Seudah Shlishit is sponsored by the Oppenheims to commemorate the Yahrzeit of Joanne s mother Sara bas Uri ע ה. May her neshama have an aliyah.

Transcription

1 בס ד שבת פרשת משפטים פרשת שקלים SHABBAT PARSHAT MISHPATIM PARSHAT SHEKALIM 25 SHEVAT - FEBRUARY 14 Maftir reads from Parshas Ki Tisah (Exodus 30:11-16). Haftorah for Parshat Shekolim is Kings II 12:1-17. We bless Adar. Do not say We do say. אב הרחמים" or "א-ל מלא". צדקתך צדק" FRIDAY NIGHT CANDLE LIGHTING - 5:11 PM MINCHA - 5:15 PM TZAIT - 6:14 PM SATURDAY CHUMASH SHIUR - 8:00 AM SHACHARIT YOUTH - 8:20 AM SHACHARIT MAIN - 8:45 AM LAST KRIAT SHEMA - 9:32 AM GEMARA SHIUR - 4:00 PM MINCHA - 5:00 PM SHKIA - 5:30 PM MAARIV/HAVDALAH - 6:15 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 (2/15) Monday (2/16) Tuesday (2/17) Wednesday (2/18) Thursday (2/19) Friday (2/20) Earliest Talit 5:56 AM 5:55 AM 5:54 AM 5:53 AM 5:51 AM 5:50 AM Shacharit 8:15 AM 8:00 AM 6:25 AM 6:25 AM 6:00 AM 6:00 AM Gedolah 12:38 PM 12:38 PM 12:38 PM 12:38 PM 12:38 PM 12:38 PM Mincha (Sun/Fri) - Maariv WEEKDAY DAVENING INFORMATION 5:10 PM 8:00 PM 8:00 PM 8:00 PM 8:00 PM 5:25 PM Shkia 5:31 PM 5:32 PM 5:33 PM 5:35 PM 5:36 PM Tzait 6:16 PM 6:17 PM 6:18 PM 6:20 PM 6:21 PM Seudah Shlishit is sponsored by the Oppenheims to commemorate the Yahrzeit of Joanne s mother Sara bas Uri ע ה. May her neshama have an aliyah. The following sponsors of the Yachad Shabbaton were inadvertently not reflected in last week s bulletin due to a file saving issue: Gold ($118) - Smedresman; Silver ($72) - Spier; Bronze ($36) - Eisman, Goldgur, Lang & Schachter. Apologies to all The Journal Dinner honoring Sheree & Hazkiel Kor (Community Service awardees) and Arielle & Jonathan Schachter (Young Leadership awardees) to be held on Sun., March 1, 2015 is almost here. If you ve been procrastinating in getting your dinner reservations in or submitting your ads it has to be now We look forward to making this evening a special one with everyone s support. The Molad for Adar is Wednesday, Feb. 18, 11:59 PM & 2 Chalokim. Purim is fast approaching. Please (pretty please) get your Sisterhood Mishloach Manot orders in to Shelly Racenstien by February 19 Rabbi Uri Goldstein President Steven Winchester "1

2 Kiddush Information Kiddush cleanup for the month of February is Oppenheim, Oster, Plotnick, Racenstein, Reichardt, Rein, Riskin, Safier, Schachter, Schwitzer & Smedresman Kiddush setup for this Shabbat is Lang, Lewis, Racenstein Kiddush setup for next Shabbat is Schachter, Spier, Dworkis To sponsor a Kiddush ($1000/$613/$318 plus scotch) send an to gplotnick@aol.com. Adult Education GEMARAH SHIUR - Rabbi's Shabbat afternoon gemarah shiur takes place one hour before Mincha. CHUMASH CLASS - Gerry Halpern s Class - Shabbat morning before Shacharit. Numbers & Info ERUV UPDATE MIKVAH At Shomrei Torah, weekdays 9:00 PM 10:30 PM, Motzei Shabbat from 11/4 hours after Shabbat ends for 1.5 hours. Kaylim Mikvah: Sunday 10 AM-3 PM FACEBOOK: facebook.com/ groups/ahavat.achim/ The Sisterhood Get your Mitzvah cards Contact Eita Latkin at parentsof3@aol.com to have an acknowledgement of a Simcha, a refuah shelayma or to extend condolences. ע ה Gita Cooperwasser Youth Program This Shabbat the youth leaders are: Andy Freund (Floater), Hannah Levine (Beit Midrash - Group Aleph), and Serena Freund & Justin Safier (Purple Room - Group Bet). March 5 (Purim) - "Rolling Video Games" in a game truck trailer at the shul with widescreen high-def TVs that cover the walls in front of custom stadium seats with built-in vibration motors synched to the on-screen action with speakers in front and back. RSVP REQUIRED BY FEB. 27. How much time kids get to play in the truck will depend on how many reservations. $5 per child, $15 per family maximum. There will be crafts/snacks in the shul for the times when kids are not playing video games, and a chance to