Friday, March 31, 9 Nisan 6:00 PM Please join Rabbi Marcia Plumb and Ellen Allard for a Hybrid Kabbalat Shabbat Service.
Saturday, April 1, 10 Nisan, 9:30 AM Please join Rabbi Marcia Plumb and Cantor Lorel Zar-Kessler for a Hybrid 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
Dear CMT Friends,
Welcome to the Pesach season. I hope you have wonderful sedarim. As Pesach begins, so does the Omer, the 49 days between Pesach and Shavuot.
Every year at Congregation Mishkan Tefila, we count the Omer with a special thought for the day. The Omer begins on Thursday evening, April 6. This year, I will greet you, every morning, with a short video message to help you start your day in a positive inspired way.
I invite you to celebrate someone you love by sponsoring a day of the Omer. Choose someone to honor, who has instilled an important value in you. You may choose someone in your family (past or present), a teacher, a friend, or anyone who has taught you an important life lesson. Please share their name, and yours, so we can celebrate you both. The cost to sponsor a Day of the Omer is $118. Be sure to read the morning emails to see your day!
Thank you so much, and we look forward to celebrating the Omer with you, Rabbi Marcia Plumb
GENERAL PESACH GUIDE FROM THE RABBINIC ASSEMBLY Click here.
FOR YOUR SEDER EXPERIENCE One Table Passover Resources Click here.
PESACH RECIPES FROM TORI AVERY FOR YOUR PLEASURE Click here.
We Remember: This week's upcoming Yahrzeit Observances
Shloshim Mel Drukman
Saturday Rose Wise Alexander Gould
Sunday Rose S. Mirkin Robert Beroff
Monday Abraham Zimble Joshua I. Seidman
Tuesday Leo Allen Dale A. Silverman Gloria Rosendorf Selma Albertson Doris A. Loventhal
Wednesday Linda Cutter
Thursday Rose Silberstein Thelma Katz Samuel Gross
Friday Ruth Green Oscar Einstein
A Teaching from our Rabbi
Like you perhaps, I am cleaning and preparing for one of the most important (and well attended 75% of Jews attend a seder!) nights in our lives.
Why do I put such emphasis on Seder night? Isn’t it, after all, the night when Uncle Don falls asleep after the second cup, the kids are wired, Cousin Hilda comes but complains the whole time, and we all sing Dayenu at the top of our voices because that’s the only song we all know? Then finally it is over, and more cleaning begins…. What makes this night so different from all other family gatherings?
Because Seder night is our past, present, and future. We sit again with those who came before us. In the Haggadah, we discover, again, what it means to be a Jew. We find all humanity. We find our souls. And we find hope.
Pesach is the fundamental Jewish story, from which most of our values and ways of seeing ourselves emerge. We were oppressed, so we understand the needs of the oppressed. We were slaves in Egypt, so we are obligated to help those who are enslaved by others, or by poverty or prejudice. We survived, so we know how to be resilient. We were freed, so we practice gratitude. The Exodus and Mt. Sinai formed us into a peoplehood, so we never feel alone.
The Exodus experience may have been written thousands of years ago, and the historical events shrouded in mystery, but the story is real. The story came from our people but is a universal tale of suffering for the sake of someone else’s power, brave heroes who work for justice, and people who are afraid and hopeful at the same time. It is a story that continues today, and humanity is still wandering around looking for the Promised Land, a just society for all. The Pesach retelling leads us inward too, to find the rigidity and stubbornness of Pharoah within us and leads us toward inner change and the freedom that comes from working to be more holy.
Perhaps most of all however, our Pesach story is one of hope. Throughout the seder night, we speak of slavery, oppression, and fear in four different ways, over and over again. We drink sweet wine to mask the bitterness but then we bite deeply into it via the salt water and our remembrance of tears, and our sadness for others not as fortunate as us. But at the end, like a light at the end of the tunnel, we sing, ‘Next year in Jerusalem! Next year in the Promised Land!’ Our story of Hope lifts us up and carries us to open our doors and arms wide to embrace hope in the present, today.
Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Marcia Plumb
Congregation Mishkan Tefila 384 Harvard St. Brookline, MA 02446
