SHABBAT AND FESTIVALS @ CSH

Shabbat Services

co-led by Rabbi Jan Uhrbach and Rabbi Michael Boino. 
6:30 pm Friday nights (Zoom only)
10:00 am Saturday mornings (Zoom and livestreamed on our YouTube channel).
Email us for in-person address or log-in link.

In-person, hybrid services will resume Memorial Day weekend.

Pesach Services

co-led by Rabbi Jan Uhrbach and Rabbi Michael Boino. 
10:00 am Thursday April 6 – 1st Day Pesach (Zoom and livestreamed on our YouTube channel).
10:00 am Wednesday April 12 – 7th Day Pesach (with Yizkor) (Zoom and livestreamed on our YouTube channel).
Email us for in-person address or log-in link.

Pesach Resources

The Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly offers an easy online form for the sale of hametz.  Click here to Sell your Hametz through the Rabbinical Assembly. And you can download the Rabbinical Assembly’s 2023 Pesah Guide here. 

In addition, I want to call your attention to an alternative approach to permitted foods and kashering your home, from the perspective of Rabbi Haim Ovadia. Rabbi Ovadia is a contemporary Sephardi scholar and halakhic authority (now based on Maryland). I find his approach to halakhic observance — which focuses on the underlying rationale and meanings of Jewish law in the traditional sources, often enabling him to strip away accretions which have led to unnecessary strictures — very compelling. You can find Rabbi Ovadia’s “No Sweat Pesach Guide” on Sefaria. I recommend also looking at his Pesah Kashrut and Cleaning Guide Excerpted from Torah Ve-Ahava Pesah Guide and Reader by Rabbi Haim Ovadia, posted by Congregation B’nai Jeshurun with Rabbi Ovadia’s permission. Preparing for Pesach by altering both what we eat and the environment in which we eat (through cleaning, changing dishes, etc), plays an invaluable role in making the holy day transformative, and continuing our own and our parents’ and grandparents’ traditions has both religious and emotional value. For those reasons, we might choose to retain practices which Rabbi Ovadia concludes are not actually necessary. At the same time, for some of us, the frenzied physical work allows little time for spiritual preparation, and leaves us so exhausted we’re unable to appreciate the Seder itself. Rabbi Ovadia’s approach, in it’s simplicity, may allow us to reclaim the meaning of the holy day.  

And check out Merle Feld’s seder prompts — for discussion at the table, or reflection/writing on your own, as preparation, or during the week.

Read or listen to Rabbi Uhrbach’s teachings (including Pesach) here.

And watch Rabbi Uhrbach’s teachings for JTS:

“I Shall Not Fear”:  Liturgy, Emotional Honesty, and Resilience
Can praying other people’s words help build and sustain resilience? Using particular familiar examples from our daily and Shabbat prayer, we’ll explore the unique ways in which a regular prayer practice grounded in traditional liturgy can help strengthen us and give us honest hope in challenging and distressing times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yz5XEHWYo4

God of the Faithful, God of the Faithless: Belief and Doubt in Prayer
Do we need “faith” in order to pray? Can synagogue services be worthwhile and meaningful even if we’re not sure what we believe? We are hardly the first generation to struggle with contradictions among our intellectual beliefs, traditional Jewish liturgy, and the act of prayer. What do biblical and rabbinic texts about prayer, and the prayerbook itself, teach us about these conflicts, and how can they help us connect to prayer even in times of doubt or faithlessness?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK3xYmzkEsg

First Failures: Falling Apart and Starting Over in the Book of Genesis
(Part of Times of Crisis and Possibility, an online series with JTS faculty and fellows.)
The first book of the Torah is filled with stories of crisis, brokenness, disappointments, and failure, both human and Divine. What religious meaning can we derive from the Torah’s focus on failure rather than success? Through a close look at some of its key narratives, we will mine the Book of Genesis for strategies for living through difficult times, and as the grounding of a hopeful and resilient theology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEkCHxqC6MU