February 2002 - שְׁבָט .. אֲדָר תשס״ב Shevat..Adar 5762

As many of you know this has been a milestone year for me. Last June, after approximately thirty-six years of formal schooling, I finally earned and received my PhD degree in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. During this year I will have been married almost twenty-eight years and I have been an ordained rabbi for twenty-three years. And in the same year that my daughter, Rinat, will reach her milestone birthday of twenty-five, I will reach my milestone birthday of twice that. I would like to celebrate my fiftieth birthday this month with you. And since I will not have another milestone birthday for ten more years I have built up the temerity to ask you for a birthday presence. Please, I will not accept a present from any of you; I only want your presence. I will be celebrating my birthday throughout the month of February on each Shabbat. It will be an on-going party for four Shabbatot including all eight services (four on erev Shabbat, Friday evenings, and four on Shabbat mornings, Saturdays). Please celebrate with me by attending one of my eight parties.

I will not accept presents, but if you are moved to celebrate with me by donating tzedakah, then I would be honored. I would like to share a personal insight with you. Since I was ordained in 1979, I have chosen to serve three smaller congregations. I would not give up this life where I know almost everyone by name (certainly all of the children) and where I have the opportunity to be a teacher, student and scholar instead of a full time fundraiser, politician and administrator. I have chosen this quality of life over the ‘prestigious’ climb to be a rabbi in a mega-templeous. And I only have one regret over this choice. I have never had a tzedakah fund that could make sizable donations to any particular cause. Other rabbis (who are not nearly as happy in their congregations as I am here) can stand up and pledge large sums, largely due to their weekly b'nai mitzvah, weddings and funerals. But I think that I can get over my ‘tzedakah-envy’ with your help. At the end of February Barbara and I will make three donations in honor of my birthday. We will support Mazon, (the Jewish Response to Hunger), the Atid Jewish Day School of southern Alameda County, and Rabbis for Human Rights. If you would like to join us in supporting any one of these causes, would you please consider sending to the Temple your check made out to that tzedakah. In other words if you would like to join me in the fight against hunger, please make out a check to Mazon and send it to Temple Beth Sholom. If you would like to support Jewish day school education in the underserved southern part of our county, please make out a check to Atid Day School and send it to Temple Beth Sholom. And if you would like to support our struggle for decent medical care for all Israelis, for equal rights for Ethiopian Jews and Russian Jews, for the struggle for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, please make out a check to Rabbis for Human Rights and send it to Temple Beth Sholom. (Please do NOT send a donation in honor of my birthday to the TBS Rabbi's Tzedakah Fund!) I will send your checks with our own and then I will feel light a Tzedakah Machar, and you will be doing a great mitzvah.

Thank you,

—Rabbi Harry A. Manhoff, Ph.D.

January

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