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Friday LetterFriday Letter Archive | Friday Letter AlertsMIDDLE SCHOOL NEWS Parashat Beshalach Candle Lighting – 4:56 pm Havdalah – 5:57 pm
SCHECHTER GALA UPDATE FROM JENNIFER PRAVATO It is time again to start collections for silent auction prizes for the amazing Gala on March 6, 2012. I am reaching out to the Schechter community to join the committee and/or to donate items for the silent auction. Any help would greatly be appreciated. Please contact me at smarttype@verizon.net Thank you, Jennifer Pravato COMING EVENTS Wednesday, February 8, 2012 Tu B’Shvat Thursday, February 9, 2012 Yearbook ads and orders due (please click on link below for yearbook order form). Monday, February 13, 2012 Ladies Night Out at Colbeh in Great Neck @ 7:00 pm (please click on link below for informational flier/registration). Wednesday, February 15, 2012 6th Grade Parent-Student Bar/Bat Mitzvah Meeting @ 7:00 pm
TODAH RABBAH! Todah to The Brandeis School for hosting the Winter Wonderland Dance. Over 50% of our middle school students attended the dance and had a great time. We look forward to attending the Purim Dance, which will be hosted by SSSQ in March. AFTER-SCHOOL ATHLETICS SCHEDULE Please click here for CURRENT after-school athletics calendar. NOTE: All FST (Fundamental Sports Training, Westbury) practices are from 4:00 to 5:30 pm. All Cross Street practices are from 3:30 to 5:00 pm. MISHLOACH MANOT Dear Schechter Parents, We are pleased to offer Mishloach Manot/Purim Baskets to our community. Please read through the order forms (please click on link below), which include various purchasing options and the current Schechter staff list and families. Please fill out and return your completed order form with payment by February 14th, 2012 We look forward to your participation in this special mitzvah of Purim through the PA. Thank you, Schechter Parents Association SCHECHTER STUDENTS SING! We are pleased to announce that our elementary school students are participating in the Jewish Day School Video Academy Awards. This video contest awards up to $10,000 in prize money for submitted videos. Six winning videos will be selected by both public voting and expert judging. Please click on this link to watch and rate our video. Then, share it on Facebook and Tweet about us. The last day to vote is Sunday, February 5, 2012. We are especially grateful to David Lobel for co-directing and producing our video and to Elana Stern for writing the script and co-directing. Yeshar Koach to both of them! BNEI MITZVAH PROJECTS YAEL R.’S WINTER WEAR-A-THON Yael is collecting gently used coats, gloves, hats and scarves to be donated to The INN (Interfaith Nutrition Network). Kindly bring in your donated garments to the main office by Monday, January 30. Thank you (please click on link below for informational flier). Isaac B.’s Mitzvah Project Please Help Save the Earth… by donating your old rechargeable batteries and ink cartridges! For my mitzvah project for my upcoming January 2012 Bar Mitzvah, I am collecting rechargeable batteries and ink cartridges. Please drop off your rechargeable batteries and ink cartridges in my collection boxes and I will make sure that everything is properly disposed of. Rechargeable batteries will be delivered to the Town of Oyster Bay STOP (Stop Throwing Out Pollutants) Program, which recycles hazardous household and electronic waste. Ink cartridges will be brought to Staples, which will pay me $2 for each ink cartridge. With the Staples Rewards coupons, I plan to buy items that are needed by my school, Solomon Schechter, and by my synagogue, Midway Jewish Center. You can make a difference by giving me the opportunity to recycle your used rechargeable batteries and ink cartridges. In the future, please bring all hazardous materials to your town’s STOP program and bring ink cartridges to stores such as Staples or Best Buy. SAVE-THE-DATES Tuesday, March 6, 2012 – Annual Schechter Gala, honoring Jason Cury, President of the Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education, and Schechter parents Judy and Rob Hirsch, and Julie Levi and Richard Blau Tuesday, March 13, 2012 – Last day of the 2nd trimester and Purim Dance at the Solomon Schechter School of Queens (details to follow) Wednesday, March 21, 2012 – Trip to Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition (details to follow) Monday, March 26, 2012 - 6th grade Siyyum ceremony (Navi 1) Thursday, March 29, 2012 – 6th grade Siyyum ceremony (Navi 2) Sunday, June 3, 2012 – Celebrate Israel Parade. Join the school as we March up 5th Avenue, in the world’s largest show of support for the State of Israel. KIDSTUFF COUPON BOOK The valuable, family-friendly KidStuff Coupon Books are now available through the Schechter PA! Use just a few coupons and quickly save more than the $25.00 cost of the book…The coupons are valid through December 31, 2012. Remember to keep the book in your car! Our PA earns 50 percent or more profit on each book we sell! Your family earns one FREE book