Nov 7 2008 -WELCOMING OUR NEW MEMBERS IN THE SPIRIT OF ABRAM

Tonight, begun with the wonderful dinner-banquet arranged by Darryl and Deanna Hoffman, we honor those new members who have joined B’nai Chaim over the past year. Like Abram’s being called to a new land and his acceptance of that call, your joining this congregation is an act of faith. You have demonstrated a belief that B’nai Chaim has the essentials elements of Jewish life that you have been looking for…and we hope that some of them are more than just being within the less than twenty minutes drive time which seems to be a major factor in peoples’ joining congregations these days.

B’nai Chaim, as you may have already discovered, is pretty eclectic in what we offer. While we are usually willing to try new things, like bringing Acoustic Eidolon as we did this past Saturday evening, and like starting a film series which will continue with the screening of the delightful, Israeli film, "Ushpazeen", on December 6th ; our real strengths lie in the relatively small size of the kahal or congregation, the quality of our Religious School and the dedication of its Principal, Kathy Horewitch, and our home grown teaching staff. Then, too, is the fact that our members have a spirit of being willing to take a program or project and “champion” or run with it as Darryl and Deanna did tonight. Therein do we have folks like Sandy and Sharon Solove who organized our Purim Carnival last year and Vickianne King who annually steps up to moderate our Chanukah gift exchange. If you’ve not witnessed Vickianne in this role, you’ve missed one of the treasures of our congregation.

In point of fact, if you look around this building, you will see signs of people who have pitched in. They either donated time, talent, or treasure, and the result is a congregation which operates with a lot of well deserved pride and a great deal of creative energy.

Like our members, Abram, himself, had certain strengths: his most important was his insight into the nature of God, making him the world’s first proclaimed monotheist. (Let’s here draw a distinction because being the first to believe in one God does not, however, make Abram the world’s first Jew. Like others of his day, Abram maintained an intense loyalty to his extended family. Since the extended family was the central unit of that age, intense loyalty was instilled and demonstrated by each family member as well. As a semi-nomad, a herder of sheep, Abram was especially attuned to nature and, given great faith, was willing to take chances which ultimately paid off in his achieving those important goals and fulfilling certain latent dreams that even into his old age still drove and inspired his life.

Loyalty, being willing to work hard for a cause, and also being willing to take chances to reach much desired goals is reflected in the history of this congregation. After all, hiring a part time rabbi and moving into one’s own building are both gambles of a sort on the pathway to establishing what we have called “our legacy of Jewish life here in Southwest Denver.”

In addition to being willing to stretch ourselves to vaunted goals, we believe that you will find the other members of this congregation to be hard working, busy, family focused—though obviously not of Focus on the Family, concerned about the world and wishing that they had the time and energy to do more than they do, but still proud of doing what they apply themselves to. Our support of Second Wind, a teen suicide prevention program that is spreading throughout Denver’s high schools, our adopted section of highway which we police twice a year, our Youth Group dinners and fund raisers for Camp Rainbow, a summer experience for kids with cancer, our High Holiday food drive and Passover support for Mazon (a Jewish attempt to prevent hunger), and our Books for Israel program, our Holocaust Shoe Project and our periodic Bonfils Blood Drives are all efforts in Tikkun Olam, congregational attempts to repair our broken world

In other words, those joining us will find our members are grounded, steady, and decent folks…people with whom they can make friends and share lives.

Abraham certainly was like this. He had a pretty healthy handle on his code of living. He also was perspicacious in his dealings with his neighbors, returning kindness for kindness, being genuinely hospitable to strangers but ferociously territorial and belligerent to those who proved themselves to be enemies.

Abraham sets the standard for many of these values which became the bed rock, sine qua non standards in the Jewish world. His example of hospitality, of sitting at the opening of his tent waiting to welcome the weary traveler and the stranger who might be venturing by became the model by which we try to offer a warm welcome to all who come into our midst here in this building. His sharing of his food we attempt to emulate when we go to food kitchens to help prepare meals for the homeless. Abram’s hospitality we reflect when we’ve joined the Mayor’s program to end homelessness called Denver’s Road Home in which we have sponsored a homeless family or two and have helped them regain their self confidence and get back on their feet. And we should not forget to mention our participation in Habitat-for-Humanity builds in our vicinity.

Throughout his later years, Abram sought to perform the proper rites and ceremonies that would link him to his God and mark the significance of his covenant with his maker. We at B’nai Chaim see ourselves as part of the continuum that links us all the way back to this Patriarch. When we bring our sons into the covenant of circumcision or name a newborn daughter with words that connect us to the holy contract Abram cut with God, we establish in our own day the facts of Jewish life and our commitment to secure this covenant well into the future.

In one other very important way our world does not differ from that of Abram. It is in what we face and in what we must teach our children about having integrity in our lives. As we celebrate the sea change which has just taken place in American life, as we lift the burden of the past 8 years from off our necks, we need to teach our children the lessons of frugality…of living within our means, of observing and honoring the law both domestic and international, of not spending more than what we have, and of not obligating ourselves to more than what we are able to handle, either with our time or our financial resources. These are truths that we Jews have passed on from one generation to another, until we come to this day.

As we welcome our new members and express our joy that they have joined our ranks, we ask them to invite their friends and acquaintances to come and see if B’nai Chaim is attractive, as well, to them. Certainly, a congregation that has all of what we have going on within our midst should be as attractive to others as Abraham’s tent must have seen to wayfarers as they traveled the dusty, lonely and often dangerous roads in the ancient near east.

We are so gratified with all of new members and we are grateful to be able to offer this way of life to ourselves and to our children. And just as God called Abram to covenant and blessed him and all that he had, we feel ourselves blessed and thankful for what is ours, for what we have accomplished in the name of our God and for the opportunities B’nai Chaim gives us to participate and grow in Jewish life.