Families with kids 5-10 years old are invited to a Shavuot hike on Sunday morning at 9:30am! Come celebrate the giving of the Torah with a kid-friendly hike, Jewish music, and a traditional Shavout treat - cheesecake!
RSVP to Lauren Miller at 818 689-5235. Call or text.
Location will be shared when you RSVP.
Chag sameach!
Please contact us at jewishcommunityofkauai18@gmail.com if you did not receive our letter so we can update your contact information.
Thank you!
Marty Kahn will lead the service, and we’ll have Kiddush and an Oneg following.
We look forward to sharing Shabbat with our friends, family and Kauai community.
Where: St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, Hardy Street, Lihue. Map.
When: Saturday, May 17, 2025
Time: 10:00 am.
They Were There in Israel’s Darkest Hour – Now They Need Our Support.
On October 7th, 2023, Israel faced an unimaginable tragedy. As Hamas terrorists stormed homes, massacred families, and tore lives apart, Tomer Peretz, a renowned Israeli American artist, was visiting his homeland. Without hesitation, he joined a group of ZAKA volunteers in the sacred task of recovering the victims’ remains, giving dignity to the fallen and bearing witness to horrors no one should ever have to endure. In doing so, they carried the weight of a nation’s grief so that others would not have to.
Now, through The 8 Project, Tomer is bringing his brothers from ZAKA — the brave men who stood by his side in Israel’s darkest hour — to a transformative retreat aimed at helping them recover. These men, who have experienced unimaginable pain, now need the support and care they so deeply deserve.
The 8 Retreat is officially set—and we’re proud to share the full schedule of this transformative two-week therapeutic journey with our supporters.
To contribute and read more please click here.
Our annual Jewish Community of Kauai SEDER will be on Sunday, April 13, 2025, at St. Michael’s in Lihue. Sara Silverman will lead the Seder, assisted by Marty Kahn; of course we all will participate in the powerful retelling of the Passover story! The Four Questions, searching for the Afikomen, reading, singing, remembering our freedom from slavery and renewing our commitment to our faith and all freedoms.
Sandy Jennings will cater a sumptuous meal with the traditional favorites, including matzoh ball soup - YUM!
Matzoh Ball Soup
Gefilte Fish
Choice of one: Moroccan Chicken
Mahi Escabeche
Vegetarian Matzoh lasagna
Scalloped Potatoes
Salad
Caramel Matzoh for dessert
As always, Matzoh, wine, charoset and the Seder plate will be provided for each table.
The meal will be served buffet-style, so there is no need to select an entree beforehand; however, we will need to know how many will be joining us, so a reservation is required.
How to reserve:
There is limited seating: please make your reservation on Eventbrite by April 10. Here is the link to EventBrite:
If you'd prefer to buy tickets with a check at the event to avoid the service fee, please send me your reservations asap.
The cost is as follows:
Members: Adults $95
Children $60 (ages 6-13)
***(No cost for children under 6)***
Non-members: Adults $125
Children $75 (ages 6-13)
***(No cost for children under 6)***
If you need any assistance, please contact us.
Doors will open at 5:30pm, Seder begins at 6.
The Jewish Community of Kauai welcomes you to join us for our monthly community Shabbat observance. Marty Kahn will lead the service and Sara Silverman will lead the d’var Torah discussion.
We’ll have wine and challah (home made!), and a lox and bagel oneg.
We look forward to being together!
(In order to plan for the oneg, please RSVP if you’ll be attending.) jewishcommunityofkauai18@gmail.com
Blessings for a superb, salutary, sustainable Shvat! And for a fabulous February, which overlaps neatly with our new Hebrew month. It’s the height of winter in the northern climes from which so many JCK participants hail; on much of the mainland, deciduous trees are decidedly bare, and spring feels far off. Yet our tradition notes that even in those colder darker days, the sap is rising, and the process toward new verdancy is unfolding as it should.
The Mishnah tells us of four different New Years, of which Rosh Hashanah (1 Tishrei) is just one. Animals have their own, a month earlier (Elul 1); kings and infrastructure are commemorated just before Pesach (Nissan 1); and the timing for trees turns over in winter, at the full moon, on the 15th of Shvat. (In alpha-numerics, the number 15 should be rendered as10+5, but that would yield Yod-Hey, Yah, a Divine name – so we substitute 9+6, Tet-Vav, and pronounce it “tu.” Thus our Jewish Arbor Day, in the middle of this month, is known as “Tu b’Shvat”.).
This may seem odd, but a certain wisdom inheres here. We are those who take the long view, who faithfully affirm that the barren branches before us will yet re-grow greenery, and songbirds absent now will again alight upon them. Leo Tolstoy supposedly said, “there’s hope for a people who celebrate trees in the middle of a Russian winter!”
The Mishnah is most concerned with tithing cycles, so originally, Shvat 15 was akin to April 15. The medieval mystics made hay of this holiday, since in Kabbalah, divinity gets diagrammed as a tree (truly, a tree-shaped set of ten spheres of godly emanation, the s’firot). Early Zionists embraced Tu B’shvat anew, as they made tree-planting a core practice and modern mitzvah.
