Thank you to Randi Spier for arranging this Shabbat s dinner at the shul!

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1 בס ד THE BULLETIN IS DEDICATED BY SARAGAIL CHESSIN CARPE TO WELCOME GRANDDAUGHTER TIFERET TZIPORA, BORN SEPT. 1, 2017 IN JERUSALEM TO LEAH & RAV DOV CARPE (SIBLINGS AHAVA AND SHLOMO YISRAEL ARE DELIGHTED)! YOUTH KICKOFF EVENT, this Sunday, 10 AM, in the Schwitzer social hall. Welcome our new Youth Director Chad Shapiro, and enjoy events for children of all ages, including Shalom Baby (newborns to 3), Minute to Win it (5 to 12), and NCSY Meeting. Ice cream will be served! שבת פרשת כי תבא SHABBAT PARSHAT KI TAVO 18 ELUL/SEPTEMBER 9.(קומי אורי) Haftorah is Isaiah 60:1-22 Pirkei Avot Chaps. 3 & 4. FRIDAY NIGHT CANDLE LIGHTING - 6:58 PM MINCHA - 7:00 PM TZAIT - 8:02 PM SATURDAY HASHKAMA/YOUTH - 8:20 AM SHACHARIT MAIN - 9:00 AM LAST KRIAT SHEMA - 9:42 AM GEMARA SHIUR - 5:45 PM MINCHA - 6:45 PM SHKIA - 7:15 PM MAARIV/HAVDALAH - 8:00 PM BULLETIN INFORMATION TO REQUEST A BULLETIN ANNOUNCEMENT (BY 7:00 PM WEDNESDAY) OR DEDICATE A BULLETIN FOR $36 ($54 W/PHOTO), SEPLOTNICK@GMAIL.COM. CONGREGATION AHAVAT ACHIM SADDLE RIVER ROAD FAIR LAWN, NJ נא לא לדבר בשעת התפילה PLEASE NO CONVERSATION DURING SERVICES Sunday (9/10) Monday (9/11) Tuesday (9/12) Wednesday (9/13) Thursday (9/14) Friday (9/15) Earliest Talit 5:34 AM 5:35 AM 5:37 AM 5:38 AM 5:39 AM 5:40 AM Shacharit 8:15 AM 6:15 AM 6:25 AM 6:25 AM 6:15 AM 6:25 AM Gedolah 1:25 PM 1:24 PM 1:24 PM 1:23 PM 1:23 PM 1:22 PM Mincha - Maariv 6:50 PM 6:50 PM 6:50 PM 6:50 PM 6:50 PM 6:50 PM Shkia 7:14 PM 7:12 PM 7:10 PM 7:09 PM 7:07 PM Tzait 7:59 PM 7:57 PM 7:55 PM 7:54 PM 7:52 PM Thank you to Randi Spier for arranging this Shabbat s dinner at the shul! Yomim Noraim are almost upon us, Marty at thegabbai@aol.com to arrange for High Holiday Seats. Bask, Banter and Befriend during PEREK ON THE LAWN in the Beautiful Bernstein Backyard, Tanis Pl., with Rabbi Shestack, this Shabbat, at 5:00 PM. Light refreshments will be served. Elul Matters, Part II & III: Keeping Kosher On-The- Go (shiur by Rabbi & Rebetzin Shestack), Sunday, Sept. 10, 10:00 AM; and Keeping Kosher on Shabbat (shiur by Rabbi Shestack), Wednesday, September 13, 8:00 PM. Please submit Kashrut questions for the program to rabbishestack@gmail.com. Tzedakah Committee: The Jewish community in Houston has again found itself in the wake of a devastating storm. Donate online by clicking: OU Relief Fund. We regret to inform you of the passing of Eita Latkin s brother, Dennis Freilich. Eita will sit Shiva at her home Motzei Shabbat, and then will be at her brother s home, 120 E. 81st St., NY, Penthouse H, until Wed. morning. To partake in Chessed, call Sophie at המקום ינחם אתכם בתוך שאר אבלי ציון וירושלים Rabbi Ely Shestack "1 President Aryeh Brenenson

