the next incarnation of our promised land. We must admit that we truly don't know the proper outcome. It is a real-time, never before experienced adventure, an existential minute-by-minute play of forces, a process-driven drama, the unwinding Torah Scrolls of HaShem's reality. But we are indeed asked to have a say in this process, to give our d'rash on these teachings. We are, if anything, expressive souls, and I love us for it. Good luck, my friends, and yasher ko'ach.

Every thousand years or so it's good to reconsider options. We have a whole year to do this because Y2K arrives in a few months and January 1, 2001, is the date when the next millennium begins. These moments are, of course, just dates derived from the Christian calendar but Jews live in the world that surrounds us; indeed we are co-creators of this civilization along with the Christians, Buddhists, Hawaiians, Moslems, Hindus, animists, atheists and everyone else with a spiritual opinion.

Sometimes visitors ask if KBS is Reform or Conservative or what? I explain to them that we are not affiliated but we are Jewish. What does it mean to be Jewish in this kind of community? Many of the Jews who live here on Hawaii's Big Island are married to people who are not Jewish. Many of these non-Jewish spouses are not only active participants in this Congregation, they know more about Judaism than many Jews by birth.

Jews are first and foremost monotheists. This is so even though not every Jew states a belief in God. If we recall the central prayer of Judaism, the Sh'ma: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One," we can reword it for a broader congregation as follows: "Hear this everyone, Godness is Oneness." The restatement is not a substitute for the original, but it is a useful corollary for a heterogeneous society. We do not ignore the Sh'ma. Yet we say also that "Godness is Oneness."

We are told that it is the role of the Jews to be a light unto the nations. If we choose to accept that, then two corollaries follow. One is that we must seek the light ourselves, and the other is that we need to be open to seeing that light in the "nations" that surround us. Light is energy, which can be neither created nor destroyed. Light is reflected. If the Light comes from HaShem then it strikes all of us and we must be illuminated by reflected light as well as whatever we consider to be direct light.

Our own mystical tradition, the Kabbalah, describes an aspect of Creation when there was a great shattering of the primary vessels that contained divine light. Immediately thereafter began the process of tikkun, of repair, in order that those sparks of light could be re-gathered. I wonder if we are not particularly privileged to see the many different colors of the spectrum of light in those sparks in the faces of all the "nations" that live around and with us here in Hawaii.

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi explained his understanding of why there are so many religions. After all, if there is only one God, why the need for so many religions? He answered by describing an island with many different types of plant life. There were small shrubs on the ground. There were tall trees. The shrubs needed the trees to provide shade. There were grasses between the trees and the shrubs that kept the soil moist for the trees and shrubs to have enough water. One form of plant life alone could not hope to survive on this island. Variety was absolutely necessary for all the species to thrive.

Co-existence, cooperation, interdependence; this is the fact, the requirement. Each unique species is vital to the well-being of the whole, and perhaps to the well-being of HaShem.

The last day of 1999 will be a Friday. Y2K begins on Shabbat. Let us focus our own intention at that time on Shabbat Shalom, on Shabbat Shaloha. Let that be for us and all the world the time we recognize that peace, cooperation and unity are our only valid choices. Let us act now to make this become universal reality.