Rabbi’s message Shavua tov and Chag Purim sameach to the entire TAS community. I hope that everyone had a very fun night last night and made lots of noise with your groggers and ate lots of delicious homentashen!! And, let’s hope that today continues to be a very festive and happy time for all of our communities who are celebrating one of the happiest days in the Jewish calendar. And now, as our year continues to move through the spring season, we start looking ahead to our next holiday, one of the three major holidays of the year, Passover, Pesah. There are some teachings that Purim allows us to start using up all of the flour and other food items that we are not supposed to eat during Passover. We now have about 5 weeks to continue preparing our homes and ourselves for the eight days of Pesah. This Shabbat will also be the third of the four special Shabbatot that lead us to Pesah. This week is known as Shabbat Parah, the Sabbath of the Red Heifer. We will read from the second Torah, for the maftir Aliyah, that in the days of the Temple, the priests would use the ashes of the red heifer to purify people who were ritually impure, which would have prevented them from being able to eat from the special Pesah sacrifice. In a similar way, today we ‘purify’ our homes of all of the bread and items with leaven to make our homes ready for Pesah. I’m sure that Costco and Ralphs markets and lots of other places that we shop are already stacking packages of matzah and gefilte fish and other items that will be labeled as ‘kosher for Passover’on their shelves. We will discuss the preparations for the upcoming holiday over the next few weeks. This week’s Torah portion is one of my favorites, Ki Tissa, it also happens to be the parasha from my Bar Mitzvah Shabbat…many years ago!! It is a very important and transitional reading because it includes some very interesting events that our people experienced and remember to this very day. We are approaching the last days of Moses’ 40 days on Mount Sinai as he listened to God give Moses almost all of the commandments that will be the living guide to the Israelites and also to the Jewish people throughout our history. One of the most familiar verses from the Torah are also part of this week’s reading. They are the last two verses of this year’s triennial cycle. They are the words that we sing every Friday night and every Shabbat morning, “V’shamru v’nay Yisrael et ha-Shabbat…” Chapter 31, verses 16 and 17, “the Israelite people shall keep the Sabbath, observing Shabbat throughout the ages as a covenant for all time. It shall be a sign for all time between Me and the people of Israel. For in six days the Lord made heaven and Earth, and on the seventh day God ceased from work and was refreshed.”
We will continue to discuss this week’s parasha and the special maftir as well on Shabbat. I want to wish everyone a very festive rest of Purim today and a wonderful week ahead as we move closer to our festive Pesah in just a few more weeks. Wishing all of us a very early Shabbat shalom and I hope to see many of you on Friday night on Zoom and on Shabbat morning in person or on Zoom…
Rabbi Ralph Resnick ·
Friday, March 10, 7 pm – Shabbat service on Zoom led by Rabbi Ralph. Candle lighting 5:38 pm. ·
Saturday, March 11, 10 am – Shabbat service led by Rabbi Ralph. Please join us for a kiddush lunch after the service. ·
Friday, March 17, 7 pm – Shabbat service on Zoom led by Cantor Mike. Candle lighting 6:44 pm. ·
Saturday, March 18, 10 am – Shabbat service led by Rabbi Ralph and Cantor Mike. Please join us for a kiddush lunch after the service. ·
Friday, March 24, 7 pm – Shabbat service on Zoom led by Rabbi Ralph. Candle lighting 6:49 pm. ·
Saturday, March 25, 10 am – Shabbat service led by Rabbi Ralph and Cantor Mike. Please join us for a kiddush lunch after the service. ·
Wednesday, March 29, 7 pm – Cantor Mike’s end of the month concert. ·
Friday, March 31, 7 pm – Shabbat service on Zoom led by Cantor Mike. Candle lighting 6:54 pm.