Parashat Masei – Life is Growth – Sandy Kress special guest

Kaballat Shabbat services, TOMORROW, Friday July 13th at the regular time of 7 pm. We continue with our summer speakers by welcoming distinguished educator Sandy Kress to deliver a Dvar Torah! Please join us – Sandy is a great speaker!

Shabbat morning Services are also this week, July 14th, starting at 9 a.m., with the Torah service at around 9:45 a.m. We will have a light kidish after.

About Sandy Kress: Sandy Kress received his bachelor’s degree with great distinction from the University of California at Berkeley and his law degree with honors from the University of Texas at Austin. After a long career in law and public service, Sandy began a few years ago to devote most of his time and energy to study, writing, and teaching on religious and ethical matters. He now teaches weekly in a variety of synagogue, church, university, and neighborhood group settings.

Sandy’s weekly blog on Jewish wisdom and topics in the Tanach can be found at https://sandykress.wordpress.com.

Lesson plans, handouts, and audios of his full course on the 613 mitzvot, the entire Torah cycle, and a variety of other courses on Jewish topics at the Westlake Hills Presbyterian Church can be found under the Hebrew Bible Studies tab at https://www.thirdwell.org.

Sandy has begun podcast series, A Shared Word, with his good friend, Mark Charbonneau, pastor at the Vine in Austin. The first on Proverbs and other wisdom sayings can be found at https://itunes.apple.com/…/podc…/a-shared-word/id1375838631…
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Cantor Ben-Moshe’s Weekly Message;

This Shabbat we end the reading of Sefer B’midbar, the Book of Numbers, with the combined parshot of Mattoth/Mas’ei, and on Friday we begin the month of Av. The Sages taught “When Av enters, we decrease joy”. We are of course on the cusp of Tish’ah B’Av, the Fast of the Ninth of Av (this year observed on the Tenth, since the Ninth falls on Shabbat). We remember the destruction of the First and Second Temples, as well as other calamities that have befallen our People. This month’s mourning is directly opposite the rejoicing of the month of Adar, the month in which Purim falls, when disaster was averted. May we never know any more disasters, and may mourning be a matter of distant memory. Shabbat Shalom.
Hazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe

Shabbat candle lighting times are at 8:17 p.m.

Dive into the Talmud!
Next class TONIGHT July 12 at 7pm.

The Talmud has been compared to a vast sea, in which one can swim forever. The Talmud is a vast compilation of law, legend and scholarly discussions, which also gives us a window into the lives of our ancient ancestors.

Come dip a toe into the sea of Talmud as we begin to explore Massecheth B’rachoth, the Tractate of Benedictions, which deals with prayer. The class, led by Chazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe, will meet on alternate Thursday evenings at 7:00 PM, July 12, July 26, August 16, August 30, September 6.

Save the Date Guys!
Bowling with my Buddies –
Join the Men’s Club August 19 for an afternoon of fun, bowling and camaraderie. Open to all!

Enrolling now for Hebrew school starting in the Fall! Save your spot! Let your friends know about our amazing little school!

ALSO ENROLLING FOR CHAI MITZVAH TEENS!

Teen Chai Mitzvah Program
Congregation Beth El
Shereen Ben-Moshe
info@bethelaustin.org

Come meet other teens in the Austin Jewish community, learn together and volunteer your time to do good!
The teen program includes texts to spark discussions, suggestions for increasing meaning in ritual observances, and examples of volunteer opportunities for each topic that can inspire the group towards creative ideas for social action.

Upon completion of the 9-month program, through our partnership with Jewish National Fund, participants will have trees planted in Israel in their honor. Each participant will receive a tree certificate.

Hands-on leadership program:
Social Action opportunities
Builds self-esteem
Builds Jewish identity
Builds Jewish Literacy
Connects with other Jewish teens and with the community
Provides opportunities for positive personal expression
Open to the Jewish community.

When?
Chai Mitzvah Study Sessions – 2nd & 4th Saturdays each month 10AM – 11AM
(Teens are welcome to join in on Shabbat morning services following our class. We also invite you to join us for a delicious Kiddush lunch. Teens may be dropped off as early at 9 AM and picked up by 1:00. Families are invited to come for services and lunch as well. If twice per month is too much for your teen’s schedule, we encourage one Shabbat per month and our Sunday mitzvah day!)
Mitzvah Project -1 Sunday per month 10AM – 1:00PM to participate in a monthly community service project.
(Subject to change based on our mitzvah project or trip of the month. Teens can earn volunteer hours for this day.)

Cost: $150
(Sibling discount and tuition assistance available.)

