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TEMPLE BETH OHR La Mirada, California |
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Temple Beth Ohr of La Mirada with Rabbi Mark Goldfarb - Reform Judaism July 16th, 2010 7:54 pm PT RabbiMarkGoldfarbTempleBeth Ohr La Mirada: Why did I become a Rabbi? I did not always want to be a rabbi. I was born in Lexington, Kentucky and moved to Ohio when I was a young child. When I was growing up during those formative years the Reform congregation my family was connected with in Dayton went through several rabbis. None of them were interested in children so I had very few positive role models. In my later teenage years the congregation did settle in with a very nice rabbi and he and another rabbi, who was an assistant rabbi there, I now look back and see that they were positive role models. I became a rabbi because I wanted to give back. I wanted to give back to my people, my heritage and even my country. I toyed with the idea of doing a military chaplaincy but I’m a little too much of a free thinker. So I toyed with being a social worker and I toyed with being a teacher or a professor and I toyed with working in the healthcare industry in some fashion. I wanted to serve but none of those areas quite made the connection. However, I realized that a stronger connection to Judaism did exist. I became a rabbi because I wanted to work with people and I specifically wanted to work with Jews. I wanted to work to try to address some of the ills facing our society and felt I could best do that as a rabbi. The temple I grew up in and where I now preach are both Reform congregations. I grew up as a Reform Jew and my grandfather started his life as an Orthodox Jew but became very liberal in his early teenage years and found a spiritual home in Reform Judaism. That is how my family ended up at a ReformJudaism Temple. I did my undergraduate at “The” OhioStateUniversity and that is its official title. I did my undergraduate in ColumbusOhio and then the seminary after I graduated. I was working in a restaurant realizing that that was not what I wanted to do but this was 1982 and the job market was in the tank. There were no jobs. I had a degree in public relations but there were no jobs in public relations. My wife and I sold our car, the lease was up on the apartment and we spent two month backpacking through Europe and 6 months living on a Kibbutz in Israel. It was on the Kibbutz that I do credit some seeds that had been planted and they did sprout. I realized that I knew more about Judaism than I thought I did. I think it was during this experience that the idea of becoming a rabbi first materialized. From graduating college to starting seminary was about three years. Granted I had only worked three years since college but I had to make my living off of some other means than brains and words. For my seminary I went to HebrewUnionCollege in Cincinnati. The first year of the program is in Israel and we all go to Jerusalem and attend courses on our campus there. We rented an apartment in Jerusalem for the year so I had to pay electric bills like the Israelis and had phone bills, grocery shopping and all of the regular expenses of life and then I was ordained in 1991. I’ve been at this temple for three years coming on board here when the previous rabbi, rabbi Goldmark, retired after 29 years of service. Immediately before that I was at St. JosephHospital in Orange, California for two years as a chaplain. I had received the advance training necessary to become a hospital chaplain plus prison ministry though most of the special training revolves around hospitals. Required are four units of pastoral education which consists of supervised hospital visits, group therapy and individual supervision. There is a grand total of 1600 hours required of you before you can become a trained chaplain. There is an incredible amount of time involved before you can become a chaplain. The reason it takes all of this time is because we are not there to cure the person but rather we are a spiritual social worker to be with them in this time of stress and issues. This was because at one time anyone who was ordained could call themselves a chaplain and go and work in a hospital. Eventually it was discovered that some of these people who were calling themselves chaplains were doing more harm than good. They were dealing with these people in very vulnerable situations who at times were literally stripped naked of all their defenses involving both help and emotion and you would get some of these yahoos saying things like, “The reason you’ve got cancer is because you didn’t keep Kosher or you didn’t accept Jesus in your heart and if you just read the psalms you will be cured.” Or telling them, “If you will read the Bible this will be your cure.” And there were chaplains who would do that. They finally realized that a lot of people who wanted to be chaplains probably shouldn’t be. The 1600 hours is to help you develop the skills to truly be a chaplain and be a help to a person dealing with very serious life situations. I worked for two years at St. Joseph and prior to that I was in Ohio where I worked as a community chaplain for five years and was in training. There I worked with hospitals, hospices, nursing centers and prisons. Before that I served congregations in Ohio and Michigan and a congregation in El Paso, Texas. Life is an adventure that has been my circuitous journey starting in 1991 in El Paso, Texas and ending up here in La Mirada. So what is a rabbi? A rabbi is a teacher. As a rabbi we are expected to study the Talmud. I am very good at knowing the rules and also about knowing the rules behind those rules. Even more important I feel much more confident in understanding the process and the people involved in those processes that have given reasons for those rules. The Torah is not always explicit and indeed in most cases it isn’t explicit at all. “Do not work on the Sabbath.” “Do not make a fire.” Literally this refers to a fire made with wood. That is all the Torah says about what to do on Shabbat and what not to do on the Sabbath. It is the rabbi’s intendment that gives us all of these categories. Reform Judaism instead of emphasizes what the rabbi’s end up with it puts the emphasis on the process the rabbis went through. It challenges Reform Jews with the need to do that same thing. In Orthodox I don’t really have to wrestle with Jewish tradition. Here it is! This is what you do! In Reform Judaism I have to wrestle with this tradition. “This is what the tradition says.” Well the question then becomes is it meaningful? Is that relevant? Is that really what God intended? How do we understand this? Those are the questions that the rabbis asked and those are questions I think all Jews should ask. When congregants come to me or when I am teaching congregants about a particular issue I start with the Torah. “This is how the rabbis of the Talmud understood it.” We also discuss how Jews today interpret or respond to this. The question then becomes how do we as individuals respond to this and how do you see yourself in this big