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Affiliate of the National Council of Young Israel Synagogues, Member of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, Sponsor of West Hartford NCSY, National Conference of Synagogue Youth, Kashrut Commission of Greater Hartford,
Mikveh Bess Israel of Greater Hartford, Eruv of West Hartford
YOUNG ISRAEL OF WEST HARTFORD
2240 ALBANY AVENUE WEST HARTFORD, CT 06117
www.YoungIsraelWH.org
Shabbat Parashat VaYigash
December 22-23, 2017 5 Tevet 5778
Kiddush is sponsored by
the Young Israel of West Hartford
Seudah Shlishit is sponsored by
the Young Israel of West Hartford
Rabbi Tuvia Brander [email protected] To submit something for the bulletin,
please send it to [email protected]
Young Israel Chesed Committee
The hallmark of any Jewish community truly is the network of chesed and support we show one another. We are currently undergoing a process of revitalizing and renewing our Chesed committee, Yedei Chesed, if you would like to get involved, please contact Rabbi Brander.
Please take a moment to introduce yourself to someone new over Shabbat! A new membership directory will go out shortly. Please check the current list to ensure your own information is correct.
MAZEL TOV
To Eileen & Bernie Weinberg on the birth of a granddaughter, Chana Yenta, to Dena & Rabbi Neal Rich in Israel.
To Judith & Bruce Hessing on the birth of a granddaughter to Tamir & Doni Fogel.
Seudah Shilshit Mini-Shiur
Talmudic Methodology: It’s all about the definition!
Upcoming Events
Hebrew Academy Comes to Young Israel
Shabbat Shemot ∙ January 6th
YIWH Movie Night
Saturday Night, Jan 20th ∙ 8 PM Screening of the critically acclaimed docudrama
In Our Hands: The Battle for Jerusalem Refreshments will be served
Young Israel Speakers Series 5778
Shabbat, January 26-27 Shabbat with Yoetzet Halakha Nechama
Price
Director of the Graduate Program for Advanced Talmud Study for Women at Yeshiva University.
2nd Annual Chulent Cookoff
Save the Date — 2/17/2018
DON’T MISS OUT!
WEEKLY LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
SUNDAY MORNING GEMARA SHIUR will not meet this Sunday
Dive into the world of the Talmud Sunday mornings as we make our way, line by line, through the 8th chapter of Sanhedrin—immediately following davening and served with a light breakfast.
KIWI: INTERMEDIATE TALMUD STUDY
Join Monday nights at 7 PM to explore the intricacies of the tractate of Bava Metziah.
PONDERING THE PARASHA Come tackle the weekly Parasha over lunch with Rabbi Brander. Wednesday from 11:45-12:45 at the Mandell
JCC in the Lounge.
KIWI: WEEKLY PARASHA EXCHANGE Each week join friends to share and hear insights on the
Torah portion — share your own idea or find one online!
Meets Thursday Evenings at the Young Israel at 7:00 PM.
SHABBAT MORNING CHAYEI ADAM CLASS
Travel through the Halakhic work, Chayei Adam, with Rabbi Avi Robinson. Shabbat mornings at 8:15 AM.
WOMEN’S SHABBAT AFTERNOON MISHNAH CLASS
Join Jo Bruce in examining the tractate of Bava Kamma. 15 minutes after Mincha Shabbat Afternoons.
Weekday Mincha & Maariv
Our Mincha Maariv minyan Monday through Thurs-day will be held at Young Israel!
Mincha & Maariv this week is at 4:10! As with the early hour, please try to support our minyan. For a complete
winter Mincha Maariv schedule visit our website, www.youngisraelwh.org.
Thank You
Thank you to Eli Aroesty, Juanita Moss and Eric Maurer for organizing and putting together our YIWH Chanukah Party Menorah Mystery! Thank you to Juanita Moss for coordinating our YIWH Youth Chanukah Party!
SECURITY COMMITTEE
Thank you to all those involved our coverage rotations. If you are interested, please speak to one of the members of the committee or email [email protected].
BOOKKEEPER’S CORNER As the calendar year closes, please look out for your current Young Israel statements. If you have any questions, please contact Maria at [email protected]. She will be in office this Thursday.
