Shalom Congregants and Friends.....
 
Rabbi's Ramblings...... 
     
I always look forward to our "Shabbat Under the Stars" programs. Especially when the weather cooperates, it is a wonderful evening. And as of now, the weather should be very good! Ethan Nash will provide a rousing Kabbalat Shabbat service, and Shabbat hamburgers and hotdogs taste especially good amongst friends.
 
For those who may not have read, Chelsea Clinton is gtting married to a Jewish  young man this coming Saturday evening. There's a lot of speculation as to how the ceremony will be conducted (let alone the guest list and the wedding dress), But this issue or event  is symbolic of the changing attitudes towards intermarriage today. I'll be talking and inviting your comments in a discussion Shabbat morning.
 
Saturday afternoon we have Saturday Sundaes - enjoy some ice cream and fruit before Havdalah!
 
Sunday through Wednesday Iris and I will be on vacation -- we're going down to Atlanta to see her older daughter and other family. I'll be back Thursday and this is the last traveling planned before the Holy Days!
 
Can you believe... it's already almost August!
 
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, July  30.... 7:51pm
 
SHABBAT  SERVICE TIMES:                               
Friday, July 30 - 7:15pm (Shabbat Under the Strs)
Saturday, July 31 - Shaharit 9:30am, Mincha/ Maariv/Havdalah 7:45pm  
 
Come enjoy the beautiful Havdalah ceremony that ends Shabbat...
Congregational Announcements 
Synagogue Bulletin Board
There is a new bulletin board by the door to the rabbi's office. Take a look when you're in the building to read notices of community events and contemporary news articles!  See photos of my grandchildren!!
 
And there are also good handouts on the racks by both the chapel and sanctuary.....
 
 Traveling in the weeks ahead?????
Ask Rabbi Atkins for "shaliach kesef" - messenger money - along with a prayer for a safe journey, it will "guarantee" you a safe trip.
It's one of my favorite  mitzvot!!
 
 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!   Our subscription to the Jerusalem Post newspaper has resumed!  
 
Beautify The Synagogue Grounds
 
Call Tobie Neuwirth at 242-7084 to volunteer ...... 
 Upcoming  Special Events   - For more info see  Chai-lites!!    
 
August 8 - Kosher Day at the Rock Cats Baseball Game
 
August 12 - movies - "Inglorious Bastards" 
 
August 20 - Shabbat Under the Stars - Fish Fest - 6:00pm / 7:15 services
 Social Action Updates    
 
 Volunteer  to serve at Loaves and Fishes shelter. Our turn is coming up in September! Contact Lenny Swade or the office if interested.
  
Help with Darfur ..... Help in Hartford... our food bins are almost empty.
Please donate to the Kosher of general  Food Pantry!!
 
The 2010 Handbook of Volunteer Opportunities is now available for your perusal in the library!
 
Be aware of those less fortunate than we are!! Carry out the mitzvah of tikkun olam!

 

Israel in the News    

British Prime Minister, David Cameron, exploited his visit to Turkey to curry favour with his hosts, using Palestinian propaganda hype, saying that Israel's blockade turned the Gaza strip into a "prison camp".  Every last Israeli left Gaza long before Hamas' bloody take-over. Closing the borders and even war has not stopped the incessant rockets and terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and border checkpoints.  More than 30 terrorist attacks come out of Gaza each month.  

Applying international law, Israel inspects the constant flow of goods through its borders into Gaza, in an attempt to exclude war material. Propagandists (and it seems European politicians) conveniently ignore the rules of war and international law, and claim these actions to be a form of occupation. They declare that Israel ruthlessly keeps Gazans in poverty.


 
Visiting international politicians and aid agency representatives are taken to view the deliberately unrepaired damage of the war Hamas provoked. Poverty stricken areas, including families living in plastic tents since their houses were destroyed in the war, are all on the carefully pre-arranged agenda. Israel is obligingly condemned. And more western tax payer money is pledged to the highest ever per capita aid program.
 

Although of little interest to the mainstream media, Gazan "poverty" is strongly questioned in the blogosphere. No accumulation of facts seems to be able to stop the constant flow of lies, cynically manipulated into very effective anti-Israel (and often anti-Semitic) propaganda.

 
Even the Palestinian media reports a very different picture. There is an abundance of both basic and luxury goods. It is not clear if it comes via the Egyptian border, underground tunnels, or the thousands of trucks that the Israelis officially allow to stream through their border crossings. But the fact is that there is plenty, and often at very attractive prices. 
Ordinary Palestinian citizens say that there is enough to go around - but the Hamas apparatchiks steal it.  

 
And what of building materials to house those wretched families? Somehow, they don't seem to rank in the Hamas list of priorities. A brand new shopping mall replete with luxury goods, aluxury hotel  fancy restaurant, an olympic size pool and a fancy jail  to lock up prisoners accused of crimes such as "passing information to the Palestinian Authority" do make it into the list of latest completed projects, though.
 
Electricity shortages? Also an internal problem. Seems that Hamas collects electricity bills from the end user & then steals the money - expecting the Palestinian Authority and international donors to pay the Israeli suppliers. When the suppliers want their overdue money before providing more goods, who do you guess is blamed?
But those wretched Palestinians are suffering. Then again, life expectancy, infant mortality, and even cell phone penetration statistics show Gaza to be better off than other Muslim countries - and in many cases better than most places on earth!  Forgotten is the Economist report of 2004 that the West Bank and Gaza rank amongst the most obese populations in the world.  Clicking on the links embedded above will bring you to lots of reports and pictures showing the truth.... 
Torah Portion -- Commentary of the Week 
 
This week written by Dr. Raymond Scheindlin of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America... 
 
