November 10, 2006 –
Heshvan 20, 5767
Join your fellow community members and volunteer on Super Sunday,
(UJF's community phone-a-thon)
on December 3, 2006.
22nd ANNUAL
HAROLD E. HOFFMAN MEMORIAL LECTURE
Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 8:00 p.m.
Guest Speaker:
Peter Bergen
Best-selling author and terrorism analyst for CNN
Topic: Osama
bin Laden,
History’s Most Successful Terrorist, and Al Qaeda
Check our website at www.tbe.org for super photos of our spectacular
TBE Sukkah
and mp3 and text files of the
High Holidays sermons.
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.”
Contents
of the Shabbat O Gram:
(Click
to scroll down)
Just
the Facts (service schedule)
The Beth El Bar/Bat Mitzvah Commentary
(new)
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
"Perhaps the most striking feature
of the story of Ishamael and Issac is its balance:
Neither son is a pure victor, or a pure
loser."
Bruce Feiler,
from his best-selling book “Abraham”
Sat. Night at 8:00
– The Best of Israeli Cinema
“THE SYRIAN
BRIDE”
This Sunday Morning: 7th Grade
family program
Friday Evening
Candle
lighting: 4:30 pm pm on Friday, 4
November 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 Evening service:
7:30 PM– in the sanctuary (note later time on second week of the
month).
Shabbat
Morning: 9:30 AM– on Shabbat, we celebrate the Bat Mitzvah of Ilana
Springer. Mazal tov to her and to
her parents Fred and Eileen Springer!
Children’s services: 10:30 AM – (jr.
congregation service in the chapel, Tot Shabbat morning downstairs. 6th
and 7th graders are expected to be in the main sanctuary)
As
part of Ilana Springer’s Mitzvah Project, during this week’s service
we will be privileged to have a presentation during the service called
“No Hate But Harmony.”
Here
is some background information on the program from its director, Jimmy Locust:
No Hate But Harmony, Working
To Make Honor An Epidemic
Jimmy Locust
Founding Director
Our Torah
Reading for Shabbat Morning
Genesis 18:1 - 22:24 – The Abraham Saga Continues…
1: 21:1-4
2: 21:5-13
3: 21:14-21
4: 21:22-34
5: 22:1-8
6: 22:9-19
7: 22:20-24
maf: 22:20-24
Haftarah II Kings 4:1 - 4:37
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://www.jtsa.edu/community/parashah/.
USCJ Torah
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!
A guaranteed minyan request has been made for
this Sunday, Nov. 12.
Please sign up at the Rosner Minyan Maker at www.tbe.org
The Beth El Bar/Bat Mitzvah Commentary
This week we introduce a new feature to
the Shabbat-O-Gram: the weekly portion as interpreted by our own resident Torah
scholars, our B’nai Mitzvah.
This feature carries over my High Holidays theme of including some of
the best speeches heard on our pulpit over the years. If you would like to have your
d’var Torah considered for this space, please send it along (even if it
was delivered many years ago – Torah is timeless). Check any Jewish calendar (or http://www.hebcal.com) to find out when your
portion is coming up.
This week’s d’var Torah for
the portion Vayera was delivered not long ago – in fact, just last
Shabbat afternoon (when we read the upcoming week’s portion), by Jake
Levensohn. Enjoy!
Parashat Vayera
– Jake Levensohn (2006)
Those
of you who know me know that I have a very loud hobby. I play the drums. I’ve loved the drums for the past
six years or so. It all started
when my Nana Linda got me a junior drum set for my birthday. I immediately started just banging on it
and realized quickly just how much I love playing the drums. As the years progressed, I realized that
I have a natural talent and saw that I could use this talent in many different
ways.
Currently,
I have my own rock band with my friends and I play the drums in my school
band.. I have a drum set at home
and I play it every day and occasionally give my family a real headache.
I’ve
come to appreciate some of the finer points of my chosen instrument. I feel that drums are underestimated in
terms of their importance to a band or orchestra. Without the drums, the 1812 Overture
would sound like the music on a merry go round. And imagine the Beatles without Ringo.
Also,
people don’t appreciate how much goes into learning how to play the
drums. It takes a lot of work and
practice. It’s not a matter
of hitting something with a stick.
