March 23, 2007–
Nisan 5, 5767
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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
Required Reading and Action Items (links
to key articles on Israel and Jewish life)
Announcements (goings on in and around
TBE)
See photos of our TBE teens at
our new USY
website:
A Bravura Performance!
Check out www.tbe.org for more photos from last
week’s scintillating Cantors’ Concert,
Plus Purim photos, Passover
downloads, April’s Synaplex Schedule
and 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
From Avraham Infeld, this week’s Community Scholar in
Residence
I run summer camps for
about 2,000 16-year old Israeli and American kids every summer. There I am, one
Sunday morning with 150 handpicked Israeli teenagers. Yuppies. The 300 Jewish
American kids arrive and I watch them all walk into the dining room together. I
cannot tell who is who, they all look the same-wearing jeans, T-shirts, Nikes,
Reeboks, and pierced body parts.
The Americans are from NFTY, the youth division of
the Reform movement, and at the end of the meal, the American rabbi gets up and
says - 'Alright kids, the birkat .' What we call birkat hamazon (prayer
after meals). The American kids sing the birkat in Hebrew, in beautiful
harmony. The Israeli kids sat there in total shock. They had never seen it,
they had never heard it. They had no idea what it was. They had no idea what it
was good for.
And they
were the only ones who understood it!
Mark your calendar for something very special:
Passover festival services
on days 2 and 7 this year will be held in unison with Temple Shalom of
Greenwich
Day 2 will be in
Days 1 and 8 will be held
here, as usual.
Children’s Service
with Nurit will be held at 10:30 on days 1,7 and 8.
Candle lighting: 6:51 pm on Friday, 23 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 lobby
Tot Shabbat: 6:45 PM
– in the Kindergarten Room (note different location!)
Shabbat Morning:
Service begins at 9:30 AM
Mazal Tov to JOELLE PEIKES, WHO
BECOMES bAT MITZVAH THIS SHABBAT MORNING!
Children’s
Services: 10:30 AM
Shabbat Mincha: 5:30 PM
–
MAZAL TOV TO TESS LITCHMAN, WHO BECOMES BAT MITZVAH THIS
SHABBAT AFTERNOON!
Our Torah Portion
for Shabbat Morning
Parashat VaYikra – The Book of Leviticus begins
פרשת ויקרא
1: 4:27-31
2: 4:32-35
3: 5:1-10
4: 5:11-13
5: 5:14-16
6: 5:17-19
7: 5:20-26
maf: 5:24-26
Haftarah: Isaiah 43:21 - 44:23
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!
Passover Resources
(see Spiritual Journeys section below for more Passover
material)
Download our TBE Sale
of Hametz Form
My own Passover guide A Guide for the Perplexed
Keeping the
Story Alive: Questions and Reflections for the Seder Table
COMMUNITY SEDER
Second Night of Passover
Tuesday, April 3 at 7PM
Click for more information
Those high school students wishing to attend services on Passover,
April 3, 4, 9 and 10, may obtain an absentee letter for their school’s
attendance office by contacting Ellen at 322-6901, ext. 308 or TempleSec@tbe.org.
Passover: Guided
Learning from MyJewishLearning.com
Guided Learning
presents the content for this section by level of depth, and offers you a
specific order by which to read through the articles at each level. You can go
directly to one of the four levels by clicking below, or take a quiz that will suggest
the appropriate level for you based on your results. Or, you can opt to start
at the Primer and work your way through all four levels of Guided Learning one
by one. Quiz
on Passover Level
I: Primer Level
II: Topical Overviews Level
III: Deeper Explorations Level
IV: Analysis & Interpretation
For a host of other Pesach links:
And finally…
Two nice links if you are interested in getting rid of the
“hametz of the soul” http://hillel.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Passover/TO_Pesach_Home/Isaacs_Leaven_717/SpiritualHamezt_555.htm
http://www.rebgoldie.com/pesachrituals.htm
The
(occasionally)
Today we set
my own rantings aside
in favor of
some creative efforts and writings from our TBE family,
and
beyond…
Our entire
Jewish community has been enthralled this week by the message of our first
community scholar in residence, Avraham Infeld. Some of his views are summarized in this
essay, first published in 2001: We will Not Survive as a Nation Without a
I arrived in
Hebrew is vital to the
Jewish people because the language is the way in which culture transfers itself
from generation to generation. We Zionists lie when we say we took a dead
language and turned it into a living language. It isn't true. We took a
living language and turned it into a spoken language . Every rabbinical Responsa
throughout the generations was written in Hebrew.
When a Jew tried to
speak German it came out Yiddish. Why? Because there were certain things you
could only say in Hebrew. When a Jew tried to speak Persian, it came out
Persian-Hebrew, Spanish - Ladino, Arabic - Mugrabit. Hebrew as a conveyer of
central concepts of Jewish life has always been essential to our lives.
