CLAL Rabbinic Community On Line

As you are getting geared up for summer, and hopefully for some time off from your daily grind, we thought you might take a moment to reflect on the summer’s blockbuster holiday. Unless you happen to be a rabbi in a vacation hot-spot, you probably experience July 4^th as a time when it’s not so easy to get a minyan. While we do want people to go to shul on Independence Day weekend, our approach at CLAL is also to build a Jewish connection to the activity that millions of American Jews will undoubtedly be engaging in – watching the fireworks with their friends and family.

How can you use this resource?

Here are five suggestions:

Looking for more?

If you would like to use the card as a spring-board to discussion, one idea we had was to compare the text of the Declaration of Independence– with Jefferson’s protest at the behavior of King George– and I Samuel 8:4-22, which includes Samuel’s distaste at the idea of kingship.

We have a limited number of extra free copies that you can order by contacting Ruth Bregman, National Rabbinic Administrator on 212-779-3300 or rbregman@clal.org.

Have a freilech Summer!

Rabbi Daniel Brenner
Senior Teaching Fellow

As part of our continuing effort to fine tune our holiday guides and teaching materials, we would be most appreciative of your feedback. In particular, we would like to know how you used the holiday cards in your congregations and how useful you found the electronic teaching guide.  Any other feedback would also be appreciated.