1) Last Call for Yoga this Month!
Yoga for Body and Soul with Marcus J. Freed

http://yogawithmarcus.eventbrite.com/

2) Get High On The Holidays!
Enjoy a friendly, joyous, participatory, celebration of the High Holidays with meaning, melody, and humor.

WHAT: Services led by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein with special guest speakers Rabbi Shlomo Seidenfeld and Cheston Mizel, and chazzanim Dr. John Hoenig, Chaim Goldberger. PLUS other special guests.
-Traditionally inspired & Alternative services
-Special break-out sessions
-All levels and backgrounds welcome
-Hebrew reading skills not required
-Delicious Kiddush following services
-Additional Shofar Services
-Morning coffee and honey cake
-Excellent play-care for children available.

WHERE: Hillel Harkam Academy – corner of Doheny and Olympic

WHEN: Schedule @ A Glance

Rosh Hashanah, Early Service,@ 9am Coffee, Cake & Learning, Shofar

Rosh Hashanah, Main Service @ 9:30am— 1:30pm Services

Tashlich, Sun. Sep. 12 @ 5:45pm when we symbolically cast our sins into the deep waters.

Yom Kippur, Kol Nidrei, Fri, Sep. 18 @ 6pm
Alternative Services – Time TBA

COST:
$50 for all services and kiddush | $36 for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur separately
$25 Full Time Graduate students (apply online) |
Free – Full time students under 26 (apply online)

Hurry and reserve your seat – space is limited!

http://highontheholidays.eventbrite.com/

Dear Friends:

Stuck without plans for the High Holidays?!

Never Fear– JCafeLA & The Aaron's Tent Jewish Events Newsletter have got you covered!

Below, please find an UPDATED list of 5 Separate Groups providing FREE high holiday services at multiple Levels of Jewish observance.

PLEASE FORWARD to ANY Jewish friends that would find this helpful.

Best regards & wishes for a blessing-filled New Year!

Aaron Kemp of JCafeLA (& The Aaron's Tent Jewish Events Newsletter.)

(PLEASE NOTE: we have made every effort to post accurate information but are not responsible for typos; please verify details with sponsoring organizations) ;D

FREE WORLDWIDE SERVICES FINDER: FIND SERVICES NEAR YOU—http://www.chabad.org/holidays/jewishnewyear/calendar_events.htm

"CHAI" HOLIDAYS w/THE CHAI CENTER:
WHAT: Experience the "CHAI" Holidays with the Chai Center and the world famous Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz (aka "Schwartzie") as he leads meaningful, enjoyable services in English. His services are usually attended by 600-800 people and are followed by a great Rosh Ha Shanah Singles party featuring unlimited Apples and Honey + assorted wines.
WHERE: WGA ( "Writers Guild of America") Theater 135 South Doheny Dr,. Bev Hills, CA 90211
WHEN: Yom Kippur, Sunday, September 27th 8th 6:30-8:30 pm, Monday, September 28th 11:00am-2:00 pm, Neilah: 5:30-7:28 pm
AGES: Open
COST: FREE!
INFO: No Reservations required, Walk-ins welcome. However, any info, 310-391-7995: http://www.chaicenter.org/high_holidays.htm

CHABAD ON OLYMPIC 5623 W. Olympic LA CA 90036
WHAT: FREE HIGH HOLIDAYS SERVICES w/CHABAD on OLYMPIC
WHERE: CHABAD ON OLYMPIC- THE FRIEDMAN CENTER 5623 W. Olympic LA CA 90036
WHEN: Yom Kippur Sunday September 27th 6:26 Candlelighting, Kol Nidrei: 6:30 pm, Monday Sep 28th Morning Services: 10:00 am, Yizhor 11:30 am, Neilah 6:20 pm, Fast Ends: 7:20 pm
AGES: OPEN
COST: FREE
INFO: http://www.maalot.org/ 323-965-1111 ext 101 NOTE: Chabad has MANY FREE locations for Services, use this LINK to find them: http://www.chabad.org/holidays/jewishnewyear/calendar_events.htm

HIGH HOLIDAYS AT THE LAUGH FACTORY! –
WHAT: When is a comedy club, not a comedy club? A:When it hosts FREE high holiday services! Services are conducted in the Reform Jewish tradition by Rabbi Bob Jacobs.
WHERE: Laugh Factory, 8001 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, CA 90046
WHEN: Yom Kippur, Kol Nidre, Sunday September 27th 6:00-8:00 pm, Monday September 28th 11:00am-1:00pm, Neilah: 6:00-8:00pm (Break the fast will follow)
AGES: Open
COST: ( FREE! donations are not accepted. )
INFO: Info: 323) 656-1336×1 http://www.laughfactory.com/content/Club.html#H_high_holiday