In a band, my responsibility as a drummer is to keep the beat, while
playing 5 to different variations of beats in a single song. If I don’t do my job right, the
song falls apart.
Another
thing is that each element of the drum set, from the bass drum all the way to
the symbols, makes a different sound.
They all blend together in some unique way. Some people might not think of it as
“music,” but without drums, music just wouldn’t be the same.
I’ve
discovered that in many ways, playing drums is just like being Jewish. For one thing, for a group that makes up
such a tiny percentage of the population, we Jews make a lot of noise. Like the drum, Jews have been underestimated. There are only 13 million Jews in the
world, but we’ve earned more than our fair share of Nobel prizes, and
Jews have always been among the world’s most famous journalists,
filmmakers, scientists, and government leaders.
And
of course, not only have we made a mark on the arts and sciences most
importantly, baseball! Among the
most famous Jewish baseball players have been Shawn Green, Sandy Koufax, Moe
Berg, and most importantly for any Red Sox fan like myself, Kevin Youkilis.
It’s
not easy being a Jew. Like the
drums, it takes a lot of work and practice to be a Jew and especially preparing
for my Bar Mitzvah. And
finally, just as there are all different kinds of drums, there are all
different kinds of Jews.
My
portion teaches us about the first Jew, Abraham, who was a drumbeat of
conscience in his day. When the
cities of
If
only they had found a turkey caught in the bushes. Then they would have sacrificed it, and
since a turkey has drumsticks, we would play the drums on Rosh Hashanah instead
of the shofar.
Another
way we can make noise in the world is to give support to those in need. For my mitzvah project, through an
organization called AMIT, I am donating money to help an underprivileged
Israeli boy to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah.
His name is Maxim. I wrote to him recently.
And
so I hope you can now see that my very loud hobby has given me special training
on how, as I become a Bar Mitzvah, I might make a very loud impact on the
world.
The
(occasionally)
The Elections
We’ve
been at the eye of a national storm here in
This
is to say nothing against their opponents.
I had the privilege of having breakfast with Diane Farrell a few months
ago, at her invitation, and I was very impressed. I know that she would also have
represented us with integrity, and possibly with more clout in a Democratic
congress. But I have seen the
growth in Chris Shays over the years, have always admired his passion, humility
and humanity and I know that he of all people is suited to play a central role
as a centrist in reaching across the aisle.
Ultimately,
with all the issues at stake this year, no candidate offered solutions to our
greatest concerns regarding security and the instability of our world. The prospect of Iranian nukes is not
just an existential threat to
Some articles to check re. Jewish
perspectives on the elections:
Dems:
Aipac Needs To Mend Fences (the Forward) As Democrats prepare to take
control of Congress, they are quietly saying that the pro-Israel lobby needs to
“do some work” to improve relations with their party. Read
more
- Polls:
Democrats Score Big Win With Jewish Voters (the Forward)
- Democrats,
Jewish Candidates Score Big Victories (the
Forward)
Letting The Bidding War For Joe Begin - http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13250
(The Jewish Week) After being
written off, the independent-minded
For all you
movie buffs,
here is an
interesting piece that came out of Beliefnet this past week.
Virtual
Talmud: Borat & the Politics of Jewish Humor
Synaplex: What
You Had to Say
Two weeks ago, our congregation entered
a new era – and people seem to like it. Our wildly successful first Synaplex
Shabbat elicited wildly enthusiastic responses. The idea of Synaplex was to change the
paradigm of how we do things – to re-imagine Shabbat,” as our logo
said, but beyond that, to re-imagine lots of other things as well: community
building, volunteer development, marketing, membership, spiritual and
intellectual growth, individual choice, and appealing to the specific needs of
each of our demographic groups.
For the first time ever, we conducted an
online survey. Over 100 responses
gave us a good indication of how the 600 + people who attended on Friday and
Saturday felt about the weekend. In
what must be a first for any synagogue anywhere, no one marked either of the
two “dissatisfied” options in filling out the form. In fact, 95% chose either “very
satisfied” or “satisfied” (with 66% being “very
satisfied.”) The results for
each individual activity were equally positive, and our variety of services
attracted large followings, ranging from the family learner’s service
(well over 100 people) to the meditative service (40+ people) and yoga (also
40) to our tot and teen services (when’s the last time we had over a
dozen teens leading their own service on a Shabbat morning?) and to our traditional
service as well (a packed chapel).
