February 29, 2008 – 23
Adar 1, 5768
Thank you to the Cooper family for
sponsoring this week’s Shabbat-O-Gram
in honor of
the bat mitzvah of Samantha Cooper!
Special
Occasion? Sponsor a Shabbat Bulletin, (sent every
Friday morning via e-mail),
the Shabbat Announcements (Distributed
each Shabbat at the
& the Shabbat-O-Gram.
Sponsor all three publications for only $72
All sponsors will be acknowledged at
the beginning of each of these announcements
and also listed in our Bi-monthly
Bulletin. Call Mindy in the office at 322-6901
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
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Prior Shabbat-O-Grams are archived at http://www.tbe.org/sog/index.php.
NEXT FRIDAY!!!!!
+
=
SIGN UP FOR DINNER ONLINE
AT OUR WEBSITE, www.tbe.org
Download an mp3 file of the recent Jewish Week panel, in which I
participated,
“Is the Internet Good for the Jews?” here
or at
http://www.thejewishweek.com/podcast.html
and see video
highlights by clicking here
Contents
of the Shabbat O Gram:
(Click
to scroll down)
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)
Picture of Lieba
Lander and Sisterhood president Barbara Cohen at last night’s
sold out Challah baking class at TBE.
Lieba Lander will be presenting by
popular request a Hamentaschen Baking Class on
Monday, March 10, 7 p.m in the Temple Beth El
kitchen.
Don’t get left out on this
one. RSVP to office@tbe.org
or call Mindy in the temple office 322-6901.
Check our website at www.tbe.org for more photos of recent TBE
events.
Quote for the Week
“Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming;
you are touched
at all points and conscious everywhere.”
- Lionel Trilling , critic, from a 1928 journal
entry
Candle lighting: 5:27 pm on Friday, February 29,
2008. For 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.
MAZAL TOV TO LARA
AGATSTEIN, DAUGHTER OF MARLYN AND RICHARD AGATSTEIN, WHO BECOMES BAT MITZVAH ON
SHABBAT MORNING, AND SAMANTHA COOPER, DAUGHTER OF DONALD AND STACY COOPER, WHO
BECOMES BAT MITZVAH AT TOMORROW’S MINCHA-HAVDALAH SERVICE!
THE FULL SERVICE SCHEDULE NOW APPEARS ON THE
SEPARATE TBE ANNOUNCEMENTS E-MAIL
Shabbat Services:
6:30 Friday night in the chapel
Shabbat morning @ 9:30 AM, Children’s services
at 10:30
Mincha-Havdalah: 5:45 PM
Morning Minyan:
7:30 Weekdays, 9:30 Sundays
WE’VE BEEN
HAVING DIFFICULTY OF LATE ACHIEVING A MINYAN EACH DAY.
PEOPLE WHO
ARE SAYING KADDISH NEED YOUR HELP!
PLEASE COME TO MINYAN!
TO ENSURE A “GUARANTEED MINYAN” FOR THE DAY OF
YOUR YAHRZEIT – GO TO THE ROSNER MINYAN MAKER AT WWW.TBE.ORG
AND THEN NOTIFY OUR OFFICE.
Now you can become more comfortable with the prayers of our
morning service by heading to…
http://www.tbe.org/site/sog/minyanmastery.htm
Reminder of our “No
School No Shul” policy: On days when Stamford
Torah Reading For
Shabbat Morning
Torah Portion:
Vayakhel
פרשת ויקהל
Torah Portion: Exodus
35:1 - 38:20
1: 35:1-10
2: 35:11-20
3: 35:21-29
4: 35:30-36:7
5: 36:8-19
6: 36:20-38
7: 37:1-16
maf: 37:10-16
Haftarah for Ashkenazim: I Kings 7:40 - 7:50
Haftarah for Sephardim: I Kings 7:13 - 7:26
- myjewishlearning.com
- Torah
from JTS
- JTS Podcasts
- American Jewish University
- Academy for Jewish Religion
Mind Your Manners (Online and Off)
This
Sunday I’m starting a new adult ed class, “Being Nice:
The Next Big Thing.” Our prime resource
will be Joseph Telushkin’s new “Code of Jewish Ethics,” which is available for
purchase in our gift shop (I’ll also provide copies of the relevant material). This week’s topic will be “Being Humble” followed next week with “Becoming
a Grateful Person,” then, on March 16, “Good Manners and Civility,” and
finally, on April 6, “What is “Lashon Hara” and how do we avoid it?”
