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YOUNG ISRAEL OF WEST HARTFORD
2240 ALBANY AVENUE
WEST HARTFORD, CT 06117
860-233-3084
Web Site: www.youngisraelwh.org
Y
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ISR
AEL O
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Affiliate of the National Council of Young Israel Synagogues, Member of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, Sponsor of West Hartford NCSY, National Conference of Synagogue Youth, Kashrut Commission of Greater Hartford,
Mikveh Bess Israel of Greater Hartford, Eruv of West Hartford
Rabbi Tuvia Brander 561-271-4148 [email protected] Debra Luger 860-233-0300 or [email protected]
Shabbat Mevorchim
Parashat Chayei Sarah
November 7, 2015 25 Cheshvan 5776
Kiddush this Shabbat
Is sponsored by
dedicated Mets fans celebrating the
National League Championship win,
the teams trip to the World Series,
and a good season of baseball
Seudah Shlishit
is sponsored by Susanne, David, and
Lawrence Gelb & families in Memory
of Armin Gelb,
Avner Ben Avraham Ha'Kohen
Editor: Judie Patel [email protected]
מזל טוב
to Judy Levy on the engagement of her מזל טוב granddaughter Chaya Rochel to Moshe
Linkenburg of Monsey! מזל טוב to the Levy and Linkenburg families!
SPECIAL THANKS
Special thank you to all those who hosted for the Grow West Hartford Shabbaton and
helped out with the programming and events. It was a wonderful Shabbat and a good time
for everyone!
WELCOME NEW MEMBERS
Estee & Rabbi Willie Balk Nathalie & Dr. Robert Weinstock and
Ayelet & Nathan Jennifer & Dr. Brian Grosberg and
Noah & Talia
WELCOME TO THE COMMUNITY
Dr. Steven Marx
WEEKLY YIWH LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
SUNDAY MORNING GEMARA SHIUR
The Gemara Shiur will begin this Sun-day immediately following davening accompa-
nied by a light breakfast. All are invited and welcome to attend.
LADIES' LUNCH & LEARN
Explore the weekly parasha with us On Wednesdays at the JCC from 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM.
For more information, please contact Ann Feldman at [email protected].
WOMEN’S SHABBAT AFTERNOON
MISHNAH CLASS
This Shabbat, November 7th at 4:15 PM at the home of Jo Bruce, 116 Brewster Road
Please join us !
REMINDER
Weekday Mincha & Maariv (Monday-Thursday) will meet at HHNE
300 Bloomfield Avenue We look forward to seeing you there!
Please include in your tefilot IDF soldiers as well as those have been injured in the recent
wave of terror activity. Leah Michal bat Bracha, Odel bat Miriam,
Natan ben Odel, Moshe ben Orli, Meir Yitzchak ben Sarah,
Aharon Moshe Chaim ben Chaya Chana, Dvir ben Shoshana, Ron Shai bat Sigalit,
Adi ben Rut, Niv ben Yardena, Moshe ben Daisy, Meor Efraim ben Fortuna Daniela,
Moshe ben Edgach, Liat bat Yael, Or-El bat Limor, Yom Tov Lipa ben Roiza, Yair ben Roizina,
Samuel Ono ben Antoni, Shoshana bat Lulu, Moshe ben Bracha, Maia bat Ilana, Ron ben
Chana, Adiv ben Fortuna Mazel, Daniel Chaim ben Revital, David ben Shoshana,
Alon Chaim ben Rita HaCohen, Yohonatan Amiram ben Miriam, Pesach ben Ra-
chel Miriam Haddasah, Yarden ben Orli, Meital Dikla bat Ninette, Marike Veldman, Gilad ben Meirav, Tahel bat Sigal, Sigal bat Jacqlin, Gal ben Naomi, Yaniv ben Chana,
Yotam ben Penina, David Shlomo ben Rachel, Nirit Chana bat Nitza & Shmuel ben Chasiba
May they all have a refuah shleima -- a full and speedy recovery among all the sick and wounded!
MEMORIAL SERVICE
In memory of Simon Konover whose generosity, warmth and compassion touched so many.
