Friday, March 19, 6 Nisan 6:00 PM Please join Rabbi Plumb and Rabbi Lev Friedman for a virtual "From Our Home to Yours" Kabbalat Shabbat Service .
Saturday, March 20, 7 Nisan 9:30 AM Please join Rabbi Plumb and Cantor Ellen Band for a virtual "From Our Home to Yours" Service.
If you have a simcha, please share it with us and receive a special blessing from Rabbi Plumb during an upcoming Shabbat service. Sponsor a Kiddush by virtually inviting us to your home as you lead the community in KIddush and HaMotzi prayers. (we will provide challah and grape juice!) Please contect Rosalie Reszelbach, Janet Stein Calm or Toni Spitzer to arrange.
Please click here for the link to the new Conservative prayerbook, Siddur Lev Shalem: Shabbat Shaharit Siddur Lev Shalem The prayers will be the same as in our usual blue siddur, so feel free to use that instead if you wish.
Please click here for the link to the page numbers for Shabbat morning prayers in Sim Shalom (Blue) and in Lev Shalem Page Numbers for Shabbat Morning
We Remember: This week's upcoming Yahrzeit Observances
Saturday Nathan Alexander Baer
Sunday Matilda Gellis David Lushan Flora Cohen
Monday Ruth Goldstein Jason Starr
Tuesday Rose Wise Alexander Gould
Wednesday Robert Beroff Rose Mirkin Hinda Lewin
Thursday Abraham Zimble Joshua Seidman
Friday Dale A. Silverman Doris Loventhal Gloria Rosendorf Selma Albertson Leo Allen
From Our Rabbi: A Teaching
Our parasha this week begins with the word Va’yikra.,ויקרא It is written in the Torah with a tiny aleph at the end. There are many commentataries on the meaning of the small aleph.
I’d like to suggest that the word, with the little aleph, has meaning for us today, in our day, and in this week before Pesach.
Part of the word Va’yikra includes ‘kara’, which means ‘call out.’ The aleph comes at the end of the word. The combination of Kara and the little aleph represents the tiny acts of kindness we have done for each other and the ways we have called out to each other throughout this pandemic. It reminds us of the individual phone calls we have made to old friends, the check ins with elderly neighbors, the grocery runs for ill friends, and the many other ways that we have reached out to each other.
Through vayikra, calling and reaching out with acts of kindness, we are pulling each other through the trauma of this pandemic.
The other word hidden within Vayikra, is Ikar. Ikar refers to what is central, or most important. One of the things we have discovered during the pandemic is what is most important to us. I hope that as we move out of it, we hold on to that which is ikar and keep it at the center of our lives.
This Shabbat, may we find comfort in the chesed, the acts of lovingkindness, we have shown others, and gevurah, strength from what matters most to us. May God bless us with hesed and gevurah as we move through these challenging times.
Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Marcia Plumb
Congregation Mishkan Tefila 384 Harvard St. Brookline, MA 02446
