שבת חקת 7תמוז 5770
Praised are you, Eternel our God, Sovereign of the universe, for giving us life, sustaining us, and enabling us to reach this season. Shehecheyanu is a blessing that is recited whenever a Mitzvah is performed for the first time. The blessing expresses thanks to God for sustaining us and bringing us to this day. A Mitzvah is a commandment.
Welcome to JFC (Jewish Family Congregation of South Salem, NY). We are honored and delighted that you are here to celebrate Jacob's Bar Mitzvah with us. Today we are witnessing Jacob's first steps as a responsible adult in the Jewish community. He will lead the service and be called to the Torah for the first time in front of all of you. This will mark the beginning of his life as an adult in the community, and the time when he becomes accountable for the choices he makes.
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WELCOME! Welcome to the Jewish Family Congregation. JFC was established in 1981 and moved into this beautiful Stanford White building in 1995. This building was formely the RenĂŠ Chardin restaurant. Our sanctuary was recently remodeled. JFC is a reform congregation. It is a warm, welcoming, family-oriented congregation that has well deserved its name, where our family has found a spiritual home to complete not only religious education for all of us, but also to compensate for the geographical spread of our biological families. Today we celebrate that Jacob can now, like millions of Jews for over forty centuries, read from the Torah and be part of a minyan. A minyan is the required quorum of ten Jewish adults over the age of thirteen, to conduct a service. Jacob will, from now on, be considered a Jewish adult and will have to assume the obligations that go with being Bar-Mitzvah "son of the commandment" or otherwise said "commandment accountable": he will now be obligated to fulfill the religious, moral and ethical commandments of the Jewish faith. As a Bar Mitzvah, Jacob will read from the Torah, the five Books of Moses, for the first time in public. Each week, every Jewish congregation in the world reads the same passage from the Torah. Thus we are connected to one another and to those who came before us. Jacob's passage is from the Book of Numbers, Parashat Chukat, Chapter 20 verses 1 through 21. A copy is included in this booklet. He will share his study of this passage, and a lesson that can be drawn from interpreting it, and also relate to books he had to read to prepare for this day. Reading from the Torah is the centerpiece of the Bar Mitzvah ceremony. It involves a tremendous amount of preparation. Not only, Jacob had to learn Hebrew, beginning with the alephbet (alphabet), that reads from right to left, but he also had to read from the Torah scroll, where the helping signs that represent the vowels are absent. He then had to learn to chant, and he will do so without the help of the cantilation signs or tropes (musical notation) that are also absent from the scroll. The Torah scroll contains no vowels nor punctuation. For twenty four weeks, Ruth Ossher, Jacob's tutor, monitored closely how he learned and prepared for this chanting today. -2-
TODAY'S SERVICE The Mishkan T'filah, our prayer book, includes readings in Hebrew and transliterated prayers, as well as the English translations. The Service is divided into five sections: • • • • •
The Introductory Prayers and the call to worship The Central Prayers of the morning service The Torah Service, including the weekly Torah reading The Aleinu, a prayer praising God The Kaddish, a very powerful prayer in ancient Aramaic that is meant to magnify and sanctify God's name, even in the face of death.
Jacob will assist Rabbi Carla Freedman in leading the service. All are welcome to wear the traditional head covering called in Hebrew a Kippah (plural Kippot). Only Jewish adults can wear the traditional prayer shawl, or tallit (tall-eet). We are told in the Book of Numbers to wear fringes on the four corners of our garments as a reminder of the commandments or mitzvot. Jacob is going to wear his tallit for the first time today. Most of the service this morning is conducted in Hebrew, the language of Jewish prayer for thousands of years. We stand for our most important prayers, whenever the curtain of the Ark is open, or when the Torah is carried or lifted for us to see. As a very special treat today, lots of our service will be enlivened by the JFC choir. This is not a concert, and everyone is welcome to join and participate in the congregational singing. If you can't sing, you are expected to clap your hands when requested. While you may feel the urge to applaud after Jacob completes his Torah portion or his drasha (his speech), please refrain. The temple is a sanctuary and this is a religious service. Please save your applause for after the service. There will be plenty of opportunities then. In the JFC tradition, we encourage everyone to read, to sing and to rejoice in participating in the service. Please take this booklet and a kippah, as mementos of Jacob's Bar Mitzvah! -3-
THE TORAH The Torah is considered the most precious possession of the Jewish people. In it are the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, constituting the foundation of Judaism. The Torah documents our faith's essential stories, commentaries, teachings, ethics, doctrines, laws, customs, holidays and ceremonies. The Torah is also a legal document, dictating the terms of a Jew's covenant with God and the rules of how to live morally with others in the world. The commandments of the Torah, its statutes and regulations, cover the entire range of human and social behavior. Every Torah writing is an act of love and long devotion. A sofer, or scribe, specially trained in the writing of Torah, spends typically a year of his life or more writing a single scroll. The sofer writes in black china-ink on white parchment calf leather. The sheets of parchment are sewn together to form a single scroll several yards long. It is then attached to two wood poles and rolled to the center. Each Torah has its own history. The Torah scroll Jacob will read from this morning originated in a Czechoslovakian town called Brno. Written in 1838, the scroll was the focus of Brno's synagogue for over a century, where it was used at every religious event, and meticulously restored over the years as time and love took its toll on it. During World War II, Hitler's army invaded the town, decimated the Jewish community of Brno and confiscated the Torah scrolls. The Nazis, who usually destroyed Torahs and other Jewish artefacts, decided to keep this one to add it to what they had planned to become a collection for the future, a commemoration of the Third Reich's great triumph, in the form of a museum of "Extinct Religions and Races". Our Torah, like many others, was tossed into a truck and sent to Prague. There, it was tattooed on the bottom of one of its rollers with an identifying number, tagged with a swastika and heaped into a pile of scrolls. -4-
Several years after the war, Arthur Weil, an American, discovered over a thousand five hundreds Torahs in a warehouse in Prague. In 1964, after years of negotiations, the government of Czechoslovakia released 1565 of the scrolls. They were sent to the Westminster Synagogue in London where they were catalogued, cleaned and restored by scribes. Each Torah received a small brass plaque to identify its origin. And so our Torah links us in a continuous chain with those who have gone before us. It is a living testament to the endurance of its great oral teachings, the tenacity of the Jewish people, and the human ability to triumph over adversity. The tattooed number of 1242 is still visible on the bottom.
Jacob holding the yad to follow in the Torah scroll while chanting from parashat Chukat .
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SHARING THE HONORS It is considered an honor to be called to participate in the Torah service. On the occasion of a bar-mitzvah, we generally call family or close friends to recite the blessings before and after the Torah readings. The reader is called the baal-koreh (master of the reading) and he actually chants on behalf of the person(s) who have recited the blessings. Being called to the Torah is known as having an aliyah (al-ee-yah), which literally means "going up". Lifting and dressing the Torah (hagbah/g'lila) is also considered an honor. And of course, carrying the Torah around the congregation before the reading, is also an honor. Today, Jacob will be maftir, or the person who concludes. He will chant on behalf of six groups of honorees, and then be called himself for the first time and read the last aliyah of his Torah portion as an adult counting in the community of Jewish adults. He will also read the Haftarah, a section from the books of Prophets, which was matched to specific Torah portions by the early rabbis, at a time (second century BCE) when the ruling Syrians had forbidden the Jews to read from their Torah. Selections from the Prophets were at the time substituted for the Torah portion in order to circumvent the interdict. Even after the Jews restored their Temple, the tradition of reading Haftorah remained, and it today symbolizes our freedom of religion.