In recent decades, as awareness has grown of our interdependence with trees and with all the biosphere, Tu B’Shvat has become a sort of Jewish Earth Day. So this month, Jews around the world are tuning into what tradition tells us about stewardship and sustainability. Much is summed up in the mandate given to the first humans in the initial ecosystem (Genesis 2:15), l’ovdah u’l’shomrah – that we should serve/work, and guard/protect, the land. The only unavailable option is to let its condition worsen on our watch.
Jewish wisdom gives us so much that’s great and green! A few highlights include: the law of minimizing waste (bal tashchit); a calendar that ties us to nature’s rhythms, plus prayers and psalms that root us in the natural world; the need to honor the land and the animals, as in the laws of Shabbat and Shmita/Sabbatical, where long-term holiness and sustainability trump any short-term incentives toward production and consumption; and so much more. These perspectives may seem counter-cultural in this national moment, but that just makes them more necessary, as they are key parts of our timeless Torah-rooted tradition.
To sum up eco-Jewish consciousness, we should prioritize sustainability for three big reasons: starting with, for Creation itself. The other beings around us have their own rights to thrive; and since God ordained them and all of nature as good, who are we to disagree?! (Martin Buber notes that “love of the Creator, and love of that which God has created, are finally one and the same”).
Second, in our justice-oriented tradition, we center climate concerns around vulnerable people, those first and worst hit by pollution and its adverse global effects – so we go green in the name of tzedek and mishpat, justice and righteousness.
And finally, we do it for our own descendants, l’dor vador, from generation to generation. Climate change’s ravages spare no one, and those who come after us will wish us to have been responsible and forward-thinking ancestors. The famous command to “choose life” (Deut. 30:19) is not just a present-tense concern; the phrase continues, “so that you and your progeny may live.”
Indeed, as with celebrating trees in mid-winter, we should ever take the long view, and accept responsibility. Even as society back-slides and political realities impede progress, the imperative toward sustainability remains a Jewish mandate incumbent on each of us, with metrics of success measurable only in the far future. For now we must overcome fear and marshal faith, to persevere in doing what we know is right, and to redouble our efforts to save all that we can.
However eco-friendly we believe ourselves to be, there’s more to be done. From what and how and how often we drive, to what we put on our plates, to where we invest, to what we purchase and how we dispose of it, even to the many miles we fly anytime we leave the state or even the county/island – “ecology” is etymologically the study of the house, and all these considerations and more unfold within it. Even the numbers of the house (“eco-nomy”) remain secondary; the economy is no end unto itself, it’s just a subset of our interconnected whole.
Concrete steps we can take to live lighter on Earth are not just good ideas; they’re mitzvot, holy actions, required of us as people of faith and conscience. Nor is Judaism unique in insisting on sustainability: every great religion, and every enduring indigenous culture, has its own unique perspectives and framings for the universal value of (to use Pope Francis’ mellifluous language) “Care for Our Common Home.” Parallel wisdom from these sacred isles includes melama, mutual care – ohana, interdependence – kuleana, responsibility – and of course, the spirit of aloha. (See www.HIPL.org/home/about-us for more).
As Tu b’Shvat comes and goes – and as many seasons of insufficient national and global action unfold ahead of us – what can and will we each do, to more fully live out these Jewish and human values, and to respect the environment as profoundly and consistently as we ought? This is perhaps the key question of our time. And just as “every day is Earth Day”, may Shvat’s metaphorical greenness tinge every moment, and every month, of our lives.
Shvat Shalom!
L’shalom, Fred
Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, D. Min. (he/him)
2:00-4:00pm
Makai Event Lawn
(at Makai Golf Course near Grill)
Highlighting the magical guitar of Brynn Quick
Emcee - Tim Shrimpton (Baha'i Faith)
Dance of Universal Peace (Steve Stream Backinoff)
MLK Reading (Steve Sobel), Wayne Powell (musician)
Charles Woolfork (CSL Kauai), Suzanne Kobayashi (Episcopal Diocese) Ron Margolis (Rotary Club of Hanalei), Eric Lucy (Hale Pule O Hanalei), Papa Laua'e o Makana (Kumu Mauliola Cook), Ron & Ann Garrison (United Church of Christ - Ho'okipa Food Pantry), Folk Dancing (Luane McGowan)
Community Book Swap Free Books available Donations of a book or two welcomed
Makai snack bar & grill is open
Please do not bring your own food and drink
Do bring your own chairs or blankets for seating on the lawn area
And Happy New Month, too! January 2025 largely overlaps with Tevet 5785 – a month that began by the blazing-full chanukiyah; sports a minor fast day (Asarah b’Tevet) commemorating the events of 588 BCE that led to the First Temple’s destruction; and extends through the quiet normalcy of mid-winter, finally giving way to Shvat and its promises of spring’s imminent arrival. Though a bigger deal in more northerly climes, this rhythm is pronounced in the Holy Land too, just a few latitude lines further north than the most northerly Hawai’ian isle.
