Friday, April 21, 2023
Dear friends,
As the founder of Shabbat with Friends NM, I am frequently asked, “What is Shabbat with Friends (SWF)? I frequently get this question from synagogue members and rabbinic colleagues.  I explain, “SWF is not a synagogue, nor does it aspire to be a synagogue. Shabbat with Friends does what its name suggests. We organize home Shabbat celebratory gatherings that build friendships and recapture the joy of sharing Shabbat over a meal, singing together, and engaging in group Torah learning.  SWF is an emerging Shabbat centered Jewish community that seeks to revitalize the experience of the Jewish Sabbath. We are rooted in the New Mexico Jewish community, blending Jewish tradition with the  enchantment of the Southwest.”
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To better understand with SWF is doing, I have summarized some of the basic differences and overlaps between SWF and synagogues in the table below.

As a rabbi who has served congregations for most of my career, I have profound respect for the role of synagogues in Jewish life.  However, I founded SWF to address the gaps in synagogue and Jewish life, especially the way Shabbat is presented and experienced in our community.   

I believe that Jewish communal life is so diffuse and overextended that it can become boring, uninspired, and detached from its original purposes and its spiritual wellsprings. I believe Shabbat is the source of the Jewish genius of community, of the value of relationships, the context for joyful activity, and the source of rest and rejuvenation. 

Shabbat with Friends is also infused with the influences of the vigorous experiments in Jewish life going on in other communities across the United States and in Israel. One such influence is the work of the Jewish Emergent Network. This network comprises several Jewish communities around the country that offer exciting approaches to Jewish life. I have long enduring relationships with leaders in many of these communities. Their values statement reflects the vision that animates Shabbat with Friends. It shapes our efforts and helps guide our programs and initiative.

• a devotion to revitalizing the field of Jewish engagement
• a commitment to approaches both traditionally rooted and creative.
• a demonstrated success in attracting unaffiliated and disengaged Jews to a meaningful Jewish practice.
• a willingness to operate outside of traditional institutional models and rethinking basic assumptions about US Jewish communities with regard to prayer, membership models, staff structures, the religious/cultural divide, and physical space. (Click on  Partnerships – IKAR to see the participating organizations.)

 
If you want to be part of a engaging conversation on new ideas about Jewish life in our region, please join the Shabbat with Friend  open forum the next steps for SWF on Sunday morning, April 23rd from 10-11:30am MDT.  You can attend in person at the JCC  in Albuquerque at 5200 Wyoming Blvd NE (boardroom).  Or if you live in Santa Fe or beyond, you can register on Zoom to attend virtually. There is no charge. The forum is open to the community.
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For questions, please contact me at 505 582-9577 or by email at dov@shabbatwithfriends.org. 
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Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg
Convener, Shabbat with Friends NM

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg, 3/24/23
I love inviting non-Jewish friends and people of all walks of life to come to our family’s Passover Seder. Those of us who have grown up Jewish, take the rituals, songs, and passages for granted. Maybe not the food which so many look forward to. But it never fails to impress me how a person who has never been to the seder and has grown up in another religion, is blown away by the experience.

The Passover Seder is a unique event: the ancient text, the intricate rituals, the domestic context, (Synagogue and cruise ship seders are strictly a recent phenomenon.) a storytelling gathering led by a family member (not a trained teacher or clergyperson.). Because of all these things and more, the Passover Seder is the most popular Jewish festival ritual among American Jews by far.

My friends who grew up in different cultures and religions always comment about one thing they experience around the Seder table. They are very moved by the custom of singing around the table. Passover table singing is an essential part of the seder ritual from Mah Nishtanah to Eliyahu Hanavi and from Dayeinu to Had Gadya. As a child I loved these melodies and grew to expect them every Passover no matter how badly they were sung. (In Israel, public spaces and businesses are filled with the sounds with Passover music just after Purim, just like the pervasiveness of Christmas music after Thanksgiving, that encompasses us in that season.) When I lead our family seder, I always make time for singing, especially in the second half. Back in Seattle, I organized an ensemble that played at the University of Washington Hillel Seder for several years. The special place of singing made this seder popular in the community and made me happy to share this music I have always loved.

But Passover table singing is not unique. Table singing is a central feature of home Sabbath meals. If your Shabbat meal is filled with song, it is all the more so that your Passover Seder will be a surround sound chamber of contagious melodies. One of the main reasons I founded Shabbat with Friends was to revive the powerful and nurturing experience of Jewish table singing on Shabbat. For many American Jews singing at the Seder is the surviving vestige of a way of life that was permeated by the acapella folk singing of the Sabbath. Shabbat is the weekly occasion to exult in our liberation from slavery as it says in the Kiddush: “Zecher l’yitzi’at Mitzrayim” a recollection of our unforgettable liberation from slavery.”

The iconic singing at the Passover table comes from the Sabbath, not the other way around.  Passover is the culmination of the Jewish spiritual path of joy which is founded on the weekly joyful remembrance of freedom which, of course, is the Sabbath day.

May you have a most joyous Pesah and many Shabbatot as well!