turn in Torah dollars for prizes. March 15 - Good Deeds Day 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM, at Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, 50 Eisenhower Dr., Paramus. May 24 - Shavuot ice cream party (first day), 4:00 pm at the Bernstein home, Tanis Pl.. Upcoming Events Feb Seudah Shlishit is sponsored by the Garfunkels upon the third Yahrzeit of David s father Yehoshua Falik Ben Moshe. ע ה HaCohain March 21 - Seudah Shlishit is sponsored by the Garfunkels upon the first Yahrzeit of David s mother Fayge Rivka Bat R. ע ה Chaim Halevi May 9 - Shimshon Goldstein Bar Mitzvah May 13 - Norpac Mission to Washington May 16 - Eli Schachter Bar Mitzvah June 20 - Kiddush sponsored by the Schwitzers in honor of Jason s Aufruf and upcoming wedding to Alicia Cohen Aug. 1 - Kiddush in honor of Andrew Wigod s Aufruf, and upcoming wedding to Kira Batist Oct. 3 - Hadassah & Hadar Schachter B'Not Mitzvah Feb. 6 - Ben Wechsler Bar Mitzvah Pack 613 Feb Den Meeting Feb Den Meeting Shirley Vann has dedicated this week s Covenant & Conversation (used with permission of. ע ה the Office of Rabbi Sacks) in memory of her beloved mother Necha bat Yitzchok "2

3 IN ADAR WE REMEMBER... NAME HEBREW DATE CANDLE EVENING OF DEDICATOR RELATIONSHIP Osias Garfunkel 3 February 21 David Garfunkel Father Louis Tabatneck 6 February 24 Naomi Levine Husband's Cousin Charles Cooperwasser 10 February 28 Seymour Wigod Uncle Bert Vann 10 February 28 Avi Vann Father Pearl Iroff 10 February 28 Renee Freund Grandmother Elaine Goldstein 13 March 3 Mitchell Goldstein Mother Herman Klein 14 March 4 David Garfunkel Grandfather Morris N. Matkowsky 15 March 5 Charles Matkowsky Father Helen Garfunkel 16 March 6 David Garfunkel Grandmother Charles Feldman Frankel 17 March 7 Elyce Smedresman Uncle Pearl Gelb 17 March 7 David Graber Cousin Bernard Page 18 March 8 Eita Latkin Cousin David Wigod 19 March 9 Seymour Wigod Uncle Doris Rotberg 21 March 11 Ellen Chass Mother Fred Diamond 22 March 12 Lisa Eis Father Edna Kerin Shimoff 22 March 12 Melanie Kwestel Mother Morris Levine 22 March 12 Naomi Levine/ Father in Law/ Kenny Levine Grandfather Avraham Schaeffer 26 March 16 Mimi Weinraub Father SUPPORT YOUR SHUL Donate a Sefer, etc. The shul has Siddurim & Machzorim ($36) and Chumashim ($54) available to be donated. Please contact Jeff Safier at rjsafier@optonline.net for details. Yahrzeit Plaques Memorialize a loved one and receive written notice of your upcoming yahrzeit every year. In addition, your loved one s name will be mentioned during the public Yizkor we recite on Yom Kippur and in the Bulletin. Plaques are $300 for members and $350 for non-members. For more information, contact Sophie Infield at Scrip Scrip is available from Men s by ing David at dmgarfunkel@gmail.com. at Paypal at treasurer@ahavatachim.org or by Discover, MasterCard or Visa - treasurer@ahavatachim.org for details. Mishebayrach If you ve made a Mishebayrach you ve pledged to give Tzedakah on behalf of those for whom you asked Hashem's blessing. Contributions to the shul are appropriate and can be made via Paypal to treasurer@ahavatachim.org, or via MasterCard, Visa or Discover by sending the information to Elliot Greene (contact him at treasurer@ahavatachim.org). If paying by check please indicate on its face Aliyah Donation. Thank you for your generosity. David Schwitzer ע ה Social Hall Please contact Steven Winchester at swinchman1@gmail.com to book the David Schwitzer ע ה Social Hall for an event or special occasion. $250 per simcha (members) / $500 paid in advance for nonmembers, plus the cost of any additional clean up (plus a $150 security deposit refunded when the social hall is returned in the condition it started in). Private caterers must be approved in advance by the Rabbi. "3 Sisterhood & Men s Club Please contact Elliot Greene at egreene@acm.org to join the Men s Club. To join Sisterhood, please contact Lori Garfunkel at garfmom@gmail.com. Honoraria Contributions to acquire honoraria in memory or honor of a loved one are welcome. The available Honoraria list will be provided upon request by contacting Steven Plotnick at seplotnick@gmail.com. Mitzvah Cards Want mitzvah cards, contact Eita Latkin at or parentsof3@aol.com. Cost is $3 per card. Also can be ordered in bulk - ten cards for $25, which you send out yourself privately. SUPPORT YOUR SHUL

