MAZEL TOV!
Congratulations to
our High School graduates
Scott Berman
Joshua Givant
Sarah Goldstein
Sean Hammond
Daniel Koch
Shir Michael
Shoshana Remer
Jason Schoenberg
Samuel Sperling
and to
Ariel and David Kay
(our Nusery School
Director Hilarie's twins)
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COMMUNITY
SHABBAT DINNER AT GRJC
FRIDAY, JULY 10, 2009, 6:30 PM
Join us for a Shabbat dinner in the GRJC
social hall at 6:30 pm,
and then we'll participate in the Friday
evening service.
We'll explain and then
perform together all the Friday night
rituals including candle-lighting, kiddush,
hand-washing, blessing children, and the
blessing after the meal.
Dinner will include: Brisket, Chicken,
Vegetarian
$9 per individual
$18 per family
To
sign up, please fill out and mail in the
form contained in the June Bulletin. The
form will also be sent by email.
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Glen
Rock 4th of July parade
This year
July 4
falls on
Shabbat.
The GRJC
will hold Shabbat services at 7:30 am on
7/4, allowing congregants time to view the
parade when it begins at 9:30.
As part of
the
Religious
Communities of Glen Rock, GRJC members
have, in past years, pushed grocery carts
and solicited cash donations for the
food banks during the parade. Since these
are not activities we do on Shabbat,
we are asking our members this year to
drop off non-perishable food items and/or
monetary donations at the GRJC next week
leading up to the parade, or the week
after the July 4th weekend. Our Social
Action Committee will deliver your
donations to the pantries, which are
sorely in need of contributions, given the
current economic climate.
A SAFE AND
HAPPY 4TH!
God Bless America!
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SAVE THE
CORRECTED
DATES!
FRIDAY, AUG. 14
GRJC BBQ and Erev Shabbat Service
under the tent in
Rabbi Tow and Rabbi Schwartz' backyard.
SUNDAY, AUG 30
Family White Water
Rafting in Lehigh, PA
Annual Men's Club Golf
Outing
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Shabbat,
June 26-27, 2009
5
Tammuz 5769
Torah portion:
Korach
Bamidbar (Numbers)
16:20-17:24
We light our Shabbat candles at 8:14 pm
Shabbat evening services
will begin at 8 pm
Joshua
Ross will become a Bar Mitzvah this
Shabbat
We wish an early Mazel Tov! to the Ross
family
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Saturday morning services will begin at
9 am
Shabbat ends at 9:24 pm on Saturday.
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THE ISRAEL TRIP IS ON!
After a successful opening meeting, we're
moving forward with the Israel trip that's
scheduled for February 6-16, 2010. We
have the proposed itinerary available as
well as the costs. Please contact Rabbi
Tow (rabbi@grjc.org) to learn more about
this exciting Israel opportunity!
This trip offers a maximum Israel
experience at the most affordable price
available today--a unique opportunity!.
*See Tel
Aviv, the Golan, the Galilee, Jerusalem,
Masada, the Dead Sea and more...
*Participate in an archaeological dig in
Jerusalem.
*Dinner with members of a Masorti/Conservative
congregation in Rehovot.
*Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial
*Wine tasting in the Golan Heights Winery
*See where King David lived
*And so much more...
Join us on our Israel adventure!
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Shabbat Shalom to the GRJC family
Question:
When we offer the "Mi Sheberach" healing
prayer we offer the sick individual's
Hebrew name and then son of/daughter of (ben/bat)
followed by the mother's name. For
example, Eliezer ben Chana or Batya bat
Leah. Why do we cite the mother's name
for the healing prayer?
Answer:
The reason we cite the mother's name
in the healing prayer comes from the way
that the Zohar, the central book of Jewish
mystical thinking, explores and explains a
statement King David makes in Psalm 86.
The Zohar, believed to largely be the work
of Spanish kabbalist Moshe ben Shem Tov de
Leon (1240-1305) is the foundational work
of kabbalah or Jewish mysticism. Though
Moshe de Leon wrote most of the work, it
is attributed to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai,
a student of Rabbi Akiva who lived in the
middle of the second century CE. The
first section of the Zohar is a series of
midrashim, or rabbinic expositions, on the
weekly parashiyot, Torah portions. The
answer to our question above begins in one
of the midrashim on parshat Lech-Lecha,
the third portion in Sefer Braysheet, the
Book of Genesis.
The answer begins when Rabbi Shimon
starts to explain a verse from Psalm 86
(Verse 16). Before we take a close look
at this verse, it is necessary to explain
that Jewish tradition ascribes the Psalms
to David as the poet. The Zohar in our
passage assumes that the reader accepts
this ascription, and, as it happens, Psalm
86 is one of the Psalms that opens with
the words "A Prayer of David". The verse
in question is as follows, "Turn to me and
have mercy on me; grant Your strength to
Your servant and deliver the son of Your
maidservant." Rabbi Shimon quotes the
beginning of this verse and then proceeds
to unearth its "secret meaning". First,
Rabbi Shimon compares "grant Your strength
to Your servant" to a verse with a similar
statement in another book, "...God will
give strength to God's king..."(1 Samuel
2:10) based on the similarity of the
wording in these verses. He argues that
the king referred to by the verse in
Samuel, and by extension the servant of
God mentioned in Psalm 86, is the messiah
who is often referred to as "melech
ha'mashiach", "King Messiah" since the
Messiah is to be a descendant of King
David's house. Note that 1 Samuel 2:10 is
a verse that Hannah speaks in a moment of
thankful prayer. Hannah is the childless
woman whose prayers were at first mistaken
by the priest Eli for a drunken woman's
ramblings and then were answered with the
birth of the great prophet Samuel.
Rabbi Shimon in his midrash continues
to the next part of Psalm 86, verse 16 in
which David prays, "...deliver the son of
Your maidservant." Rabbi Shimon asks,
"But wasn't David the son of Yishai
(Jesse)?" Then he states, "He made his
statement in the name of his mother, and
not his father, for we have established
that when a person comes to request
something of God, one must go with what is
certain. Therefore, David mentioned his
mother and not his father." In order to
clarify Rabbi Shimon's midrash, we take
note that David does not mention anything
like, "son of your servant". Rather, he
only calls to mind his mother. Also, the
Zohar suggests that motherhood is reliable
whereas fatherhood is unreliable. As
Rabbi Alfred Kolatch writes in the Second
Jewish Book of Why, "...at the time of
birth one is always positive of the
identity of the mother of the child, but
one cannot be positive of the identity of
the child's father. Jewish law therefore
established that if a child's mother is
Jewish, the child is Jewish..."(p. 26)
The implication for the issue of Mi
Sheberach is that we use the mother's name
in the spirit of the certainty of
motherhood.
There is also the additional meaning
attached to using the mother's name by
virtue of the connection in Rabbi Shimon's
teaching with Hannah. Hannah, in her
prayer, thanks God for the gift of new
life. Later in her prayer she exclaims,
"...the faltering are girded with
strength...The Lord deals death and gives
life."(1 Sam. 2: 4,6) In our healing
prayer, we pray that the ailing individual
will also have renewed strength and life,
and that he or she will receive blessing
just as Hannah did. We also may consider
the mother's role as nurturer as an
underlying reason for citing the mother's
name in the healing prayer. Jewish
tradition recognizes the important role of
the father in raising a child, but there
is that special connection between the
mother and the child she bears (or adopts,
or fosters, or raises) that likely
contributed to the custom of using the
mother's name for our Mi Sheberach.
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