Sunday, November 15th at 1:00 PM Beth El Temple
SAVE THE DATE
Hebrew High School of New England COUNTDOWN TO 20TH YEAR CELEBRATION
Thursday, December 3rd 5:30 PM - 9:00 PM
At Emanuel Synagogue
Page 2
SCRIP
We have scrip cards for Big Y, Shoprite, Crown (one time use), & Whole Foods in $100
increments. Please be in touch with Daniella by email or phone if you'd like to pick up cards
or if you need them delivered to you. Daniella Robinson
[email protected] cell: 516-286-0185 Home: 860-578-9515
BOOKKEEPING
With so many assorted pledges and cate-gories for payments to the YIWH, please en-
close a note or write in the memo of your check (in English not Hebrew) exactly what the check is payment for. Separate checks or a specific ac-counting of what's included in a payment is es-
sential to keeping things in order. You can reach Maria by email
SECURITY COMMITTEE
Thank you to all those involved in the coverage and rotations. If you are interested in
being involved please email : [email protected]
Thank you Stan Rutstein – YIWH Security Committee
Smachot to share??? Graduations? Awards? Engagements? Wed-
dings? Births? We want to celebrate when you have exciting news for us! Please email us with your special occasions! You are our best source
of YIWH Mazal Tov, Refuah Shleima wish-es, and other news. If you know something we may not know (or may have missed or forgot-
ten), please email us! Help us avoid oversights! Thank you [email protected]
RABBI JAFFEE’S CHAYEI ADAM CLASS
Shabbat morning at 8:15AM
WEEKLY YOUTH GROUPS
Weekly youth groups will take place on Shabbat mornings from 10:00 AM
SHABBAT TOT CIRCLE
Is a parent led Shabbat group for children ages 5 & under. The program is the first Shabbat of every month. Parents are invited to stay with
their children during this program to partake in davening, songs and games. A special Shabbat treat will be served.
Avraham, Yitzchak and Intermarriage by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper - Dean of the Center for Modern Torah Leadership Avraham Avinu’s journey begins with clear instruc-tions from G-d to abandon his land (eretz), his culture (moledet), and his family (beit av), and move to a new land, which turns out to be Canaan. His journey ends when he or-ders his servant to go back to that very same eretz, mole-det, and beit av to find a wife for Yitzchak, and under no cir-cumstances to marry Yitzchak to a Canaanitess. What ac-counts for this ambivalence? There is a natural temptation to argue that G-d’s ini-tial instruction was intended to make life more difficult for Avraham – to estrange him from all his support mechanisms – because loneliness and insufficiency naturally make one turn to G-d. But Avraham was already willing to listen, so this strategy seems redundant. Alternatively, one might argue that G-d wished to remove Avraham from a corrupt and corrosive family and culture. But if Canaanite culture was superior to that of Clan Terach, why insist that Yitzchak marry in the family? At least one Rabbinic tradition reflects a very complex ap-proach to this question. G-d refers to himself in Bereshit 15:7 as having ex-tracted (hotzi) Avraham from Ur Kasdim. (Nechemiah 9:7 reiterates the point.) The Rabbis were fully aware that Ur Kasdim was a location, but they were bothered by the con-notation of hotzi, which implies success over resistance; thus G-d was also motzi us from Egypt during the Exodus. They suggest, or record a tradition, that Avraham was rescued by G-d from religious persecution in Aram at the hands of Nim-rod’s emerging totalitarian empire. To concretize this inter-pretation, Ur Kasdim was translated punningly as the (auto da fe) furnace of the Chaldeans. In this reading, G-d took Avraham out of Ur Kasdim into Canaan to rescue him from religious persecution. Indeed, the Torah records no negative reaction to Avraham’s religion in Canaan. Quite the contrary. Malki Tzedek seems to be a co-believer, and even the Hittites refer to Avraham as a Prince of G-d.
