About TABI
Leadership
May 2012 - Message from the Rabbi
Pesach has been celebrated; spring is here with all its beautiful flowers and blossoming trees and shrubs. A truly wonderful time of year when we witness the “rebirth” of nature.
We will be having a plethora of blessings this coming month.
Josh Dinner will be the cantorial soloist again, and we will joyously celebrate Shabbat. Shavu’ot is at the end of the month and we will be celebrating God giving us the Torah; without which we would not be Jews and the Western world would not be as it is.
In the middle of the month Kate and David will be having the naming of their beautiful child.
Kate and David are following in the footsteps of all those generations before us who have brought their blessings, their children, under the “wings” of the Sh’china (God’s Presence) to bring them up as Jews. No easy task that. It requires all of us to see that child as ours, and not just as “theirs”. As ours, we must all promise to give her the best that we can in Jewish education. As ours, we must ensure that our community is also hers.
Baby namings had been, until fairly recently, just for boys. Our Movement has stood for gender equality for decades. We have ceremonies for our daughters, welcoming them into our families and communities as equal partners; and anything that a man may do, ritually, that is what a woman may do.
We very recently remembered the Shoah; it is a major miracle that any of us are here. This child and every one of our children is a miracle and a blessing. Our generations will continue – but that also depends on us.
May God continue to bless us with children; may God continue to smile on us and be with us. May we do everything that we can, to the very best of our abilities, that we should be worthy of such blessings.
