UPCOMING: R' ROLY MATALON - I AM MY PRAYER TO YOU

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Rabbi J. Rolando Matalon / Congregation B’nai Jeshurun

Born in Buenos Aires Argentina, and educated in Buenos Aires, Montreal, Jerusalem and New York City, Rabbi J. Rolando Matalon came to B’nai Jeshurun in 1986 to share the pulpit—and vision—of his mentor and friend Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer. They worked together to revitalize the congregation and turn its focus to liturgical revitalizaton, education, interfaith cooperation, and social justice.

After Rabbi Meyer’s death in 1993, Rabbi Matalon became BJ’s spiritual leader. He and Rabbis Bronstein and Sol now lead a vibrant, diverse community of more than 1,800 households.

Rabbi Matalon is a founding co-director of Piyut North America, a partnership between B’nai Jeshurun and Hazmanah Le-Piyut in Israel. A member of the New York Arabic Orchestra, he plays the oud (Arabic lute). Rabbi Matalon is married and has two daughters.



Va-Ani Tefilati Lekha  / "I Am My Prayer to You"
We’ve heard that prayer can conjure moments of longing, heartbreak, enlightenment, and intense joy. We’re even aware that praying has helped people and communities reconnect to their dreams and recommit to their collective purpose in the world.

Maybe you’ve seen people singing their hearts out on Shabbat and wondered what it’s all about, or you’ve felt those highs and lows yourself but weren’t sure what it meant or how to connect it to any lasting ideas.

How might we access this staggeringly powerful stuff through what can seem to be a complex and ancient tradition? What’s the secret? How do we “become” our prayer?  

Rabbi Roly Matalon of the famed  BJ in Manhattan, is coming to The Kitchen to help us. Known internationally for his teaching on piyutim and practice, Rabbi Matalon will offer four interactive workshops, in a variety of formats and locations. Meant to work together, these sessions are less classes and more hands-on prayer experiences. 


Thursday, January 28
6:00 - 8:00 PM, 101 California
"PREPARATION AND KAVANNAH / INTENTION"
We’ll begin by asking and discussing some of the most primary questions, the ones that rarely get asked: What is prayer about, anyway? When we pray, what are we trying to achieve? What is it exactly that we are searching for? And how do we prepare to pray?

Members: Free
Non-Members: $36


Friday, January 29 (Kabbalat Shabbat)
6:15 PM, SF Friends School

R. Matalon will offer teachings throughout our Friday night t’fillah (service) on how the words of Kabbalat Shabbat help us to focus and fulfill what our souls need as we transition gently and with full intention from hol to kodesh – leaving the ordinary work-week consciousness in order to enter holy time and welcome Shabbat.

Services: Free and open to all
Ticket required in advance for those wishing to stay for dinner


Saturday, January 30 (Shabbat AM)
10:00 AM, SF Friends School
"UNDERSTANDING AND CONNECTION"
One way of understanding services is to see ourselves as traveling somewhere. How do we get from here to there? What’s the meaning and intention of each section of the prayer service? Where are we supposed to be by the end? For this shabbat morning, R. Matalon will guide us through the service piece by piece, as we pray together and create a map for this singular kind of spiritual journey. 

Free and open to all, but please let us know if you will join us. 


Saturday, January 30
7:00 PM, Private home
"BRINGING PRAYER IN"
In this havdallah session, R. Matalon will  explore with us resources for developing daily and shabbat prayer and ritual practices at home and in our lives. 

Members: Free
Non/Not-Yet-Members: Please inquire

 

FOR PARIS

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"For Paris" (Shabbat AM, 11/14/15)
Rabbi Noa Kushner

Once we were running from Pharaoh, certain he would destroy us, but trying to run just the same. And then, instead of running into our new lives, we came smack up against the raging sea.

In the Technicolor version the sea opens and we cross to safety and sing to God.

But the Rabbis notice that Torah says, “The Israelites entered into the midst of the sea, on dry ground,” and they want to know, how could it be both? Either we started in the sea or on dry ground. Which is it?

Their answer? The strange phrase must mean we opened the sea with our crossing. The sea was only a sea until we entered it.*

Remember: Pharaoh was close behind us. We went inside the ocean, not because it was pretty or dramatic, but because our lives depended on it. There was no other choice.

