Rabbi's Ramblings...... 

 

Shalom Congregants and Friends.....    

 

Our nation mourned the Tenth Anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy .this past weekend. The thought occurred to me that it actually seemed to be an American "Yizkor" service. Indeed I saved and posted by my office full-page ads from the newspaper that promised; indeed "commanded" us to remember and not to forget! Many of the programs on TV on Sunday were incredibly moving -- and draining as well. I hope that each of you attended some service or event.

 

This is an especially busy season of the year. Tuesday evening I attended our Hartford Jewish Federation annual meeting. Beth Hillel is an active part of our community, and I am active in Ferderation... serving, for example, on its Long Range Planning Committee. Obviously, they have greater resources and a wider mission than the synagogue... but they are dealing with the same problems of demographic changes and shrinking resources.

 

This evening Iris and I will be attending the annual ADL "Torch of Liberty" program. The Anti-Defamation League is an organization that does an outstanding job in both defending Jewish interests as well as fighting bigotry and bullying everywhere in the larger community. You might remember Gary Jones, its Regional Director, speaking at Beth Hillel earlier in the year.

 

We draw closer to the High Holy Days. The ritual committee is sending out letters re honors; if you have a special request, let us know. Each day at minyan we sound the shofar to remind us of the messages and meanings of the High Holy Days.

 

The Brotherhood meeting has been POSTPONED. A new date will be announced in the near future. The first Lunch and Learn will be this coming Thursday, Sept. 22, at 11am. Hope you can attend... please RSVP so I can have the appropriate amount of food. The Shmooze and Lunch program won't start until after the fall holidays... as a number of the holidays are on Thursdays this year. Put October 27 on your calendar for the first one!

 

Speaking of calendars, we received a donation of a box of them from Big-Y. If you need a 5772 Jewish calendar, just stop by the synagogue.

 

Fall formally starts this coming week, sometime on Friday September 23. Thanks to our House Committee for arranging the planting of beautiful mums around the synagogue, and to Jack and Pearl Vogel for the planting of mums in the Vogel Courtyard.

 

This Shabbat we will look at both the Torah portion and start our preparations for the High Holy Days!

 

   

Shabbat Shalom ....... Rabbi Gary and Iris Atkins

 
"All it takes to study Torah is an open heart,

a curious mind and a desire to grow a Jewish soul."  

Shabbat  Services & Candle Lighting Times
CANDLE LIGHTING     
Friday, Sept. 16, 6:39pm  

SHABBAT SERVICE TIMES    

Friday, Sept. 16,8:00pm 

Saturday, Sept. 17, 9:30am, 6:45pm Mincha/ Maariv

Joke of the Week  

A bunch of salesman went to a funeral of one of their friends, another salesman. They looked down at him in the open coffin (A NON-JEWISH FUNERAL, obviously)

 

"GOSH, HE LOOKS TERRIBLE," one said. "WHAT DID HE HAVE?"

 

ANOTHER ANSWERED: "NORTH DAKOTA, MINNESOTA, AND WYOMING." 

Social Action Updates    
 
THANKS... to all our congregants who participated in the Loaves and Fishes "soup kitchen". We also had congregants cooking and serving at the program run by the Bloomfield United Methodist Church, "around the corner " from us.

 

Be a reading  volunteer! ......Sign up to be a member of the Hartford Jewish Coalition for Literacy! Organizational / training meeting Sept. 14. Visit JewishHartford.org or call 860-236-7323 for more information!

 

Become involved!!.... The Bloomfield Clergy Association has become the Bloomfield Interfaith Association, open to all interested participants. Note the next meeting,  Tuesday, October 4, 12 noon here at Beth Hillel Synagogue. Light lunch will be provided, so please let Rabbi Atkins know of your interest in attending.

 

Be aware of those less fortunate than we are!! Carry out the mitzvah of tikkun olam!

 

A mitzvah we can ALL DO: Visit a friend in a nursing home or assisted living center or who otherwise can't get out! Or bring someone to a service here who couldn't get here on their own!
Community Events    

JCC Annual Memorial Service for the Six Million.

At the JCC Sunday, September 18, 2pm.