---------------------------------
At my welcoming party in
Imagine the following conversation between myself and Bob. Bob, are you
religious? He says 'God forbid.' Do you ever eat kosher? 'If there is
nothing else available, I'll eat the stuff.' Do you ever keep Shabbat? 'No.'
Do you ever pray? 'No.' Do you ever go to synagogue or temple? 'I
go once a year to see the guys'. Are you religious? 'NO.' What
is Judaism? 'A religion.' What are you? 'I am Jewish.' Great
logic, right?
He could have done the same thing to
me.
Do you ever keep Shabbat? 'At least once a week.' Do you ever
pray? 'Three times a day.' Do you ever eat kosher? 'All the time.' Is
Judaism a religion. 'NO way.' What are you? 'I am Jewish.'
Check out this
creative startup project being
coordinated by
TBE Member
Michael
Swartz! It’s called
“Refunds
For Good”
Read on!
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And check out
this fantastic article on the latest Bar Mitzvah trends, by TBE’s Own
Gabi Birkner, writing for the
Latest Philanthropy Trend: Giving Away Bar Mitzvah Gifts
BY
GABRIELLE BIRKNER –
http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=50519
The latest movers and shakers on the
philanthropy scene may now be in the middle of a game of freeze dance.
Teenagers celebrating their bar and bat
mitzvahs have emerged as a major charitable force — with many giving away
their monetary gifts totaling millions annually.
An eighth-grader who has severe nut
allergies, Ian Callender, recently asked invitees to his James Bond-themed bar
mitzvah party at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel to donate to the Jaffe Food
Allergy Institute. The
Ian's family asked him to consider giving
away his bar mitzvah money, and the youngster decided it should go to help
other people with food allergies. "Every time I go to a restaurant, I have
to ask, ‘Are there nuts in this?' and ‘Am I okay eating
this?'" Ian, now 14, said. "It's been a major part of my life. I
wanted to make my gift personal."
An Upper East Sider who relished his
summers at sleep-away camp, Jacob Lewin, used his bar mitzvah money to
establish a $15,000 summer camp scholarship fund, benefiting children with
life-threatening illnesses. In advance of her bat mitzvah, Meredith Bilski of
Through a bar mitzvah philanthropy program
called "Give a Mitzvah — Do a Mitzvah," 27 teenagers last year
gave away a total of more than $400,000 to UJA-Federation of
In 2006, one local "Give a Mitzvah
— Do a Mitzvah" participant raised $53,000, which paid for heating,
cooking fuel, and warm clothing for impoverished, elderly Jews in St.
Petersburg, Russia. Another collected $52,000 to fund outdoor adventure
experiences for disabled teenagers in
Mitzvah is the Hebrew word for commandment,
but also is used to connote a good deed.
Not all families follow the same model of
bar mitzvah giving. Some pay into collective synagogue- or community-based
funds — and give their bar and bat mitzvah-age children the precocious
responsibility of making grants with that money. Such a fund was established
last year at Ansche Chesed, a Conservative synagogue on the
"It's very easy for kids to get very
big eyes, and say, ‘I'm going to buy the biggest iPod that ever
was,'" the spiritual leader of Ansche Chesed, Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky,
said. The synagogue's philanthropy projects teach youngsters that their
coming-of-age ceremonies aren't about iPods or whatever loot their bar or bat
mitzvah money can buy, Rabbi Kalmanofsky said. "It makes it, as the saying
goes, a little less bar and a little more mitzvah — and I think that's a
wonderful thing," he said.
A father of a child who recently celebrated
his bar mitzvah, Hugh Pollack, said the focus on bar mitzvah philanthropy helps
deflect attention from the lavish parties that so often mark the occasion.
"Maybe after some of the excesses got people thinking, ‘Wait, we
should really take a look at this," Dr. Pollack, whose son donated some of
his bar mitzvah money to the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, said.
Some teenagers are even using their bar or
bat mitzvah money to set up 20-year charitable "Bnai Tzedek"
endowments in their names. Each year, about 5% of that endowment is donated to
a charity Jewish chosen by the teenager.
This endowment model of bar mitzvah giving
was pioneered a decade ago by the Harold Grinspoon Foundation. More recently,
the Springfield, Mass.-based foundation, partnering with community-based Jewish
groups, has helped establish 36 Bnai Tzedek programs in 26 states, and three
Canadian provinces.
Even a decade ago, doing a volunteer
project or giving away money wasn't de rigueur for youngsters celebrating their
bar or bat mitzvahs, a Bnai Tzedek director, Valerie Gintis, said. "Now,
it's not just about studying with a rabbi, and planning a party," she
said. "Now, the mitzvah project has become part of the rite-of-passage
— part of the ritual itself."
And speaking of “TBE’s own” in the journalistic field,
check out Sam Ginsburg’s column in the Pitt News: