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Our Minyan Needs Your Help!
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Shabbat Kiddush
Join us for Kiddush on Shabbat. This is the perfect opportunity for us to experience community and get to know each other better.
Birthdays & Anniversaries
Shira Feurstein
Ian Gilenson
Alex Gilenson
Karen Meyers
Barry Sussman
Suzette Josif
Laurie Small-Levy
Janet & Marvin Chertkoff
UPCOMING EVENTS
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Saturday 4/7
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Passover Day 8
Morning Service including Yizkor 9:00 am
Guest speaker Mr. Mark Schonwetter/ Yom Hashoah observance
Minha 1:00 pm following Kiddush
8:30 pm Maariv & Havdalah for the conclusion of the holiday
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Sunday 4/8
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Hebrew School Closed
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Thursday 4/12
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Rabbi's Class 10:30 am
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Friday 4/13
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11:30 am Bible study
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Cantors' Pleas Rejected: They Pray for Dew on Saturday; God sends Snow on Monday
or maybe:
Stern Contemplates Setting Foot in the Not-So-New Yankee Stadium for the First Time for Opening Day. Blames Cantors' Lack of Efficacy for Thwarting his Plans.
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Torah Rea
ding
1074, 932 Haftarah 1316
EIGHTH DAY OF PASSOVER
A yearly tithe (ten percent) of all agricultural products must be spent by the farmer at the central religious shrine. The produce itself may be brought or it may be converted into money. Every third year an additional tithe must be distributed among the Levites, strangers, widows and orphans. In order to further assure the economic well-being of the disadvantaged, all loans are cancelled according to a seven-year cycle, and the Torah reminds us to exercise the greatest compassion and generosity when confronted with the plight of the poor. Released slaves are to be rewarded liberally for their loyalty and service. Eradication of poverty is the ideal to which everyone must aspire.
Unblemished, kosher firstborn male animals are to be brought as a sacrifice before God. Their meat is to be consumed by the farmer and his family.
We are reminded to observe the three pilgrimage festivals: Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot.
From the second scroll we read of the sacrifice offered in the Temple on Passover.
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Passover Service Schedule
Thursday April 5th: 7:00pm Evening service
Friday April 6th:
9:00 am Minchah at 1:00pm, following Kiddush
7:00 pm Ma'ariv for Shabbat and the
8th night Saturday, April 7th: 9:00 am (including Yizkor and a guest speaker) Mr. Mark Schonwetter, In observance of Yom Hashoah, a survivor who was hidden in Poland by several courageous non-Jews, will share his experiences.
Minchah at 1:00 pm, following Kiddush
8:30 pm Ma'ariv & Havdalah for conclusion of the holiday
Please wait until 9:00 pm for the Rabbi to transact the return of any Hametz that you may have "sold" through him.
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YOM haSHOAH to be Observed on the Last day of Passover
Yizkor on Pesach is only 5 days before Yom haShoah; this year Yizkor falls on Saturday, April 7. During the services--just before we rise for our Yizkor prayers, we will hear from
Mark Schonwetter,
who survived the war with his mother and sister in the Polish countryside.
Mark's message to us is especially important this year as we try to understand the ramifications of the new Polish laws making it a crime to associate Poles and Poland with the Holocaust, and role that Polish Christians played in protecting Jews, turning them in, and actively participating in acts of vandalism and destruction, bodily harm and murder.
 Mark Schonwetter feels blessed to have had a lifetime. As a young Jewish boy in Poland during World War II, he spent the war years in hiding with his mother and sister in the Polish countryside. When the war ended, the family stayed in Poland until 1957, whenthey emigrated to Israel. Due to a lack of job opportunities, Mark decided to move to the U.S. in 1961, with the backing of his mother's relatives here, and only five dollars to his name. Unable to speak English, he nonetheless obtained work at a jewelry factory, where he swept floors under the supervision of a man who spoke Yiddish. He soon learned English and rose through the ranks in five years to become the factory manager, and within five more years had the opportunity to purchase another jewelry company, Lieberfarb, which he turned into a successful wedding ring and bridal company, and owned and ran for over forty years. He took the American Dream to heart and built a life in his adopted country.
Yom Tov services begin at 9:00am on the 7th.
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New Start Time for Friday Night Services: 6:30p.m.
At its January meeting, the Ritual Committee decided to experiment, for three months, with an earlier time for our Friday evening, couple at Shabbat services. The proposal was brought to our Board of Trustees in late February, and hearing no objection, the trial run will be implemented beginning on Friday night, April 9 at 6:30 p.m. and will run through the end of June, when it will be reevaluated.
On those evenings when the synagogue hosts a Shabbat dinner, the dinner will begin at 6:00 p.m., but the service that follows will begin at 7:15p.m.
Please let Richard Schiff, chairman of the Ritual Committee, or Rabbi Stern know what you think of the time change.
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Jews in the News
It's one thing to try to take care of your own, but when you take it to an extreme like this, it has no justification. I truly hope that this comes back to burn New York State Senator Simcha Felder. It's in line with stories that we have heard about falsifying records in the school lunch program to provide additional income for yeshivot, and receiving grants for computerization in schools and communities prohibit the use of television, the Internet and computers. My personal encounter with the quality education received by Hasidic yeshiva graduate goes back decades: I tried to buy Aravot (willow branches) Hasidic teenager on the Lower East Side. He spoke no English. We conducted our business in my broken Yiddish and his fractured Hebrew (When I asked him if he spoke Hebrew, he replied, "K'Tzos"-- using the Ashkenazic pronunciation for "a little". He did not even know how to say "K'tzat").
