Friday Night Shabbat Services Tonight 10/21, at the regular time of 7:00 PM.

Shabbat morning services are a THIS Saturday OCTOBER 22. Story time for children at 11 AM. Kidush lunch immediately following sponsored by the Koellers in honor of our Jewish home Beth El, a place that has helped elevate our Jewish lives and enriched it in boundless ways.

Sunday school this Sunday October 23 at 10 AM.

Simchat Torah THIS Monday October 24 at 7:15 PM. Come and dance with the Torah!

Candle lighting in Austin is at 6:34 PM

Cantor Ben Moshe’s Message

This Shabbat we take a break from the cycle of Torah readings for the Festival of Sukkot, but resume again on Simhat Torah, when we read the last parshah of the Torah and then immediately begin with the first. The last word of Parshat V’zot Hab’rachah is Yisrael, ending with the letter “lamed”. The Torah begins again with Parshat B’reshit, which begins with the letter “bet”. Together, the last letter and first letter of the Torah spell “lev”, heart. The Torah has been the heart of our People from ancient times-telling us where we came from, and pointing the way that we should go. May we always follow our heart, our “lev”, not only at this holiday season but at all times. Shabbat Shalom umo’adim l’simhah.

Hazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe

Fun fact following the Chazzan’s message: Did you know that recent studies have found that when people sing together, their heartbeats synchronize. Let’s sing and join with one heart this weekend at services!

Happy October birthdays to: Herschel Hochman, Iris Daniel, Patrice Jones, Natalie Bowers-Benderly, Amanda Golden, Elyse Tarlton, Nathan Finkelstein and Rachel Union.
Please send us your birthday so we can give you a shout out.

We greatly appreciate every person in our shul. As you know, we always keep our dues affordable, but rely on donations to run this sweet little shul. 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.

Thank you to our dedicated “Shabbat Shefs”, Michelle, Iris, Shereen and Claudia. We are currently recruiting more shabbat shefs who can help us prepare kidishes every two weeks. Let us know if you would like to join! All you need to do is know how to chop and chat!

Sukkot For Our Time (extract from Koren Sacks Sukkot mahzor). Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.

Of all the festivals, Sukkot is surely the one that speaks most powerfully to our time. Kohelet could almost have been written in the twenty first century. Here is the ultimate success, the man who has it all – the houses, the cars, the clothes, the adoring women, the envy of all men – who has pursued everything this world can offer from pleasure to possessions to power to wisdom and yet who, surveying the totality of his life, can only say, in effect, “Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.”

Kohelet’s failure to find meaning is directly related to his obsession with the “I” and the “Me”: “I built for myself. I gathered for myself. I acquired for myself.” The more he pursues his desires, the emptier his life becomes. There is no more powerful critique of the consumer society, whose idol is the self, whose icon is the “selfie” and whose moral code is “Whatever works for you.” This is the society that achieved unprecedented affluence, giving people more choices than they have ever known, and yet at same time saw an unprecedented rise in alcohol and drug abuse, eating disorders, stress related syndromes, depression, attempted suicide and actual suicide. A society of tourists, not pilgrims, is not one that will yield the sense of a life worth living. Of all things people have chosen to worship, the self is the least fulfilling. A culture of narcissism quickly gives way to loneliness and despair.

Kohelet was also, of course, a cosmopolitan: a man at home everywhere and therefore nowhere. This is the man who had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines but in the end could only say, “More bitter than death is the woman.” It should be clear to anyone who reads this in the context of the life of Solomon, that Kohelet is not really talking about women but about himself.
In the end Kohelet finds meaning in simple things. Sweet is the sleep of a labouring man. Enjoy life with the woman you love. Eat, drink and enjoy the sun. That ultimately is the meaning of Sukkot as a whole. It is a festival of simple things. It is, Jewishly, the time we come closer to nature than any other, sitting in a hut with only leaves for a roof, and taking in our hands the unprocessed fruits and foliage of the palm branch, the citron, twigs of myrtle and leaves of willow. It is a time when we briefly liberate ourselves from the sophisticated pleasures of the city and the processed artefacts of a technological age and recapture some of the innocence we had when we were young, when the world still had the radiance of wonder.

