Happy Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah!
October 13, 2006 – Tishrei 22, 5767
So – is Friday the 13th
unlucky for Jews??? How can it be: We become
bar/bat mitzvah at 13, it’s Sukkot and tonight is Shabbat. This is in fact, arguably the luckiest
day of the week. Happy Friday the 13th!
(and besides, it’s the 21st…of Tishrei). In fact
today is a day of many blessings…a day for this one in particular:
Blessed are You, O Lord our
God, King of the universe, Who has kept us in life,
and has preserved us, and enabled us to reach this season.
Synaplex is
coming – in just 14 days!!!!!
Check our website at www.tbe.org for the complete Synaplex schedule, along
with NEW super photos of our spectacular TBE Sukkah and mp3 files of the High
Holidays sermons.
And fill out a Bark Mitzvah “All About Me” page for your pet! Download it at http://www.tbe.org/site/sog/blessingofanimals.htm
- deadline for our Pet Pallooza booklet is Oct. 22! Thanks to Beth Boyer for sending this
amusing link along (with a local connection) to get us into the spirit of our
own Jewish Blessing of the Animals: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061006-pet-church.html?source=rss
SIMCHAT TORAH SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14th
at 7:00 p.m. and SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15th at 9:30 a.m.
Join our celebration!
This year’s Hattan Torah will be Peter
Weissman and our Kallat Bereshith
will be Joan Katz.
Send your friends and relatives the gift of Jewish awareness -- a
Shabbat-O-Gram each week, by signing them up at www.tbe.org. To be removed from
this mailing list, sent e-mail request to office@tbe.org. If you have signed
up and are not receiving our e-mails, check your spam filter to make sure that
TBE is not being “spammed out.”
Please
give generously to our High Holy Day Appeal!
Thus
far the response has far exceeded expectations –
we are most grateful to all who have given. For those who have not as of yet, please
give TBE extra consideration this year as we continue to try to bring the
spirit of excellence and warmth to our Jewish Village and to service the needs
of our congregants.
Contents
of the Shabbat O Gram:
(Click
to scroll down)
Just
the Facts (service schedule)
The (Occasionally) Ranting Rabbi
Mitzvah/Tzedakkah Opportunities
Required Reading and Action Items (links
to key articles on Israel and Jewish life)
Announcements (goings on in and around
TBE)
Quote for the Week
A Talmudic Discussion…
From When Do
Mention God’s Power in Providing Rain?
(The line that
is added to the Amida near the beginning
acknowledging that God “makes the wind to blow and the rain to
fall”)
Rabbi Eliezer says: From the first
day of the festival (Sukkot).
Rabbi Yehoshua says: “From the last day of the festival.”
Said to him Rabbi Yehoshua: “Since rain on the festival is a sign
of curse, why mention it at all?”
Replied Rabbi Eliezer: “I did
not say we should pray for rain, but rather that we proclaim that ‘He
causes the wind to blow and the rain to fall in its season.”
He answered: “If so, one should always mention
it!”
(Mishna, Ta’anit 1:1)
Friday Evening
Candle lighting: 6:00 pm on Friday, 13 October 2006. For candle lighting times, other Jewish
calendar information, and to download a Jewish calendar to your PDA, click on http://www.hebcal.com/. To see the festivals of other faiths as
well, go to http://www.interfaithcalendar.org/
Shabbat and Festival Evening service: 7:30 PM
– in the sanctuary (note the special time) – Thanks to Jerry
and Beth Cooper for sponsoring the oneg Shabbat in
honor of Eric.
Shabbat
and Sunday Morning: 9:30 AM– on Shabbat, we celebrate the Bar Mitzvah of Eric
Cooper. Mazal tov
to him and to his parents Beth and Jerry Cooper! The service will also include a reading
of selections from the book of Ecclesiastes, Yizkor and the Prayer for Rain
(for background on this prayer, see http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=195&letter=G).
Children’s services: 10:30 AM – (jr.
congregation service in the chapel, Tot Shabbat morning downstairs. 6th
and 7th graders not on the Shabbaton are expected to be in the main
sanctuary)
Saturday evening Simhat Torah service –
7:00 PM – We honor our Yad Squad Teen Torah readers (and thanks to the
Robinov family for once again sponsoring Cantor Littman’s Yad
Squad).
