From the Pulpit: A culture of creating leaders

Rabbi Menachem M. Blum

By Rabbi Menachem M. Blum
Ottawa Torah Centre Chabad

From the Caribbean to Mexico, from Florida to Europe, Ottawa vacationers attended Chanukah celebrations organized by Chabad and some brought back regards from my colleagues, Chabad rabbis posted around the globe. Their feedback was the same across the board, “It is so amazing to see young couples move to these far-out places away from their family and form their community and create a Jewish oasis in real deserts.”

My mentor, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, is the inspiration that fueled the Chabad outreach revolution. His teachings continue to motivate thousands of his emissaries around the world to dedicate their lives to enhancing Jewish life wherever they are. This month, I participated in the commemoration of the 70th anniversary since he assumed the leadership of the Chabad movement.

In his opening address in 1951, he said in Yiddish: “Leig zich nisht arayn kein feigelach in busem,” literally, “Don’t put birds in your bosom.” This Yiddish saying refers to someone who fools himself by putting a bird in his pocket, thinking that this will make him fly.

This is how the Rebbe empowered thousands of his followers to go out and create Jewish communities in places where kosher food or synagogues are often non-existent. He made it clear that while having a spiritual leader for guidance and inspiration is important, in order to see real progress, we need to work on it on our own and achieve it from within. His message was, “I am here to inspire and guide you, but I won’t do everything for you.” His attitude was that his followers are required to find their power and strength on their own and light their fire from within. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Great Britain, expressed it beautifully: “Other Jewish leaders that I’ve met created followers, the Lubavitcher Rebbe created leaders. It was he who encouraged me and ordered me to enter the rabbinate.”

This is the standard that the Rebbe set for Chabad and how he built his Jewish outreach machine. The financial and programmatic responsibility rests entirely on the shoulders of the local Chabad rabbi and rebbetzin. The couples don’t receive any seed money or capital funding from Chabad headquarters. Each chapter is independent and has to develop its own financial support from their local communities, which ensures that it establishes roots and truly becomes part and parcel of its local community. Although every chapter is directed by the Rebbe’s teaching and his guiding principle of loving every human being unconditionally, each chapter sets its direction as to what to spend most of its energy on. Whether their focus should be on youth programming, serving the elderly, education or on social programs and services.

In describing the Rebbe’s impact on world Jewry for the last 70 years, Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz writes: “The Rebbe changed the direction in which Jewish history was moving. If you told a Jew after the Holocaust that his son or daughter would be more God fearing, that the next generation would be more religious than the previous generation, that person would react in disbelief. The crisis after the Holocaust was so deep that the general feeling was that religion had ended, a matter of a year or 10, until Judaism became a distant past. The Rebbe inspired his followers to embark on a worldwide mission to travel to all corners of the earth to open Jewish educational and social centres and engage Jews of all ages in Jewish life and today we are seeing the results.”

From the Pulpit: Brisket lessons for the New Year

Rabbi Menachem Blum

By Rabbi Menachem Blum

Ottawa Torah Centre Chabad

I write these lines a few days before Rosh Hashanah, as Jews around the world prepare to greet the New Year. This is a period for introspection when we dedicate some time to cheshbon hanefesh (soul accounting). Taking stock of our actions of the past year to decide where we have improved and where improvement is still needed. Which unwanted habits have to be discarded and which good practices and mitzvot have to be kept and built upon.

Very much like the first step practiced in preparing a brisket for smoking. This is something I recently learned while organizing Ottawa’s first Kosher BBQ Cook-Off. Some fat has to be trimmed off the brisket and some fat has to be kept. Trimming it too much will make it too dry and trimming it too little will make it taste too fatty. The first step in preparing for the New Year is to think deeply and honestly as to what we want to keep and what we want to discard.

As with every other New Year celebration, the second step is to take on good resolutions. To add another mitzvah and good practice in the upcoming year which will add spice and flavour to our life. Every one of the seven teams who participated in the Kosher BBQ Cook-Off applied their own spices and rubs to their brisket before starting the smoking process. Each one of us can find one more mitzvah that we can add and incorporate into our lives to give it a little more meaningful flavour.

Then, there is the science of smoking the brisket that I learned about. The heat temperature has to be stable and water has to be used to help keep moisture in the smoker. This mixture of heat and water is symbolic of two elements needed to achieve success in our New Year’s endeavours. Our approach in life must have two opposing forces. Heat, which is the by-product of fire, and its polar opposite, water. On the one hand, we must be like fire, which always reaches upward, expressing our yearning to reach a higher place. We must strive to go from strength to strength and constantly rise higher. On the other hand, we must be like the calm water, which flows downward, which symbolizes the idea of being present in every moment of our lives.

