Shalom Congregants and Friends.....
 
Rabbi's Ramblings...... 
     
Beautiful weather this past week. God's world can be beautiful... even as we are aware of past and current tragedies. I attended, as did hundreds of others, the Community Yom HaShoah memorial service last Sunday evening. This is the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the camps. Some survivors have flown to events; others remember in the hearts -- joined by the entire community.
 
I write this words on Rosh Hodesh Iyar. The start of a new month. New hopes renewed, like the moon. On May 5, we celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel's 62nd year of independence. The community festivities have been scheduled for Sunday, May 2, but have some extra joy in your heart next Tuesday. You may note on the calendar that the day is Iyar 6. Why the delay? Because the day before is Yom HaZikaron, Israel's day of Remembrance for fallen soldiers, and whenever a holiday or memorial day falls near Shabbat they are postponed in order to be able to be properly celebrated.  There is a communal remembrance service this Sunday evening at the JCC at 7:30 for those wishing to remember in this way fallen soldiers and victims of terror.
 
This Shabbat - services at TIKVOH CHADOSHAH FRIDAY EVENING at 6pm. I imagine  that there will still be someone, who didn't read all the notices, and will come to Beth Hillel at 8pm -- but we are building community and this is their reciprocated hospitality for our hosting the annual Tikkun Layl Shavuot next May 18th. It will be a Ruach style - "Carlebach" service and very enjoyable. There will be over 100 at the shared dinner afterwards..... I hear each congregation is more or less evenly represented.
 
Shabbat morning services here... I will be talking about the difficult topics of ritual purity and mikveh as presented in the Torah portion. See also Rabbi Gold's column below.
 
A busy week coming up! Next Monday evening Rabbi Lazowski starts his class on Pierkei Avot here at Beth Hillel - our Adult Ed Committee scheduled this class because we heard that members would enjoy studying with/learning from our Rabbi Emeritus -- so please come!
 
Wednesday evening Beth Hillel hosts author Neal Bascomb as "our part" of the community JCC Book Festival program. He will be speaking at 7pm on "Hunting Eichman." Should be fascinating... try to attend!!
 
Thursday afternoon at 1pm there is the next movie in our Adult Ed Committee series, "Keeping Up with the Steins." Enjoy!!
 
Then, after a quiet Shabbat, Saturday evening, April 24 is the Annual Fund Raiser -- it's not too late for reservations!!!
 
So, when I wrote last week, "Lots of good other activities ahead.... adult education/ synagogue and Sisterhood fundraisers/ guest speakers.....  good spring-time activities...." you know what I mean!!!!
 
Debrorah Gutcheon and Len Swade of our Social Action Committee are  representing Beth Hillel in Foodshare's Annual Walk for Hunger that's coming up Sunday May 2 in Hartford, They invite members to consider walking or raising pledges, or making a donation to one of the walkers. See the form later in this e-shul..... Sign up... or at least contribute. Foodshare is right in Bloomfield... and does a wonderful job!!
  
 Shabbat Shalom....look forward to coming to shul and being with your "synagogue family" here at Beth Hillel Synagogue!
 
 Rabbi Gary and Iris Atkins
"No one should leave services unmoved or unchanged...
 This Week  Shabbat Services & Candle Lighting
 CANDLE LIGHTING   
 
FRIDAY EVENING, APRIL 16, 7:13 pm
 
SHABBAT  SERVICE TIMES:                               
Friday, April 16 - 6:00pm - Evening Services at TIKVAH CHADOSHAH
Saturday, April 17 - Shaharit 9:30am, Mincha/Maariv/Havdalah 7:15pm
 
Come enjoy the beautiful Havdalah ceremony that ends Shabbat! 
 
Library Reminders 
Lots of good new books in the Library - and interesting periodicals like Consumer Reports, The Jewish Week, and The Forward!  Music and videos, too! 
 
 Come and use your Synagogue Library!!
 
Beautify The Synagogue Grounds 
Call Tobie Neuwirth  at 242-7084 to volunteer
 
Tag Sale Is Coming 
This fundraiser starts on Friday, July 9. Bring items to the synagogue or call Myrna Kahan if you have items that need to be pickled up!
Community Programs of Interest 
 
62nd Independence of Israel Celebration - Sunday, May 2, JCC.... 12:30 - 4:30pm
 
JCRC presents Gil Hoffman on "The Latest Developments between Israel and the United States and the Iran Issue" -- May 3, 2010 , 7pm at JCC (Gilman theatre) -- RSVP 727-5789  
 Upcoming  Special Events   - For more info see the Chai-lites!!   
 
THURSDAY, APR 29 - SHMOOZE - SPEAKER ANN LEABMAN = "TAKING CONTROL NOW FOR YOUR FUTURE"
 
APR 30 - MAY 1 - CANTOR SHABBAT - CANTOR MICHELLE TEPLITZ
 
SAVE THE DATES
SATURDAY EVENING, APRIL 24 -- SYNAGOGUE ANNUAL FUNDRAISER --- SEND IN YOUR AD AND DINNER RSVP NOW!!
 
WEDNESDAY EVENING, MAY 5 -- SISTERHOOD ANNUAL FASHION SHOW
 
MAY 7-8 ADULT EDUCATION SCHOLAR-IN-RESIDENCE SHABBAT -- RABBI JONATHAN PORATH
 
TUESDAY, MAY 11, CONGREGATIONAL ANNUAL MEETING
 
MAY 14 - SHABBAT DINNER AND RELIGIOUS SCHOOL GRADUATION
 
TUESDAY, MAY 18 - START OF SHAVUOT / TIKKUN L'AYL SHAVUOT IN EVENING
Social Action Projects     - Being A Caring Community 
 
Every time you are at synagogue, consider bringing a donation of food for the kosher or general food bank, or appropriate-to-wear clothes and coats to help the needy. 
 

Dear Beth Hillel Members:

 

I am writing you about an important event in our area.  This spring, I will be walking in the 27th Annual Foodshare Walk Against Hunger to raise awareness and funds to help hungry people in Greater Hartford, and I have decided to form a team.

 

Hunger is in our community and is a more serious problem than you may think:

  • There are more than 100,000 "food insecure" people living in our region. Food insecurity means  not knowing  where your next meal will be come from.
  • 40% of our hungry neighbors are children.
  • The hungry include working poor families and senior citizens forced to choose between essentials like rent, utilities, and medicine... or buying groceries.
  •  
    This year, nearly 350 local hunger-fighting programs--food pantries, community soup kitchens, shelters, kids cafes and others--will rely on Foodshare.
     
  • Foodshare's Walk Against Hunger is the largest event of its kind in central Connecticut that benefits local families and children in need of food.  Will you join me?  I know it will be a lot of fun and together we will make a difference.

     

    Here are the details...

     

    Date:                Sunday, May 2, 2010

    Time:                1:00pm check-in / 2:00pm Walk starts

    Place:               The Hartford Financial Services Group - 690 Asylum Avenue, Hartford

     

    Please let me know if you are willing to take part.  I will send you all the materials and information you need to start raising money today!  My goal is to recruit 10 team members and for each team member to raise $50-$100.   For more info, you can also visit www.foodshare.org or simply click the link below. 

     

    Together, let's take a step against hunger!

     

    Sincerely,

    Deb Gutcheon,   Beth Hillel member

  • Israel News........ 
     
    Beth Hillel has obtained, through the JCRC, a quantity of informative booklets called "Israel 101" as a primer for your knowledge of the geography, culture, politics, and people of Israel. First come, first serve at the synagogue!!!
     
    AS A YOM HA'ATZMAUT FEATURE, HERE IS A BEAUTIFUL PIECE WITH A TRUE APPERECIATION OF THE UNIQUENESS OF ISRAEL

    Loving Israel is in the details By Joel Chasnoff

    NEW YORK (JTA) -- In honor of Israel's 62nd birthday, I'll forgo the expected Op-Ed about Israeli government corruption, the Bibi-Obama drama, or the Israeli Rabbinate's stranglehold on marriage and divorce. Instead, I offer this love letter to Israel: "Top 10 tiny details about Israel that make it the most wonderful country on earth."

    10. Egged Bus #394: The midnight ride from Tel Aviv to Eilat. The trip begins in the gray-stucco slums of south Tel Aviv. Two hours later, you're rolling through the desert beneath a blanket of stars. You crack open the window. The desert smells dry and ancient, like an attic. At dawn, you pull into Eilat as the city comes to life.

