Monday, January 19, 2009
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday - School closed
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Picture Retake Day
Wednesday, January 21, 2009 and Thursday, January 22, 2009
8th grade ELAs
Registration forms due for After-School Clubs. Please note that clubs are scheduled to begin on Monday, January 26th and will take place from 3:45 pm - 5:00 pm (please see link to registration form below).
The beautiful art installation in the main entrance, in solidarity with Israel and the IDF, comprised of middle school students' art work. A yasher koach to Mrs. Meir who organized this project and the other Hebrew teachers who collaborated on it. A special yasher koach to all the students for working hard on this project.
PAW PRINT
Please see link below for the January 2009 edition of our school newspaper, Paw Print.
SAVE-THE-DATES
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 at the Waxman High School and Youth House at Temple Israel of Great Neck. Update: Students will be going to Q-Zar in Carle Place motzei Shabbat. Pick-up time is 9:30 pm from Q-Zar. Directions, etc. will be emailed directly to 8th grade families next week.
Art Auction on Saturday, January 31, 2009. This year's event will recognize the dedication to our students of Coach Alan Brent and Coach Nicollee Inguagiato (please see link to fliers below).
Mishloach Manot - Order forms are ready. Please click on link below to download and kindly submit to the main office by Friday, February 6, 2009. Thank you for your participation in this joyous mitzvah!
Salute to Israel Parade - Sunday, May 31, 2009
First Day of School for 2009 - 2010 - Wednesday, September 9, 2009
YASHER KOACH - ACTS OF CHESED
Josh Mendelowitz has initiated a campaign to raise funds for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. All monies collected for the Pennies for Parkinson's campaign will go to support research that can lead to the creation of better Parkinson's treatments. Collection canisters are located in classrooms and in the main office.
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. During the month of January, we will be collecting 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. 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!
FRIDAY LETTER
Parashat Shemot
Exodus 1:1-6:1
January 17, 2009 / 21 Tevet 5769
This week's commentary was written by Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, associate professor, Talmud and Rabbinics, JTS
The great thirteenth-century biblical exegete Nahmanides, noting that the book of Exodus is a direct continuation of the narrative that concludes the book of Genesis, asks why it is that Exodus is designated as a separate book of the Torah. He answers by observing that Genesis is the story of families, while Exodus is the story of a nation. Genesis relates the history of Abraham and his descendants, whereas Exodus begins with a description of the transformation of Jacob's clan of seventy souls into a "numerous and mighty nation," and then proceeds to delineate the events that befall it.
One of the ways that the shift from family to nation is expressed in Exodus is through the disappearance of patriarchs. After the death of Joseph and his brothers, there is no one to take their place. Israel becomes numerous but also anonymous. Moses' father, although elevated to patriarchal status by the Rabbis, is identified in Exodus simply as "a man from the house of Levi." There are women who arise to ensure that Israel will survive the cruel decrees of Pharaoh, but in the patriarchal world of the Hebrew Bible they can be only temporary saviors, not the architects of liberation.
It should not surprise us, then, that the man designated to lead Israel out of Egypt has many fathers, yet none. His biological father is mentioned briefly and then disappears from the narrative. Israel's savior is himself saved by Pharaoh's daughter, who gives him an Egyptian name, Moses. As an Egyptian prince, Moses is presumably in some sense the ward of Pharaoh. When he arouses Pharaoh's wrath, Moses flees to Midian and is taken in by Jethro, whose son-in-law he becomes. Moreover, Moses is connected to three different peoples through these three fathers. He is a Hebrew by way of Amram, his biological father; an Egyptian by way of his upbringing in Pharaoh's palace-indeed, Jethro's daughters report to him that they were saved by an "Egyptian man" (Exod. 2:19); and upon Moses' marriage, he is absorbed into a Midianite clan. Indeed it is while he is engaged in herding sheep, a primary occupation of the semi nomadic Midianites, that he encounters God at the burning bush.
At this encounter God announces to Moses that he is "the God of your father." In saying this, God is informing Moses of two things. First, Moses is being told that he has only one true father, the Hebrew father who conceived him. In a sense God is only confirming a choice that Moses had already made as a young man when he left Pharaoh's palace and went "to his brothers and witnessed their labors" (2:11). In recognizing the Israelites as his brothers, Moses had already identified himself as a Hebrew and, by implication, the son of his Israelite parents.
