newsletter

I hope.

Are there things that you would like to do at CBI, but you don't know who to talk to about it? Have there been times when you've wanted the rabbi to visit you or a friend, but you didn't know how to ask? We want CBI to be a place where people can find the things they want, where they can get the things they need.

In the foyer of the synagogue, you will find cards with the title "I Hope" on the front. The "I Hope" cards are a way of letting the rabbi or others in the congregation know about the things you hope for when you are part of our community. The card contains suggestions for what you might ask for:

• I hope to know some of the people in the

this congregation better.

• I hope to talk with the rabbi.

• I hope to become a member of this

congregation.

• I hope to have some special job to do in

this congregation.

• I hope that the rabbi would visit me.

• I hope that the rabbi would visit:

_____________________.

• I hope to make a contribution to this

congregation.

And, of course, you can also write in whatever it is that you hope for.

Whether you fill out a card, or just give us a call or email, we hope to make CBI a place where you can fulfill your hopes.

CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS FOR TAKE AND EAT

Over the past year the TAKE AND EAT program has become established as an effective social action program that has even received national recognition. With skillful coordination of Cindy Polinsky and others, one weekend a month, nutritious hot meals are prepared from scratch, packaged and distributed to 130 elderly individuals who are unable to leave their homes. It is amazing to see how efficient the operation has become starting with Saturday early preparation in the kitchen, Sunday’s final cooking and packaging and then sending the drivers off with their insulated containers and meals. For example, I serve as a driver, arrive Sunday at ~11 am, pick up my map and meals and usually have the meals delivered by 12:30pm. It is very gratifying to see the appreciative faces of our families as they open their doors to us.

More volunteers are needed.

Specifically regular and back up drivers, kitchen workers, home bakers and clean-up crew are needed. It is obviously understood that there are months when volunteers might not be available. This is a good opportunity for members of all ages to get involved in an important and successful program.

Volunteer drivers should contact Ed Oshinsky and all other volunteers should contact Cindy Polinsky.

You will be happy you did!

Shalom,

Bill Levy

Vice-President, CBI.

Chevra Kadisha - since 1895

The Chevra Kadisha is two groups of volunteers, one male and one female, who care for the bodies of deceased members of the congregation before burial. According to custom, the Chevra insures that the body (mais) is given respect and care and buried according to Jewish law. The body is ritually washed and dressed in a burial shroud (tachrichim). The tachrichim is a plain white garment that is the same for everyone. This symbolizes the equality of all men and women. The mais is buried in a plain, all wood casket that does not contain any metal including hinges or screws.

Both male and female Chevra committees are looking for new members. While the thought of being on the Chevra may seem a bit overwhelming at first, fulfilling this important mitzvah is spiritually satisfying and healing. If you are interested in learning more about our Chevra committee, please contact Len Radin or Darlene Radin. No special skills are necessary, just a desire to give a final gift to our departed friends.

This committee was founded in 1895.

From the Rabbi

Holy friends,

That's how Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, of blessed memory, used to address his friends and students and colleagues: with the Yiddish phrase heilege chevre, "holy friends." I love the way this form of address elevates each of you, and reminds me that as I write to you, I am writing not only to my friends and congregants but to holy beings, made in the image of the One.

So: dear holy friends! We've entered the coldest part of the year. Though each day grows longer by the tiniest of margins, these days and weeks often bring the deepest chill of Berkshire wintertime. And yet our tradition

calls us, at the full moon of Shvat, to celebrate the sap beginning to rise in the trees around us -- and the spiritual sap beginning to rise in our hearts as we approach the festivals of spring.

For the kabbalists of Tzfat, the Jewish mystics whose teachings offer a myriad of poetic ways to understand our God and our tradition, Tu BiShvat offered an opportunity to take a magical journey. We live, they taught, in four worlds simultaneously: the world of action, the world of emotion, the world of thought, and the world of spirit or essence. The Tu BiShvat seder which they developed features four different kinds of tree fruits, each symbolizing one of these "worlds."

