that's going to do it for today. remember to stay in touch with the show by following us on social media. for everyone here, i'm charles davis. we'll see you next week on "sports stars of tomorrow". (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (uplifting jingle)

good morning, and welcome to mosaic. i am honored to be your host this morning. in the jewish community we are right in the middle of the jewish new year called rosh hashanah and yom kippur. with us this morning to talk about the jewish new year is the executive director of jewish family and children services of east bay and the director of interfaith bay area. welcome. let's jump in and talk a little bit about the agencies you come from and what they do and then we will talk about the jewish new year. the jewish family services of the east bay. >> we deliver services in alameda and contra costa county. we do services in the jewish community and the broader multicultural community. we do a lot of work with early childhood

mental health, older adults and refugees. >> and your zone of service? >> alameda and contra costa counties. >> we are part of a national organization connected to website that offers tons of information for families looking for an entry into jewish life and might not know where to look. i work with families that have different backgrounds they are coming from. some may have a jewish background, someone may be coming from a different background and trying to navigate how to make choices in their family. i work with local folks in the bay area. >> so you are probably very busy at this time of the year with the holiday celebration. we have a beautiful ritual item on the

table, it is a ram's horn and we will hear you give it a good blow later on in the show. we are entering into your 5776. i'm wondering, for you, maybe talk a little bit about where you come from and the ways in which you grew up celebrating the new year and what has changed for you and what you kind of see for yourself in that way. >> i was raised in a conservative synagogue and was fortunate to be in a community that celebrated with a lot of warmth and spirit. i am fortunate to have that as an adult. i am an active member of my congregation in the east bay and i feel like it provides me a context to reflect and recommit and celebrate with the community

of people that i really love. >> i grew up in a very active synagogue as well. a reform synagogue in southern california. in the high holy days we went to a church nearby because we had so many people that we could not fit into the synagogue and there were organs and pipes and it was a very majestic feeling kind of time of year. i was singing in the children's choir and i love the music. i grew up pretty close to it even though i came from a family marginally connected event a little tentative about jewish connection. i was just drawn to it. >> you both say something that is kind of interesting when we think about the demographics of the bay area. when we think about how we can bring people back into the community whether

it is lgbt or a particular race or culture of a particular faith system, whether they are religious, or agnostic. and both of you talk about growing up in a jewish community where you did feel connected. so what were sort of some of the elements that actually kept you engaged throughout your growing up years into adulthood? >> i was very connected with our synagogue community. pretty engaged in the process. a lot of kids don't love hebrew school but i was pretty connected with that and felt somehow a deep connection to it. most of the people i'm working with, that is not the case and they might not even have that foot in the door to even know what is going on in the more institutionalized community. i recognize now that

it was a gift that i had that education and a lot of people are coming into the jewish community and might not have much background. there is a lot of assuming that people know what is going on in services and that they might know hebrew. it is actually a pretty high barrier if you don't have that background. as i reflect where i came from i hope that with the families i meet with and think about, you are coming from a place where this is very new. how can i lower the barrier for you? >> i was also lucky and i think it is unusual, i had a very positive experience in the synagogue and in my community in general. in my late teens and early 20s i certainly had my time of feeling alienated as a political activist at the time

and as a young gay man. i was not confident that there was a place for me in the community. i created my place. >> we are going to take a quick break and come back in just a moment with more mosaic. please join us in just a moment when we return.