In Parashat Eikev, we hear the voice of Moses, that most eloquent of preachers, exhorting the Israelites as to how to behave in the Land that he is never to see. He reminds them of their past misconduct and warns that if it continues, they will not thrive in the Land. He devotes much of his attention to the Land itself. Except for a historical digression on the episode of the Golden Calf and several other occasions of Israelite backsliding, most of the parashah is devoted to describing the excellent qualities of the Land of Israel, foretelling the easy conquest of its inhabitants, promising its bounty, and warning of the consequences of using it badly.

A highlight of this discourse is Moses's stirring depiction of the Land of Israel and its abundance in a sort of poem (beginning in Deut. 8:7) in which each line begins with the word [a] land: a land of rivers and fountains; a land of wheat and barley; a land of oil and honey; a land in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron and whose mountains yield copper (paraphrased to highlight the anaphoric repetition of the word land).

Moses's skills as an orator are apparent also in complementary pairs that shape the parashah's first large section (Deut. 7:12-8:20, the complete Torah reading in the ancient triennial cycle). He frames this section with the uncommon word eikev ("if"), which gives the parashah its name, to enunciate a promise and threat: "If you observe the laws, God will preserve His covenant with you"; and "If you do not obey the Lord, you will perish like the Canaanites." This symmetry recurs throughout the parashah, for example: "It will come to pass that if you forget the Lord your God" (8:19) vs. "It will come to pass that if you obey My commandment" (11:13, incorporated by tradition into the Shema'). Again: "When you eat and are satisfied, you will bless the Lord" (8:10) vs. "Beware lest you eat and are satisfied . . . and become arrogant and forget the Lord" (8:12-14).

The discourse is also replete with striking imagery, such as the hornet that Moses assures the people that God will send ahead of them to destroy the Canaanites (7:20) and the depiction of God as a consuming fire (9:3). It contains the famous symmetrical proverb, "Man does not live on bread alone; rather on whatever comes from God's mouth does man live." Not what we put into our mouths sustains us but what comes out of God's mouth: His words, His teaching, His decree of death and life, of famine and plenty.

Motifs of eating are prominent in the parashah. Moses speaks of the Israelites "eating" the Canaanites (7:16). (The spies whom Moses sent from Qadesh Barnea thirty-eight years earlier had already spoken of the Canaanites as Israel's "bread," Num. 14:9) He reminds the Israelites of the manna they ate in the desert (8:3); promises that in the Land, they will not eat scantily but in abundance (8:9); warns them against eating ungratefully (8:13); and, in a passage that would be repeated by Jews several times daily for centuries, he announces (8:10): "When you have eaten and been satisfied, you will bless the Lord your God for the good Land that He has given you."

Ancient rabbis cited this verse as authority for the obligation of reciting a grace after meals. However, the verse does not seem to speak about a ritual blessing, but rather a spontaneous expression of gratitude; not "When you eat and are satisfied, you must bless the Lord" (implying a commandment) but "When you eat and are satisfied, you will (spontaneously) bless the Lord." Regardless, Moses was not speaking primarily of gratitude for the food. Gratitude for the food, he declares,will lead to gratitude for the Land, and it is for the Land that he envisions the Israelites as giving thanks once they experience its bounty.

Despite this link between grace and the Land of Israel, the rabbis insisted we give thanks for our food wherever in the world we live and enjoy it, wherever in the world it comes from. Thus, "Blessed are Thou, Lord, for the land and the food" refers not, as originally intended, to the Land of Israel but to this whole bountiful world. There is, indeed, a certain analogy between the Israelites entering Canaan, waging war, occupying it, and eating its produce, and mankind's conquest of the world's soil and of the technology of food production, then producing and eating the produce. Like the Land of Israel to the spies, and to Moses in our parashah, the world is our bread to eat, ours for the taking.

Because bread comes to us so easily, we slip easily into the arrogance against which Moses warned (8:11): "Beware of forgetting the Lord your God. . . . When you eat and are satisfied, build great houses and dwell in them, when your cattle and sheep multiply and you acquire much silver and gold, when everything you have is abundant-beware of turning arrogant and forgetting the Lord your God." Master rhetorician that he is, Moses uses here some of the same language that he used when he spoke of blessing the Lord, turning it into another poem warning against that arrogance. He is less concerned here that the Israelites will forget to bless the Lord than he is that they will credit their success to themselves and say (8:17): "My power and my own hand's strength have gotten me this prosperity." In our time, the practical consequence is that we fail to consider the harm we are doing in the act of conquering the land and its inhabitants and extracting its bounty, heedless of the consequences for the land itself, its inhabitants, and future generations. Thinking that we can subject them to our unrestrained appetites, we give no thought to any larger principle that should teach us humility in our attitude toward ourselves and modesty in our demands for material things.

The Bible is not much given to abstract language. In place of modern words like arrogance, it uses imagery like "your heart will become lofty." It couches its message in concrete situations such as the conquest of the Land of Israel and embellishes it with rhetorical techniques of the kind we have been exploring. In the opening passage of our parashah, it targets behavior that is the besetting sin of our age, the attitude that we are our own masters and masters of the earth. We moderns may not be able to see God as clearly as Moses did, but there is no difficulty in seeing this behavior as sin. Happily singing birkat hamazon over the remains of a plentiful meal, we vaguely feel we have done our duty. But the goal, as Moses's rhetoric makes clear, is not only to praise God but to use His world humbly and modestly, a discipline that is considerably harder to achieve.