Sisterhood Scoop – March 23, 2024
Volume 7 Number 11 • 13 Adar II 5784• March 23, 2024
Book Club Meets This Monday!
The Sisterhood Book Club is currently reading
Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World’s Most Contested City, by Andrew Lawler. This intriguing book explores the findings of the many archeologists who studied what lies beneath the modern city and how it all affects today’s political and social landscape.
Join us on Monday, March 25, 7:15-8:45 pm, at the home of Joyce Hochberg in Olivette.
Sharon Summers will lead the discussion. We will also be selecting our next book choices,
so bring your list of suggestions! Be sure to RSVP – ASAP!! Call or email… Joyce Hochberg at joycesing@hotmail.com, or Fran at 314-993-4024, fran.alper@outlook.com or sisterhood@nhbz.org
All women are welcome to join us!
VAYIKRA – The Pursuit of Meaning
Each of us is unique. Even genetically identical twins are different. There are things only we can do, we who are what we are, in this time, this place, and these circumstances. For each of us G-d has a task: work to perform, a kindness to show, a gift to give, love to share, loneliness to ease, pain to heal, or broken lives to help mend. Discerning that task, hearing Vayikra, G-d’s call, is one of the great spiritual challenges for each of us.
How do we know what it is? Where what we want to do meets what needs to be done, that is where G-d wants us to be.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt”l
The Pursuit of Meaning, Vayikra, Covenant & Conversation
ZACHOR: Generating Doubt
Parshat Tetzaveh usually precedes Purim, when we read the “maftir” portion describing how Amalek attacked the Jewish people as they left Egypt – even though Amalek lived in a distant land and was under no imminent threat.
So why did Amalek attack?
The Torah says that Amalek attacked the Jews “karcha” – which literally means by way of happenstance. Amalek’s entire philosophy is that there is no design or providence in the world. Everything is haphazard, dictated by chance, luck, and fate. That’s why Haman, a direct descendent of Amalek, decided to kill the Jews based on a lottery, from which the name “Purim” is derived.
Philosophically, Amalek and the Jewish people stand at opposite ends of the spectrum. Judaism believes that the world has purpose and meaning, and that G-d is intimately involved in our lives. Indeed, that is the very lesson of Purim: Even when things seem bleak, G-d is there, guiding events. With Haman’s decree, it seemed that the Jews were doomed. But then there was a dramatic turnabout.
In our own lives, to the extent we may doubt G-d’s involvement, is the extent that Amalek’s philosophy of randomness is part of us.
The Kabbalists point out the numerical value of Amalek — 240 — is the same as safek, meaning “doubt.” The energy of Amalek is to create doubts about what is true and real in this world, and of G-d’s role in directing events in the best possible way.
This concept is so important that one of 613 mitzvot is to remember what Amalek did. And that’s what we do, every year, on the Shabbat before Purim. So, let’s take this message to heart, and do our part – to fight Amalek’s idea of a random world.
– Rabbi Shraga Simmons, www.aish.com
For information or to join Sisterhood, call the NHBZ office at 314-991-2100, ext. 3, or email: sisterhood@nhbz.org