These same mystics liked to imagine the infinite blessed God through the metaphor of a tree, with roots here in creation and branches flowering in the ineffable heavens. Or maybe it's the other way around: from the divine Root flow all the blessings which sustain us here in the branches of the world! We'll explore these ideas and more in our various Tu BiShvat celebrations this year: two celebrations geared specifically toward children, and another -- on the evening of February 8, the night of the full moon -- geared toward adults. I hope you'll join us, even if this is a holiday with which you don't (yet) feel a connection.

February may feel like bleakest midwinter, but on the Jewish seasonal calendar it's the first great leap toward spring. Four weeks after Tu BiShvat comes Purim, our festival of costumes and noisemaking and merriment. Four weeks after that, the first night of Pesach. (And on the second night of Pesach, don't miss our community seder here at CBI. More about that in the next newsletter, for sure.)

In other, warmer, climes, Tu BiShvat comes as spring is actually beginning. But as a celebration of the sap rising, it always seems exactly right to me as a celebration for our place and time -- we celebrate divine sap rising in the cosmic tree right around the time when our neighbors who harvest maple are celebrating literal sap rising in the sugar maples which grace our hills. My own favorite "sugar shack" is Ioka Valley Farm on route 43, and I'm already looking forward to bringing Drew there this winter for mini corn muffins with maple butter. Maybe my family and I will see some of you there.

Judaism is a tradition with deep intellectual riches and an endless library of spiritual teachings and interpretations. But festivals like Tu BiShvat remind me that our tradition is also an earthly, embodied one, linked to the cycles of the moon's waxing and waning and to the ancient agricultural calendar by which our ancestors lived. Tu BiShvat was originally the date on which trees (regardless of when they were planted) celebrated their "birthdays," as only trees of a certain age could be harvested for the annual Temple tithe -- but over time it grew from being simply a date in the Israelite Farmer's Almanac to being a festival for celebrating trees and their edible abundance as a symbol of God and the endless flowering of divine blessing in our lives.

My teacher, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, has suggested that "Tu BiShvat should make us aware of and thankful for the trees around us. Go into your backyard and thank the trees that give off oxygen and provide shade for your house. Blow a shofar for your trees!"

Whether or not you blow a shofar, I offer this invitation: take some time this month to notice the striking brightness of the full moon shining on snow, the silhouettes of trees limned with frost, and see whether you can perceive the beauty and the holiness in these manifestations of winter. (As the psalmist tells us: God gives us snow like wool, and scatters hoarfrost like ashes.) And as you ponder the dreams of summer held in seed catalogues (or in catalogues extolling t-shirts and swimwear), imagine that all of your hopes for the future are curled tight into the kernel of this moment, waiting for the right moment to unfold.

Blessings for a sweet winter season,

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

Women of CBI....Let's Grow Rosh Chodesh Together

If you are a woman who is a member of CBI and you've got that spark, perhaps you've heard about our Rosh Chodesh group and you wonder what it would be like to be in such a group. Or, you feel you'd like to talk to other Jewish women on a regular basis.

We have found that being part of a Rosh Chodesh group has been a very special experience of community - a unique opportunity to lead and be led, to grow and to experiment, to learn and to teach, to struggle and to celebrate with our sisters.

A Rosh Chodesh group can provide a unique opportunity for women to share experiences. After all, we are experts at our own lives. Talking about our upbringing, relationships with parents and siblings, experiences with death and mourning, the need for a spiritual dimension in our day-to-day lives, the joys and pains of relationships with significant others, how it felt to have an aliyah for the first time–all are potential themes to explore. Sharing the tales of these experiences will broaden your own knowledge while creating a bond between group members.

We meet monthly, traditionally at the time of the New Moon/Rosh Chodesh.