2 Kiddush Information If you are around when the Rabbi says המחיה, על your assistance in clean up would be appreciated. Kiddush setup for this Shabbat: Borsuk, Kwestel, Smedresman Kiddush setup for next Shabbat: Oppenheim, Oster, Sonnenblick To sponsor a Kiddush ($1000/$613/$318 plus scotch) send an to gplotnick@aol.com. Community Events Sept. 17 Sofer Day, Sunday, 9:00 AM 4:00 PM, YOUNG ISRAEL OF FAIR LAWN. For details, click here: Sofer Day. Nov. 5 - Mikvah Gala Evening. For more info contact Dossy Brandstatter at or mikvahfairlawn@gmail.com. Book Club Want to read ahead, the next book will be A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. ע ה Gita Cooperwasser Youth Program Please contact Melanie at mkwestel@gmail.com and volunteer to host Chad (our Youth Director) for shabbat and/or meals. Youth groups begin at 10:15 AM. Tot Shabbat in the playroom. Parents, ensure that your children are in groups or with you at all times. NO FOOD DURING GROUPS! Adult Education CHUMASH CLASS - Shabbat morning before Shacharit. GEMARA SHIUR with Rabbi Josh Abramson - One Hour Before Mincha on Shabbat. DAYTIME TORAH VOYAGES - Thursdays at 1:00 PM. FUNDAMENTALS OF JEWISH THOUGHT - After Kiddush, but on hiatus this Shabbat. PEREK ON THE LAWN, Pirkei Avot Monthly Shiur. Ahavat Achim Future Events Sept Seudat Shilishit sponsored by the Agress family on Yahrzeit of Amy s father Ha'Rav Yisroel Yehuda Ben. ז ל Ephraim Michal Ha'Levi Pruzansky Oct. 1 - Sylvia Latkin ע ה Sukkah Construction/Arba Minim Sale, 9 AM Oct. 6 - Kiddush is sponsored by the Winchester family on the Yarhtzeit of Steve s mother Helen Winchester, Miriam ע ה Hendl bas Shimon Oct Oneg Shabbat series in ע ה memory of Jonathan Garfunkel resumes at the Garfunkel home, 8:00 PM. Oct Edie Fontaine Bat Mitzvah Oct Suedah Shlishit sponsored by David & Lori Garfunkel in memory of Jonathan ע ה, and Betsy & Marty Sonnenblick on Yahrzeit of Betsy s father ע ה Howard Perlmutter,חיים יהודה בן ירמיהו Nov Kiddush sponsored by the Sonnenblick family in honor of Elie's Aufruf and upcoming marriage to Samara Kandelshein. Nov Andrew Wechsler Bar Mitzvah Feb Yachad Shabbaton Mar Kiddush sponsored by Agress family in honor of Josh's Aufruf and upcoming marriage to Bronia Goldman From the Sisterhood - Get Sisterhood Member Renewal & Rosh Hashana Scroll info in by Sept. 10 to Natasha Borsuk, 82 Garwood Rd., Fair Lawn, NJ. - Send Order forms for Rosh Hashanah bouquets (Sept. 20 delivery) by Sept. 12 to Elfie Eisman, Matule Dr., Fair Lawn, NJ. Points To Ponder (Answers Below) 1st aliyah: What section of this aliyah should stand out from the rituals of the holidays? What is odd about the connection between this aliyah and the prominence of the section of pesukim in the holiday ritual? 4th aliyah: What shift occurs at the beginning of this aliyah? 6th aliyah: What general imperative, that could perhaps sum up the entire ideology of the commandments is found in this aliyah? 6th aliyah: How many times was the "tochacha" told to the Jewish people in the desert? 7th aliyah: What does the reading of the tochacha "give" the people? Discussion question: How so? What does this verse mean? Answers to Points To Ponder 1st aliyah: "Arami oveid avi" (the statement that the person who brings his first fruit makes) is the same sequence of verses that we expound upon in the hagada on Pesach. The use of these verses in the hagada is odd because the story is told when the Jews actually leave Egypt in Exodus, and yet these verses are chosen to tell the story. 4th aliyah: Moshe's continuous speech ends. This sections includes narration and instructions, but it is not spoken to the entirety of the Jewish people 6th aliyah: "V'halachta b'drachav", imitatio Dei, following in God's ways (28:9) 6th aliyah: Twice (see 28:69) 7th aliyah: Hashem didn't give you the mind to understnad, the eyes to see and the ears to hear until today. Shirley Vann has dedicated this week s Covenant & Conversation (used with permission. ע ה of the Office of Rabbi Sacks) in memory of her beloved mother Necha bat Yitzchok "2

