and…
December 15, 2006 –
Kislev 25, 5767
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A HANUKKAH CELEBRATION FOR EVERYONE!!!!
THIS SUNDAY AT 10:45 am
Please join TBE
for our Annual
Chanukah
Celebration
Featuring:
Creative Chanukiah Contest
Chanukah Candle Lighting
Dreidel Spinning Contest
Junior and Senior Choir Performances
Delicious Jelly Donuts and Latkes
December 17th 10:45 am
In the Social Hall
(Hebrew School
students will already be here – Parents, please plan go straight to the
sanctuary at 10:45
Day School
students’ Semi- Final Dreidel Contest Spin-offs
will take place in the Social Hall at 10:30 AM)
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Guests at the home of Wil
Brewer before the TBE Murder Mystery |
Check out www.tbe.org for
our extensive library of photo
albums,
articles, sermons, info about
the temple,
Shabbat-O-Grams and links to
the Jewish world.
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
(From
Koach e-zine)
1.
Christmas is one day, same day every year: December 25. Jews
also love December 25th. It's another paid day off
work. We go to movies and out for Chinese food and
Israeli dancing. Hanukkah is 8 days. It starts the evening of the 24th of Kislev, whenever that
falls. No one is ever sure. Jews
never know until a non-Jewish friend asks when Hanukkah starts, forcing
us to consult a calendar so we don't look like idiots. We
all have the same calendar, provided free with a donation to either the World
Jewish Congress, the kosher butcher or the local Sinai Memorial Chapel
(especially in Florida) or other Jewish funeral home.
2.
Christmas is a major holiday. Hanukkah is a
minor holiday with the same theme as most Jewish holidays. They
tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat.
3.
Christmas is a time of great gift-giving pressure. People
expect special gifts. Jews are relieved of that burden. No one expects a diamond ring on Hanukkah.
4.
Christmas brings enormous electric bills. Candles are
used for Hanukkah. Not only are we spared
enormous electric bills, but we get to feel good about
not
contributing to the energy crisis.
5.
Christmas carols are beautiful. Silent Night, Come O
Ye Faithful.... Hanukkah songs are about dreidels made from clay or having a party and dancing the horah. Of course, we are
secretly pleased that many of the beautiful carols were composed and written by
our tribal brethren. And don't Barbara Streisand and
Neil Diamond sing them beautifully?
6.
People have fun baking Christmas cookies. People burn
their eyes and cut their hands grating potatoes and onions for latkes on
Hanukkah. Another reminder of our suffering through
the ages.
7.
The players in the Christmas story have easy to pronounce names such as Mary,
Joseph, and Jesus. The players in the Hanukkah
story are
8.
In recent years, Christmas has become more and more commercialized. The same holds true for Hanukkah, even though it is
a minor holiday. It makes sense. How
could we market a major holiday such as Yom Kippur? Forget
about celebrating. Think observing. Come
to synagogue, starve yourself for 27 hours, become one with your dehydrated
soul, beat your chest, confess your sins, a guaranteed good time for you and
your family. Tickets a mere $200 per person.
Better stick with Hanukkah!
Friday
Evening
Candle lighting: 4:09 pm on Friday, 15
December 2006. For candle lighting times, Havdalah 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/
Hanukkah
Light Hanukkah candles
first, before Shabbat candles
Click here
for instructions on how to light Hanukkah candles
Shabbat Evening service:
6:30 PM – in the chapel
Tot Shabbat: 6:45
– in the LOBBY (SPECIAL HANUKKAH SNACK!)
Shabbat Morning: 9:30 AM– on Shabbat, we celebrate
the Bat Mitzvah of Samantha Wise. Mazal
tov to Samantha and to her parents Lisa and Steve!
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)
Our Torah Reading
for Shabbat Morning
Genesis 37:1 - 40:23– The Joseph story begins
1: 39:1-6
2: 39:7-10
3: 39:11-18
4: 39:19-23
5: 40:1-8
6: 40:9-15
7: 40:16-23
maf: Numbers 7:1-17 (for Hanukkah)
Haftarah: Shabbat Chanukah / Zechariah 2:14-4:7)
If you liked
Storahtelling, you’ll LOVE Storahtelling’s
new weekly blog about the Torah portion Find it at http://storahtelling.blogspot.com/. ORT
Navigating the Bible; Rashi
in English; BibleGateway:
Useful for comparing different translations: Note- this is a Christian site.
What’s
Bothering Rashi (Bonchek) Each week, one example
from the parashah is deconstructed.
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 http://www.mechon-mamre.org/
100
Blessings: Download information about the grace
after meals (see Birkat Ha-mazon
explained in Wikipedia and in the Jewish
Virtual Library)
The actual prayer can be downloaded at Birkat
Hamazon [pdf]
Morning Minyan
7:30 Weekdays, 9:30 Sundays
We’ve had Guaranteed
Minyan requests for yahrzeits on Sundays, December 17
and 24. If you can make it, please
take a moment to sign up at the Rosner Minyan Maker at www.tbe.org.
