Reply #9: No Easter service for me

[Kber]

but I did attend a Bat Mitzvah.

The Rabbi did bring it up at Shabbat services on Friday and again on Saturday. He talked about the sin of slander -akin to murder b/c you can't ever really get your words back once spoken. He felt that Rev. Wright had been slandered. Apparently, he knows him personally and they have worked on anti-poverty projects together. He also felt that Obama has been slandered as an anti-semite.

Sunday was the Purim story and he drew a parallel between Esther and Barack Obama that I thought was interesting. In summary, Esther finds herself in a position to speak truth to power, but it takes time and prayer to summon the courage tell the King something he doesn't want to hear. Obama spent much of his campaign trying to be "post-racial" but events put him in a similar situation to Esther and, like her, he chose to take advantage of the position he found himself in to tell us, as a nation, something we needed to hear about our country.

The Hav-Torah portion, interestingly was on the prophet Jeremiah who was, well, damning Israel for it's neglect of the spirit of God's will, including the neglect of the poor and the tilting of the rules to favor the wealthy and powerful.

After hearing Obama's speech, The Bat-Mitzvah girl rewrote a portion of her teaching to encompass the role of the prophets to tell us the uncomfortable and even terrifying consequences of neglecting the true message and commandments of God and that the prophet Jeremiah was doing the hardest thing God can ask of a person when he prophesied upcoming disaster.

It was an interesting weekend that included lots of discussion in and out of temple. :)