During the winter months, Friday evening, Kabbalat Shabbat services, are virtual only. (through March 10) Shabbat morning services remain in person and on Zoom.
Friday, January 27, 5 Shevat 6:00 PM Please join Rabbi Marcia Plumb and Ellen Allard for VIRTUAL"From Our Home to Yours" Kabbalat Shabbat Service
Saturday, January 28, 6 Shevat, 9:30 AM Please join Rabbi Marcia Plumb and Cantor Lorel Zar-Kessler for aHYBRID Shabbat morning 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
Kabbalat Shabbat with Nefesh Mountain March 17, 6:00 PM R.S.V.P. required
Kabbalat Shabbat with Nefesh Mountain at CMT March 17, 6:00 PM
We Remember: This week's upcoming Yahrzeit Observances
Shloshim Sylvia Schwartz
Saturday Esther Graubart Lillian Cutter
Sunday Fannie Karas Morris Kaplan Lois Gordon Isadore Stein
Monday Melvin Bravman Irving L. Bloom
Tuesday David Greenglass Melvin Perlmutter Julius M. Cohen
Wednesday Lottie Beroff Melvin C Pearl Rae Michaelson
Thursday Paul Clark
Friday Fanny Berman Jill Forman Starr Alan Friedman Sumner Neitlich Marilyn Lipsky Sara Fishgeyer Jacob Geller
International Holocaust Memorial Day
Zichronam Livracha
Who is ordinary and who is extraordinary? Is a farmer ordinary? Is a soldier extraordinary? Is a shepherd a hero? And a Pharoah average?
Today, on International Holocaust Memorial Day, we take note of the ordinary people–some of whom became murderers, and some who became saviours.
Take railway workers for example. Average railway workers, who had followed in their fathers’ footsteps and fixed tracks, and drove trains in Germany in the 1920’s and 30’s, were transformed during the war. Who did they become?
Dr. Martin Stern MBE, a Holocaust survivor, recalls the railway workers who loaded people into trucks. He said, ‘And the people loading them in – they were railway men, they didn’t look terribly different from the railway men who check my tickets these days – they looked like ordinary people.’
These railway workers, who looked so ordinary, were indeed simply people from all across Nazi-occupied Europe, working as train drivers, conductors, signal men. Some of these ordinary people were perpetrators, driving Jewish people to concentration camps; some were rescuers, hiding Jews.
Two hundred Lithuanian railway workers murdered more than 60 Jewish men on a farm in August 1941, shooting them into a pit that had been dug by Russian prisoners of war.
Henryk Gawkowski was a conductor who gave testimony to Claude Lanzmann for his film, Shoah. Henryk estimated that he transported approximately 18,000 Jews to Treblinka extermination camp. It is estimated that 800,000 people were murdered at Treblinka. Henryk said that he drank vodka all the time because it was the only way to make his job bearable.
Léon Bronchart was a French railway worker who was made a Righteous Amongst the Nations for helping his Jewish neighbours, hiding a Jew and for refusing to drive a train containing political prisoners.
Marcel Hoffman was one of 24 French railway workers who helped save Jewish children from deportation in September 1942.
Ordinary people sink to their basest selves by forgetting their humanity. Ordinary people become heroes because their humanity overcomes fear or self-interest. These average, run of the mill, people become heroic because they do extraordinary life saving acts of generosity.
Moses started life as just another Hebrew baby wrapped in a dirty cloth. Pharoah was a giant of a man known throughout the empire. Moses became a prince, then fell in status to become a simple shepherd. And there he stayed, until God found him and made him choose to become something more–a leader. The higher in moral stature Moses rose, the more base Pharoah became. Eventually, in this week’s parasha, we see the ordinary Moses rise to be a hero, and Pharoah lose all his power because of his inhumanity to others.
We are all ordinary, simple human beings. Hannah Arendt reminded us that we all have within us the choice to be lesser and baser, or extraordinary. We can turn a blind eye to suffering around us, or we can step up for good. Which will we choose to be this week?
This Shabbat, may all our acts be for the good. May we each be reminded of our power to be extraordinary.
Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Marcia Plumb
Congregation Mishkan Tefila 384 Harvard St. Brookline, MA 02446