worth $25.00 for every 5 books you sell! Family and friends will love saving with KidStuff…They are great for gifts too! Check out all 15 valuable editions of the KidStuff Book. You will enjoy great savings from the following Long Island sampling: 1) Lord & Taylor 2) Barnes & Noble 3) Dick's Sporting Goods 4) Eastern Mountain Sports 5) Fairway 6) Golf Galaxy 7) Boomers 8) Great Wolf Lodge and many, many more!!! Allow three business days to fill KidStuff requests. Please make checks payable to SSDS PA. If you have any questions, please contact Debbie Gubin at 516-582-8612. KIDSTUFF DOES NOT PROMOTE DOOR-TO-DOOR SALES BY CHILDREN A PENNY FOR YOUR SEARCH! What if Solomon Schechter Day School of Nassau County and High School of Long Island earned a donation every time you searched the Internet? Or how about if a percentage of every purchase you made online went to support our cause? Well, now it can! GoodSearch.com is a Yahoo-powered search engine that donates half its advertising revenue, about a penny per search, to the charities its users designate. Use it just as you would any search engine, get quality search results from Yahoo, and watch the donations add up! GoodShop.com is a new online shopping mall which donates up to 30 percent of each purchase to your favorite cause! Hundreds of great stores including Amazon, Target, Gap, Best Buy, eBay, Macy's and Barnes & Noble have teamed up with GoodShop and every time you place an order, you'll be supporting your favorite cause. And if you download the SSDS/SSHSLI GoodSearch toolbar, our cause will earn money every time you shop and search online - even if you forget to go to GoodShop or GoodSearch first! COMMUNITY EVENTS - Huntington Jewish Center will be the site for a Sam Glaser concert on Sunday, February 12, 2012 at 4:00 pm (please click on link below for informational flier). - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 – 10:00 am to 12:00 pm UJA-Federation of New York • Connections This series, facilitated by experienced professionals, advises parents on how to connect with their children enabling them to raise successful, healthy, and happy children. No previous participation is necessary. Kernels of a Pomegranate: The Voice of the Storyteller At the Home of Lisa Caslow Award-winning storyteller and author Peninnah Schram will teach you how to:
- The Sid Jacobson JCC is hosting a number of workshops through the UJA Federation of New York’s Connect to Care programs and services. Please click here to learn about upcoming workshops and classes. Divrei Rav Josh Parashat Beshalach A song takes you from where you are to where you want to be. “Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians.... Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord: ‘I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously....this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him” (Exodus 14:30-15:2). Immediately following the above passage, which becomes a part of our daily tefillot, we see a second song recited by Miriam and other Israelite women. Our parasha states: “Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. And Miriam sang to them: ‘Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea’” (Exodus 15:20-21). In each case, upon seeing Pharaoh’s troops drown in the sea, and realizing, perhaps for the first time, that they were now free, the Israelites’ first reaction was to sing. This past week, in preparation for the special Kabbalat Shabbat in honor of Shabbat Shirah and the dedication of the Annette Ostrow Music Lab, I visited the music classes with the fourth and fifth grades in our elementary school, and asked them why they thought the Israelites chose to make song their first act as free people in this week’s parasha. While this may seem like a trivial question, we could imagine a scenario where the Israelites celebrated their freedom in any number of other ways, such as having a feast with food and wine, or building an altar to the God who brought them out of Egypt. However, our commentators who interpret this section of Parshat Beshalach see the act of singing as the ideal way to form community. I would like to suggest three different answers to this question given by different Torah commentators throughout the generations. In each case, the commentators saw something singularly unique about the decision to sing to God at this particular moment in the Israelites’ journey. First, the midrash points out that the song at the sea was unique because it marked the first time that any people chose to sing a song in praise of the one God. The midrash states: “From the day the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world until the day the Israelites stood on the shore of the Red Sea, no human being had sung a song to the Holy One, blessed be He, save for the Israelites… When the Israelites arrived at the sea and it was split for them, they immediately sang a song before the Holy One, blessed be He, as it says, ‘Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song’” (Exodus Rabbah 23:4). According to the Midrash, the song at the sea was unique because it was the first communal acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty, the moment the Israelites went from being merely a people to being God’s people. Second, some commentators that take a Hasidic approach to understanding the Torah text see the song as the Israelites first testament of faith to God prior to the giving of the Torah in Parshat Yitro. Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotzk, the Kotzker Rebbe, writes that the song begins with the words “this is my God” because “A Jew must first acknowledge: 'This is my God.' Only then will he choose to follow in the path of his ancestors, to exalt the God of his forbears." In order words, when the Israelites feel that they can finally attest to their beliefs about how they make meaning in this world, the only way they can properly testify to their faith is through this song. In our modern day, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel offers a similar interpretation to the Kotzker Rebbe, only Heschel argues that each of us is obligated to find our own connection to God through our rational understanding of the world in which we live. Heschel writes: “Out of his own insight...a person must first arrive at the understanding: This is my God, and I will glorify Him, and subsequently he will attain the realization that He is the God of my father and I will exalt God" (Abraham Joshua Heschel, page 242). In each case, the Israelites’ viewing this awesome miracle at the sea formed the foundation of their relationship to God, and the foundational statement of that relationship is the statement “This is my God.” By extension, any relationship that we can form with God in our own lives begins when we acknowledge God’s role as being in primary relationship to us. Finally, in a masterful commentary from his essay entitled “The Fourfold Song,” Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook writes that the act of singing itself is a spiritual act that achieves a type of unity between the human and the divine. Kook writes: “There is a person who sings the song of his soul. He finds everything, his complete spiritual satisfaction, within his soul...[Eventually,] The song of the soul, the song of the nation, the song of humanity, the song of the world-they all mix together with this person at every moment and at all times. And this simplicity in its fullness rises to become a song of holiness, the song of God...” (Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook, Orot Ha-Kodesh II, page 444). While not specifically referring to the song of the sea, one can see how Rav Kook’s understanding of the fourfold song parallels what took place in this week’s parasha. In that moment when the Israelites burst into song, they became bound together as a people who went from slavery to freedom, and to whom God sent miracles on their behalf, and thus this moment at the sea was their opportunity to attest to the guiding values and principles that would define what made the Jewish people, in some way, chosen. Although each of three approaches outlined above examine the significance of song, and the significance of the song of the sea, in different ways, each is united through an understanding that Jewish song is powerful precisely because it makes a statement about community. In certain cases, the communal statement is a national one, as in the case of the midrash where the Israelites took this opportunity to sing, for the first time, in honor of their God. In other cases, the communal statement is actually a personal one, where the Kotzer Rebbe and Abraham Joshua Heschel note how the song of the sea represents a type of credo for what defines Jewish belief. And in other cases, the communal statement is a universal one, as in the case of Rav Kook’s, where song can somehow unite everything in the world, when it happens at the right place, and at the right time. In every case, no matter the purpose, song becomes a mode of expression that brings people together for a higher purpose, one where melody is a vessel for spiritual power and force. As the text of Rebbe Shneur Zalman reminds us at the beginning, all of us have the opportunity to use song as a means of bringing the many different subgroups within our community together, whether that is through tefillah in our many minyanim at Schechter, through listening to the beautiful compositions created by students in our music classes, or simply through those peak moments where song is used to raise up the significance of an event, whether through havdalah on a Saturday night, or singing Hatikvah at a communal celebration. At every opportunity, we can use song to bring our community together for communal, individual and universal purposes, taking us from a place we are to where we want to be. Shabbat Shalom!
PDF filesYearbook Order FormMishloach Manot Order Form Yael Rogoszinski's Mitzvah Project Ladies Night Out Sam Glaser Concert at Huntington Jewish Center |
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