Rabbis in New York City plan to address a wide range of topics on Shavuot, a two-day holiday marking the receipt of the Torah at Mount Sinai that begins at nightfall on Thursday and during which many Jews stay up all night studying religious texts.
Some intend to preach about current politics in Israel as it affects liberal Jews, while others plan to stick strictly to the traditional theme of divine revelation.
Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, of Park Avenue Synagogue, a Conservative congregation, told JNS that he will address “Yizkor, memory and revelation,” rather than politics, during Shavuot morning services.
Rabbi Michelle Dardashti, of Kane Street Synagogue, an egalitarian Conservative congregation, told JNS that she intends to speak about what it means to stand together at Sinai at this moment when she addresses attendees at Shavuot Across Brooklyn, hosted by Congregation Beth Elohim, a Reform synagogue.
Shavuot Across Brooklyn brings together most of Brownstone Brooklyn’s congregations and will offer 40 learning sessions.
On Shavuot morning, Kane Street plans to welcome a new Torah scroll, commissioned by a longtime member whose grandfather was a sofer, or Torah scribe, and who was murdered in the Holocaust. It will be the first new Torah welcomed by the synagogue in half a century, according to Dardashti.
“In the wake of rising violent antisemitism and Islamophobia, I pray that this Torah will indeed be a source of healing, tikkun, through which we will raise up love,” she told JNS. “Love of Torah, love for ourselves and other Jews and for all of God’s creatures.”
Among the topics listed at a Marlene Meyerson Jewish Community Center of Manhattan gathering for Shavuot are “the fight for Israel’s democracy.”
