Monday, April 29, 2024

The Synagogue and the Study House

jewish house of worship

“How Great Is Our God” also harks back to an earlier era of worship music, she said, before megachurches such as Hillsong, Bethel and Elevation dominated the industry. The hit songs churned out by those churches often rely on vocal acrobatics and sophisticated arrangements — filled with white space and instrumentals, which makes them harder to pick up spontaneously. At first listen, “How Great Is Our God” seems an unlikely candidate for a Christian nationalism protest song.

Harvard students start their own tent city

Protest encampments on campuses have been set up with greater frequency this month in several states in the U.S.in solidarity with students at Columbia University in New York City. The Brown agreement allows for five students chosen by the encampment’s organizers to meet with the board to make the case for divestment. An advisory committee will also present Paxson with its own recommendation on the issue.

Second Temple period

Rallies and encampments have sprung up on campuses from California to Massachusetts this week, sometimes prompting police intervention, as was the case Wednesday at the University of Texas in Austin and at the University of Southern California. The protesters are calling for an end to U.S. military support for Israel and for eliminating Israeli investments. Yet protesters remained in the library as of Wednesday, leaving the terms of the agreement on hold, a university spokesperson said. The word “synagogue” is originally a Greek one first found in the New Testament. Meanwhile, police arrested protesters Wednesday at the University of Southern California campus, which closed to the public Wednesday amid clashes between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and authorities at the school and nationwide.

jewish house of worship

Torah Ark

Because of this, there are lots of rules for things you can and can’t do . It’s supposed to be a day of rest—you’re not supposed to do any type of work, or watch television, use the computer, use electricity, any of that stuff . Rabbi Steve Leder is much too discreet to share the names of his movie-biz congregants, but he will say that some big-time Hollywood studio heads, producers, directors, writers and agents have attended the temple over the years. Some of the congregants who helped build Wilshire Boulevard Temple — which was dedicated in 1929 — were pillars of the movie industry.

Synagogues, Shuls and Temples

An entire annual holiday — Tisha B’Av — is given over to mourning its absence from Jewish life. And a piece of the Temple — the western retaining wall of the platform on which it stood, called the Kotel or Western Wall — is today one of the holiest sites for Jews. All this came to a screeching halt in 70 CE when the Temple was destroyed in a devastating war with the Romans. In its wake, rabbinic Judaism (the Judaism practiced by virtually all Jews today) and its central text, the Talmud, laid the foundation for Jewish ritual and worship in a world without the Temple. The Warner Bros. studio provided the colorful murals that recount the history of Judaism as they stretch across the walls inside the Wilshire Boulevard Temple's huge, gold-domed sanctuary. This isn’t because Jews object to the New Testament roots of “synagogue,” of which few of them are even aware; however, there remains something about the word that does not sound or feel terribly Jewish, as if its Christian origins nevertheless show through.

The Temple was messy — and smelly

Groups from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Historical Society also regularly tour the building to study the architecture and behold the window. Letting go of their mid-century modern structure, however, is hardly the ideal answer. Never mind that it is an architectural gem or that the congregation’s most significant asset – its property located just blocks west of Millennium Park – is worth millions. Relinquishing the building would also doom the fate of Chicago Loop Synagogue’s monumental stained-glass window. That has put intense pressure on the Loop Synagogue, where leaders fear losing people if they raise dues significantly beyond $180 a year, a fraction of what full-service suburban synagogues charge members. “It’s the only institution like it in the Loop – the only synagogue in the area that holds afternoon services every weekday all year round,” he said.

