Friday Letter

COMING EVENTS

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Grandparent and Special Friends Visiting Day. Grandparents and special friends are invited to spend the morning from 8:30-10:30 in our Middle School and get a taste of what a day at Schechter is all about. If you have not already provided us with the addresses of grandparents or special friends that you would like to have an invitation sent to please click on the link below. Any questions regarding the day, please contact Tracy Lubin, Development Associate at 656-5500 x1220 or at tlubin@ssdsnassau.org.

Middle school boys are requested to dress in slacks or neat jeans and a collared shirt. Middle school girls are requested to dress in slacks, neat jeans or a skirt/dress (please, no leggings).

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Fifth grade Scavenger Hunt at the Glen Cove campus.

Knesset elections are coming up in the middle school!  We have very spirited candidates this year.  Good luck to all the candidates!!!

Thursday, November 20, 2008

SSDS PA Poker Night is coming up with a Texas Hold 'Em Tournament in our Jericho gymnasium.  Join other SSDS parents and friends for a great night with dinner, drinks and a chance to win great prizes including 2 flat screen TVs.  Tell your friends and family about this fun night! 

Call Matt Fineman at 212-631-8855 or e-mail mattydaddy@optonline.net to reserve your spot in the tournament which will be run by a professional organization. Entry is $180 and should be submitted to the school offices in an envelope marked "Poker Night." You will receive 10% more chips if you sign up before November 14^th. Please see link to registration flier below.

Friday, November 21 and Saturday, November 22, 2008

Shelter Rock Jewish Center will be having a special Shabbat program on Friday, November 21, 2008 and Shabbat Havdalah workshop on Saturday, November 22, 2008. Included on both evenings will be entertainment by a capella group, Pizmon and dinner (please see link to informational flier below).

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Please join the community at the Mid-Island Y JCC in Plainview at 10:30 am for a presentation of Israel on Campus: What Students and Parents Need to Know. Presentation by the international education organization StandWithUs. Please see link to flier below.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

First trimester ends.

PA FRIDAY LETTER

To receive an email alert for the PA Friday Letter, please go to link

http://www.ssdsnassau.org/parents/alerts.php for sign-up.

SAVE-THE-DATES

Boys' Basketball Tryouts on Monday, December 1, 2008 from 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm.

Girls' Basketball Tryouts on Thursday, December 4, 2008 from 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm.

Champions for Charity - Free monogrammed Lacoste Polo with every purchase at Lacoste Boutique on Thursday, December 4^th.  Up to 25% of your pre-tax purchases will be donated to Schechter if you shop between December 4th - 6th at the Americana Manhasset and Wheatley Plaza Malls.  For a Champions for Charity shopping card, please call 516-627-2277, or visit Champions for Charity.  You can also shop in advance of the fundraising event and have your items held for you.  Contact Elaine Dalfen, Development Assistant, at 656-5500, ext. 1219 for more information. Please see link to informational flier below.

High School drama production of John Cariani's romantic comedy, Almost, Maine. Thursday, December 4, 2008 @ 7:30 pm and Saturday, December 6, 2008 @ 8:00 pm. Both shows at SSDS Jericho. Call Denise Bellitti at extension 1206 for details.

Auditions for the middle school drama production of Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka Junior after school on Wednesday, December 17, 2008.

Save the Date for Our 2008 Annual Sports Night and Raffle Drawing on December 17, 2008 from 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm in our Glen Cove gymnasium (please note change of venue).  Join us to meet players from the New York Islanders, take a photo with the pros, and enjoy exciting games, an indoor barbecue, and a wonderful silent auction.  Buy your raffle tickets and sell them to friends and family for a chance to win fabulous prizes including our Superbowl XLIII package for two seats, hotel accommodations, and airfare. 

Please note: children must be accompanied by an adult.

Call 516-656-5500, extension 1220 or e-mail tlubin@ssdsnassau.org  to order raffle booklets, purchase raffles, or make reservations. 

8th grade Shabbaton January 30 - 31, 2009  Join with students from Schechter Queens, East Midwood Hebrew Day School (Brooklyn), and the Brandeis school for a fabulous Shabbat together.  Please see link to flier below.

YASHER KOACH - ACTS OF CHESED

After being moved by the stories he heard on the Washington, DC trip in September during a program by the National Coalition for the Homeless, 8th grader Jordan Liebman felt that as a school community, we could do something to help.  Jordan spoke with a representative of the Nassau-Suffolk Coalition for the Homeless to see what we as a school community can do to help.   As a result, we've begun a series of collection drives to go through the Fall/Winter months.  Throughout November, we will be collecting toiletries, soap, shampoo, lotions, etc... In December, we will be collecting socks and gloves, in January, coats and jackets, and in February, sweatshirts.  The project will culminate in February following the Nassau-Suffolk Coalition for the Homeless' "Have a Heart for the Homeless" Candlelight Vigil on February 12.  Details on our school's participation in the vigil will be coming soon.  Please help us with our monthly drives to help those less fortunate throughout the winter months.  Kol HaKavod to Jordan and the 8th grade for making a commitment to help make the world a better place.

Drop off your donated items at Michael Hirsch's office. Thank you!