HIGH HOLIDAYS w/Darryl Temkin, PhD (submitted by Deb Klein-thank you!)
WHAT: Enjoy High Holiday Services with Doctor Daryl Temkin, PhD in what has become a yearly tradition. Many attendees rave about his services!
WHERE: Hillel Hebrew Academy, First Floor Community Room: 9120 Olympic Blvd. Beverly Hills, CA 90211
WHEN: Sun. Sept. 27th, 6:30 pm-8:30 pm, Mon. 9:30 am-12:30 pm and 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
AGES: Open
COST: NO CHARGE!
INFO: RSVP & further info- DarylTemkinPhD@Gmail.com

HIGH HOLIDAYS w/ATERET ISRAEL @ 2 LOCATIONS WESTWOOD & LA! –
WHAT: Enjoy meaningful High Holidays Services w/Ateret Israel @ 2 separate locations in Westwood (Emerson Middle School) and in Pico Robertson
WHERE: Westwood: Emerson Middle School -1650 Selby Ave (1 blk E of Westwood, 1 blk N of Santa Monica); LA Pico-Robertson: 1467 S. Crest Ave (1 blk W of Livonia, 1 blk So of Pico)
WHEN: Westwood (Emerson Middle School) Sun, Sep 27th Kol Nidrei 7:30 pm, Mon Sep 28th 8:00 am
LA/Pico Robertson: Sun Sep 27th Kol Nidrei: 6:00 pm, Monday Sep 28th: Shaharit: 5:45 AM
Barukh Sheamar: 6:15 AM
AGES: Open
COST: FREE!
INFO: Please RSVP- For Westwood call 310-927-6599, For LA/Pico Robtson, call 310-274 -2526

http://ateretisrael.org/

FIND SERVICES NEAR YOU—USE THE CHABAD SERVICE FINDER @ THIS LINK, WORKS ALL OVER THE US & WORLD: http://www.chabad.org/holidays/jewishnewyear/calendar_events.htm

Our program will be led by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein with Rabbi Shlomo Seidenfeld, Cheston Mizel, Rachel Bookstein, and other guests!

‘Get High on The Holidays’ is being hosted by Young Israel of Beverly Hills, who have graciously provided their facilities for all our programming.

Start the New Year right on a good foot with food and friends. Our celebrations kick-off Friday, September 18, 2009 at 6:30pm with an entertaining and delicious Rosh Hashanah feast, highlighting special symbolic foods, round raisin challahs, honey, pomegranates, apples, dates, award winning brisket and other home-made delicacies.

Saturday & Sunday mornings, September 19 and 20th, at 9am, we will enjoy home-made honey-cake and coffee, and some Rosh Hashanah teachings before services start at 9:30am. The service itself is condensed, lively, and includes special break-out session for those that want to explore what the holidays mean to them. All levels and backgrounds are welcome. Hebrew reading skills are NOT required. We will only be blowing the Shofar on Sunday – so make sure to hear the call of the New Year!

Following services on both days, we will be treated to a sweet and delicious Kiddish.

We provide a Kiddie Minyan and childcare for children ages 1-13, from 10am until 1pm for an additional cost.

REGISTRATION REQUIRED – Space is limited!
Services free for full-time students.

Register here: http://tinyurl.com/GetHighOnTheHolidays

Questions? Email Eric@JconnectLA

Schedule for Rosh Hashanah

New Year’s Fest – Friday, Sept. 18
6:30pm: Short Services7:00pm: Special Rosh Hashanah Kabbalistic Feast

Rosh Hashanah Services & Kiddush – Saturday/Shabbat, Sept 19
Honey Cake & Torah Study @ 9am
Morning Service @ 9:30am
Learning Breakout Sessions @ 11am
Delicious Buffet Kiddush following Services

Rosh Hashanah Services, Shofar & Kiddush – Sunday, Sept 20
Early Shofar Blowing, Torah Study & Honey Cake @ 9am
Morning Service @ 9:30am
Learning Breakout Sessions @ 11am
Delicious Buffet Kiddush following Services
Late Shofar Blowing @ 2pm

Shabbat Shuva Tish – Saturday/Shabbat, Sept 26, 6pm
Delicious meal, singing and learning,
Evening Service and Musical Havdallah @ 8pm

Yom Kippur Schedule

Yom Kippur Kol Nidre – Sunday, Sept 27
Kol Nidre Evening Service @ 6:30pm
Followed by “Discovering Your Life-Mission” – A class with Rabbi Yonah

Yom Kippur Services – Monday, Sept 28
Morning Service followed by Yizkor @ 9am
Closing Service @ 6:30pm
Break-the-Fast following the Closing Service @ 8pm

Yes, he did it to himself with his off-the-handle emails but who has not sent off emails that would be embarrassing if they were to be made public?

If you went to his High Holiday services, you wouldn't have noticed any dropoff however. He was just as inspiring a teacher. The crowd was just as large. The cake and apples were just as sweet.