welcome back to mosaic. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation about the jewish new year. the time between rosh hashanah and yom kippur. we have with us rabbi copeland, the director of interfaith bay area and avi rose. we have on the table a beautiful ritual object that is used at the jewish new year, typically thought of as the happy birthday of the year. the beginning of the new year and the birth of the world. let's talk a little bit about it. why don't you tell folks what we have. >> this comes from an antelope, many times they come from a ram. and there is a lot of deep significance for the holidays. and one is that the sounds and

succession made with the shofar are a long, whole note and a series of broken notes and then we come back after that brokenness to wholeness again with a long, steady call. and it really mirrors one of the major themes of the holy days, which is that we start holding our lives and become broken, experience brokenness in the world around us and our own personal lives but the reminder is that we will become whole again. we may not be fixed but we will feel that wholeness again. it has been a very powerful ritual in the days leading up to rosh hashanah every year, in the month prior in the hebrew calendar, we are asked to do this every day. i do it with my children in the morning and when we are rushing around in the craziness, it is

a reminder to keep an eye on the big picture of life. >> i know you will give it a big blow in a moment. before we hear it i want to talk a little bit about this sort of notion that maybe not everybody understands that judaism is a combination of spiritual, anthropological and historic and on the spiritual level you talked about the sound of the shofar is a kind of call to wholeness. and a kind of spiritual wake-up call. can you talk about where it comes from publicly and how it was used historically and why do we think it has come to this point in our holiday celebration? >> we read about a ram in the powerful reading at the rosh hashanah services about isaacs

near sacrifice. his father almost sacrifices him. it is a powerful and difficult story for many and the hope and redemption of the story is that rather than sacrifice his son, there is a clear message in the story that we don't do that and that is not going to happen. rather a ram is caught in the thicket nearby and he is sacrificed instead. that is an enduring symbol for us of hope and redemption overtime. anyway, historically, the ram's horn is actually used for many different things and in the torah, the jewish sacred scriptures we talk about all sorts of times when it was used as a meeting call for the community. but it is an enduring symbol over the centuries. >> why don't we give it a try?

beautiful. we're going to take a quick break and come back in just a moment here on mosaic.

good morning, and welcome back to mosaic. we are having a wonderful conversation with the executive director of jewish family and children services and the director of interfaith family bay area about the jewish new year and the high holy season. we ended the last segment listening to the beautiful sound of the shofar. what do you do during the holidays, how do you approach

them? what do you see in the broader community? >> i try to start the process at the beginning, some holidays are climaxes and powerful moments of people coming together with a period of really reflecting and thinking about the past year and what i want to rededicate myself to and who i have to seek forgiveness from and who do i have to forgive. someone starts early and hopefully carries through yom kippur. that is what i try to do and with the shofar call, which is so powerful, i really see in my congregation, it really grapples with the issue of how it is not only a call to personal reflection and wholeness but a call to the pursuit of justice. and that we are focusing on the integration of the two, deepening our

spiritual practice connections and deepening and broadening our commitment to pursuing justice in the world that sorely needs it. >> interesting. we have talked about the month of elul, typically thought of as the month of preparation and reflection and we move from celebrating creation and move through to a notion of personal and communal, theological and spiritual forgiveness between folks, between a person and god and within a person and themselves. i am wondering, just in your reflection over the years, what do you make of that sort of trajectory? not every faith tradition and spirituality couples those things together. they represent other things together but for

you, what is the trajectory of internal reflection moving into communal celebration of creation moving toward communal notions of forgiveness at yom kippur, what is that all about? >> i am always struck by the number of prayers in the high holy day literature that are actually we are sometimes preying on our own behalf and speaking in the first person but many more times we are speaking communally, which in one way is interesting, if i have not done that particular transgression, somebody has, and we are all praying together and working as a community to figure out what we need to be doing in the world to make our world a better place. but it is an interesting back and forth between them. there is a lot of personal, deep introspective work during this time and also

such a sense that as a community we need to think about how we help each other and lift our community as a whole. >> one thing i've thought about this year is how with such a powerful and useful framework for really anyone, whether or not they are aligned with the jewish tradition. i am fortunate to work in an agency that is very multicultural and multiracial and in advance of the jewish holidays, give people some information about what they are. because we are closed for some of those days and they should know and they want to know. i have staff that are not jewish talk to me about really appreciating that invitation to learn and reflect and rededicate, and they plan to do some of that in their own way. >> that is fantastic. we will take a quick break and come back in a moment to continue

our conversation here on mosaic.

