Parashat Va’era – rejuvenating your Jewish soul
Are you… Looking to rejuvenate and energize your soul after a challenging and busy week? Looking to make new friends and spend time in a friendly environment? Looking to reconnect to Jewish life in a warm and inviting environment? You’re at the right place! Join us tonight, Friday January 12, at 7p.m. for song and soul filled Kabbalat shabbat.
Tomorrow morning, Saturday January 13, at 9 a.m. we have our Shabbat morning services. Torah service at around 9:45 and children’s services at 10:30. With heartfelt gratitude to Bob Miller for sponsoring a lovely kidish lunch immediately following services in memory of his late mother and our beloved friend, Marion Miller, of blessed memory!
Cantor Ben-Moshe’s weekly message:
This week’s parshah, Vaera, moves us deeper into the story of the Exodus and the beginning of the Ten Plagues. Interestingly, these plagues were all natural phenomena which could have occurred at any time. There was nothing “miraculous “ about them per se. Rather, it was our ancestors’ view of them that made them miraculous. Our ancestors saw in these natural phenomena wonders and miracles, the “Hand of God”. Rabbi Professor Max Kadushin of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America called the outlook of Judaism “normative mysticism”-that is, that we are enjoined to see everything around us as not merely physical but metaphysical as well. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called this “Radical Amazement”, the capacity to see even the most mundane things and events as wondrous. May we all cultivate that capacity in ourselves, to see the world, God’s Creation, as not ordinary but extraordinary. Shabbat Shalom.
Sunday School with the BERS resumes THIS Sunday January 14 at 10 a.m.
Candle lighting in Austin is at 5:32 p.m.
Heart-stopping Basketball Game and Camaraderie with the Men’s Club:
While the men’s club strives to model behavior for the congregation and community, they did not set the best example on their outing Wednesday night. They were up way past their normal bedtime! There was a good reason, of course. The men’s club was out for a fun evening at the UT vs TCU basketball game. The game was extremely close throughout and there were many times when UT had the lead but TCU drew close and tied the game with only seconds remaining. The game then went into overtime and the men’s club remained dedicated to the home team. The battle between the TCU Horned Frogs and the UT Longhorns was intense and extremely close. Overtime was a battle of wills and determination. But at the last second, TCU tied the score and sent the game into a second overtime. Despite pressing work the next day and a family and children at home, the men’s club stayed to support the home team. UT won the toss of the second overtime but their tall player, MO fouled out, sending dismay to the crowd. UT scored in the remaining minute with a free throw and TCU drove with seconds left on the clock. Again, men’s club remained loyal and steadfast to the house team. TCU failed with the final drive and the crowd erupted in excitement. The men’s club were very relieved that there was not a third overtime. The evening was well worth the ticket price and the company was great. Stay tuned for more great events.
Inspiring Strategic planning meeting last Sunday! Please hold the date for Sunday January 28 from 2-4 and plan to attend.
Sunday school resumes this Sunday January 14 at 10 a.m. We are so excited to welcome back our BERS.
Community News: Austin Jewish Business Network (AJBN) : Please join us to learn from Stephanie Puente, President of CoreFactor Transformative Coaching and Certified Life Mastery Consultant through the Life Mastery Institute, about “The Extraordinary Power of A Clear Vision.” This month’s meeting is January 16, 2018, at The Frisco Diner 6801 Burnet Road, Austin, TX in the glass atrium on the Burnet road side of the building.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks – Overcoming Setbacks.
At first, Moses’ mission seemed to be successful. He had feared that the people would not believe in him, but God had given him signs to perform, and his brother Aaron to speak on his behalf. Moses “performed the signs before the people, and they believed. And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped.” (Ex. 4: 30-31?)
But then things start to go wrong, and continue going wrong. Moses’ first appearance before Pharaoh is disastrous. Pharaoh refuses to recognise God. He rejects Moses’ request to let the people travel into the wilderness. He makes life worse for the Israelites. They must still make the same quota of bricks, but now they must also gather their own straw. The people turn against Moses and Aaron: “May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us” (Ex. 5: 21).
Moses and Aaron return to Pharaoh to renew their request. They perform a sign – they turn a staff into a snake – but Pharaoh is unimpressed. His own magicians can do likewise. Next they bring the first of the plagues, but again Pharaoh is unmoved. He will not let the Israelites go. And so it goes, nine times. Moses does everything in his power and finds that nothing makes a difference. The Israelites are still slaves.
We sense the pressure Moses is under. After his first setback, at the end of last week’s parsha, he turns to God and bitterly complains: “Why, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Is this why you sent me? Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all” (Ex. 5: 22-23).
In this week’s parsha, even though God has reassured him that he will eventually succeed, he replies, “If the Israelites will not listen to me, why would Pharaoh listen to me, since I speak with faltering lips?” (Ex. 6: 12).
There is an enduring message here. Leadership, even of the very highest order, is often marked by failure. The first Impressionists had to arrange their own exhibition because their work was rejected by the Paris salons. The first performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring caused a riot, with the audience booing throughout. Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime despite the fact that his brother Theo was an art dealer.
So it is with leaders. Lincoln faced countless setbacks during the civil war. He was a deeply divisive figure, hated by many in his lifetime. Gandhi failed in his dream of uniting Muslims and Hindus together in a single nation. Nelson Mandela spent twenty-seven years in prison, accused of treason and regarded as a violent agitator. Churchill was regarded as a spent force in politics by the 1930s, and even after his heroic leadership during the Second World War was voted out of office at the first General Election after the war was over. Only in retrospect do heroes seem heroic and the many setbacks they faced reveal themselves as stepping stones on the road to victory.
In every field, high, low, sacred or secular, leaders are tested not by their successes but by their failures. It can sometimes be easy to succeed. The conditions may be favourable. The economic, political or personal climate is good. When there is an economic boom, most businesses flourish. In the first months after a general election, the successful leader carries with him or her the charisma of victory. In the first year, most marriages are happy. It takes no special skill to succeed in good times.
But then the climate changes. Eventually it always does. That is when many businesses, and politicians, and marriages fail. There are times when even the greatest people stumble. At such moments, character is tested. The great human beings are not those who never fail. They are those who survive failure, who keep on going, who refuse to be defeated, who never give up or give in. They keep trying. They learn from every mistake. They treat failure as a learning experience. And from every refusal to be defeated, they become stronger, wiser and more determined. That is the story of Moses’ life in last week’s parsha and in this.
Jim Collins, one of the great writers on leadership, puts it well:
The signature of the truly great versus the merely successful is not the absence of difficulty, but the ability to come back from setbacks, even cataclysmic catastrophes, stronger than before … The path out of darkness begins with those exasperatingly persistent individuals who are constitutionally incapable of capitulation. It’s one thing to suffer a staggering defeat… and entirely another to give up on the values and aspirations that make the protracted struggle worthwhile. Failure is not so much a physical state as a state of mind; success is falling down, and getting up one more time, without end.[1]
Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner once wrote a powerful letter to a disciple who had become discouraged by his repeated failure to master Talmudic learning:
A failing many of us suffer is that when we focus on the high attainments of great people, we discuss how they are complete in this or that area, while omitting mention of the inner struggles that had previously raged within them. A listener would get the impression that these individuals sprang from the hand of their creator in a state of perfection . . .
The result of this feeling is that when an ambitious young man of spirit and enthusiasm meets obstacles, falls and slumps, he imagines himself as unworthy of being “planted in the house of God” . . .
Know, however, my dear friend, that your soul is rooted not in the tranquility of the good inclination, but in the battle of the good inclination . . . The English expression, “Lose a battle and win the war,” applies. Certainly you have stumbled and will stumble again, and in many battles you will fall lame. I promise you, though, that after those losing campaigns you will emerge from the war with laurels of victory on your head . . . The wisest of men said, “A righteous man falls seven times, but rises again” (Proverbs 24:16). Fools believe the intent of the verse is to teach us that the righteous man falls seven times and, despite this, he rises. But the knowledgeable are aware that the essence of the righteous man’s rising again is because of his seven falls.[2]
Rabbi Hutner’s point is that greatness cannot be achieved without failure. There are heights you cannot climb without first having fallen.
For many years, I kept on my desk a quote from Calvin Coolidge, sent by a friend who knew how easy it is to be discouraged. It said, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” I would only add, “And seyata diShmaya, the help of Heaven.” God never loses faith in us even if we sometimes lose faith in ourselves.
The supreme role model is Moses who, despite all the setbacks chronicled in last week’s parsha and this, eventually became the man of whom it was said that he was “a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were undimmed and his energy unabated” (Deut. 34: 7).
Defeats, delays and disappointments hurt. They hurt even for Moses. So if there are times when we too feel discouraged and demoralised, it is important to remember that even the greatest people failed. What made them great is that they kept going. The road to success passes through many valleys of failure. There is no other way.
