16 Iyar 5773
No. 7
A Gala Weekend Join us as we honor
Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso for thirty-six years of dedicated service to Beth-El Zedeck Thank you for leading generations of our congregation and for your gifts of spirit, knowledge, creativity and dreams.
Friday Evening, May 17, 7:30 p.m.
A Celebratory Shabbat Service at Beth-El Zedeck followed by a festive Oneg reception
hosted by Sisterhood of Congregation Beth-El Zedeck RSVP to the synagogue office, bez613@bez613.org
April 26, 2013 TRIBUTES TO RABBI SANDY
from the RRA Convention, March 10, 2013
All across the country and beyond, there are young women planning to go to rabbinical school. What unites them is that they have been born into a world where they can make this decision without a moment's hesitation. Indeed, they have never known a world where it wasn’t so. All of this didn’t just happen. Someone had to be willing to ignore the chorus of no, you can't. Someone had to be willing to listen more closely to her inside voice, saying you have gifts to give, than to the outside voices, saying your gifts don't belong on the bimah. For me, and for so many others, that someone is Sandy Sasso. Sandy has never tried to be anything other than who she is: a woman who deeply understands herself and her feminism; and a rabbi who is deeply connected to her Judaism, her faith, and her community. In those early days when there was lots of pressure to choose—am I a woman who happens to be a rabbi or a rabbi who happens to be a woman, Sandy resisted the choice, proudly asserting both truths as though there was no dichotomy. And therefore there was none. (excerpted from Rabbi Joy Levitt’s remarks)
Saturday Evening, May 18, 7:30 p.m.
A Gala Evening of Dinner and Dancing at the JW Marriott Hotel (Reservations by May 1)
Affirmation: A Letter to Rabbi Sandy (excerpted)
by Rabbi Rachel Gartner
Dear Sandy, The ordination of women, one of your generation of Jewish women’s most monumental accomplishments, has become my generation of Jewish women’s most cherished inheritance. What was so hard won for you, has now become almost commonplace for us. Increasingly removed from your experience, it can be hard for younger women rabbis to appreciate it. Indeed, you lived through it, so we don’t have to. And for that we are deeply grateful. Sandy – God Remembers, and so do we.