Continued on Page 3
Dvar Torah , continued from page 2 Nor does the Torah record Avraham critiquing Canaanite culture. Again, quite the contrary: Av-raham makes a covenant with natives Aner, Eshkol, and Mamrei, and in contrast to Egypt and Philistia, it seems that he considers Canaan a culture which possesses yir’at Elokim, fear of G-d. (Sodom and Gomor-rah were not Canaanite.) It therefore seems likely that Canaan was a culture of religious freedom, and more than that, a cul-ture which was capable of appreciating at least some of what Avraham had to offer, and which enabled him to become his best self. It was a pluralistic culture. (Perhaps this is why there is no mention of Avraham and Sarah making converts in Canaan; in a culture where identity is fluid, conversion can become mean-ingless). But in the Covenant Between the Pieces, Avraham is given a deeply pessimistic vision about Ca-naanite culture. Avraham’s children will eventually take ownership of Canaan, but not for several genera-tions, “because the sin of the Amorites is not yet complete.” Not yet complete, but begun, and begun in such a way that completion is inevitable. In other words, the virtues of Canaan were genuine but not sus-tainable. What if the original sin of the Canaanites, the reason that their culture was already decadent in the time of Avraham, was extreme pluralism? This formulation is deliberately provocative, but having (hopefully) grabbed your attention, I want to lay it out in detail. There are two roads to homogeneity. One is totalitarianism/Nimrodism, which gives absolute value to a very specific and detailed set of cultural markers and seeks to enforce them on others. The other is pluralism/ Canaanism, which insists that all cul-tural markers have exactly the same value and denies the objective legitimacy of any values hierarchy. Extreme pluralism is opposed to diversity. A healthy, diverse culture celebrates values clashes but develops robust nonviolent arenas for persuasive combat. In a culture of aesthetic diversity, some value classical music and others value heavy metal, and they argue about matters of taste. In a culture of moral diversity, some favor limited euthanasia and others see it as murder; but all agree to abide by a common decision procedure. In a culture of diversity, identity is more than a source of grievance, more than the basis of a claim to equal rights; it is the basis of a claim to genuine moral superiority, which is the antithesis of extreme pluralism. It works in reverse as well; without a claim of superiority, no identity is sustainable long-term. Cultures of extreme pluralism will eventually be conquered from within or without. This kind of identity can also develop under totalitarian persecution; revolutionary individualism goes easily with condescension toward the homogenized masses. And it seems the Ancient Near East had no genuine cultures of diversity, so Avraham could only develop under Nimrod. But revolutions tend to replace one totalitarianism with another. The challenge is to maintain hier-archy without absolutism, to believe that something can be less correct without being wholly incorrect, less valuable but not valueless, not ultimate and yet not unnecessary. In halakhic Judaism, this challenge is perhaps best embodied in various paradoxes about the rela-tive precedence of Torah study and mitzvah action. In the Avraham narrative, it is embodied in the Akedah, where Avraham at least seemingly makes clear that he ultimately has only one value. Yitzchak reacts against this. Yitzchak, as Rabbi Joshua Berman has argued well, never comes to terms with the ex-pulsion of Yishmael. He cannot choose Yaakov over Esav, even though he knows that choice must be made. Yitzchak, in other words, is susceptible to Canaanism. For Avraham’s unique legacy to survive, Yitzchak therefore needs to marry a woman from home. Marriage in the classical sense is a commitment to sustainability. Continuity is not an end in itself, but a culture’s purpose is not to be an ephemeral work of performance art. When continuity becomes its own justification, opposition to intermarriage is plausibly seen as racism. But it is more than evident that Judaism will not survive in America if Jews believe that it is one of a large set of equally valuable options. Perhaps more dangerously, we need to recognize that both inclusion and exclusion always have costs. The cost of exclusion is the value of whatever and whomever is excluded; the cost of inclusion is the value of whatever difference you are ignoring. The full arc of Avraham’s life, which values both his natal and adopted homelands, stands for the necessity of both hierarchy and egalitarianism. I contend that the dialectic need not be extreme; every Jew need not oscillate between totalitarianism and latitudinarianism, nor need we alternate generations of chauvinists and pluralists. We can find both within ourselves as necessary. The same is true on a communal level. It is possible and ideal to build a community which contains both these pulls, rather than dividing into absolutists and relativists. The balance is always delicate; Modern Orthodoxy, Conservative Judaism, and Reform each claim to embody it. If the capacity to sustain the norm of endogamy is a fundamental measure of sustainability – and I believe it is – clearly the latter two have failed, and Modern Orthodoxy must profit by their example. Deep and sincere appreciation for the achievements, values, and beauties of other cultures, religions, and even denominations must not be allowed to reach the point at which the only reason to choose ours over others is inertia.