In thinking of Paris, maybe we as a society, as a world, maybe we too are on the edge of the ocean. We stand, just having experienced the flattening and the narrowness of violence, and the future is uncertain. We are frightened. Which way is there for us to go?

The image that comes to mind in a form of an answer is of the people of the world pouring into Paris last January, into the streets.

I saw the aerial photos.
And it looked like rivers of people marching in solidarity and peace.
A living river of thousands and thousands. 

And I remembered this moment of crossing from Torah.
And the buildings of Paris looked like the walls of water on either side.
And the people were walking all together on dry ground.
It was impossible that they would all come out of their homes together at that moment but it was happening,
Their marching changed what had been and it changed the streets around them.

The crossing is never simple nor is it risk free.
But the way back is darkness.  
So we will go together.
We will do what our neighbors and family need from us in Paris.
We will leave our homes and gather in the streets. We will change what is around us by stepping in. We will make oceans part.
As long as it takes, as many times as it takes.

 

 

* Avivah Gottleib Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, p. 215. See also Exodus 14:22, Shemot Rabba 21:9.

WEEKEND-ING @ THE KITCHEN

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This past weekend, we took it up to 11 with a series of crazy-good events.

Shabbat PM:  In addition to introducing our full-on musical experience (more on that another time), Stosh Cotler, CEO of Bend the Arc spoke to us from the bimah. Stosh is a bad-ass activist and black belt in Kung Fu.  Let’s just say that she speaks our language of justice, and we are thrilled to be in partnership together(check out our Justice League / Bend the Arc series going on now).

Shabbat AM: Jews, vino, and dogs sums up our Saturday afternoon in the park.  Thirty fabulous singles and couples (aka Kitchen 24/7) caught up with each other at Duboce Park.

Sunday at the SF Food Bank: The Freedom School rallied for a day of packaging string cheese and pasta at the food bank.  In the first two hours alone, we packaged enough cheese for 3,120 students in SF and 2,480 pounds of pasta.

Want to plug in?  Get in touch.  

- Lisa Motenko, November 11, 2015

Empty Plaza

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I was not expecting to break down. I’d been to Israel many times. I’d talked about Rabin and his life, his work, like many other people, dozens and dozens of times.

But something happened as I was staffing another Birthright tour. There was something about walking to the stairs by the plaza where Rabin was assassinated that made me lose it. It was not the make shift, innocent memorials or the graffiti praising his name. Nor was it the empty utilitarian plaza itself, the open space just seemed very 70’s and reassuring in that quintessentially Israeli way. And it wasn’t even the heartbreaker that usually got me: the fact that Rabin was killed wearing shir lashalom in his breast pocket, that the bullet tore right through a song for peace as if it wasn’t even there.

No, what made it impossible for me to speak, what hit me with full force in the brightness of the vacated plaza was the understanding of what we had lost. How could I even begin to explain to these students what we had once held in our hands? Now they might never feel what we had once had felt -- that peace was just there right in front of us, that it was so real, we had little doubt it would soon come to fruition. I think I cried that day from the wide and terrible valley between what was on the day he died and what had come to be.

Twenty years later, I pay my deepest respects to the family of Yitzchak Rabin z”l who was a hero in every sense. I offer my condolences to his loved ones and to the Israelis who worked with him and who voted for him. But my personal grief is selfish and unresolved. I grieve the path untaken, the path stolen away, the lost years.

And yet, I take heart in this: History will not remember Rabin not only by what he did but also by what he was prepared to do. And so, rather than despair what has been done, I am also prepared to do. On this day I recommit myself to the thousands of those who are working on behalf of what-isn’t-yet, because it could still come-to-be. I’ll get back in line to help.

And I’ll also put a copy of shir lashalom / the song for peace in my front coat pocket where it belongs. It won’t protect me or you from death or disappointment, but at least we’ll remember where it is we want to go. 

-Rabbi Noa Kushner, November 4, 2015

Justice League + Bend the Arc series launches!

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Last night the Kitchen Justice League and Bend the Arc launched a 4 month series around criminal justice reform.  22 folks gathered at the Bend the Arc offices downtown to start down the path of better understanding issues related to criminal justice reform and linking that understanding to Jewish values and traditions of justice.  Next up: reading 'Burning Down The House' by Nell Bernstein and volunteering at the Prisoners Literature Project in Berkeley.  Drop an email to Lisa to get more info, or check out the future meeting dates here.