line of tradition? I approach this from the standpoint of ‘I’m not the one with THE answer. Judaism provides us with many many answers. You the individual Jew need to wrestle with these answers. What do you feel? What does your hear tell you? How do you feel Judaism speaks to you regarding this and how do you decide to hide or move or do? In the Orthodox community many would go to the rabbi and ask, “Rabbi what should I do in this situation?” And the rabbi would reply, “Here is what you do.” I see my job as having a congregant coming to me and say, “Look, my ailing mother is in the hospital and I am dealing with these issues. The doctors want to do this, my mother wants to do that but when my mother can’t answer I’m the one who has to so what do I do?” I would say, “Well, let’s take a look here is what Judaism says.” Other questions, “Rabbi what do I do about this holiday? I’m going to be traveling for the holiday so how do I observe the holiday while I’m traveling? I have to do this for work and there isn’t a Jewish congregation there so what do I do?” My job is to provide them with the tools necessary to function not giving them the answer but instead the tools for them to make their own answers. To help them make their decision. In the process I can explain to them that here are some of the answers available to us. I ask my congregants to listen because I think that Judaism tells me to listen. Listen to your heart. What does your heart tell you now that you have these answers? Which one seems to be working for you? Maybe the answer isn’t there. Maybe the answer isn’t complete and we need to process this some more. However, it is not my job to give them the answer because I don’t see that from God and I don’t see that from life. I don’t think God says to me, “Mark here is the answer to this question.” I think God says to me, “Mark here is the question now wrestles with it.” Answering the question we have to remember that life is varied as to how we encounter it with our questions and answers. Life provides us with an opportunity to encounter each other and for some reason we have become fearful of encountering someone who represents a different tradition or culture. In the Old Testament you read where God commanded the Israelites to go and kill every living thing of another tribe or country. The Reform tradition asks did God really intend that or is that what our ancestors heard. I believe that that is definitely what our ancestors heard I do not however believe that that is what God said. Stepping out from the role of interviewer I share with Mark a story of going through EST back in the 70’s, “We were all lying on the floor with our heads on our pillows. Our trainer had us all close our eyes and told us to imagine that we were afraid of the person to our right. I did and started to feel a little apprehensive. Then we were old to imagine that we were afraid of the person on our left as well. I could here people start to get nervous and whimper. Finally he told us to imagine we were afraid of every other person in the room. By now some people were screaming. Then he said what put the whole thing in perspective, "You do realize that there are 249 people in this room afraid of you!" In a way this is how many people view life. Other people are different and it is another question to wrestle with.” There is nothing to really prevent people from just sitting down and talking to each other other than our fears. Basically it all boils down to whether we believe what our parents taught us was true or do we look around for ourselves. Mark’s grandfather started out in the traditions of his parents as Orthodox and then became reform. Life is a constant process of question and changes. Back to Mark: “I think the unfortunate part is when human beings don’t challenge their accepted inherited beliefs. In the office of one of my supervisors office was a framed picture of a saying that went “Treasure your doubt it is the key that will unlock greater things”. This morning we welcomed into our community an individual who was converting to Judaism. It was the same type of thing. He had always been asking questions about the faith in which he was raised and was not finding the answers he was looking for. He took a look at Buddhism and a look here and a look there and took a look at Judaism and kept looking at Judaism and decided that there were some very good answers there. After a couple of years of studying today we welcomed him into the community. So it is important to ask those questions.
Temple Beth Ohr is located at 15721 Rosecrans Avenue La Mirada, California. Its phone number is 562-691-2551 or 714-521-6765 e-mail address tmplbthohr@aol.com and web site www.templebethohr.com
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A Long Line of Musiciansby Jerry Simon | November 2010 |
Cantor Cotler comes from a long line of cantors. His grandfather, the late Cantor Ted Cotler, began his career in Ventura. Kyle’s father, Cantor Doug Cotler, is a Grammy Award-winning composer; an accomplished singer, songwriter, and musician; and a cantor in Calabasas. Kyle’s younger brother and son of Doug, Noah Cotler, graduated magna cum laude from Indiana University in classical music performance as a bassist and currently is a teacher at the Southern California Piano Conservatory in Woodland Hills. Cantor Cotler recognizes that his immersion in Jewish music began at a very young age. He explained, “As I would lie in bed at night, I would stay up late listening to my Father practice and compose. My spirituality grew as I attended Kadima Hebrew Academy and went to a variety of Jewish camps including JCA Shalom, URJ Swig, and Newman. I graduated to head songleader at Camp Hess Kramer in Malibu in 2008 and URJ Camp Kalsman in 2009.” Cantor Kyle Cotler made his debut on the national Jewish stage with two original musical pieces at CAJE, a Jewish educators convention in Vermont, and later in Toronto at the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial convention last year. Cantor Cotler received his B.A. in Music Theory and Composition from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington and has served as Music Specialist at Congregation Kol Tikvah in Woodland Hills, and a Religious School teacher at Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas, and Cantorial Soloist at Temple Beth Israel in Fresno and at Shaarei Am in Santa Monica. Temple Beth Ohr’s new cantorial soloist will join his father and brother in a benefit concert for Chanukah on Saturday, December 4, at 7:30 p.m. at the Reform congregation. The cost of the concert, aptly titled “The Three Cotlers,” is $36 per attendee ($50 at the door) with children under 10, free of charge. (See Chanukah Happenings for details.) Temple Beth Ohr, located at 15721 E. Rosecrans Ave. in La Mirada, is a member congregation of the Union for Reform Judaism and has been in existence for more than 50 years. Temple Beth Ohr welcomes singles, seniors, and families of all compositions. For more information, please contact Rabbi Mark Goldfarb, (714) 521-6765, tmplbthohr@aol.com, or www.templebethohr.com |