The power of Sukkot is that it takes us back to the most elemental roots of our being. You don’t need to live in a palace to be surrounded by clouds of glory. You don’t need to be rich to buy yourself the same leaves and fruit that a billionaire uses in worshipping God. Living in the sukkah and inviting guests to your meal, you discover – such is the premise of Ushpizin, the mystical guests – that the people who have come to visit you are none other than Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives. What makes a hut more beautiful than a home is that when it comes to Sukkot there is no difference between the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor. We are all strangers on earth, temporary residents in God’s almost eternal universe. And whether or not we are capable of pleasure, whether or not we have found happiness, nonetheless we can all feel joy.

Sukkot is the time we ask the most profound question of what makes a life worth living. Having prayed on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to be written in the Book of Life, Kohelet forces us to remember how brief life actually is, and how vulnerable. “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” What matters is not how long we live, but how intensely we feel that life is a gift we repay by giving to others. Joy, the overwhelming theme of the festival, is what we feel when we know that it is a privilege simply to be alive, inhaling the intoxicating beauty of this moment amidst the profusion of nature, the teeming diversity of life and the sense of communion with those many others with whom we share a history and a hope.

Most majestically of all, Sukkot is the festival of insecurity. It is the candid acknowledgment that there is no life without risk, yet we can face the future without fear when we know we are not alone. God is with us, in the rain that brings blessings to the earth, in the love that brought the universe and us into being, and in the resilience of spirit that allowed a small and vulnerable people to outlive the greatest empires the world has ever known. Sukkot reminds us that God’s glory was present in the small, portable Tabernacle Moses and the Israelites built in the desert even more emphatically than in Solomon’s Temple with all its grandeur. A Temple can be destroyed. But a sukkah, broken, can be rebuilt tomorrow. Security is not something we can achieve physically but it is something we can acquire mentally, psychologically, spiritually. All it needs is the courage and willingness to sit under the shadow of God’s sheltering wings.

