Parashat Shemot

Friday Night Shabbat Services, Tonight 1/01, at 7 PM. We hope you can join us for uplifting and sprited singing. Great way to keep your New Year’s resolution of going to shul more.

Please keep Marion Miller in your thoughts and prayers as she is currently at Seton Hospital Main battling illness. We wish the whole Miller family strength in this difficult time.

Our next Saturday morning services are January 9, at 9 AM. The Kidush is kindly sponsored by Audrey and Barry Mann. We will be honoring Phil and Keren Harvey as they embark on their journey of making aliya to Israel and wish them all the best!

Cantor Ben Moshe’s Message
This week we begin Sefer Sh’mot with the parshah of the same name. Pharoah(possibly Seti I) decides that the Israelites need to be enslaved, so he makes them out to his people to be a threat, and is thereafter able to oppress them with the cooperation of the Egyptian people. After our ancestors’ liberation from Egypt, the Torah commands us to refrain from oppressing strangers, for we knew what it was like to be an oppressed community of outsiders. We need not look so far back, either. During the 1930’s and 40’s, Jewish refugees from Europe were barred from entering the United States, ostensibly out of fear that they might be Communist infiltrators. We know that feeling all too well-and God commands us in the Torah to act compassionately towards the strangers and outsiders. To support and comfort demonized ethnic groups is not only our best interest, but in the best tradition of the Jewish People. Shabbat Shalom.
Hazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe

We will resume Sunday Fundays, a.k.a. Sunday School on January 10 at 10 AM. So much to look forward to including Jungle Yoga walk on Sunday January 24 with Yoga instructor Mirit Solomon-Shimoni and more.

Rabbi Tarlow’s Weekly Parasha from the Center for Crypto Jewish studies:
Appropriately enough, we begin a new year with a new book of the Bible. This week we begin our yearly reading of “Sefer Shmot” or as it is known in English translation: “The Book of Exodus.” Just as each year brings new opportunities and challenges, the same can be said for each book found within the Hebrew Bible. Exodus is a perfect example of a book that is both a continuation of Genesis and also a very different book from Genesis. In this election year it reminds us that the consequences of past mistakes become the problems of the next administration. Reading Exodus carefully the text seems to indicate that we are partners with G’d in the shaping of history, and due to a God-Human partnership, time is a river flowing toward goals. Exodus argues that humans play a role in history’s direction. This second book of the Bible takes us from slavery toward liberation. The Hebrew reader will note the subtle clues in Exodus to humanity’s political empowerment. For example note the book’s name: Sefer Shmot does not mean The Book of Exodus, but rather the “Book of Names.” In Hebrew Scripture having a name is more than a mere sign of life. For our ancestors, names meant existence, and not to have a name was to be less than human. To give a name is to have power and purpose. Adam, symbolizing humanity, becomes human when he names the animals. G’d does not name the animals, Adam does, and in so doing changes nameless creatures into specific groups of animals. On the other hand, fascist regimes turn people’s names into numbers as a dehumanization method. We see a hint of the importance of names in the latter chapters of Genesis, the angle changes Jacob’s name to Israel, and Joseph in his flight toward assimilation changes his name from a Hebrew name to an Egyptian name. Names, in the Hebrew Bible symbolize the person or groups relationship with the world.Modern politicians continue to use names as weapons, they often speak of allies with specific names and generalize enemies’ names. The importance of names is underscored in the parasha’s first verses: VaYakam Melech Chadash al-Mitzrayim shelo yada et Yosef/there arose a knew king over Egypt who did not know Joseph.” Note the interplay here: “the Pharaoh” did not know (of) Joseph and we, the reader, do not know who the Pharaoh is. Pharaoh has ceased to be a person and instead has turned into a political position. Might the text be indicating that dehumanization begins when we cease to know our enemy’s name, when our enemy is reduced to a concept or a generalization instead of a human being?

Community News: Grand re-opening of the Austin Community Mikveh: Save the Date. Sunday January 17 at noon