Parshat Beha’alotkh

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Friday Night Shabbat Services are tonight June 24 at 7 PM
Candle lighting in Austin is at 8:18 PM.

Shabbat morning services are tomorrow morning, June 25 at 9 AM, with the Torah service at 9:45 and a kidush lunch immediately following.

Our deepest condolences to the Butler family on the loss of Larry’s mother earlier this week. May you all be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Cantor Ben-Moshe’s weekly message:
As we read Parshat Beha’alotkha, we begin with the description of the menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum that lit the Mishkan and later the Temple. It was the job of the Cohanim, the priests, to light the menorah every evening, and it was to burn all night to light up the sanctuary. In a way, this act was a microcosm of our role as a people. The Torah says that we, the People of Israel, are to be a “kingdom of priests”, and our Tradition also says that we are to be a “light unto the nations”. We are called to set an example of ethical living to anyone with whom we come in contact. Jewish Tradition is not meant merely to make us feel better, but to make the world better. Shabbat Shalom.
Hazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe

Thank you kind kidish crew for the shabbat kids. This week spearheaded by Claudia Aguilar!

We would like to wish Patrice Jones a continued refua shlema as she recuperates at Warm Springs Rehabilitation Hospital in Kyle. G-d willing you will be back home in a couple of weeks.

Parashat Naso

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Friday Night Shabbat Services tonight at the usual time of 7:00 PM. Join us for spirited singing and stay after for coffee, cookies and company.
Candle lighting in Austin is at 8:17 PM

Shabbat morning services are a week away, Saturday June 25.

A note from Arthur Gurney: I would like to thank everybody for their thoughts, prayers, calls, cards, and meals since my recent car accident. I am most grateful for the many rides to doctor’s appointments and physical therapy. It was all very much appreciated. I am finally driving again.

Cantor Ben-Moshe’s Message
This week we read in Parshat Naso about the dedication ceremony for the Tabernacle in the Wilderness. Each of the tribal chieftains brought an identical gift for the ceremony. This emphasized he absolute equality of every part of the People of Israel-no matter how large or small the tribe. All of us are, or should be, equal. Non-Orthodox Judaism should be equal to Orthodox in Israel, and of course every Jew should have equal status. May the day soon come when this is fact and not merely aspiration. Shabbat Shalom.
Hazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe

The sisterhood will have a host of events in the coming year. Highlights include another Chemist in the Kitchen class with Tamar, book club event with Gail, Art with Sharon, Volunterering at Mitzvah day with Rachael, Jewish yoga (“Oy”ga) fun, garage sale to raise funds for the shul and much, much more. As always, please send us your ideas and if you would like to help with events.

Thank you to our new board of directors!
We welcome new board members Art Levin, Barry Mann and Juliette Meinstein, who are joining Kevin Koeller, Bob Miller, Bam Rubenstein, Gregg and Michelle Philipson, Elaine Jacobs, Arie Stavchansky and Yosef Aguilar. We even have two youth group representatives who will report to the board about the needs of the youth in our congregation, Sara K. and Vania A. You all are tremendous, inspiring and really appreciated.

Kudos to all the many helpers who help make Beth El Beautiful. This week Efrain and Joakin spruced up the landscaping and Tam sharpened all our kitchen knives! Beth El is the kind of place where many hands make light work and everyone can truly make a difference.

Sunday school resumes in the fall, on August 21. Currently enrolliing students for the coming year to join our BERS and their awesome teachers. Bar and Bat mitzvah prep classes also continue. If you have any questions, please contact us at info@bethelaustin.org

Happy birthday this month to Joakin Soto, Kevin Koeller, Hal Jacobs, Rinat Levin, Moshe Sananes, Rachel Butler, Anat Inbar, Terri Rubenstein.
Let us know your special occasion and we’ll give you a Mazal Tov!