For more inspiring talks by Rabbi Sacks, go to

Friday Night Shabbat Services
Tonight 9/23, at the regular time of 7:00 PM.
Shabbat morning services are this Saturday September 24 at 9AM. It is generously sponsored by Arthur Gurney in loving memory of his late mother Lorraine of blessed memory. It will be a delicious meat luncheon.
Havdallah and Slichot services are this Saturday evening at 8 PM. Children please bring your PJs.
Sunday School at 10 AM Sunday September 25, followed immediately by the Beth El work day. Please help us make the shul extra beautiful for the High Holidays.
Check out the High Holiday schedule at www.bethelaustin.org
Candle lighting in Austin is at 7:06 PM
Cantor Ben Moshe’s Message
This week, our parshah, Ki Tavo, deals mainly with what the People of Israel are to do when they enter the Land of Israel. Moses’ instructions to the People include the laws of bringing First Fruits to the Sanctuary and the laws of the triennial Poor Tithe. The parshah also deals with two ceremonies which are to take place immediately upon crossing the Jordan. In one, the People are to build a stone monument, plaster it, and then write the text of the Torah upon it. In the other, they are to go to the valley between Mt. G’rizim and Mt. ‘Eival, outside the city of Sh’chem. There, they are to recite a litany of curses against those who commit crimes which would upset the order of society. The Levites were to recite the curses, and all the People were to answer “amen”, signifying agreement and acceptance. The first things that our ancestors were commanded in the Land of Israel was to bind themselves to law, to the Covenant. Moses would no longer be there to lead the People-it would become the responsibility of the People to govern themselves. As we enter the High Holiday season in earnest-we begin saying S’lihot, penitential prayers on Saturday night-let us pledge to govern ourselves, as individuals and as a community, in a way that reflects our Covenant with God. Shabbat Shalom.
Hazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe
Slichot and some truly meaningful soul searching! Do not miss this wonderful once a year pre-high holiday evening service.
Challah fundraiser. The Sunday school kiddos and volunteers will once more make a culinary delight. We will bake special round holiday challot and you can order your holiday challah for pick up. Either plain, chocolate chip or raisin. Suggested donation of $5 a challah with all proceeds going to help the Sunday school. PLEASE EMAIL US AT info@bethelaustin.org to place your order.
PLEASE HELP SPONSOR A HIGH HOLIDAY KIDUSH MEAL. We will gratefully accept donations of paper goods, kosher challah juice and wine, kosher deserts and of course, monetary donations.
A fabulous day was had by all of the kids, teachers and volunteers at the Beth El Religious School on Sunday.
We welcomed four new friends: Stella, Max, Izzy and Mia. We are so happy they have joined our BERS!
What a busy morning we had! A big thank you to Juliette Meinstein, Iris Daniel, Tamara Miller, Judith Golden, and Iris Koeller for helping make our honey cake baking extra sweet. We could not have done it without you!
We made delicious honey cakes to deliver to some of our friends and to Jewish residents at several senior homes.
The children also made adorable, apple print Rosh Hashanah cards to go along with the sweet treats. What a beautiful and tasty mitzvah!
Kitah alef: the children enjoyed Morah Anat’s reading of “Zen Ties,” a book about a panda who baked goodies for older people in her community. This was a great introduction to the happenings of the day.
Kitah bet: Morah Lital taught her class a beautiful Israeli song called “Be Rosh Hashanah.” They continued working in their new Hebrew books and completed a challenging Hebrew word search.
Kitah gimel: Morah Bev continued to work with her class on reading and writing in Hebrew and the senior class followed the honey cake recipe with little assistance and made beautiful cards.
There were some V.I.P.s meeting in the sanctuary on Sunday. Mike Miller, Hal and Elaine Jacobs, Barbara Goldin and their fellow Jewish War Veterans held their meeting and then came out to say hello. Mike Miller shared that he had served in the Navy in Vietnam and described what the Jewish War Veterans do). The children thanked him for his service (see photo above). It was a sweet, memorable teachable moment, in the sunshine during Hebrew school recess.
Next week, Cantor Yitzhak Ben-Moshe will continue teaching his group the High Holiday melodies and prayers as they prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
We wish everyone a wonderful week! Fill out those mitzvah leaves as you do something to help someone.
L’Shalom,
Shereen Ben-Moshe
Grandpa Abe :Times have changed
It was about 40 something years ago that I felt the need and obligation to pay my dues at my house of worship. At that time, I was a youngster, married with several children. We had all we could do to keep the bills paid. My wife stayed home with the children because we thought the children needed supervision. Our financial state was so tight that each year I would go to the bank and borrow the money to make sure that my dues were paid on time. I felt that the synagogue needed my money to operate and also I felt an obligation to pay my dues. As time went on, I would get dues statements with no amount on them. I always paid what I felt was my fair share, trying to raise the amount whenever possible.
Now that all the children are grown and left the nest, I feel even a bigger obligation to see that my synagogue has my share. Without people donating their fair share to our synagogue, we would not have one. And if we did not have one, it would be very hard to perpetuate our fine religion. I’m writing this letter just after I wrote a check to my synagogue or I should say, OUR synagogue. The dues have gone up by me for my fair share since I took that first loan out. I now do not need to take a loan out and feel extra special when I write a check to OUR synagogue. I have been told by several people that that is one way to becoming a good Jew, that is to support our synagogue.
This is the time of the year that the synagogue is asking for your help. It comes in different shapes and forms. It may be called donations or even dues. The bottom line is help keep our synagogue going. It doesn’t run entirely on love. We must have money.
