Friday, June 19, 2020

A few important notes for this Shabbat and next week

Dear Friends,
A few important notes:

1. This Shabbat is Shabbat Mevarchim -when we bless the upcoming New Month of Tamuz -If you are praying at home please remember to recite the Blessing on the new Month found before Musaf in your Siddur. We also do not recite  Av Harachamim before Ashrei of Musaf

2. Rosh Chodesh Tammuz is Monday and Tuesday 6/22 and 6/23 -Please remember to recite the Rosh Chodesh order of Prayer . Our reopening weekday minyan will be on the second day of Rosh Chodesh

3. Shabbat Times for Shabbat Shelach 6/19- 6/20 2020:
Candle Lighting  8:11 PM
Evening Shema should be Recited (again) no earlier than 9:05 PM
Morning Shema on Shabbat 6/20 no later than 9:00 AM -Recite three paragraphs of Shema before Synagogue services.
Shabbat ends and Havdalah is recited  9:22 PM

Shabbat Shalom!

Thursday, June 18, 2020

Shabbat and everything happening all week long

If you want to join a zoom event please contact Rabbi Yaffe on rabbi@bnaitorahma.org

Shabbat Times for Shabbat Shelach 6/19- 6/20 2020:
Candle Lighting 8:11 PM
Evening Shema should be Recited (again) no earlier than 9:05 PM
Morning Shema on Shabbat 6/20 no later than 9:00 AM -Recite three paragraphs of Shema before Synagogue services.
Shabbat ends and Havdalah is recited 9:22 PM

Coming up! Mastering Talmud Class resumes Sunday 6/28 (Next week!) 9:30 AM Buying, Selling and Price Gouging - in Tractate Bava Batra

Also on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/bnai.torah.1

Please don't share zoom information with anyone you don't know well -and trust

1. Thursday Evening 6/18:@ 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
New Class: The Big Idea
Exploring the big questions of the day and all-time from a Judaic perspective.
This Week: Revolutions, Protests and all that

Also on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/bnai.torah.1

2. Services on Zoom Friday Morning 6/19 @ 7AM

No pre-Shabbat Zoom

3. Friday Evening 6/19 @7PM -The Next Phase in Our Reopening
Actual Services in Social Hall:
Please observe all the directives found in this document:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UXGyYWX5nyIto7Plj6P0iS7xiGk9eQhg/view?usp=sharing
Please let us know if you are coming (You can still come if you forgot)

Public prayer is a contingent - although important, Rabbinic obligation
Guarding one’s health is a Biblical obligation of the greatest strictness
Please remember these priorities!

4. Shabbat Morning 6/20 @9AM - Service in Main Sanctuary
Please consult with your physician before attending if you have any health concerns!
Please let us know if you are coming (You can still come if you forgot)
Please follow all directions of the Rabbis and appointed ushers.
Please Stop by and come earlier if you can to have your temperature taken using our new, Israeli, Tzomet Institute Shabbat Compliant thermometer.
Please observe all the directives found in this document:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UXGyYWX5nyIto7Plj6P0iS7xiGk9eQhg/view?usp=sharing
Please sit in the same place you sat last week

Public prayer is a contingent - although important, Rabbinic obligation
Guarding one’s health is a Biblical obligation of the greatest strictness
Please remember these priorities!
Morning Shema on no later than 9:00AM -Recite three paragraphs of Shema before Synagogue services.

5. Havdalah on Facebook Live Motzei Shabbat 6/20 at 9:40 PM
https://www.facebook.com/bnai.torah.1

6. Sunday Zoom Shacharit service 6/21 @ 8AM

7: Reopening continues! Tuesday -live Shacharit Service in Social Hall Tuesday 6/23@ 7AM
Please come early to have your temperature taken
Public prayer is a contingent - although important, Rabbinic obligation
Guarding one’s health is a Biblical obligation of the greatest strictness
Please remember these priorities!

8. Zoom Shacharit Service : Wednesday, Thursday and Friday@ 7AM 6/23 -6/26

9. Pirkei Avot (Ethics of Judaism) Daily -Tuesday through Friday 6/23 -6/26 8:30 -9AM

Also on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/bnai.torah.1

10. Topic: Torah in Depth -Weekly Torah Portion Tuesday 6/23 @ 7PM

Also on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/bnai.torah.1

11. The Jewish Course of WHY - Followed by Mincha & Maariv Zoom Service
6:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Wednesday 6/24 @ 6PM

12. Not just stories: Midrash Class Thursday 6/25 1PM

Also on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/bnai.torah.1

13. New Class: The Big Idea Thursday 6/25 @ 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Exploring the big questions of the day and all-time from a Judaic perspective

Also on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/bnai.torah.1

Torah Portion Synopsis: Shelach - Numbers 13:1–15:41

Moses sends twelve spies to the land of Canaan. Forty days later they return, carrying a huge cluster of grapes, a pomegranate and a fig, to report on a lush and bountiful land. But ten of the spies warn that the inhabitants of the land are giants and warriors “more powerful than we”; only Caleb and Joshua insist that the land can be conquered, as G‑d has commanded.

