June 9, 2024 – ChaddsFordLive.com

Rabbinic Reflections: Faithcraft

Judaism is faith-based, but not based on faith. At least, it is not based solely on faith. We would not talk about the Jewish people, Jewishness, Jewish identity, or antisemitism if Judaism was only about beliefs or tenets and their consequent behaviors. Rather, Judaism is multifaceted and multilayered, especially given its survival over millennia.

As we approach the holiday of Shavuot this week, it matters what Judaism is and what it is about. The holiday itself is meant to be a call to enact the connection between God and the Jewish people. It contains within its traditions the ancient agricultural practices of bringing sheaves of barley as grain offerings to mark the early summer harvest. A more recent version of bringing our “first fruits” is the tradition of celebrating confirmation for Jewish teens concluding high school-level studies.

Shavuot also has mystical and mathematical meaning as we count forty-nine days in a sequence of seven weeks of seven days to connect with God’s Presence. Not surprisingly, another fixture of Shavuot tradition is to celebrate the anniversary – some would say the continuing moment – of the giving of Torah at Mount Sinai. Within these traditions are experiences of tangibility and of remoteness, of a search and of a communion.

Rabbanit Rivka Lubitch describes these experiences as those of generations, each with a different kind of faith (emunah). The first generation’s faith is truth, “they saw, they believed, they knew.” The middle generation’s faith is trust (eemun), “they gave trust in God in what God had done and in what God is to do in the future.” The last generation’s faith is fostering (omnut), “they foster God and God’s Torah, and raise them and rear them until the Lord is made God and God’s Torah is made Torah.”

In her exposition, early Jewish faith was one of immediacy, of direct connection to God; most of Jewish faith was one of hope that a distant God would manifest at some future point; and now, now we are demonstrating faith by nurturing God’s presence so that God might trust us and be loved.

It is worth noting that Lubitch thinks this last generation broods about the truth and trust of the prior generations, “they do not trust in anything.” Presuming that she sees herself in this last generation, as I do, her idea that the last generation is fostering God is less heretical than it is radically optimistic.

I want to take her wordplay a step further and suggest that the last generation not only fosters (omen) it also crafts (oman), just as Lubitch crafted the piece I quoted, “Faith.” There is something creative – generative or artistic – about making space for faith in Jewish life.

Judaism gets by on ritual; distinctive foods and cultural cliches; on fear of assimilation and/or annihilation; on learning and innovation. Shavuot reminds us that, in addition to cheesecake, we need to nurture faith. We need to grapple with our relationship to the moment we took on Torah as an ethical code based on a relationship to the Divine. We have to somehow make that real for ourselves and our community. We need to do faithcraft; it builds trust and brings us closer together.

Racing for water quality

Local News, Local News Concord

Runners race to raise money so the Newlin Grist Mill Park can purchase water monitoring equipment. (Courtesy image.)

Newlin Grist Mill Park and Concord Township are again teaming up to promote water quality. The second annual Race for the Watershed and Rubber Duck Regatta is scheduled for next Saturday, June 15. Last year’s event raised $10,000 for water monitoring equipment for the park. And they’re hoping for the same this year.

Brenda Orso, the development manager at the park, said the monitoring equipment is important to the park

“It’s important to us because our water is essential for everything we do here,” Orso said. “We have trout ponds, people come fishing in the ponds. A lot of community members come play in the stream, they fish in the stream, and it speaks to the overall health and quality of water in our region. And it’s not just for people, it’s for the organisms that live in the water.”

The newer monitoring equipment uses digital readouts instead of testing the water chemically. Orso said the newer digital gives results in minutes instead of hours.

“[Digital equipment] is more accurate, so there’s less margin for error, and we can monitor more frequently, faster, which saves us time, and is more accurate. It allows us to see problems as they’re developing and helps us to better communicate those issues,” she added.

Concord Township’s Parks and Recreation Director Steve Jacobs concurs with Orso.

“It is important to conduct snap-shot studies to determine water conditions in these areas. This race will help to fund the purchase of advanced water quality monitoring equipment, as well as provide broader education and awareness on the importance of watershed preservation,” he said.

Jacobs further said that the digital equipment “measures dissolved oxygen, which relates to aquatic plant and animal health, conductivity — salt runoff — dissolved nutrients — high levels can be indicative of significant erosion — agricultural/lawn runoff, and wastewater inputs from septic systems), and temperature.”

That information, he said, allows the park management to “make decisions and advocate for regional actions that impact water quality.”

Last year’s Run for the Watershed saw 130 runners do the 5K, and there were 400 rubber ducks sponsored in their floating race through the portion of Chester Creek that runs through the park. The winner of last year’s 5K was Tony Rock who finished twice. Rock ran the race in 20 minutes and 24 seconds, then went back to his wife who was walking the race with their baby in a stroller.

The 5K begins at 8:30 a.m. on June 15, with registration beginning at 8, and the duck race starts at 10 with a champion duck race at 12:15 p.m.

Anyone interested in “buying” a duck should go here. Ducks are $20 a piece or $50 for three.

There will also be a celebration for the grand reopening of the water system at 1 p.m. The raceway that powers the old mill was shut down for several years because of excess silting resulting from the widening of the upper portion of Conchester Highway. Even the fishing ponds were dry for years. They just reopened in April.

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