Sisterhood honey project work day Sunday, September 5
Erev Rosh Hashanah Monday, September 6 @ 7:30 pm Rosh Hashanah Day I Tuesday, September 7 @ 10 am Rosh Hashanah Children’s Service Tuesday, September 7 @ 9:00 am Rosh Hashanah Day II Conservative Service Wednesday, September 8 @ 10 am Explore Yizkor Monday, September 13 @ 6 pm Maariv 7 pm Thursday, 9/9 – Sunday, 9/12 – Monday, 9/13 – Tuesday, 9/14 Kol Nidre Wednesday, September 15 @ 7:30 pm Yom Kippur Thursday, September 16 @ 10 am Yom Kippur Children’s Service Thursday, September 16 @ 9 am Yom Kippur Minchah Service Thursday, September 16 @ 4:45 pm Yom Kippur Yizkor/Memorial Service Thursday, September 16 @ 5:45 pm, followed by Neilah/Concluding Service
CBS Fall Opener Saturday, September 18 @ 6 pm Religious School begins Sunday, September 19 Tefilah Tuesdays @ 7 pm – https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86420634509 Hebrew Bible with Howard Lidsky Sundays @ noon @ CBS
High Holy Days at CBS
The CBS Board of Directors has determined that the safest way to conduct High Holy Days services this year is to offer in-person services outdoors only and via live streaming.
*** No indoor services will be offered for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur ***
We have set up our tent and will welcome you to sit beneath it as Rabbi Phil Cohen and cantorial soloist Andy Curry bring in the year 5782.
Feel free to bring lawn chairs/blankets and sit on the lawn. A limited number of chairs will be available under the tent.
We will offer outdoor in-person services and live streaming via YouTube (link will be provided) for these services:
Erev Rosh Hashanah – 7:30 pm Monday, September 6
Rosh Hashanah first day – 10 am Tuesday, September 7
Children’s service – 9 am Tuesday, September 7 – led by Jacob Stiepleman and Langston Schatz Mitchell (outdoors, in-person)
Rosh Hashanah (Conservative) second day – 10 am Wednesday, September 8
Kol Nidre – 7:30 pm Wednesday, September 15
Yom Kippur – 10 am Thursday, September 16
Yom Kippur Children’s Service – led by Langston & Jacob 9 am Thursday, September 16
Yom Kippur Mincha service – 4:45 pm Thursday, September 16
Yom Kippur Yizkor/Memorial Service @ 5:45 Thursday, September 16 @ 5:45 pm, followed immediately by Neilah/Concluding Service
Join Rabbi Cohen for Maariv services at 7 pm on the dates below via Zoom only:
Our new mahzor, our book for the High Holy days, MIshkan HaNefesh is an interesting and I have to say revolutionary text in the Reform world. It contains new and engaging readings throughout. I’m particularly taken by the Yizkor service for Yom Kippur afternoon. With its 65 pages, it contains many readings that ruminate on the death of our loved ones, far too many pages to use on YK afternoon.
I’d like then to offer a class for those interested in reading some of those texts in a study context.
Please join me on Monday evening, September 13 at 7:30 pm in person or on Zoom for an exploration of some of these Yizkor texts.
Our annual High Holy Days food drive, Project Isaiah, will run from Rosh Hashanah through Sukkot. This year, we will make the donation in honor of Ruben Hakimi, a passionate advocate for this cause and a mensch we all miss.
Both food and monetary donations are welcome and necessary. We will distribute grocery bags for non-perishable food items at all three HHD services and elsewhere. Please return these bags (or your own bags) with non-perishable items and place them in one of the Food Bank barrels, which will be outside during services and inside the sanctuary foyer at other times (through Sukkot).
You can also leave food donations in front of the sanctuary door if the building is closed and we will make sure they get into the barrels. Or send a check to CBS, 500 W. Green Meadows Rd., 65203, and write Project Isaiah on the memo line.
Our CBS youth group has organized a Facebook Project Isaiah fundraiser. If you have a Facebook account you can give money directly. Login to your account and cut-and-paste this number in the Search box: 402357121556321.
Please join us in raising money for The Food Bank for Central & Northeast Missouri. Your contribution will make an impact, whether you donate $1.80, $18, or $180 – every chai helps!
This year, we hope to raise $1800 over the High Holy Days through Sukkot.