Members may volunteer to host a gathering at their homes or at the synagogue. Ideas for programs, activities, themes, topics or projects spring from the imagination and needs of our members. At every get together we enjoy conversation and a chance to get to know each other better and perhaps add a little more spark to our "Jewish Sisterhood"

For information contact the CBI office.

Reb Rachel to be Ordained as a Spiritual Director

On Saturday, January 7, Rabbi Rachel will receive a second smicha / ordination, as a Mashpi'ah Ruchanit, or Jewish Spiritual Director. The ordination ceremony will take place on Saturday evening after havdalah at the OMNI hotel in Broomfield, Colorado.

A spiritual director or mashpi'ah is someone who offers guidance and teaching on matters of Jewish faith and practice, and on a personal relationship with the Divine. Reb Rachel's ordination as a Mashpi'ah / Spiritual Director is the culmination of three years of study in the

ALEPH Hashpa'ah Program, the first and only ordination program for Jewish spiritual directors.

The requirements of the training program include four intensive classes (learning done in-person on retreat), three semesters of teleconference coursework, four semesters of supervised practice with individuals and groups, and supplemental learning in related areas. Participants train individually and in group settings with mashpi'im (ordained spiritual directors) who support their spiritual growth in relationship to God and sacred service, and who model for them diverse modalities of spiritual counseling and spiritual direction.

The curriculum integrates the sacred arts of spiritual and pastoral counseling; personal, intercessory and communal prayer and ritual; the art of the maggid (story teller); spiritual approaches to Torah and mitzvot; personal and communal ethical development/mussar; working with elders on their journey of "sage-ing;" and other areas of learning.

As part of her training, Reb Rachel has offered individual and group spiritual direction within the CBI community; this fall she led a Sage-ing group, which was wildly successful and which she hopes will reconvene in the spring.

After this ordination, Reb Rachel will stay in Colorado for three more days for the annual conference of OHALAH, the alliance of clergy affiliated with Jewish Renewal; this year she was honored to be part of the planning committee for the OHALAH conference, and will also have the pleasure of co-leading prayer there on the final morning of the conference, preparing her teachers and colleagues for their journey home with spirit and joy.

If you're interested in learning more about spiritual direction, and perhaps entering into a hashpa'ah experience for yourself, let Reb Rachel know.

Saturdays at CBI

Every Saturday morning we gather for prayer, song, and companionship. Services are at 9:30am and last for 90 minutes, followed by kiddush (schmoozing) and Torah study. This weekly spiritual practice is a gift you can give to yourself: a chance to relax, set work and obligations aside, and reconnect with holiness, with our community, and with God, whatever you understand that term to mean.

Coming to services isn't only something kind you can do for yourself -- it's also something kind you can do for others. Every week, someone in our community is observing a yahrzeit (the anniversary of a loved one's death.) When we join together to make sure there's a minyan for services, we're also ensuring that those who are mourning have the comfort of community presence around them as they say mourner's kaddish.

Whether you're coming for yourself, for God, or for your community -- please consider joining us for Shabbat morning prayer.

Adult Education Classes @ CBI

Cycles of Teshuvah (Repentance/Return)

Many of us are familiar with the idea of making teshuvah—repentance; return; turning-toward-God—before Yom Kippur. But Jewish tradition offers rich teachings about the spiritual (one might even say karmic) importance of making teshuvah each night before sleep, each week before Shabbat, and each month before New Moon.

This three-session adult education class will explore classical teachings about the cycles of teshuvah and how those teachings can enrich and inform our lives today.

Classes will be held over lunch, after services on three Shabbat mornings in February and March: 11:30am-1pm on February 11, February 25, March 3. (Attendance at services beforehand is optional, you are truly welcome to come just for the lunch-and-learn.) Bring a bag lunch; we'll eat at the seminar table as we learn.

This class is open to all: Jews and non-Jews, members and non-members. (The class is free for CBI members; for non-members there is a $35 registration fee.)

TO ENROLL: email office@cbiweb.org or call 413-663-5830.

