April 25, 2008 –Nisan 20
5768
Rabbi Joshua Hammerman,
THIS WEEK WE COMMEMORATE
YOM
HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE SERVICE,
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MAY 1, AT
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A full collection of past articles, sermons and essays can
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Contents
of the Shabbat O Gram:
(Click
to scroll down)
The (Occasionally) Ranting Rabbi
Mitzvah/Tzedakkah
Opportunities
The Beth El Bar/Bat
Mitzvah Commentary
Masechet Cyberspace (NEW)
Required Reading and Action Items (links
to key articles on Israel and Jewish life)
Quote for the Week
The Commanding Voice of
What does the Voice of Auschwitz
command?
Jews are
forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories. They are
commanded to survive as Jews, lest the Jewish people perish. They are commanded to remember the victims of
For a Jew hearing the commanding Voice of
Auschwitz the duty to remember and to tell the tale is not negotiable. It is
holy. The religious Jew still possesses this word. The secularist Jew is commanded to restore it. A secular holiness, as it were,
has forced itself into his vocabulary…
Jews after
For after
By the Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim,
written in 1968:
Candle lighting: 7:26 pm on Friday, April 25,
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.
We thank
the 7th
day of Passover, as we recall Harry Bennett on the occasion of his first
yahrzeit.
THE FULL SERVICE SCHEDULE NOW APPEARS ON THE
SEPARATE TBE ANNOUNCEMENTS E-MAIL
Friday Night Shabbat Services:
THANKS TO GLOBAL WARMING – AND IN HONOR OF THE
FESTIVAL OF SPRING
– WE
BEGIN OUR SUMMER SERIES OF OUTDOOR SERVICES ONE WEEK EARLY!
6:30 – Main Service – OUTDOORS
6:45 – Tot Shabbat – IN THE LOBBY
Shabbat and festival mornings:
Saturday and Sunday
9:30 AM: Main Service
10:30 AM: Tot Shabbat (and Pesach) Morning with
Nurit
Yizkor service on Sunday
Morning Minyan:
7:30 Weekdays, 9:30 Sundays
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
NOW THERE’S ONE MORE REASON TO COME
TO MINYAN…
We’ve
just received 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.
Torah Readings
Seventh and Eighth Days of Passover
SONG OF SONGS IS CHANTED
Sights and Sounds of Song of Songs (see http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~jtreat/song/)
· Historiated
Initial from Song of Songs manuscript
· Rubrics in Song of Songs in Codex Sinaiticus
· Chanting in the Ashkenazi Tradition
· Chanting in the Sephardic Tradition
· Chanting
in the Yemenite Tradition
· The
complete Hebrew text in mp3 format, via Mechon Mamre (The Song of
Songs is chanted in Sephardic manner)
·
Chapter by
Chapter Translation: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Songtoc.html
- Song
of Songs 1
- Song
of Songs 2
- Song
of Songs 3
- Song
of Songs 4
- Song
of Songs 5
- Song
of Songs 6
- Song
of Songs 7
- Song
of Songs 8
o
Torah Portion: Exodus 13:17 - 15:26 & Numbers 28:19 -
28:25
1: Exodus 13:17-19 (3 p'sukim)
2: Exodus 13:20-22 (3 p'sukim)
3: Exodus 14:1-4 (4 p'sukim)
4: Exodus 14:5-8 (4 p'sukim)
5: Exodus 14:9-14 (6 p'sukim)
6: Exodus 14:15-25 (11 p'sukim)
7: Exodus 14:26-15:26 (32 p'sukim)
maf: Numbers 28:19-25 (7 p'sukim)
Haftarah: II Samuel 22:1-51
Pesach VIII
Torah Portion: Deuteronomy 15:19 - 16:17 & Numbers
28:19 - 28:25
1: Deuteronomy 15:19-23 (5 p'sukim)
2: Deuteronomy 16:1-3 (3 p'sukim)
3: Deuteronomy 16:4-8 (5 p'sukim)
4: Deuteronomy 16:9-12 (4 p'sukim)
5: Deuteronomy 16:13-17 (5 p'sukim)
maf: Numbers 28:19-25 (7 p'sukim)
Haftarah: Isaiah 10:32 - 12:6
COMING ATTRACTIONS at TBE…
MAY 9-10 SYNAPLEX:
“
Featuring Scholar in
Residence
Reuven Kimelman
Friday night: “
Shabbat morning: “
Shabbat afternoon: “
And
highlighted by the preview performance of
“Becoming
Read more about “Becoming Israel”
And see a video preview…
“Becoming
wonderful opportunity to witness Jacob’s ancient
struggle as an inner conflict that is part of us today.