Dr. Peter Tarlow, Rabbi Emeritus at Texas A&M and Center for Latino Jewish Relations: Weekly Parasha:
This week we begin the Bible’s fourth book, BaMidbar, or as it is known in English translation, the Book of Numbers. Actually the yearly reading began last week, but due to a heavy travel schedule we will combine the first two weekly sections: BaMidbar and Naso.
Last week we celebrated the festival of Shavuoth. Shavuoth marks the time that the Jewish people went from being a mere “group’ and became a nation. To be a nation, means to live by a set of rules, to cease to live only in the present but to have both a common history and hopes and aspirations for the future. One of Ruth’s decedents will be our most famous king, King David. In a world of ethnic cleansing, genocide and hatred the lessons of this book are more powerful than ever.
It is not easy to find a common theme between the first two weekly sections. The first one, Parashat BaMidbar (Numbers 1:1-4:20) is about the taking of the national census; the need to have precise data and facts. The parashah is a challenge to the modern reader but despite the fact that it is not an easy parashah to read, it teaches us that without a sense of order and organization no society can long survive.
This week’s section, Naso is one of the most unusual sections in the entire Hebrew Bible. The section, called Parashat Naso, begins in Numbers 4:21 and goes until 7:89. It is the only place in Jewish law where there is a “trial by ordeal.” The trial is centered around the theme of a woman whose husband suspected her of being unfaithful to him, and how he could test her honesty.
Interestingly enough, the rabbis changed the text’s emphasis from that of the unfaithful wife to that of the jealous husband. Classical Judaism feared the “power of jealousy” seeing it as an “emotional tornado.” The rabbis understood that to be jealous is to claim ownership of another human being. In that sense this first “rebellion in the desert” is a symbol of the “wilderness of selfishness”, of a desire to control another human being. Each member of Israel had to cross this sea of jealousy if he were to reach the promised land of human dignity. It is for that reason that the rabbis argued that only G’d has the right to be jealous.
Judaism understood that to be jealous is a form of enslavement. It understands that where there is slavery then society soon degenerates into a false sense of order and finally chaos. Is there a time to be jealous? Is it there a proper time to be jealous or is a complete lack of jealousy merely indifference? What do you think?

 

Sefer Bamidbar and Shavuot

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Friday Night Shabbat Services tonight at the usual time of 7:00 PM. Join us for spirited singing and stay after for coffee and cookies.
Candle lighting in Austin is at 8:14 PM

Shabbat morning services are TOMORROW morning
Saturday June 11 at 9 AM. Please join us. A huge thank you to Hal and Elaine for sponsoring a delicious meat kidush in honor of Hal Jacob’s birthday and father’s day!

SHAVUOT is THIS Sunday at 9 AM, with the Torah Service and reading of the 10 commandments and the Book of Ruth at 10 AM. We will be honoring our recent families who have joined the covenant! Please join us in this very special milestone. We had a moving ceremony this week which will culminate in the celebrations on Sunday. A vegetarian meal to follow. Mazal tov to our precious families!

Cantor Ben-Moshe’s Message
This week, we begin Sefer B’midbar (the Book of Numbers) with the parshah of the same name, and then immediately after, on Sunday, celebrate the Festival of Shavuot. Interesting, there is a juxtaposition in the Torah readings. On Shavuot we read about the People of Israel arriving at Sinai to receive Torah, and in B’midbar we read about the beginning of the journey away from Sinai towards the Land of Israel. Sinai of course was a place of great spiritual significance, the place of Revelation-but we cannot live there permanently. Our Torah teaches that we are to carry our spiritual lessons and experiences into the “real world”, and to live life. Instead of retreating from the world permanently to focus on spirituality, we are to bring spirituality into the world. That is the true Jewish spiritual path. Shabbat Shalom and Hag Sameah.
Hazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe

The sisterhood had an amazing planning meeting this week. We will have an action packed year of events and doing good deeds. Highlights include another Chemist in the Kitchen class with Tamar, book club event with Gail, Art with Sharon, Volunterering at Mitzvah day with Rachael, Jewish yoga (“Oy”ga) fun and much, much more. As always, please send us your ideas and if you would like to help with events.

Thank you to our new board of directors!
Last Sunday afternoon, a wonderful crowd gathered at shul for the annual meeting and kosher cookout. With grace and humor, we heard all about the happenings for the coming year. We welcomed new board members Art Levin, Barry Mann and Juliette Meinstein, who are joining Kevin Koeller, Bob Miller, Bam Rubenstein, Gregg and Michelle Philipson, Elaine Jacobs, Arie Stavchansky and Yosef Aguilar. We even have two youth group representatives who will report to the board about the needs of the youth in our congregation, Sara K. and Vania A. You all are tremendous, inspiring and really appreciated.

Kidish Crew Kudos! Todah rabah to Michelle, Sara, Bo, Iris, Claudia, Vania and Sofia, Mary and Genevieve. You can always join the kidish crew and have some fun. Great summer boredom buster for older kiddos too who just love helping us.

