Friday, May 19, 28 Iyar 6:00 PM Please join us for a special service with our Festive Friday Musicians. Join us as we dedicate our new Torah Covers, lovingly donated by Florence Kaitz Greenberg z"l.
Sevices will be Hybrid.
Saturday, May 20, 29 Iyar, 9:30 AM Please join Rabbi Marcia Plumb and Cantor Ellen Band 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
Festive Friday and Torah Cover Dedication Friday, May 19, 6:00 PM
We are continuing our counting of 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 began 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
We Remember: This week's upcoming Yahrzeit Observances
Saturday Paul Sienkiewicz Miriam Bresler Perry Krentzman
Sunday Leo Wexler Milton S. Hoffman
Monday Phillip Mansdorf
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday Irene Kaplan Jacob Leve
Friday Pauline Gordon Dorothy Guild Paula Lefkowitz
A Teaching from our Rabbi
I’d like to share with you a piece I wrote for Sinai and Synapses, an organization that makes connections between science and Judaism. We have been fortunate enough to receive two grants from them to support our adult learning.
Every year, I find that I am changed by the Omer. The Omer is the period of 49 days between Passover and Shavuot. It originated in the Torah as a way of marking the days until the harvest. Today, Jews count each day by reciting a blessing then announcing the day out loud. There is a psalm that accompanies the moment of counting. A special trait, a middah, is assigned to each of the 7 weeks, like gratitude, humility, strength, and love.
Marking time using qualities we want to develop within ourselves is much more powerful than counting with minutes and seconds. Sometimes I set a goal for myself based on one of the 7 middot of the Omer. In these circumstances, I use the 49 days as my deadline for achieving the goal. Several years ago, pre-Covid, during the Omer, I was drawn to the trait of gevurah, strength. I wondered why. How did I need strength that year? What fear did I need to overcome? Right before the Omer started that year, I was asked to teach an online Mussar class. I said no because I was afraid that I couldn’t manage the tech needed to do it. I realized that I could use gevurah to overcome my fear of tech. I gave myself the 49 days of the Omer to learn how to teach online. I used each weeks’ trait to help me achieve my goal. I did it! It turned out much later to be a needed skill. The Omer that year taught me that I can achieve whatever I set my mind to accomplish. I moved through the Omer not by linear time in days and weeks, but by working with the traits.
It is said that the Omer is a time of semi mourning and it marks the days of a plague among Talmudic students. During the past three years of Covid, our plague, I added the counting of hospitalizations and deaths to the counting of the Omer. I counted the days of isolation, and I counted my fears and my blessings. Each day of the 49 was filled with life and death, rather than hours.
The act of counting during these past three years has also been an act of hope. The Jewish day begins at night, rather than in the morning. So we count the Omer at night. For example, day 34 is counted in the evening of day 33. Therefore, counting the Omer is a statement of faith that tomorrow will come and we hope to be alive to see it. The count means that we believe in the hope that comes with the promise of a new day. I am reminded of the Midrash, the story about Adams’ first night. As the sun began to set, and darkness fell, he thought his life was ending. He cried and worried and couldn’t sleep for anxiety. Then the light came back, and he saw he had survived. Nighttime can bring relaxation and release, but it can also bring nightmares. he morning sun seems to make the world feel a bit better. Counting the Omer at night reassures us that there is hope ahead.
The Omer, and Judaism as a whole, helps us move through time via holiness, and count it via blessings. I’d rather have blessings than a watch any day!
This Shabbat, as we enter into the last week of the Omer, I hope your days are filled with blessings, and your heart with hope.
Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Marcia Plumb
Congregation Mishkan Tefila 384 Harvard St. Brookline, MA 02446
