Welcome to the DAT Minyan! Shabbat Ki Tisa February 23, 2019-18 Adar I, 5779 Joseph Friedman, Rabbi Mark Raphaely, President Candle Lighting Havdalah 5:26 pm 6:26 pm Shabbat Schedule (All services take place in the BMH-BJ Fisher Hall, 560 S. Monaco Pkwy) Please help make our prayer service more meaningful by refraining from talking during the service. FRIDAY 5:30 pm: Mincha (Shema should be recited after 6:24 pm) SHABBAT Parasha: Page 484 / Haftarah: Page 1160 7:50 am: Hashkama Minyan 8:20 am: Daf Yomi 8:30 am: Tefillah Warm-up with Ellyn Hutt 9:00 am: Shacharit (Shema should be recited before 9:27 am) Today s kiddush is sponsored by Moira Saltz and her children, Ava and Jonah Siegel, marking the completion of Shloshim for husband and father Joseph Siegel 4:00 pm: HS Boys Gemara Class with Nathan Rabinovitch at the Rabinovitch home 5:20 pm: Mincha followed by Seudah Shlisheet, with guest presenter Rabbi Donny Rockoff 6:26 pm: Maariv / Havdalah Weekday Schedule (Weekday services Sunday through Friday morning take place at DAT School, 6825 E. Alameda Ave. ) SHACHARIT Sunday: 8:00 am Monday through Friday: 6:35 am MINCHA/MAARIV Sunday through Thursday: 5:30 pm Friday: 5:35 pm D var Torah with Rabbi Jonathan Sacks It is a moment of the very highest drama. The Israelites, a mere forty days after the greatest revelation in history, have made an idol: a Golden Calf. God threatens to destroy them. Moses, exemplifying to the fullest degree the character of Israel as one who wrestles with God and man, confronts both in turn. To God, he prays for mercy for the people. Coming down the mountain and facing Israel, he smashes the tablets, symbol of the covenant. He grinds the calf to dust, mixes it with water, and makes the Israelites drink it. He commands the Levites to punish the wrongdoers. Then he re-ascends the mountain in a prolonged attempt to repair the shattered relationship between God and the people. God accepts his request and tells Moses to carve two new tablets of stone. At this point, however, Moses makes a strange appeal: And Moses hurried and knelt to the ground and bowed, and he said, If I have found favour in Your eyes, my Lord, may my Lord go among us, be cause [ki] it is a stiff-necked people, and forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance. (Ex. 34:8 9) The difficulty in the verse is self-evident. Moses cites as a reason for God remaining with the Israelites the very attribute that God had previously given for wishing to abandon them: I have seen these people, the Lord said to Moses, and they are a stiffnecked people. Now leave Me alone so that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great na tion. (Ex. 32:9) How can Moses invoke the people s obstinacy as the very reason for God to maintain His presence among them? What is the meaning of Moses because may my Lord go among us, because it is a stiff- necked people? The commentators offer a variety of interpretations. Rashi reads the word ki as if If they are stiff-necked, then forgive them. Ibn Ezra and Chizkuni read it as although or despite the fact that (af al pi). Alternatively, suggests Ibn Ezra, the verse might be read, [I admit that] it is a stiff-necked people therefore forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance. These are straightforward readings, though they assign to the word ki a meaning it does not normally have. There is, however, another and far more striking line of interpretation that can be traced across the centuries. In the twentieth century it was given expression by Rabbi Yitzchak Nissenbaum. The argument he attributed to Moses was this: Almighty God, look upon this people with favour, because what is now their greatest vice will one day be their most heroic virtue. They are indeed an obstinate people But just as now they are stiff- necked in their disobedience, so one day they will be equally stiff-necked in their loyalty. Nations will call on them to assimilate, but they will refuse. Mightier religions will urge them to convert, but they will resist. They will suffer humiliation, persecution, even torture and death because of the name they bear and the faith they profess, but they will stay true to the covenant (Continued on Page 2) We kindly ask you to pay any outstanding balances owed to the shul from last year. Please call the shul office or pay online after logging into your account at www.datminyan.org. Dues owed for the second half of our current fiscal year have now been posted to all applicable accounts. Thank you! DAT Minyan is a dynamic and friendly Modern Orthodox synagogue for all ages and dedicated to meaningful personal spiritual development, community growth, youth involvement, Torah education, and Religious Zionism. DAT Minyan - 560 S. Monaco Pkwy., Denver, CO 80224-720-941-0479 - www.datminyan.org
D VAR TORAH CONTINUED Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (Continued from Page 1) their ancestors made with You. They will go to their deaths saying Ani ma amin, I believe. This is a people awesome in its obstinacy and though now it is their failing, there will be times far into the future when it will be their noblest strength. The fact that Rabbi Nissenbaum lived and died in the Warsaw ghetto gives added poignancy to his words. Many centuries earlier, a Midrash made essentially the same point: There are three things which are undaunted: the dog among beasts, the rooster among birds, and Israel among the nations. R. Isaac ben Redifa said in the name of R. Ami: You might think that this is a negative attribute, but in fact it is praiseworthy, for it means: Either be a Jew or prepare to be hanged. Jews were stiff-necked, says Rabbi Ami, in the sense that they were ready to die for their faith. As Gersonides (Ralbag) explained in the fourteenth century, a stubborn people may be slow to acquire a faith, but once they have done so they never relinquish it. We catch a glimpse of this extraordinary obstinacy in an episode narrated by Josephus, one of the first recorded incidents of mass non-violent civil disobedience. It took place during the reign of the Roman emperor Caligula (37 41 CE). He had proposed placing a statue of himself in the precincts of the Temple in Jerusalem, and had sent the military leader Petronius to carry out the task, if necessary by force. This is how Josephus describes the encounter between Petronius and the Jewish population at Ptolemais (Acre): There came ten thousand Jews to Petronius at Ptolemais to offer their petitions to him that he would not compel them to violate the law of their forefathers. But if, they said, you are wholly resolved to bring the statue and install it, then you must first kill us, and then do what you have resolved on. For while we are alive we cannot permit such things as are forbidden by our law Then Petronius came to them (at Tiberius): Will you then make war with Caesar, regardless of his great preparations for war and your own weakness? They replied, We will not by any means make war with Caesar, but we will die before we see our laws transgressed. Then they threw themselves down on their faces and stretched out their throats and said that they were ready to be slain Thus they continued firm in their resolution and proposed themselves to die willingly rather than see the statue dedicated. Faced with such heroic defiance on so large a scale, Petronius gave way and wrote to Caligula urging him, in Josephus words, not to drive so many ten thousand of these men to distraction; that if he were to slay these men, he would be publicly cursed for all future ages. Nor was this a unique episode. The rabbinic literature, together with the chronicles of the Middle Ages, are full of stories of martyrdom, of Jews willing to die rather than convert. Indeed the very concept of Kiddush Hashem, sanctification of God s name, came to be associated in the halachic literature with the willingness to die rather than transgress. The rabbinic conclave at Lod (Lydda) in the second century CE, which laid down the laws of martyrdom (including the three sins about which it was said that one must die rather than transgress ) may have been an attempt to limit, rather than encourage, the phenomenon. Of these many episodes, one stands out for its theological audacity. It was recorded by the Jewish historian Shlomo ibn Verga (fifteenth to sixteenth centuries) and concerns the Spanish expulsion: One of the boats was infested with the plague, and the captain of the boat put the passengers ashore at some uninhabited place There was one Jew among them who struggled on afoot together with his wife and two children. The wife grew faint and died The husband carried his children along until both he and they fainted from hunger. When he regained consciousness, he found that his two children had died. In great grief he rose to his feet and said: O Lord of all the universe, You are doing a great deal that I might even desert my faith. But know You of a certainty that even against the will of heaven a Jew I am and a Jew I shall remain. And neither that which You have brought upon me nor that which You may yet bring upon me will be of any avail. One is awestruck by such faith such obstinate faith. Almost certainly it was this idea that lies behind a famous Talmudic passage about the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai: And they stood under the mountain: R. Avdimi b. Chama b. Chasa said: This teaches that the Holy One blessed be He, over turned the mountain above them like a barrel and said, If you accept the Torah, it will be well. If not, this will be your burial place. Said Rava, Even so, they re-accepted the Torah in the days of Ahasuerus, for it is written, the Jews confirmed and took upon them, meaning, they confirmed what they had accepted before. The meaning of this strange text seems to be this: at Sinai the Jewish people had no choice but to accept the covenant. They had just been rescued from Egypt. God had divided the sea for them; He had sent them manna from heaven and water from the rock. Acceptance of a covenant under such conditions cannot be called free. The real test of faith came when God was hidden. Rava s quotation from the Book of Esther is pointed and precise. Megillat Esther does not contain the name of God. The rabbis suggested that the name Esther is an allusion to the phrase haster astir et panai, I will surely hide My face. The book relates the first warrant for genocide against the Jewish people. That Jews remained Jews under such conditions was proof positive that they did indeed reaffirm the covenant. Obstinate in their disbelief during much of the biblical era, they became obstinate in their