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
on the weekly Parasha:

Etre ailleurs, “To be elsewhere – the great vice of this race, its great and secret virtue, the great vocation of this people.” So wrote the French poet and essayist Charles Peguy (1873-1914), a philosemite in an age of Anti-Semitism. He continued: “Any crossing for them means the crossing of the desert. The most comfortable houses, the best built from stones as big as the temple pillars, the most real of real estate, the most overwhelming of apartment houses will never mean more to them than a tent in the desert.”[1]
What he meant was that history and destiny had combined to make Jews aware of the temporariness of any dwelling outside the Holy Land. To be a Jew is to be on a journey. That is how the Jewish story began when Abraham first heard the words “Lech Lecha”, with their call to leave where he was and travel “to the land I will show you.” That is how it began again in the days of Moses, when the family had become a people. And that is the point almost endlessly repeated in parshat Masei: “They set out from X and camped at Y. They set out from Y and camped at Z” – 42 stages in a journey of forty years. We are the people who travel. We are the people who do not stand still. We are the people for whom time itself is a journey through the wilderness in search of the Promised Land.
In one sense this is a theme familiar from the world of myth. In many cultures, stories are told about the journey of the hero. Otto Rank, one of Freud’s most brilliant colleagues, wrote about it. So did Joseph Campbell, a Jungian, in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Nonetheless, the Jewish story is different in significant ways:
[1] The journey – set out in the books of Shemot and Bamidbar – is undertaken by everyone, the entire people: men, women and children. It is as if, in Judaism, we are all heroes, or at least all summoned to an heroic challenge.
[2] It takes longer than a single generation. Perhaps, had the spies not demoralised the nation with their report, it might have taken only a short while. But there is a deeper and more universal truth here. The move from slavery to the responsibilities of freedom takes time. People do not change overnight. Therefore evolution succeeds; revolution fails. The Jewish journey began before we were born and it is our responsibility to hand it on to those who will continue it after us.
[3] In myth, the hero usually encounters a major trial: an adversary, a dragon, a dark force. He (it is usually a he) may even die and be resurrected. As Campbell puts it: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”[2] The Jewish story is different. The adversary the Israelites encounter is themselves: their fears, their weaknesses, their constant urge to return and regress.
It seems to me, here as so often elsewhere, that the Torah is not myth but anti-myth, a deliberate insistence on removing the magical elements from the story and focussing relentlessly on the human drama of courage versus fear, hope versus despair, and the call, not to some larger-than-life hero but to all-of-us-together, given strength by our ties to our people’s past and the bonds between us in the present. The Torah is not some fabled escape from reality but reality itself, seen as a journey we must all undertake, each with our own strengths and contributions to our people and to humanity.
We are all on a journey. And we must all rest from time to time. That dialectic between setting out and encamping, walking and standing still, is part of the rhythm of Jewish life. There is a time for Nitzavim, standing, and a time for Vayelekh, moving on. Rav Kook spoke of the two symbols in Bilaam’s blessing, “How goodly are your tents, Jacob, and your dwelling places, Israel.” Tents are for people on a journey. Dwelling places are for people who have found home.
Psalm 1 uses two symbols of the righteous individual. On the one hand he or she is on the way, while the wicked begin by walking, then transition to standing and sitting. On the other hand, the righteous is compared to a tree, planted by streams of water, that gives fruit in due season and whose leaves do not wither. We walk, but we also stand still. We are on a journey but we are also rooted like a tree.
In life, there are journeys and encampments. Without the encampments, we suffer burnout. Without the journey, we do not grow. And life is growth. There is no way to avoid challenge and change. The late Rav Aharon Lichtenstein zt”l once gave a beautiful shiur[3] on Robert Frost’s poem, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,’ with its closing verse:
The woods are lovely dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
He analyses the poem in terms of Kierkegaard’s distinction between the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of life. The poet is enchanted by the aesthetic beauty of the scene, the soft silence of the falling snow, the dark dignity of the tall trees. He would love to stay here in this timeless moment, this eternity-in-an-hour. But he knows that life has an ethical dimension also, and this demands action, not just contemplation. He has promises to keep; he has duties toward the world. So he must walk on despite his tiredness. He has miles to go before he sleeps: he has work to do while the breath of life is within him.
The poet has stopped briefly to enjoy the dark wood and falling snow. He has encamped. But now, like the Israelites in Masei, he must set out again. For us as Jews, as for Kierkegaard the theologian and Robert Frost the poet, ethics takes priority over aesthetics. Yes, there are moments when we should, indeed must, pause to see the beauty of the world, but then we must move on, for we have promises to keep, including the promises to ourselves and to God.
Hence the life-changing idea: life is a journey, not a destination. We should never stand still. Instead we should constantly set ourselves new challenges that take us out of our comfort zone. Life is growth.