With the new tax regulations, it may be advantage to pay your dues and other pledges before the end of 2017. Please consult a tax expert if you have questions.
With many different honors and checks coming into the office, please be sure to indicate in the memo in English what payments are for. As always, Maria can be reached by email at [email protected] for any questions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Please send all acknowledgements to Young Israel so that they may be processed, cards may be sent out, and notices may be placed in the weekly bulletin.
BUY SCRIP Buy Young Israel of West Hartford Scrip! Scrip can even be used for online purchases! Please contact Daniella Robinson by phone at 516-286-0185 (cell) or 860-578-9515 (home).
AmazonSmile Shop online with smile.amazon.com, select Young Israel of West Hartford as the charitable organization of your choice, and Amazon will donate a percentage of eligible purchases to the Young Israel!
YOUNG ISRAEL OF WEST HARTFORD YOUTH DEPARTMENT
SHABBAT MORNING GROUPS
Groups meet weekly on Shabbat from 10:15 AM-11:15 AM. Children ages 5 and under are invited to Junior Groups on the carpet downstairs. Children Grades 1-5 are invited to partake in our Junior Congregation, also downstairs.
Teen Panoply Night! Test your wits, skill and abilities in this fun filled Panoply
Challenge Rescheduled for next Saturday Night, 12/30 at 7:30
7-12 Grade
KIDZ HEBREW CLUB In partnership with the Israeli Emissaries, we are
looking to start an After-School Immersive Hebrew Language experience which would allow
children to spend an hour speaking and experiencing Hebrew in a fun and entertaining
environment. Thursdays at 4:30 PM — If you are interested, please email Rabbi Brander.
COMMUNITY HAPPENINGS
Solomon Schechter of Greater Hartford presents Baby and Me Music Time!
Thursdays, 9:00-9:30AM ● 1.8.2018 - 3.18.2018 Ages 6 months-3 years ● Cost: $150
Tummy tickles, toe wiggles, finger plays, and bouncing babies! Join Miss Chrissy Whalen, certified First Steps in Music teacher, in a musically nourishing class for
you and your littlest musicians. Contact Karen Shakun at [email protected].
NCSY Winter Summit 2018
with New England & Upstate New York NCSY February 2-4, Open to everyone, grades 8-12
For more info & registration: newengland.ncsy.org
Young Israel Book Club
Join the Young Israel Book Club! Enjoy wonderful books and monthly meetups. This month’s selection is The Mathematician’s Shiva: A Novel by Stuart Rojstaczer. To join or if you have any questions, contact Debbie Luger at [email protected].
DO YOU LOVE SHOPPING?
The shul is looking for a few good souls to help with some of the shopping for regular and specific shul events. If you can help shop on a regular basis, please contact Juanita Moss at [email protected]
Notice
As Rosh Chodesh is upon us, our weekday Cholim list will reset. If you would like David Goldfarb to continue reciting a name, please contact him at [email protected].
Message from the Hebrew Academy
The Hebrew Academy is updating its Alumni information. Please help out this process by sharing your children’s correct information. Please send phone numbers, home and email addresses to Vivian Zablotsky at [email protected]. This spring, on April 24, 2018, our very own Eileen and Bernie Weinberg are being honored and it would be great for the Alumni to be invited (and help honor Morah Chava!).
