Union B’nai Mitzvah

Chaverim/ Dear Congregants,

We hope you can join us for this weekend’s very special and exciting services.  The Union brothers, Frankie and Jakob are having their B’nai mitzvah this Shabbat.  Jakob Union will lead us in songs and prayers tonight, Friday April 25 at the special time of 6:30pm.  Services will be followed by a Friday night dinner at Beth El.
Saturday morning, April 26, starting at 9 am, Frankie Union will celebrate his Bar Mitzvah.  We will have children’s services concurrent with the Torah service at approximately 9:45.
We would like to express our sincere and heartfelt Mazal Tov to the whole Union family and thank the family for sponsoring the kidushes and sharing this double simcha with us all.

Cantor Ben-Moshe’s Weekly Message:
This week we read Parshat K’doshim, which contains what Biblical scholars call the “Holiness Code”, a set of rules governing the holy life.  Interestingly to the modern mind, much of this concerns interpersonal relationships rather than ritual matters.  The Torah teaches us not to “place an obstacle before the blind”, not to curse the deaf, and to keep honest weights and measures.  Indeed, this last has been considered to be of paramount importance in Jewish Tradition.  The Rabbis taught that when a person dies and goes before the Heavenly Tribunal, the first question will not be “Did you keep kosher?”, nor “Did you observe Shabbat?”, but rather “Were you honest and fair in your business dealings?”  Our Tradition teaches that more important than our attendance to ritual is our living an ethical life.  Shabbat Shalom.   Hazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe

Community News:

Please join us Monday night as our very own Gregg Philipson,  commissioner representing the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission will be talk at the community Yom Hashoa commemoration.