HONORS Torah Carrier First Aliyah Second Aliyah Third Aliyah Fourth Aliyah Fifth Aliyah Sixth Aliyah Maftir Hagbah and G'lila
Mark Albert Ted Goldberg Lisa Block, Daniel & Ted Bloch Liza, Peter, Jason, Sam, Jacob Breslin Jane, David, Andrew, Matthew Emmer Kathy, Paul, Jon, Daniel Storfer Laurence & Joseph Furic-Leibovici Jacob Furic-Leibovici Rona & Aviva Salpeter -6-
Numbers Chapter 20 1 The whole Israelite community arrived in the desert of Zin in the first month, and the people settled at Kadesh. It was here that Miriam died, and here that she was buried. 2 As the community had no water, they held a council against Moses and Aaron. 3 The people contended with Moses, exclaiming, "Would that we too had perished with our kinsmen in Adonai'S presence! 4 Why have you brought Adonai'S community into this desert where we and our livestock are dying? 5 Why did you lead us out of Egypt, only to bring us to this wretched place which has neither grain nor figs nor vines nor pomegranates? Here there is not even water to drink!" 6 But Moses and Aaron went away from the assembly to the entrance of the meeting tent, where they fell prostrate. Then the glory of Adonai appeared to them, 7 and Adonai said to Moses, 8 "Take the staff and assemble the community, you and your brother Aaron, and in their presence order the rock to yield its waters. From the rock you shall bring forth water for the community and their livestock to drink." 9 So Moses took the staff from its place before Adonai, as he was ordered. 10 He and Aaron assembled the community in front of the rock, where he said to them, "Listen to me, you rebels! Are we to bring water for you out of this rock?" 11 Then, raising his hand, Moses struck the rock twice with his staff, and water gushed out in abundance for the community and their livestock to drink. 12 But Adonai said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you were not faithful to me in showing forth my sanctity before the Israelites, you shall not lead this community into the land I will give them." 13 These are the waters of Meribah, where the Israelites contended against Adonai, and where he revealed his sanctity among them. 14 From Kadesh Moses sent men to the king of Edom with the message: "Your brother Israel has this to say: You know of all the hardships that have befallen us, 15 how our fathers went down to Egypt, where we stayed a long time, how the Egyptians maltreated us and our fathers, 16 and how, when we cried to Adonai, he heard our cry and sent an angel who led us out of Egypt. Now here we are at the town of Kadesh at the edge of your territory. 17 Kindly let us pass through your country. We will not cross any fields or vineyards, nor drink any well water, but we will go straight along the royal road without turning to the right or to the left, until we have passed through your territory." 18 But Edom answered him, "You shall not pass through here; if you do, I will advance against you with the sword." 19 The Israelites insisted, "We want only to go up along the highway. If we or our livestock drink any of your water, we will pay for it. Surely there is no harm in merely letting us march through." 20 But Edom still said, "No, you shall not pass through," and advanced against them with a large and heavily armed force. 21 Therefore, since Edom refused to let them pass through their territory, Israel detoured around them.
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Judges Chapter 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Then he sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites to say, "What have you against me that you come to fight with me in my land?" He answered the messengers of Jephthah, "Israel took away my land from the Arnon to the Jabbok and the Jordan when they came up from Egypt. Now restore the same peaceably." Again Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites, saying to him, "This is what Jephthah says: Israel did not take the land of Moab or the land of the Ammonites. For when they came up from Egypt, Israel went through the desert to the Red Sea and came to Kadesh. Israel then sent messengers to the king of Edom saying, 'Let me pass through your land.' But the king of Edom did not give consent. They also sent to the king of Moab, but he too was unwilling. So Israel remained in Kadesh. Then they went through the desert, and by-passing the land of Edom and the land of Moab, went east of the land of Moab and encamped across the Arnon. Thus they did not go through the territory of Moab, for the Arnon is the boundary of Moab.
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We Give Special Thanks to: Rabbi Carla Freedman, who welcomed our family to the JFC community. Her wisdom and her passion for Judaism can only be matched by her open mind and heart and are the best role model for us • Cantorial Soloist Kerry Ben-David, who constantly shares his love of music and kavanah • The JFC Adult Choir under the incredible direction of Kathy Storfer, with the upbeat performances of Paul Storfer, David Kane, and our magical accompanist Barbara Orwick • Michael Horwitz who composed some of the pieces you heard the choir sing: V'haheir eineinu, Sh'ma, V'shamru and Sim Shalom specifically for our congregation • Ruth Ossher for her relentless and patient teaching of Jacob's Torah and Haftarah portions • Leslie Gottlieb for her constant encouraging and coaching during all these years of religious school • Linda Paulding for her gentle teaching who taught Jacob his first steps in Hebrew and gave him passion for the ancient biblical language • Jane Emmer for her support, love and enthusiasm and for having introduced Jacob to Eisner Camp •
David Emmer, Liza Breslin, Peter Breslin, Jason Breslin, Patti Juliana, Meredith Juliana, Jamie Kaplan, Jolie Levy, Johanna Perlmann, Fern Tannebaum, Debra Cohen, Dayna Kaplan, Jennifer Gramigna, Sue Kaufman, all of you who have helped us in one or another capacity and without whom this celebration would have never been possible. •
AND OF COURSE Huge Thanks to all of You who attended Jacob's bar-mitzvah and shared with joy and pride: we are truly blessed to have you all as our friends With love and appreciation, Laurence, Joseph & Jacob Furic-Leibovici
Credit Cover Illustration: Gustave Doré (1832-1884)
images are in the public domain -
Moses striking the rock