Friday, December 06, 8 Kislev Shabbat@Home, 6:30 PM There will be no services at CMT. All are welcome to attend the KICKS service at 5:15 PM in the Campus Chapel.
Saturday, December 07, 9 Kislev 9:30 AM Shabbat Morning Services with Cantor Elana Rozenfeld
Hakarot Hatov/Seeing the Good at Mishkan
December 7th, Shabbat morning, 9.30 AM, Cantor Elana Rozenfeld is co-leading our service, with Rabbi Plumb. If you haven’t been with her in prayer, join us for this special Shabbat experience. She is a jewel in our crown. She leads from the siddur and imbues the prayers with extra neshama (soul). Congregants say: ‘I make a point to come to her services.’ ‘I always leave her service feeling much better than when I walked in the door.’ ‘Her voice is so beautiful.’
Come early and enjoy a mimosa (or just orange juice!) in our lounge before the service. Bring your friends for a special taste of spirits and soul.
"[And Jacob had a dream]: a ladder was set on the ground and its top reached to the heavens, and angels of God were going up and down on it" (Gen. 28:12). This week’s parasha opens with Jacob’s dream of a ladder reaching from the earth to the heavens, with angels going up and down the ladder. When he wakes up, he says, ‘G!d was in the place….’
At our recent Brookline Clergy Association meeting, we were tasked with imagining that each of us is the ladder, grounded in the earth but always striving to be connected to the heavens. We human beings are made of earth, with feet of clay, but we have the potential to rise above our base tendencies and be so much more. We have the ability to grow, develop, and change, so that we can be ‘taller’ spiritually and morally.
In studying this parasha, and imagining myself as a ladder, I am reminded of one of my favourite Mussar texts on savlanut/patience.
How do you climb the rungs of the ladder? As you stand on the bottom rung, you must see if your position is firm, and only then can you continue and climb up to the next rung. So, too, it is regarding the service of God: is it possible to jump to Heaven all at once? One must ascend in stages, rung after rung. (The Kotsker Rebbe, Sayings of Kotsker, p. 149)
According to this text, and Mussar thinking, how do we lift ourselves up to be more than who we are at this moment? Small step by small step. Rung by rung. One attempt to behave better every day. One small moment of patience in a situation that usually makes us impatient; one small act of kindness when we usually would refrain; one less gossiped word in a conversation when we would normally add our two cents.
We practice behaving better, bit by bit. We decide how we want to change, and practice that change in small ways. We stay with that small change until we think we’re on the way to integrating it into our daily lives and way of thinking. Then we add another small change to improve ourselves and practice that one, etc. Small change by small change, rung by rung.
Little by little, rung by rung, we rise higher to become our best selves.
This Shabbat, I invite us to become the ladder, to lift ourselves and grow spiritually. May we feel ‘taller’ this week, and feel proud of ourselves, one rung at a time. May we feel G!d blessing upon us just as Jacob did.
Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Marcia Plumb
Congregation Mishkan Tefila 384 Harvard St. Brookline, MA 02446