    9. The way Israelis refuse to cross the street on a red light. Drivers blare their horns the instant the light turns green. Yet pedestrians refuse to cross the street until the sign turns green. I've witnessed this phenomenon at 3:00 a.m., the streets bare and not a car in sight.

    8. The Jewish soul of even the most secular Israelis. I served in the Israeli Army with kibbutz kids who were so anti-religious that they never even had a bar-mitzvah. But on Friday nights, as the brigade sung the Sabbath Kiddush en masse, I could see my secular comrades mouthing the words.

    7. Flush handles on Israeli toilets. Almost all Israeli toilets, both public and in homes, have two flush handles -- one for "light" loads, and one for heavy ones. This saves Israel's most precious natural resource: water. And it's genius.

    6. Drop-dead gorgeous Israeli soldiers. The men are hunky, the women beautiful. Try not to drool as you watch them strut down Ben Yehudah Street in their olive-green uniforms, M-16s slung across their backs. It's not so much their physical beauty that charms us as what they embody: Jewish power.

    5. Shuk Ha-Carmel on Friday afternoons. So many things about Israel drive me mad. The bureaucracy is crippling. Government offices operate when they want, for as long (or short) as they want, usually something like 8 a.m. until noon Mondays, Wednesdays and every other Thursday. Each week, another group goes on strike -- schoolteachers, garbage men, postal workers, phone operators, cable guys, bus drivers, doctors, nurses, paramedics, airport baggage guys, and the old men in blue jumpsuits who walk the streets of Tel Aviv stabbing pieces of trash with meter-long spears have all struck in the past year -- so the country never runs at full power.

    The Knesset, Israel's 15-party parliament, is trapped in a state of perpetual gridlock. And yet, when I step into the Carmel Market and hear the shopkeepers barking their wares, smell the mixture of frying lamb, goat cheese, and human sweat, and watch the people line up to buy flowers for Shabbat, I remember why I love Israel so much. It's the excitement of the place, but also the Middle Easterness of it -- the barking, the bargaining, the haggling that's at once friendly and brutal. At pushcarts and stalls, middle-aged men with gold chains and raspy cigarette voices sell mangoes, lemons, whole and quarter chickens, cow lungs, cow tongues, cow testicles, sheep brains, 50-plus varieties of fish, calculators, knockoff Nikes, carnations, sponges, girdles, batteries, and men's and ladies' underwear.

    Friday afternoons, with only a couple of hours until sundown, the peddlers shout their last-minute pre-Sabbath bargains: "Tangerines, 1 shekel, 1 shekel!" "Pita, hummus, chickpeas-- yallah! Shabbat, Shabbat!" Whenever I walk through the souk, I think about all those American diplomats who call Israel the America of the Middle East. If those diplomats really want to understand Israel, they should leave their fancy Jerusalem hotels and take a stroll through the Carmel Market.

    4. Chocolate milk in a sack. Half a liter of Kibbutz Yotvateh chocolate milk sealed in a palm-sized plastic bag that you rip open with your teeth and then squeeze, causing the milk to shoot into your mouth in a way that makes you feel like you're drinking straight from the udder of a chocolate cow. Need I say more?

    3. The incredible bond between Israelis. Maybe it's a remnant of shtetl life in Europe, or perhaps it has something to do with living so close to your enemy. Whatever the reason, Israelis act as if everyone is everyone else's next-door neighbor. The first time I experienced this unique bond was the week I arrived in Israel to begin my army service. I was driving to Tel Aviv in a rental car when a guy pulled up next to me at a stoplight and beeped his horn. "Hey, achi!" he called. "My girlfriend's thirsty. You got water?" Beside me, on the passenger seat, was a bottle of water. But it was half empty.

    I held up the bottle. "It's already open," I said. "No problem," he replied, and stuck out his hand.

