Special Mincha Shabbat service

Friday Night Services, 6/26, at 7:00 pm

No Shabbat morning services tomorrow, but there is a special mincha service at 7:30 p.m.

We will be celebrating the bar mitzvah of Nadav Rosenberg. We would like to wish the Rosenberg family a hearty mazal tov on their simcha and thank them for sponsoring the seuda shlishit meal following the Mincha service.

Rabbi Tarlow’s weekly Parasha:
This week, we read the Torah section called “Chukkat” (Numbers 19:1-22:2). Lay readers and Biblical students alike will note that this section is not an easy section to read. The Parasha’s wilderness experience acts as a counter-point to the tale found in the Garden of Eden. If Eden represents life’s ideal dream, now the Desert of Tzin presents us with the other side of life, that of the harshness of life’s reality. Tzin is a barren place, a place to go through rather than to.
In this section everything seems to go wrong for the People of Israel and for their leader Moses. Now the People of Israel begin to realize that freedom is not an ideal dream, but rather it is a harsh reality composed of the battles for daily life. To be free means to accept life’s challenges and find a way to face and overcome them. In this week’s parashah we read about how Moses loses patience with the people, how Miriam dies, and how the nation’s naïve idealism is confronted and then transformed into the reality that life is an ongoing struggle for survival.
Parashaht Chukat is not meant to depress us. Rather it is a lesson in life’s challenges. This section teaches us that there is no life without crises; that problems are not obstacles placed in front of us by G’d but rather challenges which G’d gives us. In other words, it is we who must define the events of our lives and how we chose to view them.
To live is to overcome obstacles, it is to learn from them and to become stronger because of them. Midbar Tzin, the Wilderness of Zin as it is called in English, represents the adult side of life. It is alone in the wilderness that we, as a people, learn that even there, G’d is with us. It is in the wilderness that we also learn that paradise is not a gift from G’d but rather the results of what we accomplish by ourselves. In Parashat Chukkat we learn that no one gets to a promised land without a willingness to struggle, to accept hardships and the many detours on life’s path.
Although life is never easy, it is a challenge that forces us to seek a better world by using the talents and gifts that G’d gives us every day. We call that process in Hebrew: “tikkun olam” meaning” the repairing of the world”. The way that you answer the question: “How will I handle my journey through the Wilderness of Zin?” greatly speaks to who you are and how you choose to determine your path through life. What is your path? How do you deal with life’s obstacles, by complaining or by doing?

Cantor Ben-Moshe’s Weekly Message:
This week’s parshah, Hukkath, deals extensively with death-the sacrifice of the Red Heifer for purification after contact with death, and then the deaths of Aharon and of Miriam. The descriptions of the deaths of Moshe’s siblings and partners in leadership illustrate what the rite of the Red Heifer comes to teach-when we encounter death, we experience it fully, we mourn, and then we return to the land of the living. Bodily death is an inevitable part of life, and must be faced and not avoided. The People of Israel stop their journeying and mourn for Miriam and Aharon, and then they move on. When one comes into direct contact with death, one sits for seven days, then purifies and returns to life. The Torah teaches us a balanced way of dealing with death, which many non-Jews admire. May we all enjoy s’machot, happy occasions-but when we inevitably face death, let us face it squarely, inhabit our grief-and then return to the life which is our gift from God. Shabbat Shalom.
Hazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe