CALENDAR
May 6, 13, 20; Shabbat Services 7:15 pm, Asbell Center
May 8; Sunday School 10:00 am-noon, Asbell Center
May 15 All Congregation Picnic at the Glassmann’s Farm
. Annual All-Congregation
Meeting and Potluck at the Glassmann’s Farm, May 15 at 11am
Steve and Laura Glassmann have graciously offered their farm
once again as the site for the annual all-congregation meeting and
potluck picnic. Last year’s event at the Glassmann’s spread
was a lot of fun, with great food and friendly cows.
The gathering is set to begin at 11:00am. Please bring a
dish for the potluck.
A congregation meeting will take place after lunch.
Four board positions need to be voted on. These positions are
currently held by Steve T, Dale, Ethel, and John Bloom. The
Board will meet immediately after the all-congregation meeting to
elect officers for the next year.
Directions:
Rt. 34 south through Mount Holly
Bear right and continue on Rt 34 south 4.5 miles
Turn right onto Peach Glen Rd. 1.8 miles
Turn right onto Coon Rd. 5 miles
2599 Coon Rd on right.
Long driveway over creek, through woods, past log home.
At barn turn left up to house.
Yom Hashoah Service
About 75 people, including about 20 CBT congregants, attended the
May 1, 2011, Holocaust Remembrance service sponsored by the
Congregation, the Carlisle Area Religious Council, Hillel, the
Asbell Center for Jewish Life, and the Dickinson College History
Department. Most of the organizational work was done by Missy
Reif, Hillel VP.
The guest speaker was Bob Behr from the Holocaust Museum’s
speakers’ bureau who provided an insightful presentation of growing
up in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s until the Nazis arrested him
and his parents for his mother’s having referred another Jewish
woman to a Catholic priest near the Swiss border who facilitated the
woman’s escape to Switzerland. Mr. Behr and his parents spent
the war years in German work camps until their camp was liberated by
the Soviet Army in May 1945. The focus of Mr. Behr’s
presentation was on the German tightening of laws on the Jews
throughout the 1930s and the psychological abuse it caused the
Jewish people.
The service consisted of Reverend Charles Brophy of the First
Lutheran Church providing the opening prayer; Hillel incoming
president Evan Dubchansky reading Pavel Friedman’s June, 1942 poem
“I Never Saw Another Butterfly”; Missy Reif introducing the Keynote
Speaker; Mr. Behr providing a one hour presentation and then
answering questions; Hillel’s outgoing president Emily Weiner
leading the Kaddish; and Father William Forrey of St. Patrick Church
providing the closing prayer.
After the service Hillel had a dinner for Mr. Behr at the Asbell
Center. DeAnna Spurlock, Steve Tompkins, and Ellen Kievit
(CARC President) attended the dinner as Hillel’s guests. The
discussion with Mr. Behr continued through dinner.
Success in the Cemetery Tax Exemption
Appeal
The Congregation owes a big thank you to Nate Wolf and Steve
Tompkins for their work in achieving a tax exemption for the
cemetery property. Nate and Steve went to the Board of
Assessment Appeals hearing on April 14 and presented the
Congregation’s arguments that it deserves tax-exempt
status. The Assessment Board agreed in a 3-0 vote.
Emily’s Sentinel Article on Passover and Yom
HaShoah
Emily Burt-Hedrick wrote another excellent piece for the
Sentinel:
As you are reading this column, Jews all over the world are
celebrating the Passover holiday. Passover started this year on
Monday evening, April 18, and runs for eight days.
The Jewish calendar date for the start of Passover is the 15th
day of the month of Nissan. During that period of time, Jews will
not eat "leavened" bread, but instead will eat matzah, a hard flat
wheat bread.
We celebrate Passover to commemorate the exodus from Egypt, an
event many of you are familiar with from reading the Bible or from
watching movies.
During Passover, Jews tell and retell the story of the exodus
from Egypt during the ceremonial meals called "Seder."
Most Jews will celebrate two Seders, one on Monday night and one
on Tuesday night. It is a wonderful time for families and friends to
get together to tell the story about the exodus.
As Jews, we are required to tell the story to our children, and
the Seder is how we do that. The Seder, which means "order," is a
series of ritual prayers, questions and answers, as well as special
foods that we eat.
The youngest person at the Seder will ask four questions about
why this night is different, why we eat only bitter herbs and
matzah, and why we relax around the Seder Table. The rest of the
Seder consists of the older participants telling the story.
It starts when Jacob's family went down to Egypt to escape the
famine, at the invitation of Joseph. But later a pharaoh arose who
didn't know Joseph and his contributions to the people of Egypt, so
he enslaved the Jews.
As you know, Moses was later born in Egypt and raised in the
house of Pharaoh, and became a defender of the Jews. He tried to
convince Pharaoh to let the Jews go, and it took 10 terrible plagues
to convince Pharaoh to let them go.
We eat the bitter herbs to commemorate the bitterness of slavery.
We eat the matzah, the unleavened bread, to commemorate the haste in
which we left Egypt; we didn't have time for the bread to rise.
And we drop 10 drops of our Passover wine out of our cups to
commemorate the sufferings of the Egyptian people from the 10
plagues.
Passover is a wonderful, happy holiday for Jews, a time for
family and friends to remember the miracles of that time.
Passover is followed by a modern holiday, Yom HaShoah, which is
the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust.
This year, Yom HaShoah will start Sunday evening, May 1, and run
through Monday, May 2.
The Jewish calendar date will be the 27th day of Nissan, during
the same month as Passover. Yom HaShoah is actually linked to the
Passover holiday, historically.
