Religious School Blog

Dear Friends,

How many of us have heard, "dress for success" when we have been scheduling something important?  How important are our clothes?

Our Torah reading this week speaks about sacred clothing and how our ancient holy people would dress up.  Today we are far less formal and although rabbis used to wear robes, that doesn't happen much anymore (except white robes or a kittel on the High Holidays and Three Major Festivals).

So how do we embrace the Divine if we are not wearing robes anymore?  I believe we should create a sense of the sacred by being clothed in the good deeds we do.

As we celebrate Black History Month, I am reminded of the quote from Dr. Martin Luther King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail."

Dr. King Jr. wrote,

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” 

May we embrace the Divine in the way we pursue justice in all that we do.  In Deuteronomy we are taught "Tzedek, tzedek tirdof," we should pursue righteousness in a just way.  Let our righteous deeds be our clothing that helps protect us from the elements of injustice that we encounter.

On a separate note, please join us on Saturday morning as we honor our religious school faculty at Shabbat services.  They are the ones who clothe our children in knowledge about our precious heritage.  Please see the note below.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Bruce Aft

In honor of our religious school teachers and their bringing an appreciation of Torah into the lives of our children, we are reinstituting the Torah processional at services on Feb. 12.

We are taught that the Torah is not just for the elite (it is not in the heavens) or it is not just for those on the bima.  We will once again bring the Torah around the sanctuary and if folks wish they can take their tallit or prayer book and touch the Torah but not kiss it.  As we all touch the Torah, when it returns to the bima, we will recite the prayer, "la'asok b'divrei Torah" to make a commitment to be busy with the study of Torah.

Please join us for this shehecheyanu moment where we give thanks for the opportunity to have the words of Torah in our midst and appreciate our teachers.