Shabbat Candlelighting 5:37 p.m.                                             Friday, March 1, 2013/19 Adar 5773
 

This message has 961 words, and will take about four to five minutes to read.

Say It Isn’t So
Even with the spoiler alert, it appears a fair number of people missed the Purim context of last week’s message. For the record:

  • Rabbi Bregman isn’t going to the Vancouver Opera;
  • We didn’t have high school students debating poppy vs. chocolate hamantaschen;
  • We aren’t recruiting Jews to come from Saskatoon to Vancouver (although they are welcome);
  • The Kollel isn’t setting up shop at the cruise ship terminal; and
  • The JCC didn’t sell its property and isn’t moving into Oakridge Centre.

Based on this experience, we might need to open up a community reading comprehension course, given that so many people read all that and thought these things actually were happening.
Hope everyone had a joyous Purim.

Public Speaking Contest
This past Wednesday, we held the 25th Annual Public Speaking Contest, with 130 participants in grades four through seven from Congregation Beth Israel, Congregation Har El, Richmond Jewish Day School, Vancouver Hebrew Academy and Vancouver Talmud Torah. There were eight concurrent public speaking groups, including one group in Hebrew. Students’ topics ranged from the origins of their Hebrew name, to reflecting on the Hebrew verses, to talking about their favourite Jewish hero. Students were passionate, poised and composed. While waiting for the results to be tabulated, Josh Niehaus, a local edu-tainer, entertained the crowd with spirited singing and playing his guitar.

I always find this a remarkable event as I reflect back on who I was at age nine to 12, when speaking in front of a full room would be about the last thing in the world I’d be up for. Our thanks to the teachers and coaches who worked with the students to help them prepare, to the volunteer judges, moderators and time-keepers, and most of all to the students who put themselves out there. This amazing community-building event is made possible each year through the generosity of Larry Barzelei and Rhona Gordon.

Board Approves Youth Study Report
At our board meeting Monday night we heard a presentation from our Planning Council on their recent Study on Youth. The study was undertaken after heightened concern in our community in the past few years about youth-at-risk related issues. A professional coordinating committee has been working actively to develop emergency response protocols for our community, and new youth and parent preventative education programs are starting to take place regularly. However, it was also important to factor in the perspectives and voices of youth about how they experience their lives, their world, and our community as they deal with the various stresses in their lives.

A survey was widely distributed throughout the community and, ultimately we received 185 responses from youth ranging from 13 to 22 years old. While not an exhaustive sample, it does give us some meaningful information as we aim to expand services for youth.

Among the key findings of note are:

  1. There’s a gap between the perceptions among youth about what issues are most pressing to them and what the professionals who work with them perceive;
  2. Our youth are much more connected with their parents than youth in the general population, and much more likely to turn to their own parents for help than we might have expected;
  3. Worries about school, homework, careers and the future were among their top concerns and significant contributors to their anxiety;
  4. Their concerns about gossip and being judged within the community detract from their likeliness to turn to Jewish agencies for help when they need it;
  5. The youth identified peer support programs and education programs directed at themselves and their parents as the initiatives most likely to help themselves and their peers.

The Planning Council and the Youth at Risk Committee will be using the findings of the study as they continue their work to strengthen our community’s range of resources for youth. To access the executive summary click here.

Parashat Ki Tissa
This week’s parasha opens with a description of the half-shekel tax, which was a means not only of counting the population, but, if you will, a way of counting them in. By fixing a modest and equal required offering, every member of the community claimed their equal place as part of the collective relationship with God.

Soon after, the parasha describes Bezalel the craftsman as being divinely inspired and charged with making various holy objects to be used in the Tent of Meeting. Then the narrative moves on to the story of the golden calf and Moses’ destruction of the first set of tablets containing the Ten Commandments. A common thread running through all this is the physical manifestations that were created and used to mediate the relationship with the divine.

This week saw an historic moment with the abdication of the Pope, the head of the Catholic Church. The timing of his resignation juxtaposed with this parasha illustrates a significant difference between Judaism and Catholicism, with respect to how our relationship with God is mediated. All faiths struggle with how to bring the divine presence into the lives of the people. All faiths have their holy leaders on earth. However, there are important differences. I raise this not out of sense of triumphalism, that our path is best, but rather that we can learn more about who we are by exploring and examining the ways in which we understand things differently from others.

Shabbat shalom!

 
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