Monday, August 17 (27 Av) 7:30p Rachel Frazer's Class on Sefer Shoftim (Ends at 8:30p) via ZOOM Meeting ID: 835 5117 2681; Dial in phone number: (929) 205-6099
Tuesday, August 18 (28 Av) 5:30p Rabbi Joe Wolfson's Weekly Zoom Shiur (Ends at 6:30p) via ZOOM Meeting ID: 869 1718 3883; Dial in phone number: (929) 205-6099
Thursday, August 20: Rosh Chodesh Elul (Av 30) 9:30 JOFA's Women-Led Shacharit for Rosh Chodesh Elul. Click here for more info and to register (registration required)
Pre-Shabbat Kabbalat Shabbat Fridays at 7:15pm (ends before candlelighting)
Come together for davening as we prepare to welcome Shabbat in our own homes.
Community Havdalah Motzei Shabbat, 15 mins after Shabbat ends
Gather post-Shabbat to connect and transition from Shabbat into the new week.
Mazal tov to Laura and Sam Weisblatt, and big brother Yishai, on the birth of baby boy #2! Refuah shleimah to board member Barry Feldman, who is recovering from a fall.
Thank you to all who attended the virtual proba (rabbinic tryout) with Rabbi Leead Staller. Check your email for a brief feedback questionnaire which will be sent out to you by the Rabbinic Search Committee in the coming days!
Misheberach: We pray that all who are sick may have a full recovery. To add a name to our communal misheberach prayer list, email us.
Volunteer Opportunity: Help Distribute Meals to LES Community Members (M-F 12:30-2:00 pm): Looking for human interaction and to do good for the world? We are looking for volunteers for weekday lunch shifts! We distribute 700 meals a day Monday-Friday at 504 Grand Street (in front of Eastside Kosher), 12:30-2:00. Meals are available for anyone who needs them. If you can help, please contact Penina at penina.seidman@gmail.com.
Another nature photo from the Slater/Schwartzberg family.
Cute photos are making us smile during these difficult days. Submit a photo of your own cute kid, pet, or plant to be included in a future newsletter!
Public Service Announcement: The 2020 U.S. Census is now underway, and we have learned that only about 50% of neighborhood residents have completed it. We strongly encourage you to fill it out if you have not yet done so. Please help ensure our neighborhood gets the funds it deserves by making sure you and your family and friends get counted. More information at www.2020census.gov
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Israel Awareness Committee
Support of Israel is embedded in the Shul’s Mission Statement. We read the Prayers for the State of Israel and for the Welfare of the Israel Defense Forces each Shabbat morning, but little attention has been paid to developing stronger ties to the Jewish State. We recognize an ever increased campaign to attack the country politically, economically and physically. Also the increasing number of anti-Semitic attacks occuring locally, nationally and internationally are frighteningly disturbing. At this time we are gauging interest within our community with the intent of forming a new committee that will address these growing threats, but also will celebrate the culturally rich, ethnically diverse and miraculous Jewish State. If you are interested in participating in a virtual Zoom meeting to discuss these issues and to begin defining future goals and objectives, then please respond to info@stantonshul.com.
VIRTUAL LEARNING
SPONSOR A CLASS Remarkably, one of the benefits of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the expansion of The Stanton Street Shul’s educational programming. Please consider sponsoring a class in honor of oneself, the Shul, a yahrzeit, an anniversary, a birthday, or in the name of a friend or someone who sustains the Shul with their hard work.
Sponsorships begin at $36, but there is no maximum. Give as your heart desires. All sponsorships benefit the Shul and are very much appreciated.
Rabbi Joe Wolfson, Rabbi of The Bronfman Center at NYU, is serving as The Stanton Street Shul's Virtual Rabbi through August.
Rabbi Joe offers a weekly ZOOM shiur every Tuesday night, 5:30-6:30pm. Meeting ID: 869 1718 3883 Call in Number: 1 (929) 205-6099
He also writes a weekly dvar Torah for our newsletter (scroll down for this week's) and is available to answer congregants’ questions.