However, this assurance is not enough. Amram may be Moses' biological and ethnic father, but he is one that Moses has not known and will never know. Thus Moses the Hebrew is still, for all intents and purposes, an orphan. It is at this moment, therefore, that God Himself, in Amram's absence, takes on a parental role. Yes, God now tells Moses, the age of patriarchs has passed. There is no one from whom you can inherit the mantle of leadership. Therefore, as the patriarchs had done for their children, I will confer this privilege and responsibility upon you.
God assumes the role of father not only for Moses but for the entire people. When the people "were groaning under their bondage and cried out" (2:24), they had no one to whom to address their cries. God, however, hears them, and remembering His covenant with their ancestors, and seeing that they have no earthly father to redeem them, renews the covenant and becomes both father and liberator. "Then you shall say to Pharaoh," God instructs Moses, "Thus says the Lord: ‘Israel is my first-born son'" (4:22). It is not only as deity but also as Israel's father that God demands Israel's freedom from bondage.
We know, of course, how God manifests himself as redeemer through the exodus from Egypt and as renewer of the covenant at Sinai. How is God's fatherly role expressed in his relationship with Moses and Israel? I wish to suggest that at least part of the answer lies in the name God announces to Moses during the epiphany at the burning bush. When Moses asks for the name by which he should identify God to the Israelites, God replies, "Ehyeh-asher-ehyeh" (3:14). Several interpretations have been offered for this name. I am particularly struck by the interpretation offered by Martin Buber, an interpretation very much of a piece with his dialogical theology. He translates the name as, "I will be present at the time that I will present," which Buber interprets not as limiting God's presence to particular moments but rather as assuring God's ongoing presence in the future. What God offers Moses and the people is his face, his presence. As painful as the suffering of the Israelites has been, that pain has been increased sevenfold by their sense that their suffering has gone unnoticed. God now turns to them and says, "Yes, I have seen and I have heard, and I am here with you." Like a loving parent, God assures Israel that she is always in His thoughts and that He is always available for counsel and comfort.
The God of Exodus has the power to prevail over despots and over nature itself. We human beings are not so empowered. What are we to do when we encounter those who are oppressed and tortured and who cry out for help? Help them we must if we can, but our powers are less than divine; sometimes the salvation we seek to offer comes only after much time and effort, and sometimes it never arrives. What we can always offer is our presence, our assurance to those who suffer that we witness and experience their suffering and that we will never leave them to suffer alone. We can never turn away from suffering simply because we despair that we do not know how to alleviate it. The first step in diminishing the pain of others is to share it through our presence.
I am, in part, led to these thoughts by the present events in Gaza. There is a striking, though not surprising, contrast between the world's intense anguish and anger over the suffering of Palestinians as a result of Israel's incursions and its profound silence during the eight years of Hamas rocket attacks against the inhabitants of Sderot and other towns and cities in southern Israel; attacks that caused its victims to live in constant fear of death and destruction. What is galling about the contrast is not simply the skewed sense of justice and morality-not to mention the anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic sentiment-that underlies the asymmetry of these responses; rather, it is the sense that, for many in the world, Israeli suffering is invisible. The discussion of the events in Gaza is sometimes conducted as if nothing had occurred previously that could be seen as a basis for Israel's action. Indeed, one Hamas official interviewed by Robert Siegel on National Public Radio (NPR) claimed first that no rockets had ever been fired against Israel and then that if they had been launched it was the work of collaborators employed by Israel to besmirch the sterling reputation of Hamas.
I do not know how to make the rest of the world listen, but I find myself asking if I was really listening while my sisters and brothers were living under the gun for eight long years. There is no way that I could have stopped those rockets from falling, but there are countless ways that I could have told the residents of Sderot, "I see and hear your suffering and I am with you." I will never forget the example of the Israeli who arranged weekly shopping trips to Sderot. His actions helped revive to some small degree the moribund economy of the town, but just as important, his empathetic presence and the presence of others announced to those in Sderot that they were remembered.
Suffering is always with us, whether in Israel, Darfur, Tibet, Zimbabwe, or elsewhere in the world. We must decide whether we in turn care enough to be with those who suffer, through ameliorative action if at all possible, but also and at least through telling those who suffer that they are not alone. Our rabbis tell us that God has many messengers. God assures those who are suffering, "I am with him in distress" (Ps. 91:15). As God's agents of healing and repair, let us offer that gift, the gift of presence, whenever and wherever we can.
Have a Shabbat shalom,
Allan Dalfen
Upper School Principal