The people weep that they’d rather return to Egypt. G‑d decrees that Israel’s entry into the Land shall be delayed forty years, during which time that entire generation will die out in the desert. A group of remorseful Jews storm the mountain on the border of the Land, and are routed by the Amalekites and Canaanites.

The laws of the Nesachim (meal, wine and oil offerings) are given, as well as the mitzvah to consecrate a portion of the dough (challah) to G‑d when making bread. G‑d instructs to place fringes (tzitzit) on the four corners of our garments, so that we should remember to fulfill the mitzvot (divine commandments).

A short sermon:
This week we read about the spies: They begin by praising the Land of Canaan (Israel) but then claim that the people of Israel can't possibly succeed in inheriting it. Sometimes we make an endeavor so big and wonderful in our eyes we assume we can't possibly accomplish it - "it's too big and I'm too small"

To this the two righteous spies -Joshua and Caleb responded "Alo Na'aleh" "We shall go up". When we resolve that we can rise to a new challenge to do more with our Judaism - We should believe that if the idea came to us, we can do it! It is big but G-d who gives us power is even bigger.

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Tonight's Class is at 8PM

Tonight's Torah in Depth class will meet on Zoom and Facebook live at 8PM rather than 7pm

Friday, June 12, 2020

Beha'alotcha 5780 Reopened Week 2!

bnai.torah.1
Sermon
Join us at the Zoom service at 7PM to hear the Sermon

Friday, June 5, 2020

Shabbat Shalom: Naso -this week's classes

Facebook Classes

4. Pirkei Avot (Ethics of Judaism) Daily -Tuesday through Friday 8:30 -9AM
Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/bnai.torah.1

5. Topic: Torah in Depth -Weekly Torah Portion Tuesday 7PM
https://www.facebook.com/bnai.torah.1

7. Midrash Class Thursday 1PM
Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/bnai.torah.1

8. Gateways to Prayer Thursday @ 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/bnai.torah.1

Monday, June 1, 2020

An important article by Jeff Jacoby, columnist, Boston Globe

Indecent cops, indecent rioters

“There are two races of men in this world,” wrote the psychoanalyst Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning , the profoundly influential book he published about his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps. “Only these two — the ‘race’ of the decent man and the ‘race’ of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people.”

Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who used his knee to press George Floyd’s neck to the ground until he died in agony, belongs to the race of the indecent. So do Gregory McMichael — an ex-cop — and his son Travis McMichael, the two Georgia men who pursued and gunned down an unarmed Ahmaud Arbery after seeing him jog past their home. So does any police officer who deliberately uses deadly violence against someone who has no weapon and poses no threat.

The race of the indecent does not include men and women who are infuriated at the sight of injustice or police brutality. It does not include those who respond with nonviolent protests, demonstrations, marches, or civil disobedience. There is nothing indecent about those who cry out in horror and anger at the death of Floyd and Arbery, or demand political change to prevent such atrocities, or insist that the full weight of the law be brought to bear against those responsible for committing them.

But the legions of the indecent most certainly do include those whose reaction to the terrible violence inflicted against Floyd is to inflict their own violence — smashing, burning, robbing, and even killing— against others. There is nothing decent about the riots that erupted in dozens of cities over the last few days. There was only pointless destruction and inexcusable lawlessness. More lives were lost and countless businesses ruined. If the killing of Floyd was a sickening illustration of what the “race of the indecent” are responsible for, so is the anguish of black business owners, weeping to see their life’s savings reduced to rubble and ash.

Sickening, too, are those on the sidelines cheering as neighborhoods go up in flames, such as the filmmaker Michael Moore extolling the “good citizens burning down the evil police precinct,” or Essence magazine publishing a column urging rioters to “Burn It All Down.”

During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, in which scores of people died and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage was inflicted on mostly Korean-owned businesses, the rap artist Sister Souljah was one of those cheerleaders. In an interview with the Washington Post, she applauded the “rebellion” that was shattering much of the city and endorsed even more bloodshed:

I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? You understand what I'm saying? In other words, white people, this government and that mayor were well aware of the fact that black people were dying every day in Los Angeles under gang violence. So if you're a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person?