Storahtelling makes the past come alive.”
–Rabbi Gregory S. Marx
“Becoming
the historical, and the personal into a knot of celebration:
a worthy garland for
–Peter Pitzele, PhD
Wishing
you and yours a good and sweet Passover!
Frank Rosner
z’l
Frank on his 95th birthday last October
I’ve
set up a memorial page for Frank, a compendium of our sentiments and
memories.
Click
here
to see the remarks I made last week at Frank’s funeral,
then
scroll down to view a number of comments and anecdotes that have been received.
Then
you are invited to add your own.
Love, Passover, Spring and the Bible
On the Shabbat of Passover it is traditional to read the Song of Songs. There is no greater love poem in the entire
bible. This recent interview, "Love
and the Bible"with professor Ilan Stavans, author of “Love and
Language,” lends some fascinating perspective on the subject:
“The Song of Songs
continues to puzzle biblical exegetes and lay readers precisely because of the
risqué tenor of its content and its celebration of eroticism when compared to
other sections of the Bible. Also, it chants to individuality (physical and
personal pleasure) in a way that disturbs the rest of the narrative. Had the
manuscript of the Tanakh , unpublished, made it to the desk
of a New York editor, it would surely have undergone dramatic changes and, I
have no doubt in my mind, the Song of
Songs would have been extricated, which is too bad because what makes
the Bible endurable is its polyphony—its inconsistencies, if you wish. As I
suggest in Love and Language
, the Song of Songs is closer to the
See also Rabbi Shefa Gold's
commentary, "Commandments of Shir ha-Shirim". She
writes:
“Rabbi Akiva said
that "Had the Torah not been given, we could live our lives by the
Song of Songs." For the last couple years I have immersed
myself in this holy text - learning its language, receiving its passion, and
entering into the reality it describes. I have lived with the question,
"What would it mean to live my life by the Song of Songs?" Listening
for its instruction for my life, opening to its wisdom, I feel in some sense
commanded by its voice. The Song of Songs is about relationship. It is about
the giving and receiving of Love. Though the Song of Songs describes a very
human relationship, it is understood to illuminate all relationship, most
importantly the relationship with God, that Mystery that shines forth from
within and beyond this world. When Love
flows freely between us and that Great Mystery, the whole world is watered and
nourished.”
The challenge to us is to live our lives eternally open to this
divine, loving flow. Gold posits her own
“ten commandments” – a Decalogue born not at Sinai (that’s where we are headed,
on Shavuot in six weeks), but instead born of the passage between the walls of
water lining the Red Sea, the romance between God and Israel celebrated this
week. The Song is about a single moment,
that first spark of Spring when it is clear that
nature has turned on the switch and love is flowing everywhere. The mayflies herald that moment here, sometimes
in an annoying way to us humans, but in an unmistakable celebratory dance. We can feel it everywhere this week. My dogs suddenly are racing around the house,
simply in order to run their fastest around the house – only to stop from time
to time to sniff the new grass (which, regrettably, they start to graze on,
with the natural consequences for their stomachs and our kitchen floor).
As Gold says in her 6th commandment:
6. Thou shalt be in conversation with Nature and through that conversation
explore the Mystery of Love and Death.
God speaks to us through the wonders
and beauty and mysteries of Nature, but we must learn how to listen. We
are commanded to go out ...
" To see the new green by the brook,
To see if the vines had blossomed
And the pomegranates had
bloomed,"
And not only must we listen and watch and wonder, but we must know our own
wildness, experience all the passion of being a holy animal. We are commanded to...
