This Shabbat, September 30, we will host Interim Rabbi candidate, Rabbi David Starr to lead Sukkot Shabbat morning services. Please join us in-person, if possible, to welcome Rabbi Starr.
Friday, September 29, 14 Tishrei Please join Rabbi Marcia Plumb and Ellen Allard for a HYBRID Kabbalat Shabbat Service.
Saturday September 30, 15 Tishrei Please join Rabbi David Starr and Cantor Ellen Band for a HYBRID Sukkot 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, 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
R.S.V.P. by October 4 Celebrating Rabbi Plumb Festive Friday Friday, October 13, 6:00 PM
We Remember: This week's upcoming Yahrzeit Observances
Shloshim Gloria Bubly Althea Lank Ken Apert
Saturday Louis H. Glickstein
Sunday Ruth Golov Einstein
Monday Jacob Sandofsky Ruth Loventhal Daniel Loventhal
Tuesday Elia Karas Joseph Summers Rose Eshkenazi
Wednesday
Thursday Harry Clark , Abraham Davidi
Friday Alice Glazer
A Teching from Our Rabbi
Zman Simchateinu has arrived – the season of our joy is upon us. Sukkot begins tonight, and the Torah calls it Z’man Simchateinu.
Before we talk about Sukkot, I’d like to thank you for all the joy you brought my family and me over the Yamim Noraim. We greatly appreciated all your good wishes, and the many memories of our times together that you shared with us. Thank you as well for all the positive comments you shared about the joy and warmth you experienced over the hagim.
We may experience joy at Sukkot but we don’t often feel the warmth–it can get cold in the Sukkah! I think of Sukkot as the season of rain because inevitably, it rains during the week of the festival. True to form, it is raining today. Tonight, however, we will be warm and dry in our sacred space so please join Ellen Allard and me to welcome the Hag.
The Hag is not called Sukkot in the Torah, but we refer to it as this because of the mitzvah we are meant to do to honour it–dwell in the Sukkah for eight days.
The other mitzvah the Torah commands us to do is to rejoice this week with the lulav and etrog. There are two places in the Torah that include the mitzvah. The first is from Leviticus 23:40–‘On the first day you shall take the product of hadar trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook,and you shall rejoice before Adonai your G*d seven days.’ Lev.23:40. The second is Deuteronomy 16:14:’You shall rejoice in your festival, with your son, daughter, male and female slave, the Levite, stranger, orphan, and the widow in your communities. ‘
The Deuteronomy text is different from the Leviticus source in that it includes the commandment to celebrate with others. This is where the idea of inviting people into your sukkah comes from. Maimonides, in his great work The Mishneh Torah, says that we must feed the stranger, orphan, widow and others while we eat and drink. He says quite strongly that if one does not, then one is not observing the hag; rather one is simply celebrating ones stomach, and doesn’t deserve joy.
In our family, we love eating in the sukkah–it feels so fresh, and a ceremonial way to say goodbye to summer and to welcome fall. This year, we have been given the opportunity to truly fulfill the mitzvot of Sukkot, because today we are welcoming a doctor from Ukraine who is training at MGH to bring specialist skills back to his country to help the many wounded soldiers. He will be living with us for a short time, and so we will be providing the shelter and food the holiday commands. Helping someone who performs the mitzvah of saving lives every day will add extra joy to our celebration of Sukkot. There are other doctors from the Ukraine in need of short stay housing during their training in Boston, throughout the year. Please let me know if you are interested in helping.
Until then, enjoy the festival of Sukkot, by inviting people into your Sukkah, or your home, during the week. Give tzedakah to help feed the hungry; and come Dine Under the Stars in the campus sukkah with CMT on October 3. On October 2, we will be welcoming guests into our CMT sacred space when Boston for Democracy in Israel brings one of the founders of the Kaplan demonstrations in Israel, Or-ly Barlev, to speak.
This Shabbat, may your home be a sukkah, full of joy, good food and friends. May you be inspired to spread your tent of love and friendship to others in need.
Shabbat Shalom and Hag Sameach, Rabbi Marcia Plumb
Congregation Mishkan Tefila 384 Harvard St. Brookline, MA 02446