belief ever afterwards. Faced with God s presence, they disobeyed Him. Confronted with His absence, they stayed faithful to Him. That is the paradox of the stiff-necked people. Not by accident does the main narrative of the Book of Esther begin with the words And Mordechai would not bow down (Esther 3:1). His refusal to make obeisance to Haman sets the story in motion. Mordechai too is obstinate for there is one thing that is hard to do if you have a stiff neck, namely, bow down. At times, Jews found it hard to bow down to God but they were certainly never willing to bow down to anything less. That is why, alone of all the many peoples who have entered the arena of history, Jews even in exile, dispersed, and everywhere a minority neither assimilated to the dominant culture nor converted to the majority faith. Forgive them because they are a stiff-necked people, said Moses, because the time will come when that stubbornness will be not a tragic failing but a noble and defiant loyalty. And so it came to be. Shabbat Shalom Please help make our prayer service more meaningful by refraining from talking during the service.
DAT MINYAN NEWS, EVENTS AND MILESTONES Mazal Tov to grandparents Sara and Harley Rotbart, Pia and Fred Hirsch, and aunt and uncle Noomi and Philip Hirsch on the birth this week of a granddaughter and niece to Nurit and Matt Rotbart! Women in the community are cordially invited to a special event, Accessing the Three Powers Women Have to Transform Time, Intimacy, and the Physical World, Sunday evening, February 24th and March 3rd, at the home of Alexis Gorlin, at 7:30 pm. Join us for discussions by Ellyn Hutt (2/24) and Liora Wittlin (3/3) on the topic of women s mitzvot, plus make and take your own essential oils, bath soaps and bombs. Please see flyer on Page 5 for complete details. We invite men in the community to a special event, The Greatest Gift for Married Couples, an evening of grilling and learning at the home of Donny Basch, Monday, February 25th, 7:30 pm. Please see flyer on Page 6 for complete details. As we have done in previous years, the DAT Minyan has once again purchased a block of 20 spaces at a reduced rate of $399 for the AIPAC 2019 Policy Conference, taking place in Washington, DC, March 24-26. Please visit the home page of our website, www.datminyan.org, to register as a member of our delegation or call the office, 720-941-0479. Spaces are filling! When entering the DAT School building for minyanim, please use the south entrance. The keypad code is available from the shul office. Join us Sunday evening, April 7th, at the Denver Botanic Gardens for our DAT Minyan Annual Event honoring Steve and Ellyn Hutt. Enjoy the beauty of the gardens, a delectable meal and the friendship of the community as we gather to pay tribute to one of our most inspiring couples! Thank-you to all of those who contribute to our Shabbat services by signing up to help with our weekly leining. We remain in need of continued help with this and all able-leiners are encouraged to please volunteer! In addition, with a goal of expanding our roster of Haftarah readers, we have now opened up the weekly Haftarah portions for sign-up as well. The sign-up website is www.datminyan.org/laining. Slots are open from now through mid-march. Please contact Steve Hutt for questions and additional information. COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENTS Merkaz presents a Shovavim Class for women, Motzei Shabbat, February 23rd, A Woman s Role in Shalom Bayis, at the home of Dr. Alex and Mrs. Meryl Jacobs, 53 S. Hudson St. Please email info@merkaztorah.org for registration information. Women in our community are invited to join Ellyn Hutt for an intimate, custom-designed 9-day trip to Israel from May 5-15th. The theme: Creating and Nourishing a Balanced Mind, Body, and Soul. Arriving on Rosh Chodesh Iyar, the group will be in Israel to celebrate Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut. Please contact Ellyn for all the details at ehutt@theje.com. Space is limited. The DAT Minyan wishes to acknowledge the following milestones* of our members in the coming week: David Fishman, Bob Marks, Mark Raphaely Walter Brooks - Wed., 2/27/19 (22 Adar) *These details were obtained from the DAT Minyan database, which contains information provided by the members when they joined. We apologize for any omissions or errors. For changes, please log on to your account and update the information as needed, or contact the synagogue office at 720-941-0479. THANK YOU FOR INSPIRING FUTURE GENERATIONS WITH YOUR GENEROSITY We would like to thank our Legacy Society donors for investing in our future by naming the DAT Minyan with a gift in their will, trust, retirement account or life insurance policy. Our Legacy Society includes: Rob Allen Graeme and Irit Bean Myndie Brown Steve and Ellyn Hutt Nathan and Rachel Rabinovitch Mark and Sarah Raphaely Harley and Sara Rotbart Michael Stutzer Steve and Lori Weiser You can add your name to this list with a legacy gift to the DAT Minyan. To arrange for your gift or for more information about our Legacy Society program, please contact any of the following Committee Members: Rob Allen, Myndie Brown, Sarah Raphaely or Steve Weiser. Please help make our prayer service more meaningful by refraining from talking during the service.