One of the high water moments in the High Holy Days liturgy occurs before the open ark when, standing, we recite a litany of appeals to God. God, listen to our voice. God, we have sinned before you. God, be graceful to us and answer us, for our deeds are inadequate. Deal with us justly and with loving kindness, and save us.
These are weighty sentiments, highlighted by the profundity of the days that lie before us. As a people we’ve recited and sung these words for generations, hoping in them to discover new nuances that will fill our lives with meaning.
I’d like to point out an aspect of this prayer I learned a long time ago from Rabbi Dov Taylor, concerning the opening words of each line of this prayer: Avinu Malkeinu, our Father our King.
First, the words are so resonant, so fixed in our Jewish psyches, that attempts I’ve seen to remove the obvious masculine-ness of them inevitably fail. But having said that, there is no need to understand their meaning entirely as masculine. Rather, Avinu Malkeinu reflects a brilliant dichotomy regarding God and us that transcends gender.
It’s simple, actually. When we say Avinu Malkeinu, we’re addressing the Infinite in two aspects of God’s being, two aspects of God as understood by the tradition.
The first word, Avinu, our Father, refers to God as a compassionate, loving parent-God, the God who understands us with all of our miserable failings, but who, like a good parental figure in our lives, loves us without qualification nonetheless. This God is immanent, present, comforting; this is the aspect of God who knows us and accepts us as individuals.
Malkeinu, our King, is the God who knows us as part of an entire people over whom He rules. This is the God who makes just judgments. This God is remote, transcendent, and emotionally distant from us both as individuals and as a people. We expect justice from this aspect of God, but not intimacy.
Together, the parent and the ruler form a whole; the binary. In the recitation of Aviu Malkeinu on the High Holy Days, the two become a unity. We experience immanence and transcendence, love and justice, kindness and judgment all simultaneously. And through this liturgical experience we come away from the Days of Awe a bit more whole, a bit more committed to our own service to the Jewish people and humanity, a bit more in touch with the Divine.
Betsy and I wish you all a happy and healthy (and doesn’t “healthy” mean more than usual this year, as last?) New Year, a year filled with sweetness, kindness, understanding, and the kind of meaning that enhances our humanness in a roiling world of uncertainty and in desperate need of wholeness.
Shalom, Phil
Rabbi Phil M. Cohen and Betsy Gamburg
Religious School
Our first day of in-person classes will be on Sunday, September 19, the first Sunday after Yom Kippur. Our youngest learners are in preschool, starting at age three.
As we approach the last days of the hot summer, please help keep the memorial garden at CBS growing by help lending a hand with the watering. The memorial garden is the two flower beds by the entrance to the new building.
If you have questions, please contact Tanya Christiansen at tj_christiansen@yahoo.com. Thanks for your help!
Temple Beth El, Jefferson City
Historic City of Jefferson will present the Historic Places of Worship Tour on Sunday, September 12 from 1:00 pm – 4:30 pm in Jefferson City. The tour will highlight eight historic congregations in our state’s capital city.
Temple Beth El is one of the eight that will be featured. The temple, constructed in 1883, is the oldest continuously operating synagogue west of the Mississippi River. Its members have played an active role not only within their own Beth El but within the community and state as well.
We are inviting other congregations outside of Jefferson City to join us at the event. The tour is a self-paced walking/driving tour–attendees can see all eight locations or they can visit only the ones they choose. Complimentary trolley rides are available for those that would like to ride. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased online at http://www.historiccityofjefferson.org or at local retailers in Jefferson City.
Donations
Donations to CBS are a good way to remember or honor people and special life events. Your gift can be directed to the CBS general fund, the rabbi’s discretionary fund (RDF), the library, the Sasha Yelon book fund or the school scholarship fund.
Send a check to CBS, 500 W Green Meadows Rd, Columbia 65203, with a note with details about honorees and where you’d like the notification sent. We’ll send a handwritten card as you direct.
Tell & Kvell!
Julie Rosenfeld and Lydia Redding welcomed a new grand-niece, Maeve Lia Kelly, born on August 24th at 3:57 pm in New York City.
Mazal Tov to all!
Have you received an award or a promotion, welcomed a new child to your family, or otherwise have reason to kvell? Share your good news with your CBS friends. Send an email to Mary at maxmax@mchsi.com to include in eShalom.