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Services

In Brooklyn, police made arrests for disorderly conduct late Tuesday during a street protest near the residence of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader. The U.S. protests have been duly noted in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the demonstration antisemitic and intimidating to Jewish students. For Feucht, worship is a weapon that empowers Christians for political action as an act of spiritual warfare, as the one-time congressional candidate put in a sermon posted on his YouTube channel. Singing a worship song can show your political allegiance and fill the act of singing with political meaning. Payne said worship songs like “How Great Is Our God” work well at protests, regardless of what the protest is about. For example, she said, “Waymaker,” another hit song, was sung both at Black Lives Matters protests and at anti-vax rallies in 2020.

jewish house of worship

The whole system was fed by an aqueduct that brought water from 10 kilometers away, and it was protected by high walls and a series of gates. The Temple was situated on one particular rise that goes by many names in the Hebrew scriptures. The Torah never identifies the mountain, but simply talks about “the place God will choose to rest His name” (e.g. Deuteronomy 12). Growing up, I knew my family was atypical, yet we were made to feel quite at home in our synagogue and community . "He was the only mogul that wanted to depict what was happening in Germany," says Martin Kaplan, who ran a conference on propaganda in World War II Hollywood, at the University of Southern California's Norman Lear center. Just like most movie theaters — but unlike most sanctuaries — the Wilshire Boulevard Temple has no center aisle — after all, that's where the best seats are.

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The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization, called on political leaders and university officials to stop “endangering” Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian and other students who conducting peaceful protests. "Students should not have to risk their reputation, livelihoods or their safety to speak out against a genocide or their university’s complicity in genocide," CAIR-NY’s Executive Director Afaf Nasher said in a statement. Third, Judaism has flourished for thousands of years without a Temple. Since the rabbis say that Torah study and prayer can replace Temple service, there is less urgency to bring back a Temple.

But at a few schools — including Brown, Northwestern, The Evergreen State College and Portland State University — the two sides have succeeded, at least to some degree, in reaching agreements to keep the campus climate under control. For decades, dozens of student governments have voted symbolically to divest from Israel but have gained no traction with the university administrations with the power to act on their wishes. Brown is the first school to ever agree to a divestment vote — a key demand of the students and other members of the nationwide movement opposing Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza. Today the synagogue’s vast space, cathedral-like in its openness, is dominated by the window. A kaleidoscope of blues and purples pierced by electric shades of yellow take on the forms of planets, trees, Hebrew letters and the Israelite tribes hovering and extending toward one another. And Pross, who herself is not Jewish, recalls people dropping into the building before COVID-19.

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In terms of its specific ritual and liturgical functions, the synagogue does not replace the symbol of the long-destroyed Temple in Jerusalem. More broadly, the moment heralded something of a turning point for relations between university administrations and the encampment protesters, whose movement has only grown in the two weeks since the first tents were pitched on Columbia University’s campus. Many schools have turned to police to clear encampments, some after unsuccessful negotiations between protesters and administrators; Brown itself arrested more than 40 students during a sit-in to push for divestment in December.

Longtime author and critic Lis Harris, a Columbia writing professor, defended the students' right to form the encampment she called a "tent city,'' and said police should not have taken it down and arrested protesters last week. At least 20 people were arrested after a large number of law enforcement officers in riot gear descended upon the University of Texas' Austin campus Wednesday and broke up a peaceful antiwar protest, the Austin American-Statesman reported. At least nine of those arrested were handcuffed and loaded into police vehicles.

A representative for The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, confirmed to JTA that the school had also reached a divestment-related agreement with protesters, who agreed to dismantle their encampments Wednesday. The school says it will form multiple “disappearing taskforces” made up of both students and faculty, including one that will propose changes to its socially responsible investment policy, with a special focus on Israel. Generally, this is located on the eastern side of the building because Jews usually face east, towards Israel and Jerusalem, while praying. This is usually where both the rabbi and cantor stand, where the ark is located, and where the Torah reading takes place. In some congregations, particularly more Orthodox synagogues, the rabbi and cantor may instead use a raised platform in the center of the congregation.

If you are looking for even more Jewish things to do in Los Angeles CA, stop by The Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue. By joining our community you will discover like minded people who are seeking long lasting friendships and bonds. It is a priority for CBC to create products that are accessible to all in Canada including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive challenges. "I just didn't think they would ever get to this, escalate to this level, where our protest is met by counter-protesters who are violently hurting us, inflicting pain on us, when we are not doing anything to them." Some yelled pro-Jewish comments as pro-Palestinian protesters tried to fight them off. Police were responding to UCLA chancellor Gene Block's request for support, Zach Seidl, Los Angeles deputy mayor of communications, said on the social media platform X.

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