We just found God

For immediate release

Temple Sinai Board of Trustees announced tonight that God has been found and returned to the temple's mission statement.  "Apparently, God had been inadvertently lost these past ten years," says Rabbi Jonathan Roos, "we were pleased to see how easy He was to find."  Mission statement experts report that 91% of all consumers, members or customers of an organization never look at a mission statement.  "It is no surprise," one expert who wished to remain anonymous told us, "that God could be dropped from a mission statement without anybody realizing it.  It probably happens all the time."  Board members were pleased to see God back in the temple mission though nobody could remember exactly when He left.  God's return to the mission statement still requires full congregational approval at the annual meeting in May 2011.  Roos does not expect much resistance to God's return but reminds readers that "hester panim" - God hiding from humanity - is a common divine behavior that could occur at any time between now and the meeting.  Other sources, however, were quick to point to Hasidic teachings that say, "Where is God? Wherever we let God in."  Still, you might want to show your support for God at the May meeting.

(Caveat: this is not a real press release but a joke suggested after tonight's board meeting where a motion passed unanimously to add the phrase "worship of God" to our temple mission statement)

Israel is for liberals

Tablet Magazine (online) ran a story showing Israel to be a liberal's dreamland.  While the mainstream news is dominated by stories of the Obama administration clashing with the Netanyahu government over housing in Har Homa, another picture of Israel emerges from the stories of Gili Shem Tov and the Israeli Health Ministry's approach to medical marijuana.  Shem Tov is a sports reporter on Israeli TV and openly lesbian. She is also now the first competitor on any country's version of Dancing With the Stars, to dance in a same sex couple.  The Health Ministry is considering paying for marijuana for medical use for Israelis in the national universal medical coverage.

How Much Do You Know?

We've been talking a lot about faith, belief and God at temple lately.  Forget about what you believe (or disbelieve) for a minute.  How much do you know?

According to the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, "atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions."


Take the quiz from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and see how you rank.  For what it's worth, I did not get 100%.

p.s. This should mark the end of the blog's month long hiatus.  Updates weekly or more to come.  If you have something you'd like to share with the Sinai community, pass it along.

Greetings from Milan

Rabbi Fred Reiner sent this message:

Sherry and I send our warmest wishes from Italy for a sweet 5771. Today (September 7) we are traveling to Florence, where we will be spending Rosh Hashanah and I will be leading the services; on Yom Kippur I will lead services in Milan.


From the windows of our apartment we can see the Alps on clear days, so I am thinking of Psalm 121. As we lift our eyes to the mountains here, we are thinking of how important these words (and music) are to Temple Sinai and to all of us.

May your worship be fulfilling these High Holy Days, and may all of us enter a year of peace for our people and our world.

Fred N. Reiner
Rabbi Emeritus

More "In the News"

WTOP, NBC-4 (the local DC affiliate), and PBS also ran stories on the press conference condemning the rising tide of anti-Muslim sentiment and violence.  The PBS piece provides the most content from me and is the most thorough on the issue.  Watch it here.

Special thanks and acknowledgement to Professor Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis University.  His article in The Forward, "When Shuls Were Banned in America," provided me with a great deal of content to support my point at the press conference.