 

Save the date:
Monday, October 24, Special showing: Nuremberg - Its Lessons for Today.... the suppressed film! Sponsored by JFACT

Upcoming Synagogue Events    

Lunch and Learn..... Thursday, Sept. 22, 11am

 

Selichot, Saturday Evening, Sept. 24, 8:30pm

at B'nai Tikvoh Sholom

 

Rosh Hashanah starts Wednesday evening, Sept. 28

Schedule of services in Hai-lites

 

Sukkah decorating pizza party, Monday evening, Oct. 3, 6:30pm

 News from Israel...

 

Why Obama Is Losing the Jewish Vote....

He doesn't have a 'messaging' problem. He has a record of bad policies and anti-Israel rhetoric.

 

By DAN SENOR, from the Wall Street Journal

 

New York's special congressional election on Tuesday was the first electoral outcome directly affected by President Obama's Israel policy. Democrats were forced to expend enormous resources in a losing effort to defend this safe Democratic district, covering Queens and Brooklyn, that Anthony Weiner won last year by a comfortable margin.

 

A Public Policy Poll taken days before the election found a plurality of voters saying that Israel was "very important" in determining their votes. Among those voters, Republican candidate Robert Turner was winning by a 71-22 margin. Only 22% of Jewish voters approved of President Obama's handling of Israel. Ed Koch, the Democrat and former New York mayor, endorsed Mr. Turner because he said he wanted to send a message to the president about his anti-Israel policies.

This is a preview of what President Obama might face in his re-election campaign with a demographic group that voted overwhelmingly for him in 2008. And it could affect the electoral map, given the battleground states-such as Florida and Pennsylvania-with significant Jewish populations. In another ominous barometer for the Obama campaign, its Jewish fund-raising has deeply eroded: One poll by McLaughlin & Associates found that of Jewish donors who donated to Mr. Obama in 2008, only 64% have already donated or plan to donate to his re-election campaign.

 

The Obama campaign has launched a counteroffensive, including hiring a high-level Jewish outreach director and sending former White House aide David Axelrod and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to reassure Jewish donors. The Obama team told the Washington Post that its Israel problem is a messaging problem, and that with enough explanation of its record the Jewish community will return to the fold in 2012. Here is an inventory of what Mr. Obama's aides will have to address:

 

� February 2008: When running for president, then-Sen. Obama told an audience in Cleveland: "There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel." Likud had been out of power for two years when Mr. Obama made this statement. At the time the country was being led by the centrist Kadima government of Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Shimon Peres, and Prime Minister Olmert had been pursuing an unprecedented territorial compromise. As for Likud governments, it was under Likud that Israel made its largest territorial compromises-withdrawals from Sinai and Gaza.

 

� July 2009: Mr. Obama hosted American Jewish leaders at the White House, reportedly telling them that he sought to put "daylight" between America and Israel. "For eight years"-during the Bush administration-"there was no light between the United States and Israel, and nothing got accomplished," he declared.

Nothing? Prime Minister Ariel Sharon uprooted thousands of settlers from their homes in Gaza and the northern West Bank and deployed the Israeli army to forcibly relocate their fellow citizens. Mr. Sharon then resigned from the Likud Party to build a majority party based on a two-state consensus. In the same meeting with Jewish leaders, Mr. Obama told the group that Israel would need "to engage in serious self-reflection." This statement stunned the Americans in attendance: Israeli society is many things, but lacking in self-reflection isn't one of them. It's impossible to envision the president delivering a similar lecture to Muslim leaders.


� September 2009: In his first address to the U.N. General Assembly, President Obama devoted five paragraphs to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, during which he declared (to loud applause) that "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements." He went on to draw a connection between rocket attacks on Israeli civilians with living conditions in Gaza. There was not a single unconditional criticism of Palestinian terrorism.

 

� March 2010: During Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel, a Jerusalem municipal office announced plans for new construction in a part of Jerusalem. The president launched an unprecedented weeks-long offensive against Israel. Mr. Biden very publicly departed Israel. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton berated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a now-infamous 45-minute phone call, telling him that Israel had "harmed the bilateral relationship." (The State Department triumphantly shared details of the call with the press.) The Israeli ambassador was dressed-down at the State Department, Mr. Obama's Middle East envoy canceled his trip to Israel, and the U.S. joined the European condemnation of Israel.