3 Hi, everyone! My name is Chad Shapiro, and I am so excited to meet all of you and look forward to a fantastic year as your youth director. I was born all the way down in South Africa, but, at the age of 4, my family moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where I ve lived ever since. After high school I attended Yeshivat Eretz Hatzvi in Jerusalem for a year and a half where my passion for Torah led me onto Yeshiva University where I currently study political science and English literature. After YU, I plan on pursuing a career in law and, finally, making aliyah. Additionally, some of my previous youth experiences include working at my community shul s Hebrew school for three years and its summer camp for two summers as well as working at Camp Yavneh family camp as a Rosh Eidah. I ve always been a huge sports fan, particularly loyal to my hometown Atlanta Braves and Falcons, and some of my other hobbies include running, playing trivia games, and cooking (I can grill some serious South African meat). With the end of the summer around the corner, I cannot wait to get started having the most exciting youth program yet! I ll see you all very soon!

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6 בס ד Congregation Ahavat Achim s Sisterhood Membership Renewal & Rosh Hashana Scroll Yes, please enroll me as a Sisterhood member. Yes, please include me/us on the Rosh Hashana Scroll. Please PRINT my/our name(s) as follows: $10 per family Sisterhood dues for 5778 are $36 (Dues increase to $45 after December 31st) Total Enclosed: $ Please return this form and your check to: Natasha Borsuk 82 Garwood Road Fair Lawn, NJ nbnadler@gmail.com Please make your check payable to SISTERHOOD OF AHAVAT ACHIM. Kindly respond by September 10th. Thank you for your participation. May Hashem grant us all a happy, healthy & peaceful New Year.

7 SISTERHOOD WISHES YOU AND YOUR FAMILY A YEAR OF GOOD HEALTH, HAPPINESS AND PEACE! ORDER YOUR BOUQUETS FOR ROSH HASHANAH The arrangements will be created by Jimmy of the Empty Vase in Closter, NJ. You can order beautiful seasonal bouquets for your table in three categories: A: $55 B: $45 C: $35 Price includes delivery to Fair Lawn and Teaneck. Orders must be received by September 12 th for delivery on September 20 th for Rosh Hashanah. *30% of proceeds go to support Sisterhood programs. Please print out the order form below (make check payable to Sisterhood of Ahavat Achim) and send it to Elfie Eisman, Matule Drive, Fair Lawn, NJ For additional information, please contact Elfie at or eism@verizon.net (Arrangements may not be identical to pictures shown.) Name (Please Print) Delivery Address (Please Print) Town Tel # Please deliver: (qty) $55 $ (qty) $45 $ (qty) $35 $ Enclosed is my check for total $

8 SISTERHOOD OF AHAVAT ACHIM ANNUAL COAT DRIVE FOR Center For Hope And Safety (Formerly Save Our Sisters Shelter) We are collecting outerwear (gently worn, but not torn) for the Center for Hope and Safety Shelter in Bergen County. This organization houses and supports abused women and their families. All sizes are needed. Bring your donations to the Bickel garage: Hale Place, Fair Lawn Sunday, November 19, 2017 (Mitzvah Day in Bergen County) 8 a.m. 5 p.m. For more information, contact Audrey at bickelar@aol.com.

