Weekend services and upcoming Simchat Torah celebration

Dear Congregants and Friends,

Tomorrow morning, Saturday October 11 at 9 am, we will have our Shabbat morning services. We will have the Torah service at approximately 9:45 and a children’s story time concurrently. Please join us in thanking our kidush sponsors this week, Dani Kadosh and Juliette Meinstein as they celebrate their one year anniversary. A hearty mazal tov to you!

Intro to Judaism class this Sunday afternoon will be at 3:30 pm. This is a great class given by our very own Cantor Ben-Moshe and all are welcome to join.

Wednesday evenings at 7pm, we have mid-week evening services which we invite you to participate in. They are short and sweet and a meaningful way to break up the week.

DON”T FORGET:  October 22 at 7:30pm, we start for the first time ever at Beth El a national program called Read Hebrew across America. This crash course in Hebrew reading will be offered free of charge and we welcome you all to attend this amazing five week program.

Rabbi Peter Tarlow’s Weekly Parasha :

The month of Tishre is the holiest of Jewish months.  Beginning with Rosh Hashanah,  when we take an inventory of our lives, we then move on to the Ten days of Repentance, when we make amends with our friends and family, co-workers and colleagues. These ten days lead us to the month’s apex, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when each of us receives G’d’s final judgement.  Then as the sun sets on Yom Kippur and the final blast of the shofar is heard at Yom Kippur’s Neilah Service we immediately begin the third of Tishre’s holidays: Sukkot.

Sukkot is different from the month’s other two holidays. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a journey into our individual and national soul.  Sukkot, on the other hand, translates the spiritual  part of each person’s life into the daily aspects of life. Everything about Sukkot is practical and specific.  It is the original harvest thanksgiving holiday.  It is a week that reminds us that neither G’d nor life owes us anything; that it is we who must be grateful for whatever blessings we may receive. Sukkot takes us from our inner lives to our outer lives.  We are commanded to eat in the sukkah, to perform the mitzvah of ushpizin (hospitality), to interact with the world. The holiday is a celebration of this interaction.  It reminds us that we are part of the world and that perhaps one of the greatest of sins is to waste a precious day of the time that we are in this world

Sukkot is the motivator that reminds us that in the end, what we say or claim to believe about life is a lot less important than what we do in life.  Sukkot teaches us that there is a time for praying and introspection and a time for doing and harvesting. The days of reflection, the High Holidays, have come to a conclusion.  Now it is our responsibility to incorporate the lessons learned during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur into the way we harvest our good deeds and live our lives.

 My family joins me in wishing you a Happy and Joyous Sukkot, Chag Sameach.