4 From The OU.ORG Four Shabbatot section is adapted with permission from The Book of Our Heritage by Rabbi Eliyahu Kitov and other sources. Shabbat Shekalim Resh Lakish said "On the first of Adar, an announcement is made concerning the Shekalim." (Masechet Megillah) The first of the Four Special Shabbatot is Shabbat Parshat Shekalim. It occurs either on the last Shabbat of the month of Shevat, or on the Shabbat which in that year coincides with Rosh Chodesh Adar, or on a Shabbat early in Adar. A special reading, taken from Parshat KiTisa (Shemot 30:11-16) is appended to the regular Torah reading. The reading describes a census of the Jewish People which was taken while the Jews were in the Wilderness, after their Exodus from Egypt. The Torah, here and in other places, teaches that it is forbidden to count Jews in the ordinary manner; rather, the People should be called upon to contribute items, which would then be counted. In the case of this census, the item which was contributed, by rich and poor alike, was a half shekel, the "shekel" being the coin in use at the time, roughly equivalent to our dollar. The collected shekels, or "shekalim, in Hebrew, were then used for the construction and upkeep of the Mishkan, the portable Temple, which was used until the Temple found its permanent residence (despite its destruction twice, the place retains its holiness) in Jerusalem. The equal participation of all the People symbolizes that all Jews must share in achieving national goals, by giving up his selfish, personal interests for the sake of the nation. One who does so gains infinite benefit, because the mission of Israel is dependent upon the unity of the whole. (Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, cited in the ArtScroll Stone Edition of the Chumash) The verses also speak in terms of atonement that is achieved by participation in this half-shekel assessment A solitary human being can seldom survive Divine scrutiny; what person is free of sin and shortcomings? But when a nation becomes one, it ascends to a higher plane, because all its individuals merge their virtues with one another. This is also the reason that it is better to pray with a "minyan," a quorum, to establish a community, whose virtues can merge, instead of praying individually. Parshat Shekalim recalls the time of Purim, which was also a time of Divine scrutiny and judgment for the Jewish People. The name of the Day of Atonement, Yom HaKippurim, the "Day which is like Purim," is also suggestive of this relationship, although Purim also contains the word "Pur," lottery, to suggest how G-d uses what seems to be "chance" in His administration of the world. At the time of Purim, an edict was issued by an earthly "court;" i.e., the "court" of Haman and Achashverosh, calling for the harsh punishment, if not the destruction, of the Jewish People. The Fast of Taanit Esther, combined with the Repentance of the Jewish People, unified the nation and was once again able to receive upon itself the "yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven," and renew their acceptance of the Torah, "the Jews accepted again what they had begun to do," (Megillat Esther 9:23), and thus merit redemption. AHAVAT ACHIM MISCELLANEOUS Rabbi Goldstein s Hours Rabbi Goldstein is available to the membership by contacting him at UriG77@aol.com or by phone at For those who