9 Covenant & Conversation Ki Tavo 2017 / 5777 In two sentences in this week s sedra, the Torah summarises the entire relationship between God and the people of Israel: You have affirmed [he-emarta] this day that the Lord is your, God, that you will walk in His ways, that you will observe His laws and commandments and rules, and that you will obey Him. And the Lord has affirmed [heemirkha] this day that you are, as He promised you, His treasured people who shall observe all His commandments. (Deut. 26:17-18) Here, set out with disarming simplicity, is the dual relationship, the reciprocity, at the heart of the covenant. It is an idea made famous in the form of two jingles. The first, that of William Norman Ewer: How odd / Of God / To choose / The Jews And the second, the Jewish riposte: Not quite / So odd / The Jews / Chose God Between God and the people is a mutual bond of love. The Israelites pledge themselves to be faithful to God and His commands. God pledges Himself to cherish the people as His treasure for though He is the God of all humanity, He holds a special place in His affection (to speak anthropomorphically) for the descendants of those who first heard and heeded His call. This is the whole of Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. The rest is commentary. The English translation, above, is that of the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh. Any translation, however, tends to conceal the difficulty in the key verb in both sentences: le-ha amir. What is strange is that, on the one hand, it is a form of one the most common of all biblical verbs, lomar, to say. On the other, the specific form used here the hiphil, or causative form is unique. Nowhere else does it appear in this form in the Bible, and its meaning is, as a result, obscure. Covenant & Conversation 1! Ki Tavo 5777

10 The JPS translation reads it as affirmed. Aryeh Kaplan, in The Living Torah, reads it as declared allegiance to. Robert Alter renders it: proclaimed. Other interpretations include separated to yourself (Rashi), chosen (Septuagint), recognised (Saadia Gaon), raised (Radak, Sforno), betrothed (Malbim), given fame to (Ibn Janach), exchanged everything else for (Chizkuni), accepted the uniqueness of (Rashi to Chagigah 3a), or caused God to declare (Judah Halevi, cited by Ibn Ezra. Among Christian translations, the King James Version has, Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God. The New International Version reads: You have declared this day that the Lord is your God. The Contemporary English Version has: In response, you have agreed that the Lord will be your God. What is the significance of this unique form of the verb to say? Why is it used here? The use of language in the Torah is not vague, accidental, approximate, imprecise. In general, in the Mosaic books, style mirrors substance. The way something is said is often connected to what is being said. So it is here. What we have before us is a proposition of far-reaching consequence for the most fundamental question humanity can ask itself: What is the nature of the bond between human beings and God or between human beings and one another such that we can endow our lives with the charisma of grace? The answer given by the Torah, so profound that we need to stop and meditate on it, lies in language, speech, words. Hence the singling out, in this definitive statement of Jewish faith, of the verb meaning to say. The use of language in the Torah is not vague, accidental, approximate, imprecise. The way something is said is often connected to what is being said. We owe to the later work of Wittgenstein, developed further by J. L. Austin (How to do things with words) and J. R. Searle (Speech Acts), the realisation that language has many functions. Since the days of Socrates, philosophers have tended to concentrate on just one function: the use of language to describe, or state facts. Hence the key questions of philosophy and later science: Is this statement true? Does it correspond to the facts? Is it consistent with other facts? Can I be sure? What evidence do I have? What warrant do I have for believing what I believe? Language is the medium we use to describe what is. But that is only one use of language, and there are many others. We use it to classify, to divide the world up into particular slices of reality. We also use it to evaluate. Patriotism and jingoism both denote the same phenomenon loyalty to one s country but with opposite evaluations: Patriotism = good, jingoism = bad. We use language to express emotion. Sometimes we use it simply to establish a relationship. Malinowsky called this phatic communion, where what matters is not what we say but the mere fact that we are talking to one another (Robin Dunbar has recently argued that speech for humans is like grooming behaviour among primates). We can also use language to question, command, hypothesise and imagine. There are literary genres like fiction and poetry which use language in complex ways to extend our imaginative engagement with reality. The philosophical-scientific mindset that sees the sole significant function of language as descriptive taken to an extreme in the philosophical movement known as logical positivism is a form of tone-deafness to the rich variety of speech. The Mosaic books contain a deep set of reflections on the nature and power of language. This has much to do with the fact that the Israelites of Moses day were in the place where, and the time when, the first alphabet appeared, the proto-semitic script from which all subsequent alphabets are directly or indirectly derived. Judaism marks the world s first transition on a national scale from an oral to a literate culture. Hence the unique significance it attaches to the spoken and written word. We discover this at the very beginning of the Torah. It takes the form of the radical abandonment of myth. God spoke and the world came into being. There is no contest, no struggle, no use of force to subdue rival powers as there is in every myth without exception. Instead, the key verb in Genesis 1 is simply leimor, God said [vayomer], Let there be... and there was. Language creates worlds. Covenant & Conversation 2! Ki Tavo 5777