Rabbi Cohen is one of the few active rabbi/firefighters. In 2002 he joined the Bennington Village Fire Department, Eagle Hose Company, as the department chaplain and presently is the company's Second Lieutenant and supervises the junior firefighter program. He also founded an adventurous outdoor program, combining his love of Judiasm and the outdoors.

He was the rabbi at Congregation Beth El in Bennington for 12 years. Cohen served as a prison chaplain at a maximum security facility in Pennsylvania; he was an interim rabbi/consultant in Alaska. He is a member of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and is on the board of Ohalah: The Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal.

On November 18th Rabbi Howard Cohen presented a short history of progressive Judaism to members of the CBI congregation and others from the community.

Rabbi Cohen’s overview of the Reform, Reconstructionist, and Renewal movements gave us a glimpse into the reforms that started in Europe, blossomed in the United States and continue to evolve today.

He traced the nature of Jewish life and religious practice starting with the heretofore non-existent freedoms granted to the Jews by Napoleon in 1799, allowing our people to move away from the shtetl and begin to consider a way of life apart from a local, rabbi-centric universe.

Rabbi Cohen related that Orthodoxy was actually formulated in reaction to the Reform movement, and the "3R's" as a way for Judaism to continue to be relevant and vital within a constantly changing world.

He described the basic qualities of the 20th century movements of Reconstruction and Renewal and identified the figures instrumental in their founding and development: Mordecai Kaplan of the Reconstructionists and Shlomo Carlebach and R'Zalman Schacter-Shalomi of the Renewal movement.

** the story was shared by one of our congregants that when some Jewish women were sailing from Europe to America for the first time, their excitement over the new religious freedoms they would be afforded, motivated them to throw their traditional head coverings into the water! שייטלען – Shetlyn is the Yiddish word for wigs.

- Pattie Lipman, Joanne Ranzer and Robin Brickman

Thank You to Our Volunteers

As we recently announced, we will be publishing regularly in the newsletter the names of people whose volunteer work has contributed in many vital ways to the day-to-day operations of the congregation.

What follows is our first thank-you list, recognizing people whose volunteer efforts were essential to our High Holiday preparations and services this year. The tasks for which these people volunteered their time and energy included everything from weeding and pruning in the garden, polishing silver, and preparing grocery bags for food donations, to greeting and ushering at services, leading restorative yoga, and organizing the cemetery service or the Break-the-Fast meal or the child care and children's services; not to mention having the tallitot (prayer shawls) cleaned, setting up and re-setting the sanctuary furniture for the various events, preparing and hosting meals for the Rabbi and Cantorial Soloist, collecting and putting away the prayer books, etc.

Stu Armet, Grace Bowen, Robin Brickman, Chaim Bronstein, Amy Filson, Cole Filson, Lauren Gotlieb, Marc Gotlieb, Bob Greenberg, Jack Hockridge, Karen Kelly, Chris Kelly-Whitney, David Lane, Heather Levy, Bernice Lewis, Pattie Lipman, Bill Levy (Head Usher), Heather Levy, Jonah Marshall, Jane Miller, Carol Oshinsky, Maribeth Pomerantz, Len Radin, David Ranzer, Joanne Ranzer, Cheryl Sacks, Donald Sanders, Elma Sanders (HHD Co-ordinator), Roberta Saunders

Laura Schoenbaum, Roberta Sullivan, Audrey Their

And if the list above is missing any names (yours or someone else's), please let us know as soon as possible, either by email in care of the office or by telephoning CBI administrator Jack Hockridge at the office (413) 663-5830. Jack will forward those names to Barbara Bashevkin, who has agreed to be responsible for this feature of the newsletter, so that the additional names can be included in the next newsletter’s listing for recognition.

Please also let us know of people (including yourself) who have done other volunteer tasks, so that we can thank them/you in future issues when other categories of volunteer service will be recognized.

The Executive Committee of the Board of Directors