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Rachel Frazer Leads a Class on Sefer Shoftim (Book of Judges) - MONDAYS
Rachel Frazer offers an insightful, intelligent and novel approach to the Book of Judges (Sefer Shoftim). After the death of Joshua, as the new nation of Israel is struggling with external and internal threats, a series of unlikely, charismatic leaders emerge. Rachel's weekly study group will highlight a different personality/"judge" every week, including Deborah and Samson.
Please bring your questions, your previous knowledge and your intellectual curiosity for a stimulating evening.
Now on MONDAY nights at 7:30pm via ZOOM To join by phone, call 1-929-205-6099 and use Meeting ID: 835 5117 2681
Bring a Tanach to follow along or find the Book of Judges online at sefaria.org or alhatorah.org. If you don't have the text, just come anyway.
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REGISTER for STANTON STREET SHUL INAUGURAL BOOK CLUB
In these Covid days, we are forced to connect with one another through various on-line means, and most of us are missing the kinds of conversation that one has when face-to-face. To bridge that gap, and to bring us together now, and in anticipation of our eventual reopening, The Stanton Street Shul is debuting the SSS Book Club.
The first book we will be reading and discussing is The Price of Whiteness, by Eric L. Goldstein. Given the current turmoil in our country, we thought it important to begin an exploration of race in America, and the place of the Jews in a world divided along the lines of black and white.
We have not yet chosen our second book, but it would be interesting to continue our reading on race and racial justice. I (Phyllis) am personally inclined to read fiction or a memoir; Jules Lester’s book on becoming a Jew, Lovesong, comes to mind, but we would like to get suggestions for the next book from members.
So that we can get a rough head count, please let us know if you are interested in joining the SSS Book Club. We will announce a start date as soon as we have enough people signed up. You can CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP.
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From JOFA, An Upcoming Webinar: “The Unfolding of Modern Orthodoxy in America and in Israel? Is Change Really Happening?"
Monday, August 31, 2020 at 12:00pm EDT
Moderated by Rabbi Asher Lopatin, Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council/AJC, and featuring: Rabbi Daniel Landes, Director of YASHRUT; Daphne Lazar Price, Executive Director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA); and Rabbi Avram Mlotek, an American Open Orthodox rabbi, cantor, writer and actor.
Please register for the Zoom webinar at this link .
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To listen to a recording of Jewish Art withRichard McBee's class on July 15th, clickHERE. This class covered David Wander's “Holocaust Haggadah“ and Art & Auschwitz.
DVAR TORAH
Parshat Re'eh - A Command To Not Believe In Miracles by Rabbi Joe Wolfson
A number of years ago, a great teacher of mine, Rav Yoel Bin Nun, taught a class which presented a number of verses in our parsha as key to understanding the book of Devarim as a whole:
When there appears among you a prophet or a dreamer and he gives you a sign or a wonder, saying, “Let us follow and worship another god”—whom you have not experienced—even if the sign or portent that he named to you comes true, do not heed the words of that prophet or that dreamer. For the LORD your God is testing you to see whether you really love the LORD your God with all your heart and soul (Devarim 13:2-4).
Said Rav Yoel, a person who has absorbed the book of Shemot cannot understand these verses. For when, in Shemot, Moshe asks God how Pharoah or the people will know to listen to him as he tells them of God’s message, the answer that he is given is exactly what the verses in Devarim prohibit: he will be given signs and wonders, a stick that turns into a snake or an arm which becomes leprous, and through these signs Pharoah and the people will understand that his message is true.
Devarim introduces a wholly new philosophy, captured in these verses. Religious arguments are not to be conducted with references to signs, wonders and miracle workers. Moshe’s staff which has been ever present from Shemot through Bamidbar - splitting seas, striking rocks, ending plagues - is completely absent from the book of Devarim. Rather, the book of Devarim is exactly that - a book of words - Eleh HaDevarim - where the power of Moshe’s speech takes the place of any miracles.
