Amazing shabbat!

Dear Congregants and friends,

What an exciting weekend coming up.  Friday evening we of course have our uplifting Kabbalat Shabbat services at 7pm.  As always, we welcome new and old faces.

Saturday morning, August 9th at 9am we continue our celebration of Shabbat with wonderful Shabbat morning services.  The Torah service will be at approximately 9:45 and concurrently we will have a special children’s story time with Miss Katherine.  We would like to thank Rabbi Michael Gisser of Fort Hood Texas for giving a Dvar Torah this weekend and we all greatly look forward to hearing his words of Torah. Rabbi Gisser is a chaplain in the US Army reserves and is currently in an 18 month program at Ft Hood to become a certified family and marriage life counselor.  Rabbi Gisser is passionate about Judaism and an expert in the Holocaust.  If you have not met Rabbi Gisser, give him a big Texas welcome when you see him.  A shout out also to Bam Rubenstein for sponsoring the kosher kidush lunch following services in honor of his father’s one year yahrzeit.

Saturday evening, at 6:30 pm we will continue our journey into the World of Crypto Judaism with our other special guest Rabbi Peter Tarlow of Texas A&M University’s Center for Hispanic Jewish relations. PLEASE come at 5:40 for mincha services, followed by Seudah Shlisheet – a tasty nosh sponsored by Barry Rosson.  We hope you can come for this very special event.

Sunday August 10th at 3:30 p.m. we continue the Intro to Judaism classes with our very own Cantor Ben-Moshe.  Again, please join us whether you have been to one, all or none, you will get a huge amount out of the classes.

The Shabbat of Parshat Va’et’hanan is also called in our tradition Shabbat Nahamu, after the first words of the haftarah, “Nahamu, nahamu ‘ami”-“Comfort, oh comfort my People”.  This is the first of the seven haftarot of consolation, read on the seven Shabbatot between Tish’ah B’Av and Rosh Hashanah.  After the three haftarot of rebuke which we read in the last three weeks, leading up to the mournful day of the Ninth of Av, we now shake off our mourning and return to life.  This is like mourners sitting shiv’ah, who at the end of their seven days of intense grief, venture out of the house, walk about outside, and return to the land of the living.  Indeed we must do so, as the intense soul-searching of the High Holidays will soon be upon us.  At this time, we are bitterly disappointed that life is not returning to routine in Israel and in Gaza, nor for that matter in Syria and northern Iraq.  We wish nothing more fervently than for our fellow Jews, as well as our Arab and Kurdish fellow human beings, be freed from the horrors of war and return to the land of life.  May there be no more mourning in Israel, or in Gaza.  May God grant peace to the Land of Israel and all her neighbors, and lasting joy to its inhabitants.  Shabbat Shalom