But January is its own big month in our American life – with New Years; Jan. 6, a date known to few until four years ago, that’s now our Defend Democracy Day; and continuing the theme, MLK weekend. This year, the Presidential Inauguration falls at the very same time as the celebration of the life and teachings of Dr. King, making for an interesting interplay of both comparisons and contrasts.
The civil rights hero, though an organizer at heart from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the Selma walk to the Poor People’s Campaign, was above all a public theologian. His life’s work was all about building the “beloved community” – in which all God’s children would be honored for their deep unique worth (since all are created b’Tzelem Elohim / in the Divine Image), and through which our common effort would bring ever greater redemption into society.
No wonder Dr. King’s name comes up first whenever people speak of ‘modern prophets’ – he channeled their “moral grandeur and spiritual audacity”, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote of them, noting how they aligned with Divine Pathos, and ever set ethics at the center. After King studied Heschel’s indispensable The Prophets, the two became fast friends. Had Coretta and Martin left Memphis in peace in April of ‘68, their next stop would have been NYC, to celebrate the first night Pesach seder with the Heschels.
King’s legacy includes two critical aspects of religion in public life, both of which are as deeply rooted in Jewish teachings as they are in King’s profound and progressive Christianity. One is liberation theology, the idea that God has special concern for the downtrodden and oppressed, and that the flow of divinity is ever toward enfranchisement and equality for all. The second, closely-related notion is lived theology (aka “praxis”), the prophetic insistence that we walk the talk, and stick our neck out for others, in consonance with our core beliefs.
“The moral arc of the universe is long,” taught Dr. King (following Unitarian abolitionist Theodore Parker a century earlier) – meaning that progress is studded with stumbles and reversals, and any shorter time-period might fail to reflect the big story – but in the main, our human and cosmic story “bends toward justice.” Others have notably disagreed, and current events (in any given month, January 2025 very much included) may or may not support Dr. King’s spiritual optimism. But all that we can do, is what we are called to do – to help build the beloved community by living out our own core values, and standing on the side of liberation and enfranchisement for all.
A small example, which I relate with pride (pun intended): 27 years ago, there were few LGBTQ+ rabbis or cantors in Reform or Reconstructionist settings, and Conservative was still years away from allowing queer folks to even begin the journey. My graduating class at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, a healthy mix of gay and straight, knew that unexamined homophobia and transphobia (to say nothing of latent sexism) could well preclude good rabbis from serving good communities. So we all committed to saying absolutely nothing about our family structure or sexual orientation, up through the first interviews we had for any position – thus giving communities time to encounter each candidate and their skills and personality, before following up with the fullness of our identities and commitments. Though challenging at times, this practice educated countless people and institutions; leveled the playing field as much as possible; and produced better outcomes for all. That was how the RRC class of ’97, students of liberation theology all, walked the talk.
As feminist and queer and other liberation theologians have long noted, people of faith are called on to keep enfranchising, to keep expanding their circles of compassion and concern. As another example, my own environmental commitments, and those of the growing eco-Jewish and eco-religious worlds, are their own form of liberation theology – centering the least-resourced humans who are at greatest risk from climate change, and encompassing the non-human beings and life-forms with whom we share this glorious fragile interdependent biosphere.
These examples may or may not align with your own top priorities. But across all our circumstances and ideologies and proclivities, the questions remain: How are you – how are we, together, communally – enfranchising others, and walking the talk?
The confluence of Inauguration Day with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day adds new urgency to these timeless prophetic questions. The answers are never clear or univocal; good people inevitably disagree on which values to prioritize, and on when to go with the flow and when to resist. That reality applies to every day of our lives – every month, and season; each year; each Administration. May we navigate the time ahead with as much thought and respect and humility as possible – but if/when we err, let be on the side of the prophets.
Chodesh Tevet Tov – a meaningful January, and a happy and healthy new year, to all.
L’shalom, Fred
Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, D. Min. (he/him)
Please join JCK for our first Shabbat service of 2025 on Friday, January 17th, at the beautiful home of Lauren Miller and family. We’ll gather for a potluck dinner and services. (See below for details.)
Visiting Rabbi Judy Ginsburgh, from Congregation B’nai Israel in Monroe, LA, will lead the service in the idyllic setting in Anahola. Rabbi Judy is a cantorial soloist who has produced award-winning Jewish music for families and children. She has sung and conducted services all over the world. We’re so happy to welcome her back to Kauai for this Friday night Shabbat.
We’re gathering at 5:30, sharing a potluck dinner at 6, and the service will be at 7. Please bring a main dish to share with the community. The Rabbi will lead a “kid-friendly” 15-minute service at 7, followed by an adult service.
If you are planning to join us, please RSVP to Lauren for directions: 818-689-5235.
