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'COME BACK TO THE MOUNTAIN':
CLAL CREATES NATIONAL UNITY SHAVUOT WEBSITE

NEW YORK, N.Y.-A new web site launched by CLAL creates a national community of celebration and study intended to revitalize the holiday of Shavuot.

Jews across North America have the opportunity to take part in a virtual return to Mt. Sinai, and reconnect their many voices within one Jewish people.

WWW.SHAVUOT.ORG is the home page of the National Unity Shavuot, a celebration created by CLAL, North Jewry's leading voice promoting diversity and building unity.

The web site, which includes a listing of communal study events that will take place in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami, encourages many thousands more to take part in the celebrations with a click of a mouse. Browsers can find an introduction to Shavuot, which begins this year at sundown on May 20, and engaging Jewish texts appropriate to the holiday. They can choose to join an on-line conversation about the texts, or download the texts and use them as resources in their own Shavuot celebrations.

On Shavuot, Jews recall the story of how the entire Jewish people stood together as one, at one place and at one time, to hear God's voice at Mt. Sinai. The story also celebrates the individual experience of each person at that moment. As a result, Jews are reminded that the Torah belongs to the entire Jewish people, and to individual Jews in their own unique ways.

National Unity Shavuot organizers see the Internet as a natural setting to mark Shavuot. The World Wide Web, like the opens up communities of almost infinite connections, helping Jews discover the things that unite them as a people, even as it respects the different journeys they make as individuals.

The community events marking the National Unity Shavuot are being planned and conducted by rabbis from the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and independent movements. The events represent the eagerness of participants to put aside their denominational differences to celebrate Jewish learning and the integrity of Jews from across the spectrum of affiliations and movements.

Planners of CLAL's National Unity Shavuot are also hoping to re-emphasize the meanings of Shavuot, a major festival on the traditional Jewish calendar that is not as widely celebrated as Passover or Yom Kippur. Shavuot, or the Feast of Weeks, takes place exactly seven weeks after Passover. Rituals associated with the holiday include the all-night study of Jewish texts on the first evening of the holiday, the reading of the Ten Commandments in synagogue, and the chanting of the Book of Ruth, the story of a Moabite woman who joins the Jewish people.

CLAL is also the sponsor of www.clal.org, a central address for Jews who are passionate about pluralism, new Jewish thought and practice, and building dynamic Jewish communities. Updated weekly, it includes original essays by CLAL faculty, a study of the weekly Torah portion, and lively on-line discussions. Each week more than 100 new participants ask to receive a weekly e-mail update on postings and events available at the web site.

For additional information, contact Andrew Silow-Carroll, 212-779-3300, ext. 121.

To access the Spotlight on CLAL Archive, click here.