"be
like a gazelle, a wild stag
On the jagged
mountains."
As we get to know the cycles and
rhythms of the Natural world and begin living those rhythms of moon and tide,
seed and harvest, the power and intimacy of Love can transform us. As our
conversation with Nature deepens, we begin to notice that everything dies and
in every death, the seeds of new birth are hidden.
With the Lovers of Shir HaShirim
we cry,
"For Love is as strong as
Death
Its passion is as harsh as the
grave,
Its sparks become a raging fire,
A Divine Flame."
So let’s go out into that magical, wondrous world of ours, global
warming and all – our first outdoor service of the season is tonight!
Remember last week’s
controversy in
Well, check out this from an
Israeli newspaper”
A 27-year-old man, claiming to
be a yeshiva student, undressed at a Tiv Taam store in the city of
allowing non-kosher stores and restaurants to sell leavened
food during Passover.
The man explained that he would
not be brought to trial over this act because according to the ruling,
he did not strip in a public place.
Why Should
We Care About
Among
the many universal and parochial concerns that we ponder this Passover, the
plight of the Tibetans has emerged in a singular way.
Two
sites help to explain the connection between this plight and our own Exodus
story: http://unlitcandle.org/ and http://www.freetibet.org/.
Jan
Gaines’ Report:
Passover
in
Dear Friends,
I hope
this isn't overkill since I just wrote about 10 days ago, but I'm finding this Pesach
holiday so full of meaning that I have to just put it
down on paper to share with you.
We
spent the actual Shabbat and Seder in the lower
At the outset of WWII,
the British deported most of them, fearing German sympathizers, allied to the
Mufti who in turn was allied with Hitler.
After the
war, and during the 70's and 80's these old buildings were rediscovered by
ingenious Israelis who have remodeled them into either bed and breakfast
establishments, or elegant old homes, or even subdivided into popular
apartments. Our moshav still kept the sounds of horses braying, cows mooing,
goats and various other farm animals, and the smells thereof. Still, it
was far away from traffic and noise and very restful for our group of 16,
covering 3 generations. We held our own Seder, mostly in Hebrew, and sang
almost every reading, all of which to my ears sounded so RIGHT.
We took
several tiyulim (outings) in the area, from visiting Hazor, the largest archeological site in
Back in
Netanya, families are getting together from all over the country. At the
supermarket this morning I ran into my friend Richard,
who is the only surviving member of his Polish family. Richard's
parents were shot in front of him, and at 9 years old he was on his own, hiding
in the countryside, begging food when he could, always running from the
Germans. He told me that at one point he was hiding deep in a haystack
when German soldiers were tipped off that he was on that farm and came running
with their bayonets, thrusting them into the haystack again
and again but miraculously missing Richard by inches. He came here,
married and had two children. They in turn married and gave him 11
grandchildren, one of whom was with him in the market, tall and handsome as all these Israeli kids seem to be. All I
could think of was the obvious. Our enemies will never destroy us- - - - we
will come back bigger and better than ever!
The
beach in front of me is filled with British
vacationers and with locals visiting to enjoy the sea and sun.
The rest of the country is either in the
Galilee hiking and resting, or in
In a few days, on the last day of
Pesach, the Morrocans will celebrate Mimouna, their own special picnic and festival day, the
Yemenites will hold a kind of final Seder, and the rest of the country will be
jamming the roads back home, bracing for a return to everyday routine.
So I personally have gone
from visiting an archeological site from the 8th cent BCE to a burial place for
the judges of the Sanhedrin *(Supreme Court of Israel) including the tomb of Judah the
Prince who redacted the Mishna with Roman permission
in the 2nd century AD, to the present 21st century of an Israeli army base in
the golan and the beaches of this beautiful city, to
a visit with a Holocaust survivor and his gorgeous grandson, the new Israel.
What a momentous journey. What a treat to be living in this country of our people's history while we are still making it.
Love, Jan
Our
Man In
Passover
Comments by David Rodwin
David has been in