wish to contact him during office hours, he is available to be at the shul Wednesday evenings after Ma ariv until approximately 10:00 pm. Please note that the Rabbi's s are forwarded to his home PC and to his mobile phone. Become a Member of Ahavat Achim If you are not yet a member; please contact Aryeh Brenenson abrenenson@gmail.com for details on membership. Bikkur Cholim/Chesed If anyone could use a visit/assistance from the Bikkur Cholim/Chesed Committee, contact the Rabbi at UriG77@aol.com or Sara Levine at saralevine06@gmail.com or (201) Contact Sara to join the committee and offer Biker Cholim assistance in the manner that s most conducive to your schedule. You may find yourself in a position to spend time visiting a homebound shul member, give them a call and see if they require any special assistance or might even decide to cook or purchase a special meal for them. No offer will be refused and all are most appreciated. Personal Announcements Various life cycle events related to members are announced in the shul s weekly bulletin (e.g., births, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings and deaths), and the bulletin acknowledges travel to/from Israel for study. We also welcome new members and those who ve moved into the community and express interest in our shul. Other personal announcements generally are not appropriate for inclusion in the bulletin, except as part of the bulletin s dedication (a $36 cost - $54 with photo). Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. Shirley Vann has dedicated this week s Covenant & Conversation (used with permission of the. ע ה Office of Rabbi Sacks) in memory of her beloved mother Necha bat Yitzchok "4

5 Healing the Heart of Darkness Mishpatim - 14 February 2015 / 25 Shevat 5775 Jobbik, otherwise known as the Movement for a Better Hungary, is an ultra-nationalist Hungarian political party that has been described as fascist, neo-nazi, racist, and anti-semitic. It has accused Jews of being part of a cabal of western economic interests attempting to control the world: the libel otherwise known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fiction created by members of the Czarist secret service in Paris in the late 1890s and revealed as a forgery by The Times in On one occasion the Jobbik party asked for a list of all the Jews in the Hungarian government. Disturbingly, in the Hungarian parliamentary elections in April 2014 it secured over 20 per cent of the votes, making it the third largest party. Until 2012 one of its leading members was a politician in his late 20s, Csanad Szegedi. Szegedi was a rising star in the movement, widely spoken of as its future leader. Until one day in That was the day Szegedi discovered he was a Jew. Some of the members of the party had wanted to stop his progress and spent time investigating his background to see whether they could find anything that would do him damage. What they found was that his maternal grandmother was a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz. So was his maternal grandfather. Half of Szegedi s family were killed during the Holocaust. Szegedi s opponents started spreading rumours about his Jewish ancestry on the internet. Soon Szegedi himself discovered what was being said and decided to check whether the claims were true. They were. After Auschwitz his grandparents, once Orthodox Jews, decided to hide their identity completely. When his mother was 14, her father told her the secret but ordered her not to reveal it to anyone. Szegedi now knew the truth about himself. He decided to resign from the party and find out more about Judaism. He went to a local Chabad Rabbi, Slomó Köves, who at first thought he was joking. Nonetheless he arranged for Szegedi to attend classes on Judaism and to come to the synagogue. At first, Szegedi says, people

