Friday, June 16, 27 Sivan 6:00 PM Please join Rabbi Marcia Plumb and Ellen Allard for a Hybrid Kabbalat Shabbat Service celebrating the conclusion of the Silver Lining Buddy Program.
Saturday, June 17, 28 Sivan, 9:30 AM Please join Rabbi 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
Join us Tonight! Friday, June 16 Silver Lining Buddy Program Kabbalat Shabbat
We Remember: This week's upcoming Yahrzeit Observances
Shloshim Barry "Buddy" Hyman Neil Levin Alan Werksman Roni Sue Zeidenberg Charlotte Michaelson Frank
Saturday
Sunday Lorraine Miller
Monday Leonard Florence Harry Tichnor
Tuesday Alan Graubart Sara Stone George A. Guild Alex Yanovich
Wednesday Gertrude Tolman Benjamin Stone
Thursday Adele Karas Hilda Stein
Friday Ella Chyet Silas B. Flashman
A Teaching from our Rabbi
Please join Rabbi Plumb and Candy Gould tonight to celebrate our Silver Lining Buddy Project. We started it at the beginning of the pandemic, to match young people with elders during isolation, to keep each other company via phone. Some of the pairs have lasted for three years. Tonight we honour the elders and young people, as well as our organisers, as we bring the program to a close. 5.00 pm for nosh, 6.00 pm Service
In our parasha this week, Shlach Lecha, the Israelites are about to go into the land, but they are afraid. Before our eyes, they turn from being downtrodden slaves into a mindless angry mob. It reminds me of a play, Good.It is about a man who was a philosophy professor who lived a simple life in Germany as the Nazis were rising to power. At the beginning of the play, he scorned Hitler and thought Nazism wouldn’t last. He had no interest in politics. His best friend was Jewish. As the play progressed, little by little, the professor got drawn into the Nazi party, until eventually, he took over some of the Nazi’s violent programs. Thoughtlessly, he became part of the mob mentality.
In this weeks parasha, we see that ordinary people can be swayed and turned into a mob. We can lose our individual consciences, our individual thoughtfulness, and be swayed by those who have stronger feelings than us, into behaviour and decisions that ordinarily we would question. It can happen to anyone, even those who think that they are rational, thoughtful and compassionate people. The main character in the play kept saying, ‘I’m a happy and good person’, but it doesn’t take much to turn a happy good person into someone who hurts others, because they rationalize that it was the right thing to do or that they have no other choice. Their actions may feel distasteful, but they don’t stop to examine them.
The mob that the Israelites turned into did not stop to recall all that Moses had done for them. Instead, they began to verbally attack Moses and Aaron. They yearned for the past (even though the past was an oppressive one). They let an overabundance of fear overwhelm them, until they could no longer think rationally or thoughtfully.
After watching the play, I was reminded of Hannah Arendt’s writings about how anyone can turn into a Nazi, given the ‘right’ circumstances. I thought about the mob mentalities that we are seeing in America – Jan.6, the book banning in various states, restrictive laws around transgender and LGBT+, the fears about immigrants which lead to limited options for them, and more.
We in Massachusetts often say how glad we are to live in a state where there is no book banning, etc. I find myself sometimes saying the same thing as the main character in the play–extremism can’t last, and it’s limited to a few states, and thank goodness I don’t live there, etc. But the truth is, when we allow dangerous precedents to be set in a few places, then the tide grows, just as mob mentalities expand. That’s when the threads of society begin to unravel.
How do we guard against a mob mentality? One way is to start with ourselves. Notice when we are swayed by someone else’s argument, gossip or opinion, and we let our independent values and thoughts slip away. We allow our ethical inner voice to go silent, and we go along with what others suggest or do.
This Shabbat, may we strengthen our ethical values, our sense of right and wrong. May our Shabbat prayers remind us to speak up and challenge those who may be influencing us to behave badly toward another. May our homes be filled with compassion toward others and ourselves.
Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Marcia Plumb
Congregation Mishkan Tefila 384 Harvard St. Brookline, MA 02446
