Austin Jewish Unity Day
Friday Night Services, 6/05, at 7:00 pm
Rabbi Gisser’s Conversion class Sunday June 7 at 9 am, with shachrit at 8:20 am.
Sisterhood Event, Sunday June 14th at 2pm at Beth El. It’ll be Sew Much Fun! We will have another in the popular sewing classes and make our own challah covers! Open to all. There will also be a kid friendly sewing activity.
Austin Jewish Unity Day Message.
This year, a group of Israeli leaders and citizens provided the Jewish people with a new communal observance, a new reason to come together as Klal Yisrael. On June 3rd, 2015 the families of Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-ad Shaer and Eyal Ifrach, the three Israeli boys who were kidnapped and murdered by terrorists last summer, asked the Jewish people to come together for what they are calling Jewish Unity Day. Last summer, these families felt supported and cared for by a united worldwide Jewish community. This summer, they are asking the global Jewish community to help them honor their son’s lives, by celebrating the many aspects of Jewish life that unite Jews from around the world, rather than divide us. Through study, activism and prayer, they are asking each one of us to explore what unity without uniformity truly means for the Jewish community. In the words of Rachelli Fraenkel, the mother of Naftali, “We went out searching for the boys and we discovered ourselves. We saw that we are part of something huge, a people, a true family.” For more information about Jewish Unity Day 2015 and the recipients of this year’s Jewish Unity Prize, please go to http://www.unityprize.org/en. Also, plans are being made to hold a community-wide Jewish Unity event in Austin this Fall.
We, the combined leadership of the Austin Jewish Community declare our dedication to maintaining a strong and vibrant sense of Klal Yisrael in our community. May we ban forever sinat chinam, baseless hatred, from among our people and may all of us take this time to reach a deeper understanding of what it means to be a part of a larger Jewish family; a family that might be in conflict at times but a family nonetheless that holds a shared vision of peace and justice close to our hearts.”
JCC Austin
Countdown to Splash Bash this Sunday! Dive into Summer and have some free family fun–inflatables, sno-cones, live music 10 AM-2 PM. Bring a guest to the J. The BERS (Beth El Religious School) are going. Please join us!
Cantor Ben Moshe’s Message
In this week’s parshah, B’haalotcha, we find two familiar verses which bracket our Torah service-“Vay’hi binso’a ha’aron….” and “U’vnucho yomar….”. These verses detail the prayers of Moses when the Ark of the Covenant was taken up at the beginning of a day’s march and set down at the end. We say them now while taking the Torah out and setting it back in its place. While the Ark of the Covenant has been lost to us for nearly 2600 years (and we presume that it isn’t in a buried city in Egypt or in a Defense Department warehouse in Washington)-but we remember it in our prayers today, and adapt the words of Torah to our own circumstances. We thus make our Torah live far beyond the original context of its words. Shabbat Shalom.
Congregation Beth El will be starting a summer (conversational) spoken Hebrew class for adults and interested teens. Please let us know ASAP if you are interested. The class will be taught by our own Morah Shiry and will meet THURSDAY evenings at approximately 7 PM and will be for beginners. It will also include a short, but highly informative davening portion from Gabbai Bam Rubenstein immediately following.