Just recently, a highly respected sage, Rabbi Zalman Nehemiah Goldberg, son-in-law of the late, great venerated sage Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, shocked many by stating that Judaism is in favour of organ donation. He attached the usual caveat that one should consult one’s rabbi on this. But the message is clear and unequivocal.

The question is, will it make a difference?

Why would it not? Because it remains an entrenched myth in the mind of so many that Judaism is against organ donation. Jews and non-Jews are convinced of this.

Why do so many people believe this? There are a number of possible reasons. One is simple: ignorance. People don’t know, and therefore assume, often incorrectly. Another is that it is convenient to believe that Judaism is against organ donation, because that way, you are off the hook and don’t need to contemplate this urgent and life-saving matter. People generally avoid all conversation regarding their eventual demise, including buying burial plots. Organ donation fits with this avoidance response.

Or, people might actually be afraid of donating an organ. Why? Perhaps they give credence to the preposterous statements they may have heard, and attributed to some otherwise sage individuals, to the effect that if you donate an organ, you will come into the afterlife without that organ, as a punishment for having saved someone’s life! This is so ridiculous as to defy comment, yet it circulates and does its own incalculable damage.

Imagine that God would punish someone for having fulfilled the supreme mitzvah of saving a life. Or that God, who generates life, cannot generate another kidney. Or that someone who donates a heart will walk around in the afterlife without a heart!

By the way, what happens to those who did not donate a life-saving organ, but nevertheless had a lung or kidney removed because of cancer? Do they likewise get punished for having cancer? The more we splice this, the more absurd it sounds, because it is absurd.

Not absurd is the presumption made by many that Judaism insists on burial after death, and that by donating an organ, that body part is not buried. The premise is correct, but the conclusion is not. The Torah obliges us to bury those who have died. That is clear. Equally clear is that saving a life is a vital mitzvah that is praised and encouraged as the most noble deed that we are humanly capable of.

Until this generation, these two concepts never met after death, because organ donation was not a viable medical procedure. That has changed in the past few decades, such that organ donation is now part of after-life care. The human body is sacred, both in life and after death. If after death, one can save a life with a body part, that is an overriding mitzvah, pikuach nefesh, that pre-empts the other competing mitzvah obligations.

We understand that one must treat the Shabbat as an ordinary day in order to save a life. The same logic applies to the mitzvah of burial, namely that the rule of mandatory burial is waived for that organ or part (cornea) used to save life, or sight, as the case may be. Admittedly, it will take more than a few years to have an entire faith community re-adjust thinking that dates back thousands of years, thinking that has given birth to a noble Jewish reflex: death followed by funeral and burial, done as soon as possible with no delays.

The reality is that donating organs after one has passed from the world is a difficult concept, and it takes only a slight blip to convince people to back off from it. We continue to face an acute shortage of organs, to the extent that every three days, a person in Ontario dies waiting for an organ.

And to be fair, there are challenges, the most critical of which is assuring that the person donating an organ is dead according to halachic definition. For this, we have a major difference of opinion surrounding the issue of brain stem death, specifically whether it is a sufficient criteria to establish that the person is dead according to Jewish law.

The Halachic Organ Donation Society (HODS) has many rabbis associated with it who have signed their organ donor card. They have made this known in a public manner, and they have endorsed the brain-stem death concept. The issue is still not finalized, but it’s still possible to be an organ donor even with this challenge. And in many places in Canada, DCD, short for donation after cardiac death, has been implemented to help save lives.

Q All my teachers tell me that swordfish is not kosher, but my grandfather insists that his family ate it when he was a kid. Can you explain this?

- S.F., Tel Aviv

A I first heard about the controversy over the kashrut of swordfish as a college student, when a local Orthodox rabbi told me that the Conservative movement might be correct that it should be kosher. I forgot about the remark, since I was never a big fish consumer (I only started eating tuna a few years ago). Yet a recently acquired taste for fish (aliya will do that to you), plus a fascinating article by Ari Zivotofsky of Bar-Ilan University (B.D.D. 19), from which this column will heavily draw, has resparked my interest.

While the Torah specifies that kosher fish require both scales and fins (Leviticus 11:9-10), an ancient tradition codified by Halacha asserts that all fish with scales necessarily have fins (Nida 51b, YD 83:3). As such, much halachic literature focused on defining halachic scales, a complex project since these coverings vary greatly in different fish. Among other criteria, kosher fish must contain scales attached to their body which can be peeled without damaging the fish's skin (Rama YD 83:1). Scales that shed when fish mature or leave the water, or alternatively, that develop only later in life, were also deemed acceptable.

Nonetheless, it remains difficult to identify which fish possess the biological traits that match these halachic criteria. For starters, there are myriads of fish which must be carefully examined by competent authorities.