This followed Friday night’s Shabbat Unplugged that was filled
with positive energy and the sit-down oneg that was filled with warmth, all
with nearly 300 in attendance.
Some other survey results worth noting: it
is no surprise that, even with our variety of religious options, a number of
people came for reasons that were more social or intellectual than spiritual in
nature. So hundreds of people were
in synagogue on a Shabbat who would clearly have been elsewhere had it not been
for Synaplex. Nearly half the
respondents indicated that they attend services very infrequently. So we’ve reached well beyond the
“core” of active congregants to engage those less involved, which
was a major goal. We reached a
number of non-members as well, though that could not be accurately measured
since the survey only went out to our congregant e-mail list. And dozens signed up to volunteer at
future Synaplex Shabbats – this after we sent out a hundred thank-you
letters to those who volunteered at the last one. Indeed, the paradigm has been changed.
I’ve thanked our committee and
co-chairs and donors already. Now I
want to thank you the congregants of
TBE, who have started something here that won’t just change our
congregation for the better, it will have a significant impact on the Jewish
future everywhere. The ripple
effect is already being felt. I
hope you will mark all our future Synaplex Shabbats on your calendar, with the
next one being Friday night, Dec. 8.
Here are some of the comments that were
shared by respondents to the survey:
Yes, the reviews are in. Synaplex is
“My entire family was impressed with the entire weekend. There
was not only programming that was of interest to all of us, there were events
that brought us closer together as a family as well as to other
congregants.”
“I was especially pleased to see the smiles of the attendees, and
the enthusiasm of the kids. This "mood" appeared throughout the day.
As for me personally, as a TBE elder I really loved Dan's Meditation session.
He brings a special dimension of Judaism to us which we don't really have
"in house." And Matt, even tho we couldn't do the bike ride, I very
much liked your special handout.”
“Extremely stimulating-Very content laden and, at times,
inspirational. Great feeling of community.”
“WONDERFUL! IT WAS AN UPLIFTING AND AWESOME WEEKEND! THE VARIETY
OF INTERESTING ACTIVITIES WAS A HUGE SUCCESS!”
“Lovely environment, great to see so many children participate,
nice variety of learning and programming”
“Synaplex was a spiritually uplifting, and exciting experience.
It was a wonderful way to spend Shabbat with family and friends”
“It was a sensational weekend!”
Mitzvah/Tzedakkah
Opportunties
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
Why is this
month called “Bitter Heshvan?”
This is the month of Heshvan, the second
month in the Jewish calendar. It is
also called “mar-Heshvan,” or bitter Heshvan, because, according to
tradition, it is the only month without holidays or fast days. I guess the rabbis didn’t count
Veterans Day, Election Day or Thanksgiving. In fact, now, this month does have two
sad Jewish commemorations, including Krystallnacht (today and yesterday) and
the anniversary of the Rabin assassination.
Now
a movement is afoot to transform the meaning of this month entirely. See http://www.socialaction.com/education_resources/weekly_torah/bereshit_genesis/noah/Noah_Jerusalem_SAM.shtml
for a d’var Torah by Yossi Abramowitz on the portion of Noah, from I take
this excerpt:
In the month
of Tishrei, which begins with Rosh Hashana, we pursue tikkim pnimi, internal fixing, aligning our values and
intensions. If we are lucky, we emerge as clean and righteous as Noah, with
renewed life in an uncertain age. But is that really good enough?
This year
Heshvan, Noah and a global effort to step up social justice are destined for
each other. According to tradition, the rain began on the 17th day of Heshvan,
and the door to the arc finally sprung open a year later, on the 27th of
Heshvan. Heshvan is the month recently endorsed by the Knesset as Jewish Social
Action Month, and Deputy Minister Rabbi Michael Melchior, on behalf of the
Government and people of Israel, has been amplifying the call for Jews
everywhere to jump-start our pro-active, post-Noah activity and go out to heal
the world, linking our tikkum pnimi
with tikkun olam. Let’s
just say endorsements are flooding in. (see SocialAction.com and Cheshvan.org
)
Having the
call to social action begin in
Also see this article on the
subject from the
So now, we need to join the
push of Social Activism to turn this month of bitterness into a month of
world-repair. Maybe a day is in
sight when Heshvan – and the world – will be bitter no more.