Rabbi Shawn Israel Zevit: Articles: Index of Articles

Money, Faith and Values

• Message to Music
• Dues with Less Blues
• Finances and the Divine
• A Group Discussion about Money
• The Halakhic Basis
• Budgets
• Obligatory Giving
• Governance as a Sacred Trust
• Governing Systems and Leadership
• Building Sacred Community
• Leadership Manual for Effective Boards/Committees

Spiritual Life: From Individual to Communal

• Sh’ma: The Many—The One
• And God said, 'Let there be lights in the sky'
• Unlocking Divine Sparks
• Rosh Hashannah
• Yom Kippur
• Creativity and the Path to God
• Freedom (Passover Poem)
• From Your Father's House
• Sacred Communities
• A 21st Century Men's Midrash
• Spiritual Dimension of Justice
• Ecological Sustainability and Religious Life
• Sustainability Sources from Jewish Tradition
• Midrashic Moments - Putting art and spirit into action
• The Tapestry of Creation - Creative Drama and Music
• Tzedakah And The Jewish Holidays: Giving For Social Change

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Money, Faith and Values

article from The Forward

Rabbi Sets a Message to Music

Shawn Zevit is practicing what he preaches. A Philadelphia-based Reconstructionist rabbi who serves as a visiting rabbi at Pittsburgh’s Congregation Dor Hadash, Zevit is also a singer, songwriter and guitarist with two full-length CDs to his credit. With musical influences ranging from The Beatles to indie rock, from soul to R&B, Zevit’s new album, “Sanctuary,” is less liturgically based than his first CD, “Heart and Soul.” But Zevit still calls “Sanctuary” a “Jewish soul record” that explores spirituality and reflects his personal connection with God. In addition to writing and performing music, Zevit is the author of a recently published book about giving, “Offerings of the Heart: Money and Values in Faith Communities” (Alban Institute) — a practical guide for clergy and lay leaders that draws on traditional and contemporary texts to explore the relationship between Judaism and the use of money as a spiritual tool to help others in need.
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article from Reconstructionism Today

Synagogue Blues with Less Blues: Congregations seek dues policies aligned with Reconstructionist process and Jewish values.

The high level of growth and change in Reconstructionist congregations and havurot over the past decade motivated the series of JRF leadership workshops and resource books created and presented since 1997: "Presidents’ Trainings," "The Challenge of Growth," "A Torah of Money (SM)," "A Sacred Trust: Governance and Leadership," and "Kehillah Builders: Inreach, Outreach and Community Building." During 2003/5763, as requested by a majority of our past workshop participants, our offerings returned to the topic of Jewish values-based Reconstructionist approaches to money in congregational life. This proved to be a particularly important subject against the backdrop of an ailing North American economy and a contraction of tzedakah in the Jewish community generally. The decision was also influenced by the ongoing growth in membership in many of our congregations, resulting in first and second capital campaigns and an increase in full-time rabbinic positions and additional staff. People expressed a strong desire to keep these developments aligned with Reconstructionist process and Jewish values.
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article from Jewish Exponent

Finances and the Divine: Using Money as a Religious Tool

Historically, the Jewish people have seen financial resources as tools for building sacred communities. As recorded in this week's parashah, the fundamental approach to economic resources from biblical times onwards has been to operate within available resources and to thank God by offering back a portion of what we have been graced with.
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article from Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

A Group Discussion About Money

As the next phase of its “Challenge of Growth” work, JRF's department of Outreach and Community Development has developed a new workshop entitled, “A Torah of Money: Values, Money and Your Community”. Here is an edited transcript of a conference call (May 24, 1999) involving the workshop facilitator, Rabbi Shawn Zevit, JRF Board members, and representatives from the following West Coast congregations: Dor Hadash (San Diego, CA), Havurah Shalom (Portland, OR), Keddem Congregation (Palo Alto, CA), Kehillat Israel (Pacific Palisades, CA), Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue (Malibu, CA), Ner Shalom (Cotati, CA), Temple Beth Sholom (Salem, OR), University Synagogue (Irvine, CA). The conversation was moderated by Bruce Canter, West Coast Regional President, and Sandy Rubenstein, JRF's West Coast Regional Director.
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article from Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

The Halakhic Basis For Community Financing Of Jewish Life

In virtually all societies, functions which lie beyond the domain or the capability of the individual are publicly financed. Jewish communities throughout history have assessed contributions for such functions from individual members, and Jewish tradition is rich with law and discussion about how to fairly distribute this burden. In this summary, as in the Tamari text on which it is based, the imposition of required contributions will be called "tax" or "taxation"; in a modern sense, most of the concepts may be applied to the dues structure of a congregational community.
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article from Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