It is brit hitbagrut - a covenant of coming of age. In Bamidbar, the Jewish people are compared to a child. The sages describe Israel leaving Sinai as "tinok she’barach m’beit hasefer" - like a child running away from school. When Moshe complains to God that he is not a mother to be breastfeeding this people, his complaint is that this people are exactly like small children - happy in the moment that their parent showers them with love and makes their presence known, but distraught as soon as the parent withdraws or any difficulty is encountered. Devarim is a book of growing up - a new generation who will need the spiritual hardiness to survive in a world without miracles.
The sages of the mishna gave expression to this anti-magic tradition inherited from the book of Devarim. Commenting upon the story in Shemot where Moshe aids the Jewish people in their battle against Amalek by raising his hands to heaven, the mishna states:
“And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand Israel prevailed” etc. (Exodus 17:1). Did the hands of Moses wage war or break [Israel’s ability] to wage war? Rather this teaches that as long as Israel would look upwards and subject their hearts to their Father in heaven they prevailed, and if not they fell. (Mishna Rosh HaShanna 3:9).
Although a straightforward reading of the verses may well imply some supernatural causation between Moshe’s raised hands and Israel’s victory, the mishna establishes a firmly symbolic reading: the raised hands served to remind Israel of the cause they were fighting for.
This approach, establishing a commitment to our tradition and beliefs which does not depend on miracles, provides a protection against wonders worked by miracle men. The teacher in the cheder asks the students: ‘Did Jesus walk on water? ’Of course not’, they reply. ‘And if he did’, the teacher continues, ‘would it make the slightest bit of difference?’
Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman (1886-1969) was educated in the yeshivot of Europe, and had founded the Ponovezh yeshiva in Lithuania before the destruction of European Jewry. In Mandate-era Palestine he had stood on a hilltop outside of Tel Aviv and sworn that on the sand dunes he would build a city of Torah - what became modern day Bnei Brak - where he would refound Ponovezh. As a key architect of the post-Holocaust Hareidi world his credentials are second to none. And yet, Rav Kahaneman would recount that once as a young man he had heard Leon Trotsky speak when he visited the town, exhorting the masses to commit themselves to Communism and revolution. He had heard Trotsky speak once, and if he had heard him speak twice, said Rav Kahaneman, he would have left the yeshiva and followed him.
"When there appears among you a prophet or a dreamer and he gives you a sign or a wonder, saying, 'Let us follow and worship another god'—whom you have not experienced—even if the sign or portent that he named to you comes true, do not heed the words of that prophet or that dreamer."
RESOURCE HUB
TORAH Resources Suggested and Taught by Rabbi Wolfson:
The COVID Rent Relief Program will provide eligible households that have lost income due to the pandemic with a one-time rental subsidy that will be sent directly to the household’s landlord. Applications are being accepted now through July 30, 2020. More information and application availableHERE. No one should go hungry at this time. Please share these resources with those in need: NYC Meal Hubs are located at 400 locations throughout the city and distribute 3 prepared meals (including kosher meals) per person, Monday through Friday--packaged to go. No ID or registration required. Just show up!
Seniors can receive meal delivery by connecting with their local senior center or calling DFTA’s Aging Connect at 212-AGING-NYC (212-244-6469) or call 311.
Most supermarkets (including Trader Joe's, Stop & Shop and Whole Foods) provide Senior early hours for the more vulnerable to shop safely during Covid-19.
We Appreciate Your Support!
Although our doors are closed, our spirits, minds and hearts remain open during these difficult times. We are davening together on Zoom, supporting congregants with chesed needs, and hosting classes and events online.
Please consider sponsoring a virtual program. Now more than ever, we rely on your generosity to keep us going. We know this is a tough time and appreciate whatever you are able to give.
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