Shabbat Shalom GRJC

Weekly Emails to the Congregation

Parshat Braysheet 2008

Shabbat Shalom to the GRJC family,

We light our Shabbat candles this week at 5:44 pm.  Friday evening services will begin at 8 pm, and Saturday morning services will begin at 9 am.

This Shabbat is a good opportunity for our upcoming Bar/Bat Mitzvah students to have a chance to lead a prayer from the bimah.  Next week, Kenneth Vallespir will become a Bar Mitzvah.

On Wednesday we completed the reading of the Torah and began at the very beginning (a very good place to start) once again.  This year, we will read from the middle third of each weekly Torah portion.

This week’s reading begins where Wednesday’s introduction to Braysheet, the Book of Genesis, ended.  We begin this week with the creation story that takes place in the Garden of Eden and focuses on human beings and their relationship to God and to one another.  God creates human beings last in the first chapter, but the human beings do not interact with one another and they listen passively to God’s instructions.

In our reading this week, human beings will take an entirely different role in the work of creation.  Adam and Chava, Adam and Eve, will take an active (albeit problematic) role in the Garden of Eden.  Instead of listening passively to God’s instructions, they will be proactive about eating from the tree of wisdom.  They will learn about their anxieties and their limitations.  They will also confront the challenges of life outside the Garden of Eden.

The world of the first chapter of Genesis appears ordered and symmetrical.  Nothing in this word is out of place, and it appears like clockwork as God speaks and the world is created.  The second story in Genesis suggests that the Garden of Eden is an extension of the ordered world of the opening creation sequence.  It contains all that human beings need to live and thrive.  At the same time, it is a world filled with emotion, desire, curiosity and our innate desire to make the unknown knowable.

Perhaps God placed forbidden fruits and us in the Garden in order to help guide us in our search for meaning and truth.  When Eve looks at the fruit of the tree of wisdom, the wisdom to know what is good and what is evil, she notices first that the fruit is pretty and looks delicious, but she notes also that the fruit is “desirable as a source of wisdom.”  Although God may not have wanted us to possess this wisdom at first, the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge becomes a great value in the later stories and writings of the Torah and, indeed, of the Rabbis of the Mishnah, Talmud, and beyond.

May this year’s cycle of Torah reading help guide us toward a greater knowledge of God.  May it bring us wisdom to help us live out our lives according to our values, and inspiration in all that we do.

With wishes for a restful and meaningful Shabbat,
Rabbi Tow

CONDOLENCES:
We extend our condolences to Roann Rubin and her entire family on the loss of her beloved mother Corinne Bree Levinsohn z”l.  The funeral will take place Friday morning, 11 am, at Louis Suburban chapels in Fair Lawn.  Shivah will take place Saturday evening 7:30pm, Sunday 8pm, Monday 8 pm at 78 Kenmore Pl. in Glen Rock and Tuesday and Wednesday 8pm at 448 Grove St. in Oradell.

MAZEL TOV AND THANK YOU:
To all those who volunteered to make our High Holidays, Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah possible and meaningful.

To Marc Radin and Ellen Menschel who received the aliyas this year for the completion of the Torah and the beginning of Genesis.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Sunday, 10/26, TORAH WALK:  10-10:30 and 11:30-12 (2 sessions), Join me as we unroll an entire Torah scroll and take a guided tour of the Torah’s writing and special features along with our religious school students and families.

Sunday, 10/26, 10-12:30, KEHILLAH PROJECT-Opening Day program at the YJCC for our Daled class students.

Monday, 10/27, 6:30 pm, BOGRIM:  1st Meeting of the Year – Topic #1:  Public Service:  Putting our values into action.  Join us as we welcome Mayor Van Keuren as a special guest speaker.  And we’ll have our pizza snack as always.
 

Back to Home