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In This Edition:
- Weekly Message
- Apply to Join Jofa's Board, by May 22
- Shabbat Dorshot Tov, June 1
- Gila Fine Book Talk, June 2
- Resources for Shavuot, June 12-13
- Nova Festival Exhibit, in New York Through June 16
- Summer Learning Opportunities
- Mental Health Awareness Month Resources
- Women's Voices
- Israel Resources
- Divrei Torah by Women on Parshat Emor
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Weekly Message:
Connecting with G-d and Each Other
Friends,
Parshat Emor sheds light on how observing the major festivals has both changed and stayed the same.
The Jewish calendar is one of the tangible ways that we connect with G-d. The agricultural rites that were associated with the major Jewish festivals of Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot are laid out three times in the Torah, in the books of Shemot, Vayikra, and Bamidbar. Each time is a call to stand before G-d, our hands filled with bounty and our hearts filled with gratitude.
But the uniqueness of Parshat Emor's festival description is that it is interrupted by the mitzvah to provide for the poor. In Vayikra 23:22 we read: "And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger."
Sandwiching this commandment between the spring festivals, Pesach and Shavuot, and the autumn festivals, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot, is taken by the meforshim (commentators) to mean that giving tzedakah is not just a part of observing the festivals -- but its most important part. The Midrash makes a powerful comparison between caring for the poor and building the Beit Hamikdash: "… he who leaves the gleanings, the forgotten sheaf and the corner of the field to the poor as it ought to be, is regarded as though he had built the Temple and offered his sacrifices therein."
This mitzvah rewarded in such a significant way because the Torah accounts for human nature: After investing the time and energy to grow and reap crops, the farmer would likely want to keep them. So the Torah repeats the commandment, to ensure that the farmer sees caring for the needy as the superseding value.
Sforno, the 16th-century Italian commentator, strikingly reinforces this point: "…the only way to ensure that one does not lose one’s own money is by engaging liberally in handing out charity to the deserving. The legislation in our verse then is this insurance for the farmer not to lose his crop even after he has already brought it into the barn."
Although we no longer observe Jewish festivals through agricultural rites, the obligation to share our good fortune with the needy remains. As the Rambam (Maimonides) strongly cautioned: "When a person eats and drinks in celebration of a festival, he is obligated to feed converts, orphans, widows, and others who are destitute and poor. In contrast, a person who locks the gates of his courtyard and eats and drinks with his children and his wife, without feeding the poor and the embittered, is not indulging in rejoicing associated with a mitzvah, but rather the rejoicing of his gut…This rejoicing is a disgrace."
The primacy of the community in both caring for the needy and celebrating together was as poignant as ever this past week, as we observed Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha'atzmaut – trying as a community to balance the painful needs and staggering losses of the past several months, with our abiding gratitude for our homeland.
With this in mind, we offer ways to help wrap our heads around this time, by connecting with community, through attending events, sharing women's voices and perspectives on the situation and the weekly parsha, and suggesting more ways to help meet communal needs.
Shabbat Shalom ~ Besorot Tovot
|  | Apply to Join Jofa's Board of Directors, by May 22 | Jofa leadership pictured above (left to right) during Jofa's Israel Solidarity Mission in January 2024 are: Board President Dr. Mindy Feldman Hecht; Executive Committee Member Allie Alperovich; Executive Director Daphne Lazar Price; Board Treasurer Rachel Berke, and Executive Committee Member Rabba Dr. Carmella Abraham. | If you'd like to take an active role in Jofa's work to advance leadership opportunities for women in Orthodox communities across North America, consider applying to join Jofa's Board! Applications are being accepted through next Wednesday, May 22, for three-year Board terms beginning on June 3. Find out more & apply here. | Shabbat Dorshot Tov, June 1 | |
During Kolech: Religious Women's Forum's annual Shabbat Dorshot Tov, families and communities across Israel host female scholars who give divrei Torah and teach shiurim for diverse audiences and communities, including some where female religious leaders are uncommon.
This year, Yeshivat Maharat is cosponsoring Dorshot Tov, to include more than 100 female scholars speaking in Diaspora pulpits on Shabbat Bechukotai, June 1.
If you're speaking on June 1, know someone who is, or would like to find a pulpit, here you can find more info and the application link. We hope you'll join us!
| Gila Fine Book Talk, New York City, June 2 | On Sunday, June 2, at 7:30PM, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Gila Fine will discuss her brand new book, "The Madwoman in the Rabbi's Attic: Rereading the Women of the Talmud," which is being released on June 1. The book, focusing on the six named heroines of the Talmud, explores such questions as: How does the Talmud portray its heroines? Why are they never as they first seem? What does this tell us about the rabbis' views of marriage, sex, childbirth, and what it means to be a woman in the world? Please register here; event location will be sent to all registrants. | Resources for Shavuot, June 12-13 | |
Jofa's Project Ruth/Shavuot page offers resources to help enhance your participation and learning for Shavuot, including:
We hope that these leyning and learning resources help to enhance your chag with meaningful participation and fresh insights.