6 were shocked. He was treated by some as a leper. But he persisted. Today he attends synagogue, keeps Shabbat, has learned Hebrew, calls himself Dovid, and in 2013 underwent circumcision. When he first admitted the truth about his Jewish ancestry, one of his friends in the Jobbik party said, The best thing would be if we shoot you so you can be buried as a pure Hungarian. Another urged him to make a public apology. It was this comment, he says, that made him leave the party. I thought, wait a minute, I am supposed to apologize for the fact that my family was killed at Auschwitz? As the realization that he was a Jew began to change his life, it also transformed his understanding of the world. Today, he says, his focus as a politician is to defend human rights for everyone. I am aware of my responsibility and I know I will have to make it right in the future. Szegedi s story is not just a curiosity. It takes us to the very heart of the strange, fraught nature of our existence as moral beings. What makes us human is the fact that we are rational, reflective, capable of thinking things through. We feel empathy and sympathy, and this begins early. Even newborn babies cry when they hear another child cry. We have mirror neurons in the brain that make us wince when we see someone else in pain. Homo sapiens is the moral animal. Yet much of human history has been a story of violence, oppression, injustice, corruption, aggression and war. Nor, historically, has it made a significant difference whether the actors in this story have been barbarians or citizens of a high civilization. The Greeks of antiquity, masters of art, architecture, drama, poetry, philosophy and science, wasted themselves on the internecine Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta in the last quarter of the fifth century BCE. They never fully recovered. It was the end of the golden age of Greece. Fin de siècle Paris and Vienna in the 1890s were the leading What makes us moral? centres of European civilization. Yet they were also the world s And what, despite it all, leaders in antisemitism, Paris with the Dreyfus Affair, Vienna with makes humanity capable its antisemitic mayor, Karl Lueger, whom Hitler later cited as his of being so inhumane? inspiration. When we are good we are little lower than the angels. When we are bad we are lower than the beasts. What makes us moral? And what, despite it all, makes humanity capable of being so inhumane? Plato thought that virtue was knowledge. If we know something is wrong, we will not do it. Aristotle thought that virtue was habit, learned in childhood till it becomes part of our character. David Hume and Adam Smith, two intellectual giants of the Scottish Enlightenment, thought that morality came from emotion, fellow feeling. Immanuel Kant believed that it came through rationality. A moral principle is one you are willing to prescribe for everyone. Therefore, for example, lying cannot be moral because you do not wish others to lie to you. All four views have some truth to them, and we can find similar sentiments in the rabbinic literature. In the spirit of Plato, the sages spoke of the tinok shenishba, someone who does wrong because he or she was not educated to know what is right. 1 Maimonides, like Aristotle, thought virtue came from repeated practice. Halakhah creates habits of the heart. The rabbis said that the angels of kindness and charity argued for the creation of man because we naturally feel for others, as Hume and Smith argued. Kant s principle is similar to what the sages called sevarah, reason. But these insights only serve to deepen the question. If knowledge, emotion and reason lead us to be moral, why is that that humans hate, harm and kill? A full answer would take longer See Shabbat 68b; Maimonides Hilkhot Mamrim 3: 3. This certainly applies to ritual laws, whether it applies to moral 1 ones also may be a moot point.

