Havurah Shalom

For all who want a regular prayer practice and for people saying Kaddish. We meet both in person and streaming online in Zoom Room Aleph. All are welcome. Please email info@havurahshalom.org for join info.

Additional evening time, by popular demand. Deborah will share impressions and questions from her recent return to Israel/Palestine and her encounters with: religious relatives living on the West Bank, a few of today's Jewish and Palestinian peace activists, 'regular' Israelis trying to live their lives, Druze community members, and amazing and disturbing changes in Israel in the last 26 years. She also learned far more than planned about the current health care systems in Palestine and in Israel due to a freak accident (everybody is okay now).

Israel’s yetziat mitzrayim (exodus from Egypt/the narrow space) is a cornerstone of Judaism and the foundation for our celebration of Pesach (Passover). One of the four names for Pesach is Hag ha-Herut (The Feast of Freedom). Jews in different historical contexts have understood mitzrayim (the narrow space) differently and therefore freedom has looked different in different generations. We will explore the evolution of these themes from the Torah narratives into the self-conscious construction of the Passover seder by the rabbis. We will look at visual and liturgical representations of slavery and freedom in haggadot (the book we use at the seder) from the last 600 years. One focus will be on the liberation of gender, which has been a hallmark of the last 40 years of some creative Jewish seders. Taught by Deborah Eisenbach-Budner