Shabbat Shalom GRJC

Weekly Emails to the Congregation

Parshat Pinchas 2007

Shabbat Shalom to the GRJC family,

We light candles tonight at 8:13 PM. Friday night services will begin at 8 PM. During our service, we will celebrate July birthdays and anniversaries with blessings and songs. Come and share your simcha with us!

Saturday morning services will begin at 9 AM. Join us for a lively D’var Torah and discussion following the Torah service.

This week we read from Parshat Pinchas, the second to last week of reading from Bemidbar (Numbers), the fourth book of the Torah. This week’s reading takes us through the holiday calendar of the Jewish year. All the holidays we read about here are familiar to us by different names. What we call Rosh Hashanah, “the beginning of the year,” is called here “Yom Teruah”, “A day when the horn is sounded.” This “shofar day” also occurs in the seventh month, rather than the first month of the year as we celebrate it. Pesach is the holiday that starts the year according to the Torah. 

The fascinating part about studying the holidays in the Torah is that there are several passages that relate to our holidays in addition to the one we read this week. In Exodus chapter 34 we read about the three pilgrimage festivals Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. These are known as “chag”—compare to the Arabic word hajj, referring to the pilgrimage Muslims make to their holy places. We read about these three festivals again in Deuteronomy 16. 

Note the discrepancy between Exodus 34 and Deuteronomy 16 in terms of the length of the Pesach holiday, also called Chag ha’Matzot/The Festival of Matzo—otherwise translated as “The Festival of Indigestion.” In Exodus, the Torah tells us “you shall eat matzo for seven days”, and in Deuteronomy the Torah tells us “you shall eat matzo for six days.” The commentators and the Midrash tend to think that the “six days” is not a discrepancy but a way of teaching us about the mitzvah of eating matzah. Rashi (1040-1105, France) teaches us that when it says “six days” this clarifies that eating matzah on the seventh day is only permitted but not required, and then, from there we deduce that eating matzah the previous days is permitted but not required, except for the Seder night alone. In other words, we can eat matzah but we do not have to eat it, and we could eat other kosher for Passover foods.

A note about 7/7/07 – July 7, 2007 falls on Shabbat, this Saturday – Considered by some to be the luckiest day in the century. So that makes the 7th aliya this Saturday the greatest aliya opportunity of the century!

THANK YOU:

To Ari Rubin and Michael Herman for helping with the July 4th parade food collection effort. Ari and Michael were students in our Post-Bar/Bat Mitzvah Bogrim program this past year. 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

1. Widows/Widowers Support Group – Thursday, July 12, 11:45 AM. Join us for lunch and a special guest presentation from Rabbi Evan Jaffe from the Flemington Jewish Community Center.

2. Erev Tisha Be’Av/9th of Av, Evening – Join us at 8 PM for a short evening service followed by a program including reading from Eicha, The Book of Lamentations.

Shabbat Shalom u’mevorach/A Shabbat of peace and blessing to everyone,

Rabbi Tow
 

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