Parashat Noah 2016

Friday Night Shabbat Services
Tonight 11/03, at the regular time of 7:00 PM. Mitzvah of the month is collecting canned goods for the Food Bank, especially as we approach Thanksgiving. We have a box by the front door. Please bring your non perishable food and drop it off at Beth El.
Shabbat morning services are a week away Saturday November 12 (shhh – it’s the birthday of a very special person in the shul who also goes by the name, Chazzan, Cantor or Tzahi ) so please come and celebrate!
Sunday school this Sunday November 6 at 10 AM. We welcome Gregg Philipson to talk to the students (and interested parents) about famous Jews in Sports. ** See below for more upcoming guests.
See the article in the Jewish Outlook by Shereen Ben-Moshe about the Sunday school.
https://www.etypeservices.com/…/Magazine14…/Full/index.aspx…
Huge thank you to Arie Stavchansky and Josh Kadosh, our Baalei Kriya last week who valiantly read from the Torah’s first book, Bereisheet.

Candle lighting in Austin is at 6:23 PM
Cantor Ben Moshe’s Message

This week we read Parshat Noah, in which the eponymous hero is instructed by God to build an ark in order to save his family as well as animals and birds from a world-destroying flood. Many have noted similarities to the story of Utnapishtim from the Babylonian “Epic of Gilgamesh”. Here, the gods decide to flood the world, but a human names Utnapishtim builds an ark and escapes with his family and animals.
Obviously, both stories draw from a common source, a story perhaps of a great flood in Mesopotamia. There is however, a crucial difference. In the “Epic of Gilgamesh”, the gods send the flood as part of an internecine conflict, almost out of caprice, and Utnapishtim is saved because the gods like him. The Biblical account is quite clear-the Flood is meant to cleanse the earth of violence and other wrongdoing, and Noah is saved because of his righteousness. The difference between the pagan and the Israelite world-view is thus plain. To the pagan Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians (as well as to most other pagans), the gods act out of motives that may or may not be noble. They fight, they quarrel, they abuse humans-they are basically humans with superpowers, no more moral than any mortal. God in the story of the Flood is the arbiter of morality-the Ultimate Judge, Whose own morals are absolute. Our Tradition insists that there is an absolute standard of righteousness which applies to the whole universe, and which our Torah comes to teach. May we always strive to live up to that standard, even if we cannot, as God comes to realize in our parshah, always live up to it. Shabbat Shalom.
Hazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe

HOLD THE DATES: First Friday speakers at Beth El. We look forward to welcoming Gil Levy, head of Jewish Family Services who will come and give a talk/Dvar Torah on Friday December 2. Friday January 6, Rabbi Daniel Septimus CEO of the Austin JCC will likewise be our guest speaker at Beth El. We would love to see you and greatly look forward to hearing these dynamic speakers.
Happy November birthdays! Diana Jurist, Sarah Butler, Bob Miller, Hannah Cramer, Cayla Canady and of course, Cantor Ben-Moshe!
Please send us your birthday so we can give you a shout out.

Thank you to our teachers including our amazing Morah Bev for cleaning and sorting the teacher resource room. It was truly a labor of love!

The sisterhood is planning some exciting events.
** November 13 at Beth El at 1 PM we will be having a cooking class with chef Mirit Solomon-Shimoni, chef and caterer, yoga instructor and Mom extraordinaire. Mirit will be making a three layered parev Israeli cake as well as a parev side dish to accompany your Thanksgiving meal! All sisterhood members and older kiddos are welcome.
**Hold the date for Sunday December 4th at 1 PM for Hannukah themed art project with artist Sharon Yam-Sananes.
Pictured above at the Austin Jewish Book Fair are Michelle, Bertha, Claudia and Doris. A fun evening enjoying a great author.
Cool happenings at Sunday School!
We have some exciting guests who will be coming to Sunday school classes in the coming weeks and will help enrich the lovely experience our children are having.

