TORAH READING FOR 17 IYAR 5784 May 24-25, 2024

May 24, 2024 by templekol

SHAZOOM ONLY 6:30 PM May 24, 2024

OUR HEARTS ARE WITH THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL AND ALL THE VICTIMS OF CONFLICT

From “Mishkan T’filah / A Reform Siddur” p.180

Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya’aseh shalom alëinu, v’al kōl Yisraël, v’al kōl yoshvëi tëvël, v’imru: Amën.

May the One who makes peace in the high heavens make peace for us, for all Israel and all who inhabit the earth, and let us say: Amen.

PARSHA

From Reform Judaism https://reformjudaism.org/torah/portion/bhar

B’har (בְּהַר — Hebrew for “on Mount [Sinai]”) – Leviticus 25:1-26:2

The Eternal One spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai: “Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a sabbath of the Eternal.” – Leviticus 25:1-2

SUMMARY:

God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites that in every seventh year, the land shall observe a Sabbath of complete rest: Fields should not be sown and vines should not be pruned. (25:1-7)
After forty-nine years, a jubilee year is to be celebrated when all the land that had been sold during that time should be returned to its original owners and slaves are to be freed. (25:8-55)
God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites not to make idols, to keep the sabbath, and to venerate the sanctuary of the Eternal. (26:1-2)

HAFTARAH

Jeremiah 32:6-27

RECOMMENDED READING

From Reform Judaism https://reformjudaism.org/torah/portion/bhar

B’har – Time for a Shabbat

By: Rabbi Daniel Mikelberg

STRUGGLING WITH TORAH and REFLECTION

We will continue to meet every other Friday for Torah Study to read and discuss selections from Ketuvim, the third section of Tanach (Hebrew Bible), which follows Torah and Nevi’im. Please see the NEW Torah Study-Shazoom schedule below. NEXT week we will finish studying the Book of Ruth, which is found in Ketuvim (Writings), and traditionally read during Shavuot. Read this week’s Torah Portion at https://www.sefaria.org/Leviticus.25.1-26.2, and Haftarah at https://www.sefaria.org/Jeremiah.32.6-27

From “The Torah / A Women’s Commentary” edited by Dr. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Rabbi Andrea L. Weiss, Ph.D., Women of Reform Judaism/The Federation of Temple Sisterhoods and URJ Press New York 2008

בהר B’har – Leviticus 25:1-26:2

Contemporary Reflection – Lori Lefkovitz, pp.762-3

IN PARASHAT B’HAR, God declares to Moses that the land is a sacred trust and commands the people to observe periods of comprehensive release. This parashah invites us to consider how, in each generation, we can best serve as guarantors of this trust, respect the duty to rest ourselves and our natural resources, and experience “release.” The legislation in B’har presumes the value of balance and regulates a balance among productivity, rest, and relinquishment. Inasmuch as punctuating productivity with long pauses lends perspective to life and encourages us to express gratitude for the earth’s bounty, we may wonder what regulations we require today to help us nurture ourselves, one another, and the planet. As women join men in leadership positions and in the work force, it is becoming a Jewish communal priority to effect social and institutional adjustments that allow for a healthy balance between people’s needs and obligations.

B’har affirms that the land belongs to God, and it must be permitted to observe its Sabbaths. The sensibility that the Land of Israel has a responsibility all its own to the Creator recognizes nature’s independence from humanity. The land must be permitted, just like human servants, to praise creation through Shabbat. In the psalmist’s words: kol han’shamah t’halel Yah, “All that breathes praises God” (Psalm 150). The earth must speak its own gratitude.

In the Torah, the earth is an expressive organism. We read that when Miriam died, “the community was without water” (Numbers 20:2). Observing, as it were, its mourning for a heroine whose miracles were all associated with water, the earth dries up. To hear the speech of the earth is a blessing; but if we do not listen, the consequences of our deafness to the planet are traumatic. The ecology movement reminds us of what our biblical forebears understood: the independent consciousness of nature.

Nature’s independence is trumpeted on Yom Kippur after a fifty-year countdown. This is when we must (as the Liberty Bell translates the verse) “proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10). We more closely translate dror (“Liberty”) as a proclamation of “release,” a letting go. Counting toward release, we can celebrate release–or we can live in fear of it. And so the liturgy tells us limnot yameinu, to count our days (Psalm 90:12), by which we are meant to understand that since our days are numbered, the trick is to make them count. Our duty is not to scramble tirelessly, but to be grateful and generous, to assume our small place in creation, and to join the trees in praise. Underlying the laws of B’har is an obligation to take care of each other, to leave no one homeless: “Do not wrong one another, but fear your God” (Leviticus 25:17).