 

Moments after Mr. Biden concluded his visit to the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority held a ceremony to honor Dalal Mughrabi, who led one of the deadliest Palestinian terror attacks in history: the so-called Coastal Road Massacre that killed 38, including 13 children and an American. The Obama administration was silent. But that same day, on ABC, Mr. Axelrod called Israel's planned construction of apartments in its own capital an "insult" and an "affront" to the United States. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs went on Fox News to accuse Mr. Netanyahu of "weakening trust" between the two countries. Ten days later, Mr. Netanyahu traveled to Washington to mend fences but was snubbed at a White House meeting with President Obama-no photo op, no joint statement, and he was sent out through a side door.

 

� April 2010: Mr. Netanyahu pulled out of the Obama-sponsored Washington summit on nuclear proliferation after it became clear that Turkey and Egypt intended to use the occasion to condemn the Israeli nuclear program, and Mr. Obama would not intervene.

 

� March 2011: Mr. Obama returned to his habit of urging Israelis to engage in self-reflection, inviting Jewish community leaders to the White House and instructing them to "search your souls" about Israel's dedication to peace.

 

� May 2011: The State Department issued a press release declaring that the department's No. 2 official, James Steinberg, would be visiting "Israel, Jerusalem, and the West Bank." In other words, Jerusalem is not part of Israel. Later in the month, only hours before Mr. Netanyahu departed from Israel to Washington, Mr. Obama delivered his Arab Spring speech, which focused on a demand that Israel return to its indefensible pre-1967 borders with land swaps. Mr. Obama has made some meaningful exceptions, particularly having to do with security partnership, but overall he has built the most consistently one-sided diplomatic record against Israel of any American president in generations. His problem with Jewish voters is one of substance, not messaging.

 

Where do you need a tiny Torah scroll?

Tiny Torah scrolls to take the plunge

Israeli submarines will be taking tiny Torah scrolls with them to the bottom of the sea........

 

Several religious soldiers have joined the Israeli Navy in recent months. Just as every permanent Israel Defense Forces base has a Torah scroll to be read on Shabbat, Mondays and Thursdays, the military realized that it was time to place them on their subs.

The IDF turned to a family that has donated scrolls to bases in the past and asked it to donate Torah scrolls for Navy subs, Ynet reported. But with the limited space on a submarine, the Torah scrolls had to be small. The first submarine Torah scroll is scheduled to be completed in the coming days, according to Ynet, and will be one-fourth the size of a standard one -- small enough to fit in a shoe box.

The scroll will be transferred from submarine to submarine based on demand, according to Ynet. A rabbi with a high security clearance will be required to bring the Torah to the sub, Ynet reported.

 

US Patrols New York on 9/11 Like IDF in Palestinian Authority
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Police man roadblocks with machine-guns and sniffer dogs. Drivers are questioned. Data bases are searched for suspects in potential terrorist attacks. The scene is not the IDF in the Palestinian Authority. It Is New York City on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks.

Ground Zero was turned into a "frozen zone" Sunday prior to anniversary ceremonies that will be attended by President Barack Obama.  Concrete barriers, similar to those separating some areas in Judea and Samaria from the rest of Israel, block cars from approaching the area.

Bomb sniffing dogs late Saturday night patrolled Pennsylvania Station and local trains, and federal agents are guarding New York's federal courthouse with machine guns.  

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is on national alert amid fears of attempts by terrorists to stage more attacks. Every suspicious object is being treated with gravity, and Dulles Airport outside of Washington D.C. partially closed down Sunday after a bomb-sniffing dog set off an alert as cargo was loaded on a plane. The alert proved to be a false alarm, but not before people at several gates were evacuated in the pre-dawn hours.

