A Spiritual Meal Before the Yom Kippur Fast and Yom Kippur Services
AT GESHER - 10701 SW 25th Ave., Portland
Sunday, september 24
4:45 PM - Yom Kippur EVENING spiritual Meal
6:30 PM - YARZEIT (MEMORIAL) CANDLELIGHTING AND YOM KIPPUR CANDLELIGHTING, FOLLOWED BY YOM KIPPUR SERVICE
MONDAy, SEPTEMBER 25
10:00 AM AND CONTINUING THROUGHOUT MOST OF THE DAY
Gesher invites you to join Rabbi Laurie Rutenberg and Rabbi Gary Schoenberg at their home for an intimate Yom Kippur Observance.
The Yom Kippur celebration is especially geared to those who are “newish to Jewish,” but we hope will open the hearts of all, no matter how many rounds of Yom Kippur we have engaged in our lives. The Evening Meal on Sunday, September 24th will feature Home Smoked Salmon, Onion Soup, Tzimmes, Kugel, Mushroom Strudel, Salad, and Chocolate Mousse. The Spiritual menu will include deep reflection on the process of renewal, and an opportunity to pen a Teshuvah letter. The gathering will be outdoors.
All gatherings will be Covid Safe, and will take place under the trees and stars, weather permitting.
RSVP is a must for both Sunday Evening and Monday Morning. Rabbi Gary and Rabbi Laurie will be preparing the Spiritual Meal. Donations are greatly appreciated.
A REFLECTION ON YOM KIPPUR IN OUR HOME
When our children were younger, the evening meal before Erev Yom Kippur glistened in our family home in preparation for services. We only shared this meal with our children, because we wanted it to be intensively personal and to prepare us as a family for the holiness of the day. Each of us parents wrote teshuvah letters to our children and conveyed them. In these letters we put our journey of our past year in view, our child’s journey of growth during the year, the changes, the growth steps, and we recalled the places where we each might have missed the mark, and asked for forgiveness. When our children were very young, we read these letters out loud. As they became older, we gave them to our children and they read them before the meal and thanked us in a loving manner. We each gave our forgiveness and it engendered a spiritual opportunity to really begin again. As a family, we were fortified with gratitude and well-being, and we prepared a meal that prepared us spiritually for the holiday. We lit yahrzeit candles, not the holiday candles, which we would light together later with the community. We served a meal: fish, soup, salad, and we always ended this meal with chocolate mousse.
This year, we are pondering Erev Yom Kippur in the context of both blessing and challenge in our world. We are savoring the experience of a community having come together on Rosh Hashanah. Though we put out the word barely a week before, our deck was filled with people joyous to be here, and we spent the evening, eating, reflecting, listening to music, looking up at the stars from beneath the trees, and praying. This year’s Rosh Hashanah, too, glistened.
We definitely appreciated each and everyone one who joined us on Rosh Hashanah. We shared deeply life’s journey and shared blessings. Now, we confront the weight of Yom Kippur and wonder if you would like to join us. Because of its intensity, it’s not for everyone. Especially Jews who don’t have nourishment and joy in their lives. After all, Yom Kippur is a fast day and it presents a demand spiritually that fits in the journey of the year, but isn’t really designed for the incidental traveler. On the other hand, if you’d like to join us for Yom Kippur, we are offering a spiritual meal before the fast, modeled on our family’s experience. No, you don’t have to be fasting to join in. It will have glimmers of our family meal, and the menu will be simple: Fresh Smoked Salmon, Salad, Soup, Kugel, Strudel, Tzimmes, and Chocolate Mousse. We will only do this if we have a minyan (ten) for services, but we’re pretty confident, at this point, that we will. We will have services on Monday with the same proviso, that we have a minimum of ten, so we are asking for commitments.
Yom Kippur is a special journey. The fast mixes with a yearning to confront our time on this Earth in a different light. There is confession, prayer, and the light of the day is more amber than white. The customary dress is white. And the journey of the day has a certain bleariness (from fasting and repeated confession) to the day that allows for a deeper reflection and a spiritual opportunity for true renewal and replenishment. As the day progresses and the body wearies, the bleariness increases and there is the opportunity to lapse into a deeper sense that this is our collective opportunity to be renewed, to explore traditional and contemporary prayers at a pace that will allow for conversation of the heart, and the opportunity to be still with your soul in the forest while in community with others on the same spiritual journey.