    A week later, I was at my girlfriend, Dorit's, family's apartment with her parents. It was dinnertime and we had ordered pizza. Finally, after two hours, the pizza guy showed up on his motor scooter. He was disheveled and sopped with sweat. "I got lost," he whimpered. "So come inside! Sit!" said Dorit's mother, Tzionah. "Coffee or tea?" "Coffee," said the pizza guy. "Milk and two sugars." While Tzionah made the coffee, Dorit's father, Menashe, opened the pizza box. "Please take." He offered a slice. The pizza guy waved him off. "Nu! You're offending me!" said Menashe. "What's your name?" "Oren," said the delivery guy. "Oren. I insist. Eat." And I'll be damned if Oren the pizza guy didn't sit down at the kitchen table and eat the pizza he'd just delivered. As we ate, I thought about all those porno movies where the lonely housewife invites the pizza boy inside and seduces him on the kitchen table. In the Israeli version of the story, the pizza boy doesn't make love to the housewife. Instead, he sits down with the family and eats pizza.

    2. Dropping off a passenger at Ben-Gurion Airport. You pull up to the Departure door, hug your loved ones goodbye, and watch them walk into the terminal. Then you inhale a breath of sweet Israeli air, look up at the cloudless Tel Aviv sky, and think, "They have to leave...but I get to stay in Israel."

    1._________ . I leave this one up to you. What do you love most about Israel? E-mail me [email protected] -- I'll post your responses on my Web site.

    (Joel Chasnoff is a stand-up comedian and the author of "The 188th Crybaby Brigade: A Skinny Kid From Chicago Fights Hezbollah," about his year as a combat soldier in the Israeli army. View photographs from his army service and meet the characters from Joel's book at www.joelchasnoff.com.)

    Weekly Torah  Commentary...  
    written by Rabbi Michael Gold of Tamarac, Florida 
     
    With this chapter we enter a difficult and arcane part of the Torah.  The laws of ritual purity and impurity have mostly fallen out of practice.  But there is one area of these laws that is still observed by Jews today.  Orthodox Jews are strict about these laws and more and more non-Orthodox Jews are rediscovering them.  I am speaking about the laws at the end of this portion euphemistically called "family purity."
                When a woman has her monthly menstrual cycle she becomes ritually impure regarding sexual relations. By traditional Jewish law a husband and wife must separate part of each month. The truly Orthodox avoid all physical contact, and even sleep in separate beds. That is why twin beds rather than king or queen size beds were the norm in Orthodox Jewish households. (You can see this today in Israel, where hotel rooms have two twin beds, even at fancy hotels.)
                According to this week's portion a couple remains separated for seven days. However, the Talmud teaches that Jewish women have kept a stricter standard. According to current Orthodox practice, a woman waits until any blood stops and only then counts seven days. This makes the period of separation twelve days or more. Some Orthodox Jews have told me that this is the most difficult law in Judaism. Some non-Orthodox Jews who have begun practicing these laws have returned to the Biblical standard of seven days of separation.
                When the period of counting is over, the woman goes to the mikvah or Jewish ritual bath. It is not for cleansing purposes; she must be totally clean before setting foot in the mikvah. Rather it is a spiritual cleansing, preparing her to reunite with her husband. There is a total immersion, making sure that the water touches every part of her body. According to the Talmud, when a husband and wife reunite on mikvah night it is like a groom and bride reuniting all over again. "Rabbi Meir said, [The Torah taught these laws] so that she will be beloved by her husband as on the day she entered the huppah [marriage canopy]" (Niddah 31b)
                As I mentioned earlier, these laws are being rediscovered by many non-Orthodox Jews. There are community mikvahs being built throughout the country to serve the non-Orthodox Jewish community, something that we desperately need here in south Florida. Part of the reason for the rediscovery of these laws has been Jewish feminism. According to Jewish tradition, the laws of mikvah are one of three sets of laws given to women (the other two are lighting Shabbat candles and separating dough from the challah.) Women have been searching for female voices within Judaism, and these laws form such a voice.
                I believe a big part of the interest in the laws of family purity is an attempt to make sex holy. We live in a country with a very casual approach to sexuality. Recreational sex is common ("hop into bed first, get to know each other later.") Adultery is rampant. The notion that one can discipline and uplift one's sexual life is foreign to the Playboy philosophy. And yet it is through such self-discipline that we rise above the animal within us and connect to the holy.
                Last week I wrote about holiness in eating.  This week I am writing about holiness in sex. Our tradition does not say to suppress our appetites. Rather it says to serve God with all of our appetites. Whether we choose to practice these particular laws or not, we ought to think about how to serve God with our sexual drive. That is at the heart of the holiness code in the book of Leviticus.