Budgets: Living Our Values In A Financial Plan

We create budgets for the same reason we create other plans - so that the use of our limited resources will be consonant with our values and priorities. In the final analysis there may never be enough resources for everything we want to do- but there can be increased financial capacity to realize our mission.
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article from Congregations Magazine

A Jewish Approach To Obligatory Giving

The rabbi squirms in his seat when a leader suggests that he engage in fundraising. Perennially vocal board members grow silent when it is time to follow up with congregants about their financial obligations. The topic of money makes us uncomfortable. But no organized religion has ever been without a need for resources or an expectation of offerings, dues, or taxes to support its institutions.
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article from Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

Synagogue Governance as a Sacred Trust

Three years ago, the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation (JRF) launched a series of innovative workshops to help affiliated communities clarify their mission and communicate about themselves and Reconstructionism to the larger Jewish community.
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article from Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

Governing Systems and Leadership

Reconstructionism has long advocated the importance of being familiar with the social as well as the natural sciences and applying their insights to Jewish life. History, psychology and sociology, have had significant influences on the ways in which Reconstructionism approaches the shaping of a post-modern Judaism.
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article from Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

Building Sacred Community: The Covenant of Membership, Inreach, and Outreach

he overall growth of our movement has been tremendous over the last decade. Most of our communities are dealing with meeting new needs: increased staffing, more physical space, financial resources, youth and adult education programs, lifecycle and spiritual support, planned growth and outreach, and more services in general.
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article from Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

Leadership Manual for Effective Boards and Committees

Most people join synagogues not in order to serve on their boards, but instead to find a spiritual home, educate themselves and their families, and/or participate in Jewish community. Through pursuing these activities, however, people may deepen their commitment and contribution to their congregations through leadership roles.
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Spiritual Life: From Individual to Communal

article from Listen: A Seeker's Resource for Spiritual Direction

Sh’ma: The Many—The One

Listen, God-wrestlers, Is/Was/Will-Be is Our Divine Source, Is/Was/Will-Be ONE! These words are from the Torah, the words of tradition that the Jewish people have placed at the core of prayer—service of the heart—for millennia.
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article from Cleveland Jewish News

And God said: 'Let there be lights in the sky'

Cleveland Jewish Community's Birkhat HaChammah celebration - April 8, 2009
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article from Congregations

Unlocking Divine Sparks: Creative Approaches to Decision-Making in the Spiritual Life of a Community

In the Jewish mystical tradition, each human being is viewed as a creative spark awaiting more kindling on his or her soul journey. In the Hebrew Bible, the very first words of Genesis are, “In the beginning God created…” Life is brought into being through a combination of order and intuitive creativity. In the first blessing before one of the core prayers in the Jewish liturgy, we pray to hamehadesh b’tuvo bekhol-yom tamid ma’aseh bereyshit (the One who renews creation’s work each day). As reflections of that prayer, we, too, yearn to participate in the perpetual renewal of creation.
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article by Rabbi Zevit

Hearing the Silent Scream : And God heard the voice of the boy

Like the many facets of our lives that we put under the looking glass at this time of year, so this day has many names it has associated with it. In the names themselves, the beauty of our meaning-laden Hebrew language reveals to us a road map for the journey we might undertake in these Days of Awe. What of that overarching term- the Days of Awe? We have the opportunity to feel these days like never before: The liturgy can speak to us in a way it has never spoken to us, for we have the potential to be open and unguarded. We will encounter words, which will take on new meaning and relevance. Some will move us to tears, some will anger us and some will move us to joy, and some will evoke fear and awe.
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article by Rabbi Zevit

Yom Kippur: Teshuvah and Memory

Perhaps the projections we place on others may not withdraw back into our own souls until the first notes of Yom Kippur, when Kol Nidre and the confessionals spark a place of blocked grief or anger, withheld love or apology, and struggle for meaning and purpose in life. Maybe not even then! Maybe your time will be after the Days of Awe. Our sages wisely offer that teshuvah between us and God is the explicit work of Yom Kippur, but for teshuvah between human beings, the gates of heaven on earth are open until Hoshannah Rabbah- the end of Sukkoth, when we traditionally take willow branches and go to the river side and hit the ground with them until all the leaves come off as if to try and shake the last vestiges of sin and spiritual blindness still clinging to us. It is in the journey that we can find hope amidst the challenging world around us, and the struggles within our own hearts.
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article by Rabbi Zevit