The laws of the sabbatical year echo biblical Creation. The rhythm of the work week undergoes a cosmic magnification: people, imitating the Creator, are productive for six days and then rest. Nature is productive for six years and rests; and then geometrically, after the land has maintained this rhythm for seven cycles of seven: jubilee. The yovel, the jubilee, is a call to restore primal order: indentured servants are freed, debts are forgiven, and property is restored to its original owners. Here is a caution against struggling to amass more, and against warring over real estate–reminding us that all things are, eventually, released (one way or another) from our possession and control. After the divine promise to Noah that humanity would never again be destroyed by flood, God devises the jubilee as a peaceful strategy for restoring the world to its original state.

Appreciating that freedom must be learned, a midrash teaches that the Israelites wandered in desert circles for forty years to make the short trip from Egypt to Canaan because it took that long for the slave population to learn how to manage its freedom. Today, it behooves us to reflect on the substantial gains of the women’s movement and admit that, as B’har teaches, we suffer the consequences of depletion if we do not adequately regulate our hard-won freedoms. Not only do many of us live unbalanced lives, but schools and charities have not corrected for the absence of an earlier generation of volunteer women, to the detriment of children and the poor. Society needs to effect adjustments so as to make two-career families more viable; and we risk perpetuating conditions of stress at work and home if we do not emphasize to rising generations the need to change existing institutional structures and correct continued gender inequities. One wonders whether, in the years since the onset of the contemporary women’s movement, we have been panting from exertion without having paused often enough to ask about the meaning of life. High-achieving adolescents too often suffer from depression, and teenage girls suffer from diminished self-worth. Perhaps we have been communicating an unbalanced definition of adulthood–adulthood without sabbatical and jubilation.

The land, our possessions, our bodies, our children, and we ourselves are a sacred trust, and it is not our right to be infinitely demanding on them. We are commanded to rest, not when we are exhausted or having a breakdown, but regularly, as we count the days to Shabbat, to the seven years of the land’s sabbatical, and to the forty-nine years to the releases of jubilee.

Organizations such as Ma’yan: The Jewish Women’s Project (at the JCC in Manhattan) and Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community (AWP, founded by Shifra Bronznick) are addressing unhealthy patterns by exploring how to create humane workplaces that foster living balanced lives. Projects like these articulate demands for institutional change and new regulations that honor the spirit that informs parashat B’har.

COUNTING OF THE ‘ÓMER 2024 / סְפִירַת הָעוֹמֶר 5784

Counting of the ‘Ómer (or Sefirat Ha’ómer, Hebrew: ספירת העומר) is a verbal counting of each of the forty-nine days between the Jewish holidays of Passover and Shavuot. [The ‘Ómer is counted each evening.]

We began counting on the evening of the second night of Pesach: Tuesday, 23 April 2024, corresponding to the 16th of Nisan, 5784. The counting concludes on the night before Shavuot: Monday, 10 June 2024, corresponding to the 5th of Sivan, 5784.

Today, Friday, day 32 begins this evening at sundown. Before the ‘Alëinu, after stating that one is ready to count the ‘Ómer, the following blessing is said:

Baruch atah Adonai Elohëinu Mélech ha’olam, asher kid’shánu b’mitzvotav, v’tzivánu ‘al S’firat Ha‘Ómer.

Blessed are you, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has sanctified us with your commandments and commanded us to count the ‘Ómer.

After the blessing, one recites the appropriate day of the count. If after the first six days, one also includes the number of weeks that one has counted. For example:

“Hayom sh’náim ush’loshim yom, shehëm arba’ah shavu’ot v’arba’ah la‘Ómer/ba‘Ómer.”

“Today is 32 days, which is four weeks and four days of/in the ‘Ómer.”

PIRKË AVOT – Ethics of the Fathers

From Pesach to Shavuot on each Shabbat some study a chapter a week from Pirkë Avot. The following selection is from the fifth chapter.

From Sefaria.org https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.5

7: [There are] seven things [characteristic] in a clod, and seven in a wise man: A wise man does not speak before one who is greater than he in wisdom, And does not break into his fellow’s speech; And is not hasty to answer; He asks what is relevant, and he answers to the point; And he speaks of the first [point] first, and of the last [point] last; And concerning that which he has not heard, he says: I have not heard; And he acknowledges the truth. And the reverse of these [are characteristic] in a clod.

14: There are four types among those who frequent the study-house (bet midrash):He who attends but does not practice: he receives a reward for attendance. He who practices but does not attend: he receives a reward for practice. He who attends and practices: he is a pious man; He who neither attends nor practices: he is a wicked man.

15: There are four types among those who sit before the sages: a sponge, a funnel, a strainer and a sieve. A sponge, soaks up everything; A funnel, takes in at one end and lets out at the other; A strainer, which lets out the wine and retains the lees; A sieve, which lets out the coarse meal and retains the choice flour.