I’m discovering that this topic
of etiquette and manners has become much more than simply a question of which
fork to use or where to put the napkin. As basic societal boundaries have broken
down, we’ve lost all semblance of civility.
The “Wild West” cyber culture has a lot to do with it, though its impact
has been just as profound offline as on.
We are seeing a pandemic of shouting, threatening, and cursing. Rap lyrics have become the stuff of common
conversation. I’ve spent much time
observing Facebook and other social websites lately,
and frankly it is scary. Even Facebook is
beginning to understand that.
Internet civility was a prime
topic of the Jewish Week panel discussion I recently took part in (see the
links above to the complete audio download as well as video highlights). You’ll be happy to know that appearance
received rave reviews at some of the more cutting-edge Jewish sites, such as Jewlicious. Well, sort of. The blogger wrote, “Rabbi Joshua Hammerman was very Rabbinic
and while I wanted to dislike him based on some of the things of his that I
read, well, I just couldn’t.” I love
it! But that review was a veritable love letter compared to the online vilification
I’ve receive from time to time for articles that I’ve written. The only good thing I can say is that these
criticisms are in the distinct minority and seem to come equally from the right
as from the left. I must say, the left
is more creative (I’ve been called “deranged,” and my
looks compared to a famous Jewish porn star).
One blogger decided to dig up an article
written for the New York Times over a decade ago (about circumcision), seeking new
ways to vilify. It
’aint pretty.
Any rabbi – and any writer – puts
himself out there. I consider it a special privilege to live at a
time when people can have instant access to virtually anything I’ve ever
written. In truth, what’s always been true
for rabbis (that every utterance is amplified – every word counts) has now
become true for everyone else: every word we put online now is there
forever. I’m more than willing to take
the punches from critics, knowing that so many others are impacted
positively. We need to take such risks
for our lives to make a difference. But
there is a difference between punches and sucker punches. If you look at the
coarseness of the cyber culture, two things emerge as particularly shocking: 1)
the tone and the language of the comments that people make and 2) that so few stand up to it. The
more things change the more they stay the same.
Mob mentality rules, online and off.
The harsher things get, the more afraid people are to do something about
it. That is the
problem we need to address.
So “Being Nice” begins this
Sunday. Please come.
Pretty please.
BEING NICE - THE NEXT BEST THING
A guided reading of Telushkin’s Code of Jewish Ethics with Rabbi Joshua Hammerman
The dates for this mini course are:
March 2 - Being Humble
March 9 – Becoming a Grateful Person
March 16 – Good Manners and Civility
April 6 – What is “Lashon hara” and how to we avoid it?
--------------
MINYAN
MATTERS
We’ll be
running a series of columns from congregants responding to the question of why
minyan matters – to all of us.
This
first one is by Peter Weissman, who, along with Frank Rosner, has been THE
prime force behind the continuation of the area’s only egalitarian daily
morning minyan.
Join us
any morning!
Temple Beth El, as a conservative congregation, strives to
be a full service synagogue, including the holding of morning minyan services
on a daily basis. Most of our temple members know that these
services are held, but most of our membership only vaguely
recognize the importance of the service.
First and foremost,
the minyan service is a needed and important part of our daily lives as
Jews. Our Jewish law requires us to pray
on a daily basis and the minyan service helps to accomplish this. But on a more practical and accepted level,
the morning minyan service serves as a time and place to remember and mourn the
loss of loved ones, both for the immediate kaddish period following such a loss
and on the anniversary dates of that loss, a time to remember, accept and
memorialize that loss.
Our
tradition requires ten adult Jews, men or women, to comprise a minyan. All too often, we proceed with the service
with less than that number. Without ten
present, certain prayers must be omitted from the service, including the
mourners’ kaddish.
All too often, members come to our service to recite this prayer as part
of the kaddish period or on a yahrzeit date only to
find less than the 10 person minimum there.
We
need your help. Fortunately, we have
never had 10 attendees at morning minyan who were all there to recite the kaddish prayer. Those
who are there to mourn and remember their loss are dependent on the presence of
others who are there to help, to participate in the service, to help insure
that we have a minyan.