Hello, my name is Nadav Gershon. I am in seventh grade and in a few weeks I will become a bar mitzvah. In honor of my bar mitzvah I am working with the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. I am trying to help raise money for Israeli soldiers. FIDF is an association that works to get funds that help ensure the well-being of Israeli soldiers. The FIDF makes a difference in the lives  of these soldiers through social, education and recreation programs. The needs of the soldiers are their first priority. The program that I am trying to raise money for is a welfare program called "Dignity". It is a program that helps soldiers pay their bills, support their families if needed and even provide food for the holidays. Some sad and hard facts that are found in the FIDF literature are:
- One out of every five new IDF recruits comes from a disadvantaged  socio-economic background and needs financial support.
- Several thousand soldiers opt to stay on their bases rather than go home on their days off simply because there isn't enough food at home to feed them.
- 11,000 soldiers have been recently classified as "soldiers in financial distress."
- Unit commanders and fellow soldiers often use their own meager salaries to help their comrades-in-arms through difficult times. 
I have chosen this charity as my bar mitzvah project because these soldiers give  up so much, some even their lives to ensure that we, the Jewish people have a Jewish state to call our own. I have been lucky to have visited Israel several times. Every time I see a soldier I get this deep heartfelt feeling of pride. My father is Israeli and he served in the Israeli army as did his father and most of the members of my family. My father speaks of his experience as a soldier with such emotion and fierce honor, it makes me so very proud of him and all the other men and women in my family. Please make a donation to this very worthy cause. Give with your hearts and help these brave and honorable young men and women. I am leaving an FIDF Tzedakah box in the main office on Lisa Eisner's desk or you can forward your donations directly to me or my mom, Sharon Gershon.

Thank you for your generous support!

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FRIDAY LETTER

Parashat Vayera

Sarah and Hagar, Mean Girls

Judith May is a member of the Judaic Studies faculty of the Solomon Schechter High School of Long Island.

Karen was a frumpy, unpopular, sad girl when the popular girls Penny and Aggie took her under their wing and coached her until she became stylish and popular.  Penny and Aggie's motives were partly altruistic and partly selfish-they felt sorry for Karen, but they also enjoyed the power of patronizing Karen.  Things spin out of control when Karen, now pretty and popular, feels empowered to act as arrogantly toward Penny and Aggie as they used to act toward her.  She assembles her own clique of friends, ditching Penny and Aggie, her former patrons. 

This story line, from the on-line cartoon "Penny and Aggie," by Gisèle Lagacé & T. Campbell, could take place in any middle or high school, even ours.  It could even take place in the Torah.

This week's parasha, Vayera, includes a story so powerful that we read it on the first day of Rosh Hashana:  the story of Hagar and Ishmael (Genesis 21).  The story began in last week's parasha.  Although God had repeatedly promised Abram that he would become a great nation (Gen 12:2, 15:5), Abram's wife, Sarai, remained barren.  In Chapter 16, Sarai proposed a solution to Abram: "Consort with my maid; perhaps I shall have a son through her" (Gen. 16:2).  Like Penny and Aggie, her motives were mixed.  Altruistically, she introduced her own rival in order to give her husband a son, but selfishly, she hoped to maintain control over her underling.  Abram acceded to Sarai's plan, Hagar conceived, and then matters spun out of Sarai's control: 

When she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was lowered in her esteem.  And Sarai said to Abram, "The wrong done me is your fault!  I myself put my maid in your bosom; now that she sees that she is pregnant, I am lowered in her esteem.  The Lord decide between you and me!" (Gen. 16:4-5)

Rashi comments on the words "her mistress was lowered in her esteem," saying that Hagar began to think that Sarai must not be such a righteous woman after all, since God had not given Sarai a pregnancy, while she, Hagar, was pregnant!  Like Karen in the comic, Hagar's newfound self-esteem grows out of all proportion, leading her to despise those who led her to her good fortune.  Sarai escalates the conflict, treating her maid so harshly that Hagar flees to the wilderness.  There she encounters an angel who sends her back to Sarai-the conflict is unresolved.  Hagar bears a son, Ishmael.

In this week's parasha, the story of Hagar returns.  Sarai, now renamed Sarah, has miraculously conceived in her old age and borne a child, Isaac.  Yet even in this moment of triumph, Sarah carries the bitterness of her first encounter with Hagar, to the extent that she cannot watch the two boys playing together.  She urges her husband (now renamed Abraham) to cast Hagar and Ishmael out. 

Sarah's cruelty is shocking.  The commentaries fall over themselves trying to justify, or at least mitigate it.  They interpret Ishmael's "playing" as mocking, lewdness, even idol worship.  But even if we accept these apologetics, Sarah's willingness to expose Hagar to hardship and possible death seems out of proportion.  Abraham's acquiescence in Sarah's plan is as deeply disturbing as his involvement in the near-death of his other son, Isaac, in the next chapter.  The story of Hagar and Ishmael is resolved only by divine intervention:  "God heard the cry of the boy, and an angel of God called to Hagar from heaven" (21:16).  God opens Hagar's eyes and she sees a well of water in the desert, saving the boy's life.

What are we to make of a story like this, in which all characters behave so badly?  We could try to justify it or explain it away.  We could relativize it, saying that standards of behavior were different back then.  Or we might turn the light of criticism on ourselves.  How often are we, like Sarah, tripped up by mixed motives that we mistakenly think are pure?  How often do we blame others for the unintended consequences of our own actions?  How often do we, like Hagar, think that we are better than others who are not so blessed as we?  How often do we, like Abraham, acquiesce to abuse?  How often is cruelty, among children, among adults, among nations, motivated by a sense of our own inadequacies?  How often is bitterness carried long past the time to let it go?  The Bible, like our own world, is replete with stories of all-too-human behavior.