And this is the stellar education that Simcha Felder is trying to protect from scrutiny! Shame on him!
Gaza Border
I vehemently disagree with most of the New York Times editorial, below. I'm not even sure where I should begin...
Perhaps with the numbers: 1000 wounded? After all these years have and they yet learned not to trust Palestinian casualty figures? 16 dead. Twelve of them have now been associated with one or another terrorist group. Contrast this to 400,000+ dead in Syria. How's that for moral equivalence and hypocrisy?
Israel's border with Gaza is a recognized international border.
Don't forget that in 2014, the UN's Palmer Commission ruled that Israel's blockade of Gaza was legal! And please don't forget that this ruling came from the UN!
Don't put any blame on Hamas for the situation of its citizens in Gaza! Don't put any blame on the PA for refusing to pay the utility bills for Gaza! Don't putting the blame on Egypt for keeping its border with Gaza closed!
If 40,000 people were massing on any other country's border, you know how jittery those defending the border would be. You know that that kind of organized assembly would be considered a provocation, if not an act of war.
Only blame Israel.
Never praise Israel for her forbearance or for her restraint.
What would the world-and the New York Times-have us do?
Given what goes on in the rest of the world, and what the rest of the world gets away with, there is only one word for the way Israel is treated: Anti-Semitism
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Yom HaShoah
is
this coming Thursday
Staggering!!!
The discovery of more than 1,500 artworks in a flat in Munich serves as an inconvenient reminder of one of the unresolved wrongs of the Third Reich.
The Irena Sendler Story
Kalman Aron, Whose Art Spared Him in the Holocaust, Dies at 93
The Only Jew to Survive the 1941 Odessa Massacre
Mishka Zaslavsky, 93, will never forget the massacre in Odessa, when 22,000 Jews were burned alive; 'I've been told it's not nice to say I shoved people, but that's what happened,' recounts the only survivor to escape the inferno, while his mother and siblings were murdered
Polish journalist Anna Bikont faces history in Jedwabne in her masterful new "The Crime and the Silence"
Lies My Grandmother Told Me
Safta Chaia told me many stories about what had happened to her in the Holocaust. But when I received her war-time diaries, I realized I had to doubt them all.
Seventy-four years to the day after Nazi Germany's occupation of Hungary, we are not done defending the truth of what happened in Budapest, of how Otto Komoly carried himself in the war, and whether Rudolf Kasztner's 'Blood for Goods' rescue train was a noble or morally abhorrent act
The groundbreaking scholar of Polish anti-Semitism is caught up in a toxic new nationalism that seeks to edit shameful persecution of Jews out of history
Italian Jew Saved Hundreds of Jews from the Nazis
French Film Raises Ghosts of Nazi Medical Horrors
Swiss Honor Diplomat Who Saved Thousands of Jews
NBA Great Ray Allen Is on a Mission to Educate Everybody About the Holocaust
The Holocaust Memorial Council member visits Poland
Is Ukraine's Holocaust Memorial at Babi Yar in Trouble?
Symbolic commemoration of a massacre is subsumed in national politics
New Holocaust Documentary Tells of Jewish Refugees Who Fled to China
Holocaust Survivor Breaks Decades-Long Silence to Share Her Story
Soon There Will Be No More Survivors
Watch this presentation: We say people must remember the Holocaust in the future, but we're ignoring its victims today.
Book Sheds Light on the Holocaust-Era Plight of Italy's Jewish Soccer Team Owners
Three sports pioneers, three tragic fates
Croatia Is Brazenly Attempting to Rewrite its Holocaust Crimes Out of History
An alarming and expanding wave of revisionism in Eastern Europe
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Chag Pesach Sameach from Ramah Israel
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March 2018 / Nisan 5778
Dear Friends,
Nothing is more representative of the "Pesach feeling" (yes, even more than cleaning and the taste of too-much-matzah) than "והגדת לבנך - Vehigadeta Lebincha" - the biblical advice to "Tell this to your children!" That's where the word "haggadah" comes from!
This most beautiful mitzvah refers on a basic level to the re-telling of the story of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt to one's children. However, on a deeper level, it actually encompasses the cherished and time-honored Jewish tradition of what we like to call multi-generational heritage transmission, where all traditions, values, and stories are both personalized and passed on for all ages and from all ages.
The meaningful work of ensuring that the chain of tradition continues is exactly what we at
Ramah Israel Institute
(RII) are privileged to be doing. Whether it is
school or synagogue groups
, or our annual
family bar/bat mitzvah trip
and specialized adult trips to
Poland
or
Morocco
, we pride ourselves on not only running a successful program but also connecting in an in-depth manner to the past, present, and future of the Jewish people.
Join one of our scheduled trips, or let us help you create an unforgettable customized Jewish experience. Please contact me at
betsalel@ramah.co.il
for more information.
We say at the end of the seder, "
לשנה הבאה בירושלים
- Next Year in Jerusalem." Let this be the year that this will actually come true!
Chag Pesach Sameach,
Betsalel Steinhart, Director
Ramah Israel Institute
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for more information on programs click here and
here
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