LAG B‘ÓMER or LAG LA‘ÓMER (33rd day of the ‘Ómer – Ashkenazi) – S-S May 25-26

LAD BA‘ÓMER (34th Day of the ‘Ómer – Sefardi) – S-M May 26-27

From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lag_BaOmer

Lag Ba’Ómer/B’Ómer/La’Ómer is a Jewish religious holiday celebrated on the 33rd day of the Counting of the Omer, which occurs on the 18th day of the Hebrew month of Iyar.

According to kabbalistic tradition, this day marks the hillula (celebration, interpreted by some as anniversary of the death) of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, “the Rashbi”, a Mishnaic sage and leading disciple of Rabbi Akiva in the 2nd century, and the day on which he revealed the deepest secrets of kabbalah in the form of the Zohar (Book of Splendor, literally ‘radiance’), a landmark text of Jewish mysticism.

[While the Counting of the ‘Ómer is a semi-mourning period, all restrictions of mourning are lifted for Ashkenazim on the 33rd day of the Omer. With the exception of Turkish and Egyptian Sephardim who are more lenient, the Sephardic custom is to cease mourning the following day, celebrations being allowed on the 34th day of the ‘Ómer, Lad Ba’Ómer (ל״ד בעומר). As a result, weddings, parties, listening to music, and haircuts are commonly scheduled to coincide with Lag Ba’Ómer among Ashkenazi Jews, while Sephardi Jews hold weddings the next day.]

PRAYERS

From “Mishkan T’filah / A Reform Siddur”:

FOR OUR COUNTRY p.376

THUS SAYS ADONAI, This is what I desire: to unlock the fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of lawlessness; to let the oppressed go free, to break off every yoke. Share your bread with the hungry, and take the wretched poor into your home. When you see the naked, give clothing, and do not ignore your own kin.

O GUARDIAN of life and liberty, may our nation always merit Your protection. Teach us to give thanks for what we have by sharing it with those who are in need. Keep our eyes open to the wonders of creation, and alert to the care of the earth. May we never be lazy in the work of peace; may we honor those who have [served, suffered or] died in defense of our ideals. Grant our leaders wisdom and forbearance. May they govern with justice and compassion. Help us all to appreciate one another, and to respect the many ways that we may serve You. May our homes be safe from affliction and strife, and our country be sound in body and spirit. Amen.

PRAYER FOR THE STATE OF ISRAEL p.552

O HEAVENLY ONE, Protector and Redeemer of Israel, bless the State of Israel which marks the dawning of hope for all who seek peace. Shield it beneath the wings of your love; spread over it the canopy of Your peace; send Your light and truth to all who lead and advise, guiding them with Your good counsel. Establish peace in the land and fullness of joy for all who dwell there. Amen.

FOR HEALING

We recite MI SHEBËRACH for the victims of abuse, brutality, conflicts, fear, natural disasters, pandemics, tragedies, violence of all kinds especially directed at individuals and specific communities including us, and war; for all those at home alone or lonely; for all those in need of physical, emotional, and mental healing. “R’fuah sh’lëmah” – a complete recovery!

YAHRZEITS/ANYOS

We say KADDISH YATOM for those of our friends and families who have died and been buried this last week; those in the period of Sh’loshim (30 days since burial); those who have died in the last year; and those whose Yahrzeits/Anyos occur at this time; as well as the victims of brutality, conflict, disease, natural disasters, pandemics, tragedies, violence of all kinds, and war.

This coming week, 17 Iyar through 23 Iyar, we lovingly remember:

Those victims of the Sho’ah (Holocaust) who died at this time of year.

“ZICHRONAM LIV’RACHAH” – MAY THEIR MEMORIES BE FOR BLESSING.

SHAZOOM ONLY

We will meet for Shazoom ONLY this evening, Friday, May 24, 2024. Please see the NEW Torah Study-Shazoom schedule below. NEXT week we will finish studying the Book of Ruth, which is found in the Ketuvim (Writings), and traditionally read during Shavuot.

Zoom regularly updates its security and performance features. Making sure you have the latest version of Zoom, please join us online this Friday evening with wine/grape juice for Kiddush and Challah for Motzi.

Shazoom – Erev Shabbat Service

Time: May 24, 2024 06:30 PM Arizona

To join Torah Study and/or Shazoom click on the following link [you may need to copy it into your browser]: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/72510500854?pwd=Z3VQZWF4U1BBZytNYmh3aHFTWkFDZz09

Meeting ID: 725 1050 0854

Passcode: 4NrMk0

Hint: The last character of the password is the number zero.

Shabbat Shalom – Buen Shabbat!

-Ruben

PS – About the Book of Ruth and the NEW schedule through June 2024:

From Reform Judaism

https://reformjudaism.org/why-do-we-read-book-ruth-shavuot

https://reformjudaism.org/blog/shavuot-stand-ruth