Sunday November 6 – 11:30 AM Gregg Philipson avid historian and collector will talk to the kids about famous Jewish men and women in sports.
Sunday November 13 – 11:30 AM Arielle Levy of Jewish National Fund will come to talk to the children about the amazing work that JNF does in Israel.
Sunday December 4 – 11:30 AM Aviv Canaani will talk about his experience leading Birthright trips to Israel and Judith Golden will talk to the kids about being a participant in this life changing trip to Israel.
If you would like to share something fun with the kids, please let us know. Pictured below is the awesome Ms. Carol Rubin and Anat Inbar singing and dancing with the BERS (Beth El Religious School)!
RABBI DR. PETER TARLOW, EMERITUS RABBI TEXAS A&M AND CENTER FOR JEWISH HISPANIC RELATIONS.

If Genesis’ first parashah was both problematic and puzzling, this second parashah, named after Noah serves only to increase our sense of bewilderment,
You can find this week’s parashah, called “Noach” in Hebrew, in the Book of Genesis 6:9-11:32. Based around the story of climate change, known in the Bible as the great flood, this week’s section addresses a world gone mad with violence. We find a world where violence becomes justified by political double-speak, truth has given way to lies, murder lurks everywhere, and hope has been replaced by despair.
The section begins with a verse that is easy to read and hard to understand. In the original Hebrew it reads: “Noach ish tzadik tamim haya bdorotav et ha’elokim hithalech Noach/Noah was a naively righteous/just man for (in) his generations (times) who walked (around) with G’d.” The Hebrew leads us to a number of questions: What does it mean to be naively righteous? Are righteous people naïve? Was Noah really a good person, or did G’d have to settle for the least bad? Would we have called Noah righteous if he had lived in another generation? It is less difficult to be righteous in a righteous generation but almost impossible to be righteous when everyone else lives in a world bereft of morality, does this mean that to be righteous in a generation of crime is to be more righteous than in a generation filled with good people? Finally, exactly how does one “walk with G’d?
These are eternal questions without exact answers; we have nothing more than personal interpretations and ideas. Perhaps we can find one possibility for the reason that G’d brought about the flood because (6:13) the earth is filled with “hamas” meaning “lawlessness” or “terrorism.” In other words, G’d had no alternative; simply put, the experiment called creation needed major adjustments.
The text forces us to ask if civilization can exist in a world of terrorism, in a world where people are willing to kill other people in order to express through violence their political agenda and express their frustrations and aspirations. If there is no truth, can there be justice?
If that is an underlying message in this week’s section, then we are forced to ask still some other questions: Was Noah too trusting? Is there room for good but naive people in places where violence exists? Is the text telling us that when we are offered panaceas we must be careful, and when we confuse style with policy then societies begin to crumble.
How do we balance our need for a just/righteous society in a world where some are intent on murder?
These are hard questions that still plague us to this very day. What do you think?
COMMUNITY NEWS:
The annual Jewish Book Fair at the J is currently on and has some amazing authors featured. Check out the website below.
http://www.jewishbookfair.org/
The annual Jewish Film is hot on the heels and starts this Saturday night. Again, for a full list of films, please see the link below. Congregation Beth El is a proud co sponsor of the Austin Jewish Film Society. Please support the community by seeing some of these wonderful movies.
http://austinjff.org/wordpress/
Check out the wonderful article about Gregg and Michelle Philipson’s collection on exhibit at the Bob Bullock Museum.
http://www.mystatesman.com/…/collecting-family-artif…/ns2JD/
Please consider a tax deductible donation to help us
http://bethelaustin.wpengine.com/donate/
Other ways to help include, sponsoring a kidush for a special event or in memory of a loved one, or bringing needed supplies. Ask us how you can help.
Community News:
Snout by Snoutwest at the JCC. This Sunday come and enjoy a fun afternoon with dogs galore at the J. From 12- 4 PM