Heavily armed New York City police are stationed at bridges and tunnels and are inspecting baggage on subways, similar to the "humiliating" security checks by Israeli security personnel at checkpoints in Judea and Samaria. They have increased vehicle checks and monitoring of bridges and tunnels, are performing more baggage screenings in subways, patrolling outside places of worship and government buildings and conducting bomb sweeps of public garages.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg commented, "The one thing we know is the terrorists have not gone away." City police have prevented at least 13 terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001.

House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King said, "There are literally hundreds if not thousands of names being scrubbed" in a database of suspected terrorists, according to the San Francisco Chronicle's SF Gate website.

It reported, "Investigators are "going to suppliers and store owners - anyone who's had a car stolen, anyone who's leased certain types of trucks, [and] anyone who sold explosives."

One sign of the new mood of intense worry in the United States is a report that New Jersey detectives are contacting 2,500 businesses that might be used by terrorists, such as fertilizer suppliers, vehicle rental agencies and hotels."

"Those are the people you need to connect to; the people who are going to give you the initial leads that are going to get you to the bottom of terror operations," New Jersey State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes told reporters.

 

GILAD SHALIT...... OVER 1900 DAYS IN CAPTIVITY.... NO CONTACT ALLOWED BY HAMAS...... 

 Weekly Torah Portion Commentary.....

THIS WEEK BY RABBI MICHAEL GOLD

 

         When the time comes to eat the first fruits of a tree, the owner would place them in a basket and carry them to Jerusalem. There he would present the fruits to the Priest. He would then recite a story, the story that would become the central narrative of the people Israel.
 

               The owner of the fruit would say, "A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous; And the Egyptians dealt ill with us, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard slavery; And when we cried to the Lord God of our fathers, the Lord heard our voice, and looked on our affliction, and our labor, and our oppression; And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great awesomeness, and with signs, and with wonders; And he has brought us to this place, and has given us this land, a land that flows with milk and honey." (Deuteronomy 28:5 - 9)

 

           This story was literally moved into the Passover haggadah. The heart of the haggadah is a Rabbinic midrash on the first four verses of this narrative. This tells the fundamental story of being a Jew. We wandered down to Egypt, and there became a great nation. But the Egyptians mistreated us, and forced us to be slaves. We cried out to God and God heard our cry, bringing us out from Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. God brought us to the land of Israel to be a free people in our own land. To be a Jew is to accept this narrative about our people.

 

 

           But is the narrative true? Were we really slaves in Egypt? Did God really hear our cry? Did God bring us out? A number of years ago Rabbi David Wolpe, one of the finest rabbis in the country, created a stir in his congregation in Los Angeles by saying that perhaps the story is not totally true. Maybe it did not happen precisely as the story tells it. Rabbi Wolpe found himself castigated by members of his congregation as well as the press. "Rabbi denies the Torah." 

 

           At the time I raised the question, does a narrative have to be literally true to be true? Does it need to correspond with historical reality to make a difference in our lives? Are all of the great narratives of the Bible - the Garden of Eden, Noah's flood, the binding of Isaac, the Golden Calf, the story of David and Goliath, Elijah going to heaven in a chariot, or the exodus from Egypt literally true? Don't they contain profound truths about the reality of our lives, whether they literally happened or not.

 

           Karen Armstrong, the British scholar of religion, speaks of two kinds of truth in her wonderful book The Case for God. First there is logos, what we often call scientific truth. Then there is mythos, narratives, allegories, and insights that help us understand our place in the world. According to Armstrong, our culture tends to overplay logos and downplay mythos. Yet it is mythos that often has the more important insights into how we are to live our lives.

 

           The story of the exodus is mythos. It is the story of a universe that allows people to go out of a narrow place (the literally meaning of mitzrayim - Egypt) into a wide place. It is the story of redemption, not just the redemption of the people Israel long ago, but the redemption of each of us every day. We are all slaves to something in our own lives, we all can cry out to the universe, and the universe is made in a way that people can change. The story gives a profound truth.

 

           This truth is particularly relevant as we approach the High Holidays, now just two weeks away. The central theme of the holidays is change, turning our live around, getting on a different path. We are not slave to our past. This is worth proclaiming, not just when we bring first fruits to the priest, but when we walk into synagogue to welcome the New Year.