March 16, 2007– Adar
27, 5767
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.”
THIS SUNDAY!!!!!
JOIN US AS HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE COME TOGETHER TO CELEBRATE THE
MUSICAL TALENTS OF OUR LOCAL CANTORS, INCLUDING OUR OWN, CANTOR RACHAEL LITTMAN
Contents
of the Shabbat O Gram:
(Click
to scroll down)
Just
the Facts (service schedule)
The (Occasionally) Ranting Rabbi
Mitzvah/Tzedakkah Opportunities
The
Beth El Bar/Bat Mitzvah Commentary (new)
Required Reading and Action Items (links
to key articles on Israel and Jewish life)
Announcements (goings on in and around
TBE)
TBE’s Teens
Puttin’ their Heads Together!
See more pics at our new USY
website:
A special thank you to USY’s Communications VP,
Danielle
Shapiro, for designing the lovely site!
And of
course…
Check out www.tbe.org for Purim photos,
plus our
extensive library of photo albums,
articles, sermons, info about
the temple,
Shabbat-O-Grams and links to
the Jewish world.
Quote for the Week
An Interfaith Prayer for
this season
from the Interfaith Council
of
Lord God,
I know that my life has consequences,
that the things I say and do and think have
consequences,
that my actual sins have consequences,
even those things I wrongly suppose to be sin
have consequences.
And yet somehow I
also know
that your love is unconditional,
and that only such love can empower us
to live together without violence.
When we know that God loves us deeply
and will always go on loving us,
whoever we are and whatever we have done,
it becomes possible
to expect no more of our fellow men and women
than they are able to give,
to forgive them generously
when they have offended us,
and to respond to their hostility with love.
By doing so we make visible a new way
of being human
and and a new way of responding to
our worlds problems.
Candle lighting: 6:44 pm on Friday, 16 March
2007. 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/. The United Synagogue has updated its candlelighting information. To learn more, click here.
Friday Evening:
Kabbalat Shabbat: 6:30 PM
– in the chapel
Tot Shabbat: 6:45 PM –
in the lobby
Shabbat Morning:
Service begins at 9:30 AM
Mazal Tov to
Spencer evans, WHO BECOMES bAr MITZVAH THIS SHABBAT MORNING! MAZAL TOV ALSO TO JILL ROTHKOPF AND
JONATHAN STEINBERG, WHOSE UFRUF WILL BE CELEBRATED THIS SHABBAT MORNING!
Children’s
Services: 10:30 AM
Shabbat
Mincha-Ma’ariv-Havdalah: 6:15 PM –
MAZAL TOV TO MELINDA (LINDY) FRUITHANDLER,
WHO BECOMES BAT MITZVAH THIS SHABBAT AFTERNOON!
Our Torah Portion
for Shabbat Morning
Parashat Vayakhel-Pekuday – Shabbat Hahodesh
פרשת ויקהל־פקודי
1: 39:22-26
2: 39:27-32
3: 39:33-43
4: 40:1-8
5: 40:9-16
6: 40:17-27
7: 40:28-38
Maftir: Exodus 12:1 - 12:20
(special maftir)
Haftarah (Shabbat ha-Hodesh): Ezekiel 45:16 - 46:18
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
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!
The
(occasionally)
Warm Thoughts
for the Start of Spring
A late
winter snow and ice storm are on our doorstep, but so is spring, which begins this
coming Tuesday, on PRECISELY THE SAME DAY that the Jewish month of Spring begins.
It is now called Nisan, but in the Torah it was
“Hodesh ha’Aviv”
literally, “the Month of Spring.” How odd the coincidence! This Shabbat is Shabbat-ha’Hodesh, which always precedes the beginning of
Nisan, indicating to us that the festival of spring, Passover, is just a couple
of weeks away.
This
Shabbat we also read the portion Va’yakhel,
which describes the construction of the tabernacle in the Wilderness. It was from this sacred work that the
rabbis later defined the 39 categories of work prohibited on Shabbat. Find them here. (for more on the 39 categories and on
Shabbat in general, see http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/About_Jewish_Holidays/Overview_Shabbat/Rest_and_renewal.htm,
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/daily_life/Shabbat/Shabbat_Themes_and_Theology/Observing_Shabbat_GL.htm,
http://www.ou.org/chagim/shabbat/thirtynine.htm)
And so, some springy thoughts….
The
environmentalist Bill McKibben has said, “…the constant pauses of
observance – to say blessings, to touch a mezuzah and especially to
observe the Sabbath – are of profound importance in making people aware
of the world around them. We waste
the earth because we never stop to think or notice what we are doing.”
It is said that everyone should recite 100 blessings each day. To do that we have to
be constantly on the lookout for things to be in awe about, or to be grateful
for. Some are automatic ---
but many are not. Some Jewish
mystic traditions assert that when we make a blessing, changes actually occur
in the object that we bless. For one
thing, the object no longer is a thing to us – but a sacred
encounter. And even if it
doesn’t change the object, for certain, saying the blessing changes us.
So on this special Shabbat where we ponder the gift of spring and
the gift of Shabbat itself, let us pause a little bit more, and sense the
holiness around us.
Happy Aviv!
Thank You to
Our Purim Volunteers
With
Passover just a few weeks away, time for one last look back at Purim. Our carnival was once again a smash hit,
thanks in large part to Eran Vaisben and Edoe Cohen, along with Youth
Commission members Joan Katz, Mara Hammerman, Sharon Goldstein and co-chairs
Carl Shapiro and Roz Rubin. Roz has
put together a list of the adults and teens who volunteered to help make the
night such a success. We want to
thank them all (and see them in action in the photos on our website, www.tbe.org)! As always, there is risk of leaving
someone out or spelling a name incorrectly, for which we apologize. Here is Roz’ list as of today:
Adult
Volunteers:
Beth Finchler
Maureen Leffand
Susan Plotzky
Jeannie Kasindorf
Ellen Gordon
Mark Plotzky
Bruce Goldstein
Lisa Pomerance
Jill Knopoff
Barbara Cohen
Harvey Cohen
Linda Braun
Karen Resnick
Cathy Bernstein
Stacy Cooper
Kathy Freund
Renee Cannella
Larry Katz
Steve Katz
Stuart Nekritz
Stacye Nekritz
Kids:
Mitchell Shapiro
Allison Schechter
Harrison Shapiro
Adam Pollack
Ethan Hammerman
Randi Braun
Joelle Braun
Ali Pomerance
Arielle Poser
Alex Rosenberg
Dana Katz
Ian Cohen
David Katz
Matt Zielinsky
Jacob Cohen
Adam Satz
Peri
Shapiro
Morgan Temple
Jackie Schechter
Aliya Boyer
Brandon Pomerance
Kyle Tuckman
Daniel Hammerman
Dana Gordon
Lauren Tuckman
Michael Sosnick
Alana Kasindorf
Oliver Sabloff
Amitan Rubin
Ben Rathman
Lauren Pollack
Emilie Pollack
Mollie Steinmetz