EDUCATIONAL AND YOUTH ANNOUNCEMENTS Learning Opportunities @ the DAT Minyan Kitzur Shulchan Aruch: Daily, after Shacharit Daf Yomi Shiur (30 min): after Shacharit on Sun through Fri, and 8:20 am on Shabbat Mishnayot: Daily, between Mincha and Maariv Halacha Chaburah: Sun, 10:00 am 11:00 am, returning soon Short & Sweet Talmud Class (30 min-never longer): Wed, 9:20 am, DAT Minyan offices at BMH-BJ (men only) Rabbi Friedman Wed. Night Class: 7:30 pm at DAT, introducing the second threepart installment on the Shabbat Kitchen: A Refresher Course We ALL Need All teens are invited to join us this Shabbat for Morning Motivation 10:30 am in the Library We welcome all children through 6th grade to join our Junior Congregation Program. ALL youth groups meet at 9:00 am. If you or someone you know (college age and above) is interested in working in the Youth Groups Program, please contact Mor at youth@datminyan.org. Refuah Shelayma Please include the following names in your prayers. May each be granted a Refuah Shelayma. Names are kept on the list until the next Rosh Chodesh. Help us keep the list accurate by verifying the necessary details each month on the Cholim Document at https://goo.gl/aeyjg2. Bella bat Malka Benyamin ben Hinda Sarah Eliyahu Chaim ha Cohen ben Sara Rifka Eliyahu Dovid ben Ita Sheiva Levick Yitzchak ben Bracha Leya bat Sara Malka bat Sarah Mascha bat Rus Mayer Benya ben Nechama Important Security Reminder For the safety and security of everyone attending the DAT Minyan, we ask that all children either be in attendance at one of our childrens programs or with a parent AT ALL TIMES when in the building. Children may not be left unescorted to roam hallways. Meira bas Malka Mendel Ila ben Frida Miriam Michel ben Leah Michoel Zisel ben Barbara Noach ben Minna Batsheva Raphael Lior ben Miriam Roshka bat Bryna Yonina Tova Tziriel bat Alta Chaya Yosef Shalom Chai halevi ben Chana Update on the Mikvah of East Denver On January 8th, 2019, the City and County of Denver Board of Adjustments approved two variances for reduced setbacks, which would move the building footprint of the Mikvah of East Denver (MOED) closer to the property lines of the new lot. The City of Denver also approved variances that exempt MOED from bearing the financial burden of installing new curb ramps, widening existing sidewalks and removing/regrading the existing retaining wall along Alameda Avenue. MOED is pleased to announce that the design team will now begin work on the Site Development Plan (SDP) and the Transportation Engineering Plan (TEP) - the next steps in the City s building permit process. Once the SDP and TEP are approved, the design team can launch the building design process in earnest and submit the completed construction drawings to the City s Plan Review department for a building permit. We welcome direct communication and encourage community involvement. If you are interested in supporting MOED or have any questions or feedback, please email info@mikvahofeastdenver.org. MOED plans to break ground in 2019, with an anticipated opening of Summer 2020. Please help make our prayer service more meaningful by refraining from talking during the service.