Finally, I learned that after the brisket comes off the smoker, it is wrapped up to rest, so that it maintains its heat and holds its moisture. While we are excited about the New Year and our new resolutions, we all know too well that many resolutions don’t last very long. We need to wrap ourselves up with the recognition that the purpose for which we were created, is to serve our Creator and make the world a better place to live in. Maintaining this awareness through the year will ensure that even after the inspiration of the High Holidays wanes, our warm enthusiasm, passion and excitement, to make this year the best ever, will be sustained.

May you and yours be inscribed and sealed for a Happy and Sweet New Year. Shana Tova!

A View from the Bleachers: Celebrating that which unites us

Rabbi Steven Garten

By Rabbi Steven Garten

On Sunday evening, September 29, a significant percentage of the Ottawa Jewish community celebrated/observed Rosh Hashanah. Many gathered around family tables for a festive meal. Some observed the “first day of the seventh month” by worshipping in synagogues, temples, auditoriums and even in people’s homes. The next day, many of the same individuals returned to worshipping or continued with more private observances. The entire pattern will be repeated 10 days later on Kol Nidre eve and the day of Yom Kippur. Regardless of one’s personal choices, there is something special and unique about the two days when our Jewish community gathers together to celebrate that which unites us, rather than focusing on that which divides us.

I felt that unique sense Jewish unity on September 10 when I attended the Jewish Federation of Ottawa Annual Campaign Kickoff. Regardless of our personal feelings about Federation and the work it does, the gathering was transformative. Six hundred members of the community laughing together, mostly at our own foibles and nuances of tribal behaviour. We don’t often laugh together. In fact, we more often than not separate into denominational and ideological camps for our group gatherings. There is nothing inherently wrong with having alternative views/opinions on prayer, the Deity, Jewish tradition, Israel, interfaith coalitions, aboriginal reconciliation. However differences which serve to keep us apart are not a reflection of our potential strength as a community.

I felt the unique power of community on September 8. That Sunday afternoon I travelled to the wilds of Barrhaven to sample the products of the Ottawa Kosher BBQ Cook-off. This unique event was the brainchild of my colleague Rabbi Menachem Blum of the Ottawa Torah Centre. As I walked amongst the crowd, I was struck by mixture of kippot, black hats, Israelis now living in Ottawa, synagogue-goers, committed atheists, and most noticeably, young and old together. The food was nice, not Texas or southern barbecue, but nice. What was more than nice was the celebratory crowd. Hats off (black hat off) to Rabbi Blum and the volunteers who drew us all to the wilds of Barrhaven.

The sense of community pride was also on display during the Capital Pride weekend in Ottawa. Members of our community walked in the Pride Parade on August 25 identified as Jews. Unlike at some U.S. Pride Parades, the Star of David was prominently displayed, not forbidden. On Erev Shabbat there were dinners and programming in two synagogues. These outreach programs that bring together members of the LGBTQ community, their parents, and their supporters represent special opportunities for Ottawa’s Jewish community to display its commonality, not just its differences.

There are many other projects that will be supported by Federation’s Jewish Experience Microgrants that have the intentional purpose of bringing the community together. Stock the Freezer, a series of group cooking events, in which community members come together to cook and freeze healthy meals for Ottawa Kosher Food Bank clients, modelled on Soup Sisters of Calgary and other Canadian cities, has the potential of enticing whole families to have fun while manifesting Jewish values.

One more example of unique cross denominational programming is Jbotics, an opportunity for students in Grades 5-8 with an interest in sciences to learn about the intersection of Judaism, Israeli innovation, and hands-on building and computer programming. Though the program – supported by a Federation Jewish Experience Microgrant – is hosted by Temple Israel Religious School, it is open to all members of the community in those grades.

The High Holy Days are a time when members of our community observe and celebrate our Hebrew calendar in diverse ways. It is lovely to see so many members of the “people of Israel” gathering in prayer and observance. But these religious days do not resonate as they have in the past.

Growing up in the Bronx, living along the Grand Concourse, there were 200 minyanim, synagogues, and one large temple filled with primarily male worshippers on the High Holy Days. It was glorious to walk the 40 blocks between 201st Street and 161st Street nodding “Shana Tova” to one and all. But the Grand Concourse has changed. We no longer live in ‘gilded ghettos.’ The High Holy Days has lost its clarion call for many younger members of our community.

If we are to look forward and not backward, then we will need to innovate opportunities for communal celebrations and observances that supplement the traditional approaches.