Adapted from a lecture by Rav Aharon Lichtenstein Z”L on Asara BeTevet (5761) The nations of the world generally establish special days to commemorate victories and successes, while preferring to forget defeat and failures. Knesset Yisrael is different: we do not have a selective memory; our tradition imbues our consciousness not only with celebra-tion of glory, but also with commemoration of periods of destruction. Remembrance of the past, with its good and its bad, is part of our essence and our existence. There is a certain value to such re-membrance in itself: it involves connecting with the past, contemplating the complexity of our existence, and perceiving the continuum of past and present (and thereby also the continuum of present and future). Historical awareness is stamped deeply in the soul and heart of Knesset Yisrael. However – as emphasized by the Rambam - the fast days, when we focus on our tribulations, exist also in order to open the door towards the future: "This (i.e. observing days of fasting and prayer) is one of the roads to repentance, for as the community cries out and sounds an alarm when overtaken by trouble, everyone is bound to realize that evil has come upon them as a consequence of their own evil deeds ... and this [repentance] will cause the trouble to be removed." (Hilkhot Ta'aniyot 1:2) Today, on the Tenth of Tevet, we commemorate two events which appear to represent two opposite chronological poles. On the one hand, we commemorate the calamity of the siege of Jerusalem during the time of the Temple. However, on this day we also recite Kad-dish for all those whose date of death is unknown, and therefore this day was designated to commemorate the most recent and greatest ca-lamity that has befallen us – the Holocaust. Of all the fasts that appear in Tanakh, that of the Tenth of Tevet is, in terms of our consciousness of the destruction, the weakest. When we think of the Ninth of Av, we envision of the Temple in flames; the Fast of Gedalia was "the extinguishing of the ember of Israelite sovereignty;" the Seventeenth of Tammuz commemorates five calamities, and the breach of Jerusalem's walls and the enemy's entry is cer-tainly enough to make us sense the imminent destruction. But all that happened on the Tenth of Tevet was that the King of Babylonia laid siege to Jerusalem. For some time, life continued more or less in its normal fashion, and the road leading from this event to the actual de-struction was a long one. Thus, our sense of destruction on the Tenth of Tevet is almost imperceptible in comparison with the other fasts. By contrast, the contemporary tragedy of the Holocaust – not only because it took place so recently but also because of its terrible scope – is the most painful experience in all of Israel's history. Furthermore, from a certain perspective, the phenomenon of the Holocaust seems so unique that it cannot be compared to anything else; it cannot provide us with any lesson to be learned – even in the long term. Any attempt to draw conclusions from the Holocaust is problematic. Nevertheless, it is inconceivable that a person should simply stand dumb-struck in the face of such an event and not sense that something here demands to be perceived and learned. I would like to point out one aspect common to both calamities of Asara Be-Tevet. Why do we mark the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem and not just the breaching of the walls or the destruction of the Temple? The message of this commemoration is that after the destruction, we must trace its sources and mark its stages; we must look backwards to events that are not earth-shattering and perceive how the seeds of the destruction on the Ninth of Av were planted on the Tenth of Tevet. The more we study history, the more we learn that we should not concentrate only on the final act, the cataclysmic event itself, but also on all the stages that led up to it. The moral message that arises from this is the importance of sharpening our consciousness of the unfolding of the past, seeing how the branches sprout forth from the roots. This has great significance with relation to the Holocaust – not so much the Holocaust itself but rather its roots: how did such a phenomenon ever come to be? There are historians who give up in the face of this question, for the contrast between the culture of the Ger-man nation and its actions defies understanding. Historical rules, causality and morality come undone at the enormity of it. But at least with hindsight, we have to look back at what came before, what the roots of the Holocaust were, and what moral lessons may be learned from them. William Shirer, in his "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," tried to get to the roots of the Holocaust. There certainly were roots, but they were impossible to discern at the time of the events. Looking back now, we may point out the music of Wagner, Bismarck's hunger for power, the philosophy of Nietzsche – but none of this would have been discernible at the time. I don't know if we can make any claim today against someone who listened, at the time, to Wagner's music or who was impressed by Nietzsche. But the lesson of the Holocaust is that we now know that it is possible. Prior to the Holocaust, no constellation would have seemed to lead towards it. The roots were not discerned simply because no one had any idea that such a tree existed. But we, the generations after the Holocaust – we know that there is such a possibility, and that we must look out for the smallest sign of its buds. We need to sharpen our consciousness of the connection between siege and destruction - not necessarily out of fear of a second destruction, but rather because if that is what grows from certain buds, then how terrible are those buds themselves! Let us take a halakhic analogy. In the opinion of R. Yochanan: "A half of a forbidden amount ('chatzi shiur') is also forbidden by the Torah." Some of the commentators explain that this is because "chazi le-itztarufei," it can accumulate with another "half-measure" to constitute the full amount of a prohibition. According to this, if there is no possibility of its being added to another half-measure of the for-bidden substance, then no biblical prohibition is involved. Such is the position of the Sha'agat-Aryeh, who contends that someone who eats a half of a "kotevet" of food right before the end of Yom Kippur does not transgress a biblical prohibition. But I learned from my rebbe, Rav Shmuel Shatzkes zt"l, that if the half-measure is fit to be added to a full measure, then the half-measure itself is abhorrent and forbid-den. We hope and pray that the Holocaust was a one-time historical event. But even if so, we need to understand that if German culture was "chazi le-itztarufei," if it made such a horror possible, then how deep was the rot in that culture! This, then, is the common theme of both events commemorated on Asara Be-Tevet: the sharpening of our consciousness of the stages along the way to destruction. We must heighten our ability to discern what we are looking at, and our sense of horror at what could come about; we must know what a sense of power and militarism can bring about, and what ignorance of the concept of man's "Divine (continued on the next page right column)
Tracing the Roots of Destruction
Young Israel of West Hartford Schedule of Services
December 22nd– 29th, 2017
Shabbat Parashat VaYigash
Friday, December 22nd - Erev Shabbat
Shacharit 6:45 a.m.