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
The Beth El Bar/Bat Mitzvah
Commentary
Doug
Weisman’s Commentary of December 9: Parshat Va-Yishlach
Those who know
me know me, know that I love to snowboard more than
just about anything else. I’ve
been doing it since I was seven.
The first time I did it I was at
In my portion,
Jacob twice had to overcome fear, just like I
did. The dangers he faced, though,
were very different from sliding on a snowboard, and he responded in different
ways.
Before he met
Esau, he was terrified that his brother would kill him and his family. In verse 32:8, the Hebrew says that
Jacob was “greatly frightened” and then it adds “and
anxious.” One commentator
said that Jacob was frightened that Esau would harm his family, and that he was
anxious that he might harm Esau in return.
But the key here is that Jacob was able to overcome his fears and come
up with a plan. First, he divided
his family into two camps; then he sent gifts to his brother, and then he also prepared for battle, just in case. It’s OK to be afraid, as long as
you can make calm decisions and be able to plan ways to overcome the danger.
Overcoming fear
is also important when you are dealing with injuries and wipeouts. Once when I was snowboarding, I was
hot-dogging – standing up with one foot in the buckle. Then
the snowboard slipped and my ankle twisted. It was very painful. But I was back
on my snowboard five minutes later.
I’ve had a
number of crashes. Once I hit some
ice with my knees and began sliding down the mountain. I was trying to grab onto the snow. But instead of
panicking, I just tried to think of ways to dig my snowboard into the
snow. It worked, and my dad came a
few minutes later.
The night before
Jacob went to meet up with Esau, he had a strange wrestling match with an
unidentified being – a man or an angel. It lasted until dawn. It’s interesting that the river he
crossed at that time was the Yabok, and his name was Ya’akov – both come from the Hebrew word that means
“to struggle.” Then,
during the fight, Jacob was injured and begin to
limp. He still
prevailed and was given the new name “
Snowboarding is
a risky thing – much like God wrestling. But sometimes
you have to take the leap into the unknown – as long as you are careful
not to be too risky. By doing
something like snowboarding - or fighting an angel – we
learn how to overcome our fears.
Snowboarding has
helped me to do that – I’m not afraid of heights (it’s REALLY high
up). I’m not afraid of
falling – we all fall down at times (whether on the slopes, or at
school… or in life). And I’m not afraid of getting hurt. Just like Jacob, whose hip socket was
injured, you have to be able to shake it off.
Come to think of
it, Jacob would have made a cool extreme athlete.
And come to think of it – becoming Bar Mitzvah could be a cool
extreme sport. It’s hard, you
need lots of practice and
determination to succeed, and we wear this cool protective crash helmet (point to yarmulke). And most of all, like becoming bar
mitzvah, Snowboarding really makes me feel alive.
Saving lives is
also the purpose behind my mitzvah project, Pups for Peace. This organization trains dogs in
The
(occasionally)
A Crossroads for
Conservative Judaism
The landmark responsa on are now available for all to read on the
Rabbinical Assembly website. http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/law/new_teshuvot.html
They are lengthy
and quite technical in places, but we will have ample opportunity to discuss
them over the coming months.
Information
about the Law Committee and the Current Papers
A
Brief History of the CJLS
"The
CJLS and Multiple Opinions" by Rabbi David Fine
"Thoughts
on the CJLS Teshuvot on Homosexuality" by Rabbi Perry Rank
Teshuvot on Homosexuality:
"Homosexuality
Revisited" by Rabbi Joel Roth
"Homosexuality,
Human Dignity and Halakhah" by Rabbis Elliot Dorff, Daniel Nevins and Avram Reisner
"A
New Context: The Halakhah of Same-Sex Relations"
by Rabbis Myron Geller, Robert Fine and David Fine
"Same-Sex
Attraction and Halakhah" by Rabbi Leonard Levy
"A
Concurring Opinion to Rabbi Leonard Levy's Teshuvah, 'Same-Sex Attraction and Halakhah'" by Rabbi Loel
Weiss
"Halakhic
and Metahalakhic Arguments Concerning Judaism and
Homosexuality" by Rabbi Gordon Tucker
The first two
Teshuvot are the ones of greatest importance here. Both passed with a majority of 13 of the
25 Law Committee votes and they reflect opposite positions.
Here is my
column in this week’s Jewish Week: http://www.thejewishweek.com/top/editletcontent.php3?artid=5577
|
Gay Vote Reflects
‘Passionate Centrism’ |
|
Rabbi Joshua Hammerman |
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Conservative Judaism is taking a beating from friends and
foes alike for the confusing nature of last Wednesday’s decision by the
movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. As
a Conservative rabbi and vocal supporter of gay rights, I’ve fielded
the pleas of exasperated congregants begging for just a little bit of clarity. How is it possible, they ask, for the committee to adopt
two diametrically opposing positions, both by a majority vote? That result required some people to have voted for in
favor of each. It’s the equivalent of voting for
Bush and Gore, with or without the butterfly ballot. |