11 That, of course, is Divine not human speech. However, J. L. Austin pointed out that there is a human counterpart. There are certain things we can create with words when we use them in a special way. Austin called this use of speech performative utterance (more technically, illocutionary acts). So, for example, when a judge says, This court is now in session, he is not describing something but doing something. When a groom says to his bride under the wedding canopy, Behold you are betrothed to me by this ring according to the laws of Moses and Israel, he is not stating a fact but creating a fact. The most basic type of performative utterance is making a promise. This is the use of language to create an obligation. Some promises are unilateral (X commits himself to do something for Y), but others are mutual (X and Y make a commitment to one another). Some are highly specific ( I promise to pay you 1,000 ), but others are open-ended ( I promise to look after you, come what may ). The supreme example of an open-ended mutual pledge between human beings is marriage. The supreme example of an open-ended mutual pledge between human beings and God is a covenant. That is what our two verses state: that God and the people of Israel pledge themselves to one another by making a covenant, a relationship brought into existence by words, and sustained by honouring those words. This is the single most radical proposition in the Hebrew Bible. It has no real counterpart in any other religion. What is supremely holy is language, when used to create a moral bond between two parties. This means that the supreme form of relationship is one that does not depend on power, superior force, or dominant-submissive hierarchy. In a covenantal relationship both parties respect the dignity of the other. A covenant exists only in virtue of freely given consent. It also means that between Infinite God and infinitesimal humanity there can be relationship because, through language, they can communicate with one another. The key facts of the Torah are that [a] God speaks and [b] God listens. The use of language to create a mutually binding relationship is what links God and humankind. Thus the two verses mean: Today, by an act of speech, you have made God your God, and God has made you His people. Words, language, an act of saying, have created an open-ended, eternally binding relationship. Hence the name I have given to my series of Torah commentaries: Covenant and Conversation. Judaism is a covenant, a marriage between God and a people. The Torah is the written record of that covenant. It is Israel s marriage-contract as God s bride. Conversation speaking and listening is what makes covenant possible. Hence the dual form of Torah: the written Torah, through which God speaks to us and the Oral Torah through which we speak to God by way of interpreting His word. Judaism is the open-ended, mutually binding, conversation between Heaven and earth. Despite the deep influence of Judaism on two later faiths, Christianity and Islam, neither adopted this idea (to be sure, some Christian theologians speak of covenant, but a different kind of covenant, more unilateral than reciprocal). There are no conversations between God and human beings in either the New Testament or the Koran none that echo the dialogues in Tanakh between God and Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Hosea, Jeremiah, Jonah, Habakkuk and Job. Judaism, Christianity and Islam the religion of sacred dialogue, the religion of salvation and the religion of submission are three different things. The use of language to create a moral bond of love between the Infinite and the finite through covenant on the one hand, conversation on the other is what makes Judaism different. That is what is set out simply in these two verses: Speaking a relationship into being, leha amir, is what makes God our God, and us, His people. Shabbat Shalom. What is supremely holy is language, when used to create a moral bond between two parties. Covenant & Conversation 3! Ki Tavo 5777

12 Out Now Covenant & Conversation 4! Ki Tavo 5777