Shabbat Shalom GRJC

Weekly Emails to the Congregation

Parshat Korach 2007

Shabbat Shalom to the GRJC family,

Tonight we light candles at 8:12 PM. Our Friday evening service will begin at 8 PM. We are celebrating the Bar Mitzvah of Daniel Sapozhnikov this Shabbat, and we are also celebrating the adult-Bar Mitzvah of Daniel’s brother Lenny. We wish a Mazel Tov to parents Michael and Yelena as well as all their family and friends who will be joining us to celebrate this Shabbat.

We also welcome Rabbi Susan Gulack again this Shabbat. She will be sharing words of Torah tonight and reading Torah Saturday morning.

Saturday morning services will begin at 9 AM.

Saturday afternoon at 2 PM the entire GRJC community is invited to join Rachel and I, as well as our families, for the baby naming of our daughter. We will begin with a Mincha/Afternoon service.

From Sunday June 17, through Sunday June 24, I will be taking time off. I will not be teaching Bar/Bat Mitzvah lessons during this time. I will be on call for any emergencies during that time. You can reach me directly at 201-421-9811. (With our new baby, I will be up at all hours of the night for consultations!)

We read this Shabbat from the last section of parshat Korach. This part of our parasha explains the roles of the priests/kohanim and their assistants the levites. The kohanim perform the rituals of the Temple and the levites help with other aspects of the rituals and transportation of the holy objects from one place to another. 

Despite the apparent hierarchy, we see in the Torah that both the priests and the levites must be careful when they are participating in the Temple ritual. In this week’s parasha God warns the levites, and other non-priests, not to intrude upon the rituals that the priests perform. In other places in the Torah, such as the story of Nadav and Avihu in the Book of Leviticus, we learn that God also warns the priests that they may not approach God’s presence in the Holy of Holies except at certain times and by carrying out the appropriate preparations and rituals.

We can take from this week’s reading a lesson about boundaries in our lives. Just as the priests and levites had boundaries in terms of what they could do in the Temple, we also have boundaries, guidelines, limitations, and expectations in our lives. What this week’s portion shows us is that how we negotiate these boundaries defines who we are.

MAZEL TOV

We congratulate the inductees to the National Honor Society at Glen Rock High School who are also members of the GRJC family:

Scott Berman
Meredith Frizzell
Sarah Goldstein
Sam Gutwetter
Elana Strauss
Ariel and David Kay

We also congratulate those students who received academic awards from Glen Rock High School:

Jordan Kirsch, Business Education and Physics
Adir Cohen, Journalism – Adir was also chosen as student graduation speaker.
Andrea Hutner, University of Rochester Humanities/Social Sciences Award 

*Please send me information about our students from the Fair Lawn schools as well as from the other towns where our GRJC families live.*
 

With wishes for a restful and spiritual Shabbat,

Rabbi Tow
 

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