Keep Your College Student Connected with PAS
When Park Avenue Synagogue students head to college campuses across the country, they do not leave the PAS community.
“Barukh atah Adonai, Blessed are You Adonai, our God, sovereign of time and space, who made me in the divine image."
Every morning upon waking, a Jew says these words, affirming what is perhaps the most fundamental principle of our tradition – that each one of us is created in the image of God. As stated in the first chapter of Genesis: “And God created Adam in the divine image . . . male and female God created them.” (1:27). The implications are simple and leave no room for ambiguity: every human being is to be accorded equal and infinite dignity.
This Shabbat falls during Pride Weekend. Throughout our great city and across the nation, we celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and the continued struggle for equal civil rights and gender equality. Fifty years after Stonewall and four years since the Supreme Court affirmed marriage equality, this year is particularly momentous. Ours is an age when nothing can be taken for granted. Both at home and abroad, LGBTQ+ rights are far from given. This weekend is an opportunity to both reflect on historic gains and affirm our commitment to the fight ahead.
Park Avenue Synagogue stands proudly with the LGBTQ+ community. I recall with great fondness the unanimous board decision about ten years ago permitting our clergy to officiate at gay weddings. Be it under the huppah, on the bimah, in our classrooms, or anywhere in our community, our policy of inclusion and radical equality is fundamental to who we are. Undoubtedly, there is much more we can do to put our beliefs into practice, and I invite you to be part of that conversation in the years ahead. Human dignity is not something to affirm on only one weekend; it must be felt, lived, and defended every day of the year.
Tomorrow morning we will read the Torah, reliving the moment when we all stood at Mount Sinai. (Services are at our summer location, Darlington Hall, 2 East 90th Street).Tradition teaches that all of Israel stood at Sinai together – no matter their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or otherwise. May our community continue to participate in the effort begun so long ago, and urge each other forward in the work yet to be done.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Cosgrove