The Tapestry of Creation- Creative Drama and Music

The Hebrew Bible begins with a grand series of creative acts. Out of a soup of divergent energies, competing elements, and lack of distinctions, the Spirit of God washes over creative potential and with a “Let there be” mission, transforms the unformed into the manifest. Out of a “no-thing” comes a “some-thing”. The soundscape begins immediately with the crashing of waves on the newly formed shores of land. Birds are soon chirping, all variety of creeping things are creeping, and the music of life plays on. Long before the Psalmist details the instruments of the Temple band in Psalm 150, there is chorus of creation declaring its very existence.
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article by Rabbi Zevit

Freedom (Passover Poem)

Gathering the mixed multitudes in my soul
I rummage through my belongings
In preparation for leave-taking
What aspects of myself
Do I need to make the journey
What can I leave behind
To memory in the narrow places
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article by Rabbi Zevit

Afterword: A Midrash

On men and the quest for the Divine-

Utter change! says Kohelet
Utter change! All is in flux!
Yet there is real value for a man
In all he quests beneath the sun
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article by Rabbi Zevit

From Your father’s House: Readings for Jewish Men

This is a time of great excitement and challenge for the Jewish people as a whole, and those of us who are Jewish men in particular. As the gender roles, expectations and hopes of men and women have shifted and stretched in contemporary society, it has become increasingly challenging to gain an understanding of where we are, even as we try to figure out where we are heading and give voice to our current experiences. Even more so our connection to, and definition of what is Jewish, as well as what is male or masculine is in flux for the majority of Jewish men. We may feel the call to chart our unique path, connect to loved ones, and find our place in community and the world at large. Yet for many men today, having a clear and loving sense of our “Father’s house” can be as problematic as finding our own identities and "calling" as men.
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article by Rabbi Zevit

Sacred Communities

In the fall of 1982, having been through a couple of years of shared living spaces, I had just rented my first “solo” apartment in mid-town Toronto, Canada, as I entered my last year of the theater program at York University. It was a move that filled me with both the excitement of independence and some anxiety. Having grown up in Winnipeg, in an extended family that valued tradition, song, multiple gatherings, I was quick to join the nearest Conservative synagogue. It was a place of familiarity to me, despite the 2,500 households that were also members.
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article by Rabbi Zevit

A 21st Century Men's Midrash

On men and the quest for the Divine
Utter change! says Kohelet
Utter change! All is in flux!
Yet there is real value for a man
In all he quests beneath the sun
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article from Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

The Spiritual Dimension of Justice: Prayers and Texts

These prayers, songs, and texts were gathered in preparation for the April 30, 2006 rally in Washington, D.C. to help stop the genocide in Darfur. The handout was used at the April 29th gathering of Reconstructionists and friends in advance of the rally.
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article from Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

Ecological Sustainability and Religious Life

Rabbi Shawn Zevit passionately promotes the idea of the importance of both Tikkun Hanefesh, healing of the soul, and Tikkun Olam, healing of the world. In this talk he launches the JRF's 2007 Omer study period. The theme is on environmental sustainability.
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article from Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

Sustainability Sources from Jewish Tradition

For 2007/5767 JRF has launched its third Omer text-study initiative. This year the theme is sustainability. To support folk in developing teachings to offer for the text study, JRF has compiled texts from Jewish tradition (including contemporary and Reconstructionist texts).
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article from the Lookstein Center

Midrashic Moments - Putting art and spirit into action

Let us look at an example of how to put creative drama and music into action so that our theology and artistic expression become partners in co-creating new expressions along with our heritage of old. I am using the Book of Ruth from the Hebrew Bible as an example because God is actually absent as a character.
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article from the Lookstein Center

The Tapestry of Creation - Creative Drama and Music

The Hebrew Bible begins with a grand series of creative acts. Out of a soup of divergent energies, competing elements, and lack of distinctions, the Spirit of God washes over creative potential and with a “Let there be” mission, transforms the unformed into the manifest. Far from being confined to a pre-ordained script, throughout the Hebrew Bible God is portrayed as the “Cosmic Improvisationalist”, dancing with the twists and turns of the very human characters that have been let loose on the world stage to search for their purpose and identity.
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article from the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

Tzedakah And The Jewish Holidays: Giving For Social Change

Rosh Hashanah: The High Holy Day cycle is traditionally observed with Teshuvah, Tzedakah and Tefillah - repentance, sharing of wealth and prayer. For Rosh Hashanah, the new year of the earth, direct Tzedakah towards artistic projects that enlarge our sense of awe and connection.
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