| September 2006
Sinai Update – Week of October 8-14, 2006
Simchat Torah begins Friday evening, October 13 Reflections on the Jewish Calendar – Rabbi Andy Vogel
Jews around the world dance with the Torah this weekend at the holiday of Simchat Torah (observed in the Reform movement beginning this Friday night). Before reading the very end of the Torah (the death of Moses) and the very beginning (the Creation story), Jews take hold of all the scrolls in the Ark and we rejoice at completing the cycle of reading.
Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin writes that “the first time one holds the Torah is often a moment of elation as well as a rite of adulthood, like being given the keys to the family car. The one with the Torah leads the dancing, but most also be careful not to drop or mishandle the scrolls. Supportive and encouraging, the congregation dances – with abandon and love, with joy and energy.”
Please join us this Friday night at 7:00 p.m. to rejoice with the Torah, with music, singing and dancing! Chag same’ach!
- Rabbi Andy Vogel Sinai Update –September 17-23, 2006
Week of Rosh Hashanah Reflections on the Jewish Calendar – Rabbi Andy Vogel This Friday evening we begin our celebration of the Jewish New Year. It is a time of renewal, blessing and hope. We can celebrate at arriving at the start of another year, grateful for our many blessings this year, regretful of our many mistakes. But the Jewish calendar’s gift to us is the blessing of starting anew, filled with the knowledge of the past. On Rosh Hashanah, Friday, we begin with a “clean slate,” looking ahead to a year whose story has yet to be written. “Days are scrolls; write on them only what you want remembered.” (Bachya ibn Pakuda, 11th century, in Gates of Repentance, p. 233) A whole year lies before us! May we use our time in it well!
May you and your loved ones be blessed with a good year, with good health and happiness, and many, many blessings. L’shanah tovah!
- Rabbi Andy Vogel
Parashat N’tzavim/Vayelech Reflections on the Jewish Calendar – Rabbi Andy Vogel
Rosh Hashanah and the Hebrew month of Tishrei begin in less than two weeks, the beginning of the New Year. And yet, one oddity in the Jewish calendar is that the Bible calls the month of Rosh Hashanah’s celebration “the seventh month” (see Leviticus 23:23), while it says that in the “first month,” ”the month of the spring” (Exodus 13:4), Jews should celebrate Passover! How can the Jewish New Year begin in the middle of the year, fully six months after the “first month”?
Rabbi Arthur Waskow writes that Passover is “the month when God enters history and reshapes our tangible political and social life,” but Rosh Hashanah is “the new year for renewal” of the self. Perhaps there are two types of new beginnings in the Jewish calendar, and we need both of them. If Passover marks and celebrates the beginning of our people’s story, Rosh Hashanah is the new year for all of creation and the whole human race. And yet, it is a deeply personal and individual holiday. On Rosh Hashanah, we’re told, God “musters and numbers and counts” each one of us. As individuals, we look within seeking renewal, seeking to be close to God, and seeking to return to our true “selves,” to the best way of living and being we can imagine. - Rabbi Andy Vogel Back |  |