Candle Lighting 4:06 p.m.
Mincha & Kabbalat Shabbat 4:11 p.m.
Shabbat, December 23rd
Shabbat morning Chayei Adam Class 8:15 a.m.
Shacharit 9:00 a.m.
Sof Zman Kriat Shma 9:32 a.m.
Youth Groups 10:15 a.m.
Mincha followed by Seudah Shlishit 4:00 p.m.
Shabbat Ends & Maariv 5:12 p.m.
Sunday, Dec. 24th - Wednesday, Dec. 27th
Earliest Tallit & Tefillin 6:20 a.m.
Shacharit…Sunday 8:15 a.m.
Shacharit...Monday 8:15 a.m.
Shacharit…Tuesday, Wednesday 6:30 a.m.
Mincha/Maariv 4:10 p.m.
Sunday —Thursday at Young Israel
Thursday, Dec. 27th—The Fast of the Tenth of Tevet
Fast Begins 5:47 a.m.
Shacharit…Thursday 6:30 a.m.
Mincha and Maariv 4:00 p.m.
Fast Ends 5:07 p.m.
Friday, December 29th - Erev Shabbat
Shacharit 6:45 a.m.
Candle Lighting 4:10 p.m.
Mincha & Kabbalat Shabbat 4:15 p.m.
Tracing the Roots of Destruction Continued
image" can cause. All this is true on the historical, national and communal levels. On fast days, the public di-mension is undoubtedly given prominence. The Rambam, for example, emphasizes the idea of collective confession: "And they shall confess their sin and the sin of their fa-thers" (Vayikra 26:40). However, "awakening the hearts and opening the paths of repent-ance" applies not only on the communal level, but also to individuals. Each person must open his heart and repent; each heart must engage in its own remembrance. We must develop our awareness of the significance of processes, and not only of results and conclusions. Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik spoke of repent-ance from the PATH of sins, as opposed to repentance from a particular sin. This is the point that is unique to the Tenth of Tevet. Specifically that which does not seem so terri-ble, that which "we can live with" - THAT is what requires rectification on the Tenth of Tevet. The obligation of repentance on this day involves seeing prospectively that which may usually be seen only in retrospect. I do not know whether, on the Tenth of Te-vet, the tragedy of the Ninth of Av could have been avoided; not everything is in man's hands. But at the very least, there may have been a chance to avert the tragic conclusion. If not on the national level then at least on the personal level, each individual by means of his repentance on the "fast of the tenth month" can turn the "fast of the fourth month" and the "fast of the fifth month" into days of joy and celebration.
Pat La’Orchim In honor of Betty & Irving Wizenfeld
in memory of
Betty’s Parents, Esther & Tobias Spira טוביה בן צבי אלימלך אסתר בת דוד הכהן
Irv ‘s Parents, Dina & Sam Wizenfeld
שמואל מאיר בן יצחק הכהן דינה אתל בת נחמן
Ner La’Maor - Lights
Audrey and Leon Laufer
Yayin l’ Kiddush Ve'Havdalah Braunshweiger Children
Seudah Shlishit Supplement Leslie and Marc Rifkin
Candy Woman Candy Man
Ann Pava Steven Bernstein
Good Humor Man
Rena & Eli Aroesty
You-Dah-Man
Jeremy Pava