Happy birthday this week to Rinat Levin, Moshe Sananes and Hal Jacobs.
Let us know your special occasion and we’ll give you a Mazal Tov!

SHOMRIM: Please consider this important mitzvah!
Congregation Beth El has for the past few years been a part of Austin shomrim, a group of men and women who help in this amazing mitzvah when someone in the community has passed away. We could use some more volunteers to help this community wide organization. Please email us for more details. Go to the following link for more information and to sign up:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GCJGW7N

                 

Parashat B’hukkotai

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Friday Night Shabbat Services are tonight at 7 PM.

Shabbat morning services are a week away, June 11.

Shavuot services will be Sunday June 12 at 10 AM. Come celebrate the giving of the Torah – Chag Matan Torah with us.

But Before Then: Beth El’s Annual meeting is this Sunday June 5 at 4:45 PM. Come hear all about the shul happenings and have your say, while enjoying a delicious kosher BBQ. To help please bring paper goods, kosher drinks or consider a small donation to help with costs. Also, you may come early and help cook.

Tuesday June 7 at 6 PM, the sisterhood will meet at Beth El for a planning meeting for the coming year. All ideas are welcome.

Candle lighting in Austin is at 8:11 PM

Cantor Ben-Moshe’s weekly message:
This week we read Parshat B’hukkotai, the end of the Book of Leviticus. This parshah contains one of the two tochechot, passages of rebuke, in the Torah. Traditionally, this passage as well as the one in the Book of Deuteronomy are read very quickly and in an undertone, so as not to put an emphasis on the punishments attendant upon disobedience to God’s laws. “Fire and brimstone” preaching is simply not part of normative Judaism. We are enjoined to walk in God’s ways out of love, not out of fear. “V’ahavta et Hashem Eloheikha”-“And you shall love Hashem your God”-this is the model for our relationship with the Divine. May we go about all of our business in the spirit of love, for God, for humanity and for all of Creation. Shabbat Shalom.
Hazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe

NEW AC UNITS FUNDRAISER
The air condition units at Beth El are the original units. Over the past few years, we have had to repair the units several times and they now need to be replaced. Please consider a generous donation to Beth El for these important improvements. Thank you for your continued support.

Let’s not shvitz through another hot Austin summer. Every penny donated to Beth El goes towards doing good and doing Jewish in Austin!
http://bethelaustin.wpengine.com/donate/

Rabbi Peter Tarlow’s weekly Parasha from the Center for Jewish Latino relations:
Mixing the practical with the spiritual.
This Shabbat, we finish the yearly reading of the Book of Leviticus. We find the weekly section called Bechukotai starting in Leviticus 26:3 and going until the end of the book.
This section once again deals with a myriad of ideas and concepts, and once again, the text in the subtlest of ways takes us to the theme of balancing the ideal with the practical, the need for holiness with that of economics.
Although not openly stated, Leviticus teaches us in this final chapter that one who lacks idealism becomes nothing more than a human machine and one who lives only by one’s idealism is a fool. Life requires a balance of idealism and the practical, of an understanding of the need to balance one’s friends’ requests against the desires of one’s enemies. The text teaches this important and real life lesson in a number of ways.
For example, we read the subtext of the proper usage of time. If we examine the opening verse we find that it reads “Im-bechukotai telechu/If you will go (through time) by means of my statues”. The verb “telchu”, derived from the root h-l-ch), means “to go/walk and often has a temporal sense. Is the verse teaching us that as we travel through time we are expected to increase our knowledge base even though our time on Earth may be limited? Is this the reason that the classical rabbis understood education to be food for the soul? They emphasized that we must be good stewards not only of our physical resources but also of our temporal resources.
In these final chapters we note that the idealism of the holiness code can only exist if we are both spiritual and practical. To love we must also be strong enough to defend ourselves. Are the results of a lack love cynicism and of too much love is collective suicide?
Leviticus is a book based on the concept of “kdushah”, which means a combination of “that which we sanctify by separating from the rest, that which we make special, or that which we utilize with care”. This final parashah then summarizes the book’s theme by teaching us that as we travel down the path of time we must carefully manage our physical and temporal resources, our spiritual with our economic resources. The weekly parashah teach us that we dare not mismanage any of these or the consequences will be curses rather than blessings. These are important words to consider in an election year. What do you think?