Words of inspiration

New local rabbis prepare for their High Holiday sermons

MICHAEL MIKLOFSKY
Staff Writer

As the year 5764 comes to a close on the Jewish calendar and millions of Jews throughout the world prepare to welcome the year 5765, communities are gearing up for the High Holiday season.

Thousands of Jews in the Valley, along with Jews throughout the world, are cashing in vacation hours to come to holiday services for the express purpose of hearing their congregation's rabbi, or rabbis, speak on the issues most important to their community and the world.

Since the Valley inaugurated the year 5764, congregations throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area have hired several new rabbis who will give their first set of High Holiday sermons.

Among them is Rabbi Jordan Goldson who began as spiritual leader at Temple Kol Ami in Scottsdale on July 1.

In his first set of High Holiday services in the Valley, he says that he wants to do two main things: inspire and inform. Goldson wants to inspire people to do more in the next year and inform the congregation about who he is and what he's done. His background includes 12 years as the founding rabbi of Temple B'nai Tikvah in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and Hillel director at California State University, Northridge.

"I'm going to, in various ways, attempt to inspire people to be more than they have been in the past ... to sort of tap into people's potential of who they can be and to encourage people to raise the bar next year," Goldson says.

"Have you given enough charity last year? For you, the answer is yes to that question; for someone else, it might not be. Were you as loving a child or a father or whatever as you could be last year?" he asks. "It depends on who you ask the question to and that's why the sermons are sort of designed to help people plumb ... the depths of who they are, look at who they are and to see where they can create all sorts of possibilities of who they will be next year, that will be just a little bit better than who they were last year."

At Temple Beth Israel, congregants will hear from Rabbi Jessica Zimmerman, who began as an assistant rabbi to the congregation on Aug. 15.

Zimmerman previously served as a rabbinic intern to Rabbi Stephen Kahn, senior rabbi at the synagogue, when Kahn was at Sherith Israel in San Francisco. She has also worked as an intern at the Community Synagogue in Port Washington, N.Y., and led High Holiday student pulpits in San Jose, Calif., Costa Rica and Bombay, India. Additionally, Zimmerman was a student rabbi in Juneau, Alaska, and Rocky Mount, N.C.

She says that she wants to inspire congregants to make the most out of the new year and to reflect upon what they have done in the previous year and see how to improve upon that.

While these rabbis are new to the Valley, but not new to rabbinic life, two Chabad rabbis in the Valley are nearly starting from scratch, building up their membership rosters and the brick-and-mortar structures in which they host events, dinners and services.

Rabbi Mendy Levertov, son of Chabad of Arizona director Rabbi Zalman Levertov, began programming for Chabad of North Phoenix in mid-April.

Mendy Levertov, while new to the rabbinate and new to a synagogue, says that his work at Chabad of North Phoenix is by no means new territory.

"It's something that I was always brought up with," he says. "I was always around my father, it is new, but it's not new ... it's a continuation of just being part of the rabbinic family, not just being on the podium and delivering something which is in my blood," he says.

Levertov says there are strong ideas that he will convey to the congregants that attend his services.

"It's one small good deed is all that's important and one good deed leads to another and just doing one small thing is big enough and makes the continuation happen and that's all that God really wants, "he says. "It's not like you have to take everything upon yourself at once, it's just one small thing at a time."

For more than 30 years, Arizona State University has had the Hillel Jewish Student Center, led by Rabbi Barton and Marcie Lee, where Jewish students of all denomina-tions could come for regular lunches, Shabbat and holidays services and meals, and other events.

Today Hillel offers the same to students, but another synagogue started up last November to offer students an alternative place to practice Judaism.

Rabbi Shmuel and Chana Tiechtel started Chabad at ASU in Tempe in a home on Mill Avenue that they share with their 1-year-old son Tzvi.

These are Tiechtel's first High Holiday services as the synagogue's spiritual leader and he says that he wants to make it memorable for students and other community members that will attend, but also use the services as a means of capturing the attention of more students on campus.

"It is a very opportune and important time for me to give over the message of what is important to us as Jews, especially with the beginning of the new year," he says. "Especially our responsibility as students and as people in the community, what we learn from this important time of the year, so they feel it's a special time for me to share what I think is very important with them.

"Hopefully from these services, students will get more and more involved with Judaism and this helps that when they leave university life, they get more involved in the community, wherever that might be," Tiechtel adds.

He says that the message is just as important as getting students to recognize and embrace their own senses of Judaism.

"Firstly, throughout the services I think its important that people feel involved and they know what's going on, but some of these people go to services and they just feel it's long and they don't know what's happening," he says. "Our goal is to have a service that people should feel involved, people should understand what they're saying, people should realize the great connection they're making through prayers."

The Hebrew word for prayers is tefilah, which means connection, he says. "People should realize that through prayer, they're making a deep connection with God and to help to bring that realization to people. During our services, we will be interspersing the services with inspirational stories, anecdotes about the words we are saying, and how it relates personally to our own lives.

"Our goal is that when people leave the services, they should be uplifted, inspired, and feel different from when they walked in."

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