Won’t
you help us and help those who need your being there to recite the kaddish? In your own
time of need, you will want others there to help you. This won’t happen unless we all get in the
habit of coming on any kind of schedule that best suits you. Whether it be weekly
or twice a month, schedule yourself to come and help other members of the
temple who need you, need your attendance at minyan to enable them to say the
kaddish prayer. In your own time of
need, you will be thankful to those there to support you. Do a mitzvah and come to temple to insure the
success of our services for all of our members.
AND NOW THERE’S ONE MORE REASON TO COME TO MINYAN…
We’ve
just ordered copies of a new and comprehensive commentary on our siddur, “Or Hadash”
– This joint project of The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the
Rabbinical Assembly, authored by Rabbi Reuven Hammer, features material from
classical and contemporary sources, explanations of the history, structure and
meaning of prayers and more. The page numbers match our regular weekday
siddur, but the in-depth commentaries will bring a whole
new dimension to your experience of prayer, opening new doors to understanding
the service.
"Town
Hall" Meeting to Feature JTS Chancellor – March 13 in
Professor
Arnold M. Eisen, Chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary, will
discuss “Standing 
Up
for Conservative Judaism” in his first public address in
Community partners include Congregation
Rodeph Sholom, Bridgeport;
Congregation Beth El, Fairfield; the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Center for Judaic
Studies at Fairfield University; Temple Sholom,
Greenwich; Congregation Beth El, Norwalk; Temple Beth El, Stamford; and the
Conservative Synagogue of Westport, Weston and Wilton.
Chancellor Eisen, one of the world's
foremost experts on American Judaism, has worked closely for the past twenty
years with synagogue and federation leadership around the country to analyze
and address the issues of Jewish identity, the revitalization of Jewish
tradition, and the redefinition of the American Jewish community.
A product of the Conservative Movement,
Chancellor Eisen has regularly served as a faculty member of the Wexner Heritage Program, the Wexner
Fellowship, and the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship of the
Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. He has served, and is now serving
again, as a member of the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency and has long been well known as a passionate advocate of
strengthening the connection between American Jews and
Chancellor Eisen's
publications include a personal essay, Taking
Hold of Torah: Jewish Commitment and Community in America (1997); a
historical work entitled Rethinking
Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment, Community (1998); and The Jew Within: Self, Family and Community in
Chancellor Eisen received a PhD in the
History of Jewish Thought from Hebrew University; a BPhil
in the Sociology of Religion at Oxford University; and a BA in Religious
Thought from the University of Pennsylvania. Before assuming his role as
chancellor, he was the Koshland Professor of Jewish
Culture and Religion at
The event is free and open to the
public. For more information and to RSVP, please contact Joan Goodman, director of the
Northeast Region of JTS, at (212) 678-8861.
Beth El Cares:
Inreach and
Outreach
Do you know of any high
school or college girls that are looking for some extra money???
Or even a mature adult who is bored and wants some spending money or to spend
some time with children – mine that is…two beautiful, nice girls in fifth and
first grades. We need someone after school (Roxbury) Mondays, Thursdays
and Fridays from 3:15 – 6:15 PM. You would need your own car to drive
short distances to activities in
Mitzvah Suggestion for the Week
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You can also send mishloach manot
packages to fellow congregants!
See our website, www.tbe.org for more information.
Bar/Bat Mitzvah Projects:
Keep watching
for projects to appear in this space….
YAHRZEITS IN A
JEWISH LEAP YEAR
(thanks to
Steve Lander for suggesting this topic for this week)
The following Q&A appeared on
the website www.yahrzeit.org
Q) My father passed away on March
1, 1999, the 13th of Adar 5759. Since this year, 5760, is a leap year, and has
2 months of Adar, will my father's yahrzeit be in Adar I or Adar II.
A) The Yahrzeit is always in Adar ll but some have
the minhag (custom) also to light a candle in Adar l
but if that is not your custom than just observe Adar ll.
This is not so universal a practice as this website says! While there is Talmudic precedent to consider Adar 2 the “real” Adar (Nedarim 63a), and it is true that Purim is observed only in Adar 2, Yahrzeits are more often observed in Adar 1. Here at Beth El we follow that latter custom; yahrzeits are observed in Adar 1, unless the death oc