BRING YOUR OWN DECORATIVE FLAGS IF YOU’VE GOT ‘EM. AND BRING YOUR
DANCING SHOESAS WELL! A GREAT TIME
WILL BE HAD BY ALL! THE FUN
CONTINUES ON SUNDAY MORNING, AS WE WILL DO OUR SEVEN HAKKAFOT A LITTLE AFTER 10
AM – MAKE SURE TO GET HERE ON TIME FOR ALL THE DANCING, WHICH, WEATHER
PERMITTING, WILL LEAD US OUT TO THE PARKING LOT AS WELL. SIMHAT TORAH IS A TIME TO DISPLAY SOME
REAL PRIDE IN BEING JEWISH AND OUR LOVE OF THE TORAH. IT IS FOR ALL AGES. HELP US TO HONOR PETER WEISSMAN AND JOAN
KATZ, WHO HAVE DONE SO MUCH FOR OUR COMMUNITY.
Torah Readings
Book of Ecclesiastes: http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt3101.htm
Torah Portion: Deuteronomy
14:22 - 16:17 & Numbers 29:35 - 30:1
1: Deuteronomy 14:22-29
2: Deuteronomy 15:1-18
3: Deuteronomy 15:19-23
4: Deuteronomy 16:1-3
5: Deuteronomy 16:4-8
6: Deuteronomy 16:9-12
7: Deuteronomy 16:13-17
maf: Numbers 29:35-30:1 (6 p'sukim)
Haftarah: I
Kings 8:54 - 8:66
Erev Simchat Torah - ערב שמחת
תורה
Torah Portion: Deuteronomy
33:1 - 33:17
1: Deuteronomy 33:1-7
2: Deuteronomy 33:8-12
3: Deuteronomy 33:13-17
Torah Portion: Deuteronomy
33:1 - 34:12 & Numbers 29:35 - 30:1
1: Deuteronomy 33:1-7
2: Deuteronomy 33:8-12
3: Deuteronomy 33:13-17
4: Deuteronomy 33:18-21
5: Deuteronomy 33:22-26
6: Deuteronomy 33:27-34:12
7: Genesis 1:1-2:3
maf: Numbers 29:35-30:1 (6 p'sukim)
Haftarah: Joshua
1:1 - 1:18
See a weekly commentary
from the UJC Rabbinic Cabinet, at www.ujc.org/mekorchaim. Read the Masorti commentary at http://www.masorti.org/mason/torah/index.asp. University of Judaism,
JTS commentary is at: http://learn.jtsa.edu/topics/parashah/. USCJ Torah
For online Parsha quizzes from Pardes in Israel, go to http://www.pardes.org.il/online_learning/parsha_quizzes/ Torah for Kids: http://www.torah4kids.net/ Weekly Lesson of Popular Israeli Rabbi Mordechai Elon: http://www.elon.org/archives/archives.htm - and his parsha sheets: http://www.mibereshit.org/special/download_eng_pdf.htm From Bar Ilan University: http://www.biu.ac.il/JH/Parasha/eng/; http://www.torahproductions.com/weekly_article.jsp
THE ENTIRE
HEBREW BIBLE (AS WELL AS OTHER JEWISH SOURCES) CAN BE FOUND WITH SIDE-BY-SIDE
TRANSLATION AT
Morning Minyan: Weekdays at 7:30, Sundays at
9:30 AM
TO ENSURE A “GUARANTEED MINYAN” FOR
THE DAY OF YOUR YAHRZEIT – GO TO THE ROSNER MINYAN MAKER AT WWW.TBE.ORG
AND ALSO CONTACT ME AT RABBI@TBE.ORG.
We’ve had several people coming lately
who are saying kaddish
following recent deaths in the family.
We want to make sure we have a minyan each day. Your
presence any morning is greatly appreciated!
Please sign up at the Rosner Minyan Maker at www.tbe.org (for those who have had problems,
it’s been fixed).
The
(occasionally)
We Honor Joan Katz and
Peter Weissman
We could honor no more
worthy people this weekend than Peter and Joan. On Sunday morning they will be honored
with the traditional final aliyah of the Torah cycle and then the first aliyahs
for Genesis as we begin the cycle anew. Each year we ask our Hatan Torah and Kallat Bereisheet (the Bridegroom of the Torah and Bride of
Genesis) to make a statement about their ties to TBE and the importance of
volunteering.
Here is Peter’s
Statement
My own first
association with
Later, my father was
a president of Beth El, at the time of the purchase of the land on which Beth
El now sits and he repesented the temple on the
sale of the old temple site.
I had my own bar
mitzvah in the old temple building and later, I was president of the Men's
Club during in the 60s, but my closest association with the temple was
with my son Adam. Adam loved the temple, going to high holiday
services, and going to dances and other affairs with the youth
group. I went to services and all of the affairs with him to assist with
his wheelchair, but he danced on the floor without any help from me amd after services, always went up to wish the rabbi and
cantor a Shanah Tova. His Bar Mitzvah here was one of the highlights of
his and my life.
When Adam passed away
eight years ago, I began my attendance at morning minyans and ushering at the
holidays. While these are bittersweet, they provide me with opportunities
to think of and talk to Adam as if he were still here,
and indeed, in my heart and memory, he will always be here. So I thank
Is Kissing the Torah Idolatry?
Beliefnet held a dialogue on this
week of Simhat Torah on the question of whether we have turned the Torah itself
into exactly what it is most opposed to – idolatry. Here
are three responses to this question, from Orthodox, Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbis.
Personally, I think we
should treat the Torah with utmost reverence (see the CLAL new ritual below for
carrying a Torah), and love often is best demonstrated physically. We do LOTS of kissing at services: torahs, siddurs, spouses, b’nai mitzvah, tzitzit,
mezuzuahs….we’re one of the kissingest religions around. I’d hate to see our ritual drained
of that spirit of love – on the other hand, the worship of the letter of
the law, for its own sake, as an end in itself, is idolatry in my view. The Torah is indeed sacred, but only in that it points to Something more Sacred.
What do you think?
A Slippery Slope
to Idolatry
The Torah scroll is taken
out of the ark. The rabbi walks in a procession around
the synagogue holding the Torah as congregants reach out with their tallises
(prayer shawls) or siddurim
(prayer books) to touch the scroll and then put the tallis
or the siddur to their lips, thus giving the Torah a kiss. It’s the way I’ve always seen it done, and I
never gave it much thought.
Until, that is, a couple of years ago when a non-Jewish congregant expressed
confusion and distaste about the tradition. An avid
student of Judaism who was committed to raising her children Jewish, she
explained that she had always appreciated Judaism’s absolute refusal to
worship objects, a check against idolatry.
But wasn’t kissing the Torah just that, an idolatrous act? I gave an answer about how kissing the Torah was simply a
way of showing respect, but I wasn’t entirely convinced–and I still
am not.
The fact is, kissing the Torah as it is carried through the congregation does
look a lot like practices in other religions that seem idolatrous to Jewish
eyes, such as placing food before statues or venerating icons.
When do you cross the line from respect to honor to veneration to
worship?
The fact is, many traditions have entered Judaism as folk practices,
discouraged or denounced by rabbinic authorities–from lighting Hanukkah
candles to the Kol Nidrei prayer. Perhaps
kissing the Torah found its way into our practice as a folk tradition–a
tradition of the people. It's a physical way of
showing reverence and awe, but one not necessarily based on the bedrock Jewish
principle of rejecting idolatry. Interestingly, many
traditional authorities are troubled by the same concerns and proscribe kissing
the Torah, or wish to see the practice limited to young children.
Of course we want to honor the Torah for the sacred texts it contains,
including God’s name. At the same time, it is
vital to remember that the holiness we cherish lies in the content–the
wisdom, the stories, the laws–and not in the vessel.
I still reach out my tallis to touch
the Torah and kiss it but, thanks to my congregant, it is now accompanied by a
conscious reminder to myself of just how easy it could
be to slip into idolatry.
Of Love and
Torah
I don’t share Rabbi
Waxman’s ambivalence about whether kissing the Torah smacks of the
very idolatry Judaism has always been so vigilant against. I
think of it more like kissing a love letter: a physical expression of a passion
for the writer, in this case God.
Idolatry
is when something takes the place of God as Number One on our priority list. We may have many idolatrous relationships in our lives:
with our credit cards, our stock portfolios, our jobs, our looks, our
electronic toys, all sorts of things we give higher priority to in our lives
than to God. But when we show reverence
for the Torah, we are directing our attention to the One who is the reason
why we are here as Jews in the first place.
That is why kissing the Torah is not idolatry in my book: because the Torah is
not a substitute for God. It is what God has left us
with. Therefore, it represents the closest most of us
can come to “hearing” God’s voice in our lives.
If you have ever lost a loved one, you may know what I mean. There
is power in my holding the sweater my late mother wore and breathing in her
perfume one more time, or seeing her handwriting on a letter she sent me. Touching these things brings her closer to me. L’havdil (to make a
distinction), this is how kissing and hugging the Torah works for me: it is an
expression of my love for God. All we can do is hold
what God has left us, this Scroll with its ancient words, dressed in a way that
shows our respect and reverence. That is also why
hugging the Torah and dancing with it this weekend on Simhat Torah
is such an act of true spirituality and piety.
Perhaps we would be a stronger Jewish community if more of us made an effort to
leave our credit cards and computers alone one day of the week and made more of
an effort to kiss the Torah more regularly.
C'mon, Get Real
Idolatry
as “Bad habits,” “addictions,” “kissing Torah
scrolls”: Weren’t these the kind of things pulpit rabbis spoke
about in the 1950s on Shabbat when they couldn’t think of anything else
to talk about?
Both Rabbi
Waxman and Rabbi
Grossman fail to address the searing social and religious issues regarding
idolatry and Torah today.
As I have written elsewhere,
the issue of idolatry is at the center of what some have called the clash of
civilizations. If we look back and remember the first
time most of us heard about the Taliban, it was not on Sept. 12, 2001, but a
few months before that, in March 2001, when they decided to blow up ancient
statues of the Buddha, claiming that the images where idolatrous.
Truth be told, the greatest idolatry being perpetrated today is by those who
have substituted finite religious text for an infinite God. The
extreme elements within Islam and Christianity (and some religious Zionists in
God’s fixed word has in some sense taken the place of God’s
infinite being. Idolatry is when one confuses a
partial truth for a whole truth, or when one makes a relative into an absolute. As the 18th-century thinker Moses
Mendelssohn argued in his book, "Jerusalem,"
God gave Judaism an oral law in order to act as bulwark against the idolatry of
text. What these groups fail to realize is the
ultimate infinity of God’s being. The struggle
each of us engages in every day is keeping that infinity present.
These radical elements of religion, especially in Islam, wish to engender an
absolute rule over all of humanity, forcing all to obey their reading of sacred
text. This tyranny has now moved beyond politics and
is infecting culture.
Whether it's Muslim cab drivers
in Minnesota who refuse to take passengers carrying liquor, or Muslims in
What is most ironic is that it is those who are screaming against idolatry are
its greatest practitioners. What is child sacrifice if
not a suicide bomber?
In Judaism, the term for idolatry is avodah
zarah, which literally means a strange worship of
God. It does not mean a denial of God, but rather
serving God in an abnormal way. In other words,
although one's intention may have a grain of truth, the mode of practice is all
wrong and confused.
What all idolaters have in common is that they are religiously intoxicated
human beings. They want to become closer to God; unfortunately what they forget is that they, like all of us,
will never truly know God.
Mitzvah/Tzedakkah Opportunties
Congregant
Seeks Sitter
The Annulli
family of our congregation is seeking a babysitter, preferably someone who can
drive,
Definitely
non-smoking. For more
information, contact Richard Annuli directly, at mrdrannulli2@yahoo.com
Beth El Cares
Cathy Satz (968-9191; csscounsel@yahoo.com)Cheryl Wolff (968-6361; cwolff@optonline.net)BETH EL CARES co-chairs
HABITAT FOR HUMANITY VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
Habitat
for Humanity is recruiting volunteers to assist with the planning and building
of 6 to 9 housing units on West Main Street in Stamford (near the Kentucky
Fried Chicken). The actual timing of the building
depends on site plan and other approvals, but the ceremonial ground
breaking should take place in October 2006. Please contact bknebal@habitatcfc.org if
you want to help in any way. Assistance is needed now
in the formation stages, as well as later with the building. Bob
Knebel, CEO, can tell you what jobs are available.
LOCKS OF LOVE HAIR DONATIONS CONTINUED
Any
one wishing to donate 10 or more inches of hair to Locks of Love can contact
Cathy or Cheryl for more information on how to donate and how to get your
before and after photo on the TBE web sit
Cheryl
Wolff
Cathy
Satz
What
is “Flexidox?”
(from the Forward)
Old
Labels Feel Stiff for ‘Flexidox’
When I was growing up, in the Conservative movement, Jews
were defined by the synagogues they attended, and the movements to which they
belonged. We were all Jews, to be sure, but that bond
was less strong than the loyalties of denomination. We
were the USY team; they were the NFTY team. (I grew up
in central
Now, as studies have shown, all that is changing, at least
for younger Jews in metropolitan centers like
Some of these Jews say: Call us flexidox. What does that mean?
“Orthodox in spirit and flexible in practice,”
says one self-identified flexidox Jew.
“More concerned for the spirit than the letter of the
law,” offers another.
“Culturally Orthodox,”
according to a third.
By those definitions, there have been millions of flexidox Jews over the centuries. But
there is more to the story than that — there’s something new, and
interesting, going on here. Flexidoxy
is a kind of anti-label, a postmodern category that simultaneously mirrors and
subverts the usual structures of Jewish ideology. It
is both very old and very new, questioning the denominational structure of
mainstream Judaism.
The first known use of the word “flexidoxy”
was in 2003 by Rabbi Gershon Winkler, who called it a
corrective to Orthodoxy, “reflecting its original intent and spirit as
opposed to its otherwise superficial extremities.” For
Winkler, whose own journey from ultra-Orthodoxy to flexidoxy
was described in his memoir “Travels with the Evil Inclination”
(North Atlantic Books, 2004), flexidoxy is the belief
“that you can do Jewish right by following the forms of Judaism” as
traditionally understood, or by following different forms, such as “the
fledgling version of it offered by those Hebrews who preceded Moses.”
As is often the case with neologisms, however, the term
eventually came to mean something different — and less radical. Esther Kustanowitz, a columnist
who writes frequently on the Jewish community, says that
“a lot of flexidox Jews are people who would
otherwise be called Conservadox, but they don’t
like the ‘Conserva’ part since it’s
an ideology that they may find distasteful.”
The flexidox Jews I spoke to
agreed. Yocheved Amrami, for example, grew up within the Chabad-Lubavitch
world but now says “flexidoxy feels appropriate
to where I am in my yiddishkeit.”
She demurred from the “Conservadox”
label. “I am Orthodox and feel deeply committed
to tradition and remaining in a relationship with it,” she said,
“but I don’t want its laws and rules to dictate my life.”
This is where flexidoxy becomes
more interesting. How could you possibly have
Orthodoxy without all the laws and rules? And
what’s the difference between that and, say, Conservative Judaism?
For Amrami, the difference is in
ideology — or the lack thereof.
“Conservative Jews spend most of their time
rationalizing why they are right, or why the law has been read wrong. I’m more interested in valuing my tradition, and my
Orthodox upbringing, moving it forward and making it work for me. It’s Orthodoxy without the guilt.”
This is why I find the term appealing myself. Unlike Amrami, I did not come
from an Orthodox background. But I became disenchanted
with the Conservative movement as soon as I started getting interested in
Judaism. When, as a teenager, I sought a community of
Conservative, commandment-keeping Jews, I found it just didn’t exist, at
least not where I grew up. Conservative Judaism felt
like a salad bar, all about picking and choosing — and most just chose to
leave.
So I left too, taking on Orthodox halachic
practice in my 20s. I liked that it worked as a
system, and that it was “trans-subjective” — that it
contained my preferences, rather than catered to them, hearkening back to an
imperative that transcended humanity. Most of all, it
was coherent, and it worked. The people at synagogue
cared more, and the people at my Shabbat dinner table sang more. They even knew the words by heart.
But I never bought into Orthodox ideology, or how I had to
either pretend that biblical criticism, astronomy and evolution didn’t
exist, or somehow “interpret” the Torah in order to make room for
them. And gradually, I came to see that Orthodox
values weren’t “trans-subjective” — they were just the
results of other people’s subjectivity. And
those people had no understanding of my life, my spirituality or my sexuality,
and didn’t want to gain any.
At the same time, the Conservative movement, with its countless social structures