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September

I’m writing this message in New Delhi wrapping up a month in Asia that has included some work with son Noah on his mobile health clinic in Calcutta, a spectacular week with Louise in the Pakistani Himalayas – as close to Shangri La as I expect to get in this lifetime, and now some work with UNICEF on a new strategy to reduce malnutrition and child mortality in north India.

By the time you read this, however, the summer will be at an end, and we’ll be preparing for the New Year. So a few words about the coming High Holidays – to which I always find myself looking forward with keen anticipation. It is indeed a time for us, an opportunity to put the ordinary on hold and embrace the holy as we examine but also celebrate our lives. I’m looking forward to sharing the bimah at these services with Andi, with Andrea, and with many others of you.

Jim Levinson, Sh'liach Tzibur, and immediate past president of BAJC, Rachel Prabhakar
 

This year I’ve invited John Ungerleider to offer the Yom Kippur sermon, this being an
extraordinary time in John’s life and in his spiritual journey, with both his own Bar Mitzvah and that of son Jacob upcoming. For Rosh Hashanah, we will be honoring the request many of you have made that we be able to hear something about daughter Dora’s biblical essay that placed second of 4000 in the Reaching Common Ground competition last year – and which made her a Fellow of the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore. Dora will be speaking about that essay and also about Jonah, the Yom Kippur Minchah Haftorah.

My own evening sermon on Rosh Hashanah will be on the topic of "Practicing Jews," by the end of which many of us may be surprised to find ourselves so defined! At our Kol Nidre service, I’ll be tackling the subject of Messiach – and what we can be doing while we’re awaiting his (or her) arrival.

And, of course, this message would not be complete without my annual pitch for Random Acts of Kindness. Please e-mail me those of your family members – including yourself. Then, as is our tradition, they will be read anonymously on Rosh Hashanah and sent heavenward. Each year I find myself kvelling at the creative and wonderfully kind acts we offer during the month of Ellul in preparation for the High Holidays. If we ever doubt what kind of a congregation we are, we just need listen to this remarkable litany of the kindnesses we offer to one another and to others in need.

B’Shalom, Jim