7 than a lifetime, but the short answer is simple. We are tribal animals. We form ourselves into groups. Morality is both cause and consequence of this fact. Toward people with whom we are or feel ourselves to be related we are capable of altruism. But toward strangers we feel fear, and that fear is capable of turning us into monsters. Morality, in Jonathan Haidt s phrase, binds and blinds. 2 It Morality turns the I of self interest into the We of the common good. But the very act of creating an Us simultaneously creates a Them, the people not like us. binds us to others in a bond of reciprocal altruism. But it also blinds us to the humanity of those who stand outside that bond. It unites and divides. It divides because it unites. Morality turns the I of self interest into the We of the common good. But the very act of creating an Us simultaneously creates a Them, the people not like us. Even the most universalistic of religions, founded on principles of love and compassion, have often seen those outside the faith as Satan, the infidel, the antichrist, the child of darkness, the unredeemed. They have committed unspeakable acts of brutality in the name of God. Neither Platonic knowledge nor Adam Smith s moral sense nor Kantian reason has cured the heart of darkness in the human condition. That is why two sentences blaze through today s parsha like the sun emerging from behind thick clouds: You must not mistreat or oppress the stranger in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt. (Ex. 22: 21) You must not oppress strangers. You know what it feels like to be a stranger, for you yourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt. (Ex. 23: 9) The great crimes of humanity have been committed against the stranger, the outsider, the one-not-like-us. Recognising the humanity of the stranger has been the historic weak point in most cultures. The Greeks saw non-greeks as barbarians. Germans called Jews vermin, lice, a cancer in the body of the nation. In Rwanda, Hutus called Tutsis inyenzi, cockroaches. Dehumanize the other and all the moral forces in the world will not save us from evil. Knowledge is silenced, emotion anaesthetized and reason perverted. The Nazis convinced themselves (and others) that in exterminating the Jews they were performing a moral service for the Aryan race. 3 Suicide bombers are convinced that they are acting for the greater glory of God. 4 There is such a thing as altruistic evil. That is what makes these two commands so significant. The Torah emphasizes the point time and again: the rabbis said that the command to love the stranger appears 36 times in the Torah. Jewish law is here confronting directly the fact that care for the stranger is not something for which we can rely on our normal moral resources of knowledge, empathy and rationality. Usually we can, but under situations of high stress, when we feel our group threatened, we cannot. The very inclinations that bring out the best in us our genetic inclination to make sacrifices for the sake of kith and kin can also bring out the worst in us when we fear the stranger. We are tribal animals and we are easily threatened by the members of another tribe. 2 Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Pantheon, See Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, See Scott Atran, Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (un)making of Terrorists. New York: Ecco, The classic text is Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. New York: Harper and Row, 1951.

8 Note that these commands are given shortly after the exodus. Implicit in them is a very radical idea indeed. Care for the stranger is why the Israelites had to experience exile and slavery before they could enter the Promised Land and build their own society and state. You will not succeed in caring for the stranger, implies God, until you yourselves know in your very bones and sinews what it feels like to be a stranger. And lest you forget, I have already commanded you to remind We have to remember that we yourselves and your children of the taste of affliction and were once on the other side of bitterness every year on Pesach. Those who forget what it the equation. We were once feels like to be a stranger, eventually come to oppress strangers: the oppressed, the strangers, and if the children of Abraham oppress strangers, victims. Remembering the why did I make them My covenantal partners? Jewish past forces us to Empathy, sympathy, knowledge and rationality are undergo role reversal. In the usually enough to let us live at peace with others. But not in midst of freedom we have to hard times. Serbs, Croats and Muslims lived peaceably remind ourselves of what it together in Bosnia for years. So did Hutus and Tutsis in feels like to be a slave. Rwanda. The problem arises at times of change and disruption when people are anxious and afraid. That is why exceptional defences are necessary, which is why the Torah speaks of memory and history things that go to the very heart of our identity. We have to remember that we were once on the other side of the equation. We were once strangers: the oppressed, the victims. Remembering the Jewish past forces us to undergo role reversal. In the midst of freedom we have to remind ourselves of what it feels like to be a slave. What happened to Csanad, now Dovid, Szegedi, was exactly that: role reversal. He was a hater who discovered that he belonged among the hated. What cured him of antisemitism was his role-reversing discovery that he was a Jew. That, for him, was a life-changing discovery. The Torah tells us that the experience of our ancestors in Egypt was meant to be life-changing as well. Having lived and suffered as strangers, we became the people commanded to care for strangers. The best way of curing antisemitism is to get people to experience what it feels like to be a Jew. The best way of curing hostility to strangers is to remember that we too, from someone else s perspective, are strangers. Memory and role-reversal are the most powerful resources we have to cure the darkness that can sometimes occlude the human soul. Rabbi Sacks is honoured to be the International President of 70 Days for 70 Years, an inspiring Holocaust remembrance and education initiative that began on 25th January and runs until Pesach. For more details on how to participate and receive a book of 70 inspirational essays, visit