The most memorable response to Souljah’s incitement came from Bill Clinton, the Arkansas governor who was then running for president. Speaking before Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition in June, Clinton condemned the rapper’s words . He quoted her poisonous comments to the Post and an earlier interview in which she said all whites have a “low-down, dirty nature” and that “if there are any good white people, I haven’t met them.” Clinton told his audience: “If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black,’ and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech.”

Clinton took some heat for his rebuke — Souljah called him a racist and Jackson defended her. But most Americans appreciated his public stand against extremism. The phrase “Sister Souljah moment“ entered the lexicon as a reference to the repudiation of extremists, even when that repudiation might rub one’s allies the wrong way.

America today, far more bitterly polarized than it was in 1992, could really use some Sister Souljah moments. But there is little inclination in political circles, and even less among the media, to cool the fevers of racial grievance.

No one thinks that what happened to George Floyd was anything but horrifying and enraging. In a society where almost everything is bitterly disputed, the revulsion over Floyd’s death, and the desire to see his killers brought to justice, is practically universal. This is not a country that thinks it’s OK for police to kill black men. “I hope these cops are dealt with good and hard,” conservative talk host Rush Limbaugh told his huge radio audience . What they did to Floyd, he said, “makes me so mad I can’t see straight.”

There was a time in this country when black men could indeed be killed by whites with impunity, and when those witnessing their deaths were apt to be celebrating them. Morally, psychologically, and politically, we are light years removed from that era. Yet it has become politically incorrect to say so. Anyone who tries can expect to be shouted down by loud voices insisting that slavery and Jim Crow stamped America forever, leaving it irremediably racist to the core.

Police brutality is too common in this country. Some people have no business being entrusted with a gun, a badge, and the power to arrest. All the same, the Washington Post noted last year, killings by cops are “rare outcomes” in a nation with “millions of encounters between police officers and the public.” When those rare outcomes do occur, according to the Post (which has been tracking the data since 2014, when Michael Brown was killed by police in Ferguson, Mo.), the racial breakdown is surprisingly consistent: “45% white men; 23% black men; and 16% Hispanic men. Women have accounted for about 5% of those killed, and people in mental distress about 25% of all shootings.” In the overwhelming majority of cases, the person killed was armed; only 4% had no weapon. The killing of George Floyd, in other words, was an exception, not the rule. Saying so doesn’t make his fate less appalling, it makes it more so. To see such a thing happen to a fellow citizen is especially harrowing because it is such a desecration of what America stands for.

It was an intolerable killing, and no one is tolerating it. The men responsible were fired within a day. Chauvin has been charged with murder.

But just as intolerable is the stupefying mayhem being unleashed across the country in Floyd’s name.

“I am heartbroken. Waking up this morning to see Minneapolis on fire would be something that would devastate Floyd,” his fiancée Courteney Ross told the Minnesota Star Tribune. She described him as the most spiritual man she ever knew — “he stood up for people, he was there for people when they were down, he loved people that were thrown away.”

His employer, Jovanni Thunstrom, felt the same way: “He didn’t discriminate,” Jovanni said in an interview. “Whether you were Hispanic, you were black, you were white — he treated everybody with respect and that’s what I love about him.”

As Viktor Frankl might have said, Floyd was of the race of the decent man. It only compounds the indecency of his death that it is being used as a justification for riots.

The RCA Condemns the Murder of George Floyd

The Rabbinical Council of America, the leading membership organization of Orthodox rabbis in North America, condemns the senseless murder of George Floyd. He, like every human being, was created in the image of Almighty, and the loss of his life is a tragedy.

Furthermore, we stand together with all who fight racism, bigotry and hatred. We believe that the equal rights and opportunities guaranteed by our laws are, as the founders of this great land proclaimed, "inalienable rights" which derive from our Sacred Scripture. As a faithful Jewish community, we stand together with all who defend the rights of others, especially the "widow, the orphan and the stranger."
We also condemn the lawlessness of the few who defile the memory of George Floyd and others, by rioting and looting. The key to effecting positive change is through peaceful demonstration, not through destroying property, looting and harming others.

"Our rabbis taught that society subsists on the three basic values: law, truth, and peace," said Rabbi Daniel Korobkin, the president of the Rabbinical Council of America. "We call upon those in government and law enforcement not only to preserve the law, but also to restore justice, fairness and a sense of compassion to all. Inciteful language must cease, and efforts must be expended which will educate our society away from racism and towards a better understanding each for the other."

"We stand resolute in our belief that the goodness of human nature will prevail, but we call upon everyone to end the violence," added Rabbi Binyamin Blau, first vice president of the RCA. "While the hurt and the anger felt and expressed today must not be ignored, the solution to our national pain will only come through peaceful demonstration, deliberate conversation, and effective action. As Dr. King said, 'Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.'"