The holiday was created by the State of Israel in 1951 to
commemorate the Warshaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis that
started on 14 Nissan/April 19, 1943, the day before Passover.
Like the original Passover, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was a
struggle for freedom. In order not diminish the significance of
either Passover or Yom HaShoah holidays, the Knesset in Israel set
the date as 27 Nissan.
This date places the holiday during the period of the Uprising,
but after the end of the Passover. Yom HaShoah is a very somber
holiday, whose purpose is to commemorate the millions of people,
including six million Jews, who were murdered by the Nazi genocide
in Europe in the 1930s and '40s.
It is a custom in many Jewish communities to read the names, over
a 24-hour period, of the six million Jewish victims who were killed,
so that their names are never forgotten. Many communities sponsor
special programs to commemorate the victims of the Nazis, including
Holocaust survivor speakers and memorial prayers.
Every year, Carlisle holds a Holocaust Memorial Service. This
year the annual Yom HaShoah service will take place at 4:15 p.m.
Sunday, May 1, in the Dickinson Rector Science Complex, West Louther
Street and North College Ave., in the Stafford Auditorium.
Bob Behr, a Holocaust survivor, will speak.
This Yom HaShoah service is co-sponsored by Congregation Beth
Tikvah, the Carlisle Area Religious Council, the Dickinson Hillel,
the Asbell Center for Jewish Life at Dickinson and the Dickinson
College Department of History.
Everyone is welcome to attend.
AMY FARRELL ON THE COLBERT
REPORT
On May 4, Amy Farrell appeared on The Colbert Report to
discuss her just released book Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body
in American Culture. She held her own as comedian
Steven Colbert interviewed her about her thesis. Amy also
appeared on the show in 2009.
Amy's appearance will be
re-broadcast at 7:30pm on May 5 on the Comedy Central
channel. (Comcast channel 52)
The book is an NYU publication. Description:
"To be fat hasn’t always occasioned the level of hysteria that
this condition receives today and indeed was once considered an
admirable trait. Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American
Culture explores this arc, from veneration to shame, examining
the historic roots of our contemporary anxiety about fatness.
Tracing the cultural denigration of fatness to the mid 19th century,
Amy Farrell argues that the stigma associated with a fat body
preceded any health concerns about a large body size. Firmly in
place by the time the diet industry began to flourish in the 1920s,
the development of fat stigma was related not only to cultural
anxieties that emerged during the modern period related to consumer
excess, but, even more profoundly, to prevailing ideas about race,
civilization and evolution. For 19th and early 20th century
thinkers, fatness was a key marker of inferiority, of an
uncivilized, barbaric, and primitive body. This idea—that fatness is
a sign of a primitive person—endures today, fueling both our $60
billion “war on fat” and our cultural distress over the “obesity
epidemic.”
Farrell draws on a wide array of sources, including political
cartoons, popular literature, postcards, advertisements, and
physicians’ manuals, to explore the link between our historic
denigration of fatness and our contemporary concern over obesity.
Her work sheds particular light on feminisms’ fraught relationship
to fatness. From the white suffragists of the early 20th century to
contemporary public figures like Oprah Winfrey, Monica Lewinsky, and
even the Obama family, Farrell explores the ways that those who seek
to shed stigmatized identities—whether of gender, race, ethnicity or
class—often take part in weight reduction schemes and fat mockery in
order to validate themselves as “civilized.” In sharp contrast to
these narratives of fat shame are the ideas of contemporary fat
activists, whose articulation of a new vision of the body Farrell
explores in depth. This book is significant for anyone concerned
about the contemporary “war on fat” and the ways that notions of the
“civilized body” continue to legitimate discrimination and cultural
oppression." (See http://nyupress.org/books/book-details.aspx?bookid=1613)
Volunteer Opportunities at “Aging and Community
Services”
Cumberland County Aging & Community Services is recruiting
volunteers for its APPRISE and Ombudsman Programs. APPRISE
volunteers help seniors navigate Medicare, Ombudsman volunteers
advocate for seniors in nursing homes.
Training is provided for both programs. People interested
in becoming volunteers, or seeking additional information, may
contact Aging & Community Services at (717) 240-6110, or by
email at aging@ccpa.net.
Coming in June—Project Share’s “First Fruit
Festival”
This summer, Project SHARE will put its own spin on an ancient
festival to welcome the first gleaned crops of the season to the
Farm Stand. The First Fruits Festival will be held June 25 at the
Farm Stand at the corner of Pitt and Lincoln streets in Carlisle.
The Farm Stand will be open during the event to allow recipients to
pick up some vegetables. The First Fruits Festival is still largely
in the planning stages, but the event may include acoustic music,
hamburgers and hot dogs, an activity for children and informational
displays about Project SHARE, the Farm Stand and the garden boxes at
the Farm Stand. Volunteers are invited to help organize the festival
and to be there on the day of the event to facilitate the
activities. Anyone interested in participating may contact Farm
Stand coordinator, Tammie Gitt, at 249-7773.
Volunteers will also be needed to help glean the fields during
the summer and fall. Check our website at www.projectshare.net and
click under the “Farm” tab for a list of dates. Anyone interested in
participating may contact Tammie Gitt at 249-7773.
Weekly Torah Study
Mike Markowitz has been leading a weekly Torah discussion on
Saturdays from 11am until noon at Asbell Center. Everyone is
welcome, and turnout has been very good, with 5-8 attendees getting
involved in lively discussions of the weekly parsha.
For more info, contact Mike at 776-3995.
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Thanks to SteveT, Ethel, and DeAnna for contributions to the May
newsletter!
Send newsletter items to Howard Warshaw at hwarshaw@hotmail.com
