Celebrating the
Sabbath
T E M P L E B E T H I S R A E L’ S N E W R A B B I
BY MOHAMMED ALKHADHER
he chairs were organized in circles in
the library of Eugene’s Temple Beth
Israel, and the congregation was
chatting, swelling the sound of their
collective conversation. But as the rabbi
entered, singing, the talking quickly faded and
everyone began to take their seats.
It was the beginning of the havdalah,
meaning distinction, a ritual that marks the
end of holy time and transition back into
ordinary life at the end of Shabbat or Sabbath,
Judaism’s day of rest.
T
RABBI RUHI SOPHIA MOTZKIN RUBENSTEIN
was recently appointed head rabbi of this Eugene
congregation that serves about 350 households in the
area. Rubenstein was singing a niggun, a wordless melody
intoned by a group or congregation. The niggun is meant to
bring them to a place of meditation, she says.
Rubenstein led the congregation of Beth Israel this way
for the next 30 minutes, with short intervals of silence every
10 minutes. The choir would grow louder with repetition
and then suddenly go quiet.
Rabbi Rubenstein is the first woman to head the
synagogue on 29th and University, but she says it’s very
common in the Reconstructionist Judaism movement for
women to be rabbis.
“Both of my parents are rabbis of different liberal
movements,” she says. “In a sense, I’m not trailblazing at
all. I had a mother who was a rabbi.”
Rubenstein says that, for the most part, the Orthodox
movement doesn’t ordain women. Both her parents are
Reform rabbis and her husband, Jacob Siegel, is a Modern
Orthodox rabbinical student.
Brought up in Saratoga Springs, New York, a smaller
city like Eugene, Rubenstein recently moved to Lane
County from Manhattan, where she’d spent the past two
years.
“Growing up as a part of a visibly Jewish family
in a small, predominantly Christian town, I’m sort of
comfortable in the ‘token Jew’ role,” she says. “Actually,
it’s much more like my upbringing, which is much more
comfortable for me than the big city was.”
Rubenstein says she loves Eugene, along with its
bike and food culture. She likes to think of herself and
her husband as wanna-be homesteaders; the couple was
canning tomatoes in their tiny apartment before moving to
Eugene.
“We’re just over the moon to have our own garden
and space for big cooking projects,” Rubenstein says.
“We really like those sort of communal ethos of coming
together and singing together and eating together and
celebrating.”
Community is a powerful thread running through
Rubenstein’s work. In fact, she says a strong sense of
community is one of the most wonderfully countercultural
things about Judaism. In order to say all the prayers
in a worship service, a quorum of 10 people must be
present. Although people may be able to worship on their
own, Rubenstein says, you can’t undergo a full worship
experience unless you’re part of a community.
“The idea that we are not just here to pursue our own
highest individual goals or our own highest individual
aspirations, but that we’re here to create a holy system of
community that is larger than ourselves, that’s a really core
important piece of Judaism,” she explains.
The congregation at Beth Israel is affiliated with the
Reconstructionist movement, one of five major Jewish
movements in the U.S. “A liberal congregation is a
congregation that tends to be more embracing of the values
of the contemporary culture in which it’s embedded,”
Rubenstein says. “For better or worse, liberal congregations
are the movements that have a lot more interplay and a lot
more diffusion with the majority culture.”
A third generation rabbi, Rubenstein is part of a family
with a legacy of activism. Her grandfather was arrested
along with 15 other rabbis in a civil rights demonstration
in St. Augustine, Florida, after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
invited them to try to help integrate a swimming pool and
hotel restaurant there. In a joint letter issued by the group
of rabbis that included Rubenstein’s grandfather, they
wrote: “We came as Jews who remember the millions of
faceless people who stood quietly, watching the smoke rise
from Hitler’s crematoria. We came because we know that,
second only to silence, the greatest danger to man is loss of
faith in man’s capacity to act.”
Rubenstein says she grew up with a strong sense that
being a Jew meant putting yourself on the front lines of the
justice battle. She began her own experience in activism in
junior high in a small, predominantly conservative town,
where she says the most visible battle was for LGBTQ
equality.
While attending Smith College in Massachusetts,
Rubenstein walked across the state with an interfaith group
to raise awareness around climate change. “There was a
blizzard,” she recalls, “and it was also the beginning of
spring break at the University of Massachusetts. UMASS
students who are stuck in traffic, trying to drive wherever
they want to go for spring break, through a blizzard, are
honking at us and yelling, ‘We want climate change.’”
Environmental advocacy and climate change remain
important issues for Rubenstein. “I really think it’s the
biggest threat to humanity right now,” she says.
As the night nears its end, the congregation at Beth
Israel prepares to mark this week’s havdalah, which is the
end of the Sabbath. The Jewish Sabbath traditionally runs
from sunset on Friday until three stars are seen on Saturday
night.
Rubenstein says it’s worth recognizing this day of
rest and spiritual enrichment that is an important part of
Judaism.
“We have this day once a week where we are supposed
to be at peace with the way the world is,” she says. “We’re
supposed to unplug from technology, unplug from the
work of changing how things are, making things better,
building things, destroying things and just appreciate the
world as it is,” she adds.
“That’s a very countercultural message,” Rubenstein
says. “The world might be OK for a day if we stop
working.” ■
PHOTO BY TODD COOPER
eugeneweekly.com • January 21, 2016
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