welcome back to mosaic. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation with the director of interfaith family bay area and the executive

director of jewish children and family services. welcome back. it seems that in every religious community or any community, when we come to a holiday, whether it is a national holiday like thanksgiving or christmas or ramadan, you see a lot about what makes up a community, the communal constellation becomes more apparent and there is a way in which it also exposes on a personal and communal level a kind of spiritual, emotional vulnerability about what it means to be in the world and a person in the world. i'm wondering about those two things from your perspective. you work with interfaith families and avi, you work with a swath of diversity of the entire community of the east bay and what you see communally from the jewish community and

otherwise during this particular time of year. >> there is a model that many in the jewish community hold onto, what the jewish family looks like his two parents, a man and a woman, never been divorced, children who are biologically connected to them, et cetera. this is no longer the picture. that actually fits about 5% of the american jewish profile. if we look at what a jewish family really looks like and has for a while, we are all sorts of different pieces and backgrounds, different ethnicities. adoption, lgbt families, it is much more diverse than people often think it is. and intermarriage is a key part of that as well. at this point we are hitting very high rates of intermarriage within the community and some are very panicked about this and what the jewish future look like instead of seeing that

this is incredible diversity and vibrancy that is changing the jewish community from within. people were coming from different backgrounds and constellations, are really enlivening what judaism is today. >> folks that are in and interfaith family, which comprises them of some portion of the remaining 95% of the jewish community, how do they actually use the high holy day is an opportunity for their own family development and answering whatever questions they have about what they do as a family? >> on the one hand, what we try to do is connect people as much as possible. if folks have an idea in their minds, i'm not the one that is welcome, that's for other folks, i don't know enough, or my family will be welcomed. we are here to show them the way to connect them to existing communities. we provide a list of all the places in the bay

area where they are our high holy services that are open and happy to have new folks and really want to bring people into the communities. it is about connecting and working with families. i meet with families individually to talk about how to navigate your questions. i also encourage people to do their own introspection within their families. as you were saying before, it is very universal. and a family can walk out in the woods or to a creek and think about what this past year was, what they want their lives to be about, to be appreciative of every vicious moment they have together. it is a great time to do that, whether or not you are sitting in synagogue or somewhere else. >> and what is your perspective, avi? >> about the diversity of jewish families, it is

wonderful, and it is complicated and there are degrees, high degrees of dis-affiliation and alienation, really the whole range is there. for some people this time of year is a time where they really feel deeply that this is an opportunity for new beginnings and a time for healing and so on. honestly for some people it is a painful time. it is a time and people are aware of a sense of family or communal connection that is not in their lives. so it is mixed and the goal of our agency is to be of service to all of that, be open to all of that, help people from where they are and where they want to go. it is not singular or linear, it is very multilayered and complicated and i think a lot of us have had to learn to

not bring assumptions to it and learn how to meet people from where they are. but to offer, when it is appropriate, that framework of this being a time of new beginnings and a time for people to do something, which everyone is interested in doing, which is look at how their life and actions are aligned with the values that they espouse. >> i'm wondering on the kind of grander and social and communal level, jewish family and children services is an agency that in a technical sense is secular and helps everyone on the other hand be informed by the particular understanding of the world we call jewish values. and i am wondering what that is for you, sort of being a jewish agency in the world. >> we live right in that intersection, and it is

fantastic. being in the place. it is complicated and has its challenges but we really are speaking and interacting with so many different people. i think that may be a good example is we do a tremendous amount of refugee resettlement work. to me, that speaks so directly to my understanding of jewish history and jewish values. in a very concrete and daily way we are welcoming the stranger. right now mostly people from afghanistan and iraq, lgbt refugees from other countries. that is a very jewish activity for us. >> believe it or not, we have come to the end of our time together. so we want to say thank you so much for joining us here on mosaic. have a wonderful day.

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