Dor ‘l Dor,
Grandpa Abe
I see something in our congregation that I feel is just wonderful. It’s all the new life we’ve got started. When I mean new life, I mean all the children we have. We have them at nearly every age and they all are enjoying Judaism. We have some of the best singers anywhere around. The girls just sing their hearts out. The children have really done well in their studies at Sunday School being taught by some wonderful teachers. I was speaking to one of the parents and the dad was telling me that they had to rearrange their vacation so the children wouldn’t miss Sunday School. It wasn’t his doings. It had to do with the children. They wanted to attend. It’s wonderful to see the children wanting to get all the knowledge they can. Although I see the children having fun, I also see them taking it very seriously. When I was younger (that was before dirt) we would ask the teacher if we could go to the restroom and never return. Before we knew it the whole class was out of the room. Need I tell you how much we learned. Now we pay the price. I am so glad to see these children grow up in such a fine synagogue as ours. They are the future. “Train up a child in the way that he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6
I see something in our congregation that I feel is just wonderful. It’s all the new life we’ve got started. When I mean new life, I mean all the children we have. We have them at nearly every age and they all are enjoying Judaism. We have some of the best singers anywhere around. The girls just sing their hearts out. The children have really done well in their studies at Sunday School being taught by some wonderful teachers. I was speaking to one of the parents and the dad was telling me that they had to rearrange their vacation so the children wouldn’t miss Sunday School. It wasn’t his doings. It had to do with the children. They wanted to attend. It’s wonderful to see the children wanting to get all the knowledge they can. Although I see the children having fun, I also see them taking it very seriously. When I was younger (that was before dirt) we would ask the teacher if we could go to the restroom and never return. Before we knew it the whole class was out of the room. Need I tell you how much we learned. Now we pay the price. I am so glad to see these children grow up in such a fine synagogue as ours. They are the future. “Train up a child in the way that he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6
Our Honey Cake Bakers Tamara Miller, Iris Daniel, Juliette Meinstein and Shereen Ben-Moshe! Thank you ladies!
Happy September birthdays to Vania Aguilar, Ilan Ben-Moshe, Carmen Rodriguez, Kay Shapiro, Judith Golden, Doris Hochman, Orli Carmel and Gail Ellenbogen. May you have an amazing and blessed year ahead. If we don’t have your birthday, please do send it to us.
NOW OPEN: US Holocaust Memorial Museum Exhibition: “State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda” Exhibition
UPCOMING: Public Program Wednesday, September 28
Bullock Texas State History Museum, 1800 Congress Ave, Austin
State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda is a traveling exhibition produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It examines how the Nazis used propaganda to win broad voter support in Germany’s young democracy after World War I, implement radical programs under the party’s dictatorship in the 1930s, and justify war and mass murder. This most extreme case study emphasizes why the issue of propaganda matters and challenges citizens to actively question, analyze, and seek the truth.
Public Program:
US Holocaust Memorial Museum Event – Fueling Extremism in a Wired World: The Balance of National Security and Personal Liberty
Wednesday, September 28, 7- 8:30 PM
Bullock Texas State History Museum, 1800 Congress Ave, Austin Free
Check out a piece about Gregg and Michelle Phipson!
http://www.thestoryoftexas.com/…/collecting-to-remember-gre…
Senior Rosh Hashanah Luncheon
Wednesday, September 28, 11:15-1:00 PM
JCC Austin, Community Hall
Make your reservation today!
The Jewish Federation of Greater Austin Women’s Division will host this year’s Rosh Hashanah Luncheon at the JCC, 7300 Hart Lane. Services and music will be led by Rabbi Alan Freedman and Cantorial Soloist Abby Gostein from Temple Beth Shalom. Reservations are needed by today. Door to door transportation is available.
For more information or to register, please contact Annie Skelton at 512-735-8088 or annie.skelton@shalomaustin.org.
For transportation requests, please contact Julia Sparks at 512-735-8024 or julia.sparks@shalomaustin.org.
NOW OPEN: US Holocaust Memorial Museum Exhibition: “State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda”
Exhibition
UPCOMING: Public Program Wednesday, September 28
Bullock Texas State History Museum, 1800 Congress Ave, Austin
State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda is a traveling exhibition produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It examines how the Nazis used propaganda to win broad voter support in Germany’s young democracy after World War I, implement radical programs under the party’s dictatorship in the 1930s, and justify war and mass murder. This most extreme case study emphasizes why the issue of propaganda matters and challenges citizens to actively question, analyze, and seek the truth.
Public Program:
US Holocaust Memorial Museum Event – Fueling Extremism in a Wired World: The Balance of National Security and Personal Liberty
Wednesday, September 28, 7- 8:30 PM
Bullock Texas State History Museum, 1800 Congress Ave, Austin
Free
Registration Required: https://www.ushmm.org/events
In 1924, Adolf Hitler wrote, “Propaganda is a truly terrible weapon in the hands of an expert.” While digital tools are fostering unprecedented global conversation, extremists are using them to foment hate, recruit followers, and incite violence. The Museum is prioritizing this timely conversation to explore the tension between free speech, incendiary propaganda, and personal liberty. What responsibility do technology companies, governments, and individuals have to shape the reach of social media and technology to keep our world safe?
Questions/Contacts: USHMM Southeast Regional Office at 561-995-6773 or email southeast@ushmm.org