A few short reflections on Shavuot itself. It is the third of our three festival or pilgrimage holidays when our ancestors would celebrate by coming together at the ancient temple. On the spiritual level, it also completes a path of meaning that begins on Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot, then continues on Pesach/Passover, before concluding on Shavuot. This path carries us from creation (Rosh Hashanah), to redemption (Passover) and finally to the revelation that occurs on Shavuot when we received the Torah.
As I was writing Pirkei Imahot with Lois Shenker two years ago, we both challenged each other to come up with three-word bios for ourselves. We’d asked our other contributors for the same thing, so we thought we’d better do it too. I really struggled with this task. How would I represent myself in three words? Am I a “mother, rabbi, friend”?
D'var from Friday, May 11, 2018 - Rabbi David Kosak, D'var from Saturday, May 12, 2018 - Gail Sherman
Laura’s and my years in Los Angeles and Israel were formative in so many ways. One of the opportunities we were afforded was the ability to visit and pray with countless Jewish communities on Shabbat.
A while ago Duncan and I tried a farm share CSA. It became a fun little guessing game. Every week we’d wonder if we’d get vegetables we were willing to try. Would we know how to cook them? Would they all get cooked eaten before they went bad?
Success has its challenges. Managing the growing pains that accompany it is one of the most obvious of those tasks. On the regional level, Portland’s success as an urban center has put tremendous pressure on our transportation system, housing costs and therefore our homelessness crisis. Our ability to continue to grow will depend on how we alleviate those bottlenecks and better provide for those essential resources.
There is a famous classroom activity/demonstration that is used to teach decision making and prioritization of goals and resources. The teacher shows the class a glass jar full of ping-pong balls and asks the class if the jar is full. Most students answer that it is. The teacher then pours beads into the jar, which fill in the gaps around the ping-pong balls.