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Nova Music Festival Exhibition,
Now in New York Through June 16
| The Nova Music Festival Exhibition is a groundbreaking, in-depth remembrance of the brutal October 7th attack. This traveling exhibition is currently open to the public in New York City. The installation sets out to recreate an event dedicated to peace and love, that was brutally cut short by Hamas’ attack on Israel from Gaza on that fateful day. Please visit the exhibition website for details on visiting, and updates as additional cities are announced. | Summer Learning Opportunities | |
The summer season offers many opportunities for women to learn a range of Torah topics in a variety of settings, formats, and levels, with some offered via Zoom. Here are some summer learning options that we encourage you to explore:
| Mental Health Awareness Month Resources | In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, we are drawing attention to the Blue Dove Foundation's extensive resources on mental health and Judaism -- including the new "HaDerech - The Way: A Guide for Mental Health Crises" and "Lashon Hara: How to NOT Talk About Mental Illness". Please visit the Foundation's web site for these and many more helpful resources. | |
Raising women's voices helps us find new insight and perspective about what has been happening and how we try to find meaning in it. We hope that these voices provide you with new understanding, and inspire you to act, and to share your own insights.
This week, we make special note of the Times of Israel blog post, "Reflections on Yom HaZikaron 5784 and Keeping the Stories Alive," by Jofa's Executive Director, Daphne Lazar Price.
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Following are additional selected blog posts and opinion pieces by women, published in the past week:
- "When You Live in Israel, the Fallen are Everywhere," by Rachel Sharansky Danziger
- "The Silent Phones," by Romi Sussman
- "Five Years and Counting...," by Chavi Feldman
- "Who Is Crazy Here???," by Shellie Berman Grafstein
- "From Darkness to Light," by Sarah Bechor
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"8:04pm Erev Yom HaZikaron 5784," by Leora Jaffe Steinman
- "Jewish Literacy," by Chava Berman Borowsky
- "Reminder: We are Not Alone," by Rachel Lester
- "When Inspiration Comes from Israel’s Gloriously Varied Society," by Aliza Israel
- "How Israel’s Independence Day Connects Us to Jews Over Generations," by Dr. Mijal Bitton
- "'Freshman Fear': How Antisemitism Tainted My First Year at Columbia University," by Sophie Kasson
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"The Meaning of Modeh Ani," by Talya Bernstein Galaganov
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With the war in Israel and the hostages' fate weighing heavily on us, we look to ways we can offer help on the home front.
Please check our Supporting Israel: Ways to Help Now page, where we continue adding ways to stay connected and engaged with what is happening in Israel and what we can do - including raising the voices and stories of how girls and women are impacted, how they are responding, and ways to support them.
The page includes resources for fighting antisemitism; advocating; staying informed; keeping attention on the hostages; finding comfort in rituals; ways to contribute; talking to kids about Israel; reaching out; mental health; community gatherings, tefillot, and more.
We will also keep spotlighting additional resources in this weekly email and our social feeds, and adding them to our Israel page. We hope that each week you'll find something that speaks to you, helps you stay connected, take action, raise your voice -- in Israel, around the world, and in your own home and community.
| Spotlighted Israel Resources | We continue highlighting resources and organizations that you can turn to for information, support, or to contribute toward direct needs on the ground in Israel. Please see our Supporting Israel page for our running list. |  | |
Neve Eshkol is the Association for the Elderly in the Eshkol Regional Council, which has a 60-kilometer border with the Gaza Strip, and is the region that suffered the most casualties and hostages taken on October 7. Neve Eshkol provides welfare services and leisure activities for elderly people in the region, including Holocaust survivors. Since the war and the evacuation of the residents, Neve Eshkol has been taking care of a variety of needs for 700 elderly people, and in some cases their foreign caregivers, who are staying in multiple evacuation sites around the country.
Nirim operates a nationwide educational-therapeutic program that, every year, gives hundreds of high-risk youth another opportunity, sometimes their last, to return to Israeli society as citizens who contribute to themselves, their families, and the country. Nirim runs a Youth Village – a residential setting for 120 extreme-risk teens, and “Nirim in the Neighborhoods” – a community-based program that works with at-risk youth in underserved populations throughout Israel. Funding is needed to support the residents evacuated from the Youth Village, and provide extra home visits to youth-at-risk in communities under threat in northern and southern Israel. Nirim also provides youth at risk activities and support to evacuee youth in northern Israel and Eilat.
| Divrei Torah by Women on Parshat Emor | |
Jews around the world are reading and studying Parshat Emor this week. Here are a few divrei Torah by women on this week's parsha:
| Shabbat Shalom u'Mevorach | |