Page 3
YIWH Schedule of Services
November 6th - 13th, 2015 It is easy to sponsor a Kiddush
Shabbat Mevorchim Parashat Chayei Sarah Or Seudah Shlishit!
Shul handles set up & Clean up!
Friday, November 6th - Erev Shabbat Contact Judie Patel at 860-761-3818,
Shacharit 6:45 a.m. or [email protected]
Candle Lighting 4:21 p.m. to check the availability of the date
Mincha/Maariv 4:26 p.m. you need & call Ilana Bernstein
at 860- 922-0448 or
Shabbat, November 7th [email protected]
Rabbi Jaffee’s Shabbat morning Class 8:15 a.m. to make the arrangements for the
Shacharit 9:00 a.m. type of Kiddush you want.
Sof Zman Kriat Shma 9:02 a.m. Checks need to be received the
Youth Programming 10:00 a.m. Sunday prior to your Kiddush date.
Mincha followed by Seudah Shlishit & Maariv 4:05 p.m. There are three types
Shabbat Ends 5:22 p.m. of Kiddushim:
Standard for $150,
Sunday, November 8th - Thursday, November 12th Semi-Deluxe for $250
Earliest Tallit & Tefillin 5:39 a.m. & Deluxe for $350
Shacharit...Sunday 8:15 a.m. With supplements available.
Shacharit…Monday 6:40 a.m.
Shacharit…Tuesday & Wednesday 6:45 a.m. KIDDUSH SCHEDULE
Shacharit…Thursday Rosh Chodesh Kislev 6:30 a.m.
Mincha/Maariv...Sunday at YIWH 4:15 p.m.
Mincha/Maariv...Monday - Thursday at HHNE 4:15 p.m.
SEUDAH SHLISHIT
Friday, November 13th - Erev Shabbat 11/7 Gelb
Shacharit Rosh Chodesh Kislev 6:30 a.m. 12/19 Schwarcz
Candle Lighting 4:14 p.m. The cost to sponsor is $90.00
Mincha/Maariv 4:19 p.m. To set up Seudah Shlishit contact
Steve Luger [email protected]
Ner La’Maor - Lights Edna & David Shamash
Pat La’Orchim
Yayin l’ Kiddush Ve'Havdalah
Kiddush Supplement Ann & Jeremy Pava
Seudah Shlishit Supplement Susan & Gil Fried
WANT TO JOIN THE LISTSERV:
To receive emails from the synagogue about classes, events, and times of services consider subscribing to our public listserv
by emailing [email protected].
Members of the listserv can email each other about events and other needs by addressing email to [email protected].
Visit our website www.youngisraelwh.org or contact [email protected] for more information.
Check out the weekly Schedule on the YIWH Website youngisraelwh.org/times ~ Times from: myzmanim.org For Eruv Information: twitter.com/WHartfordEruv or youngisraelwh.org/eruv or (Hotline - 860-232-6417)
5776 Candy Man You-Dah-Man
Audrey & Leon Laufer In honor of the original
Candy Man Gene Wittenberg
Ann & Jeremy Pava
Daniella & Avi Robinson In memory of Daniella’s Grandmother
Mrs. Vivian Furst חיה גיטל בת מאיר צמח
Judy & Sam Leichtberg in memory of their parents
Israel & Frida Weiss Abraham & Miriam Leichtberg
אברהם בן שמואל ומרים בת יעקב אריה ישראל בן דוד וטויבה פרידה בת עזרא
Handy Man Good Humor Man
Edie & Sid Perew Debbie & Steve Luger
