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Weekly E-News 5785
April 4 - April 10, 2025
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Please join us as we celebrate the bat mitzvah of Emilia Mackowiak!
In honor of Emilia's bat mitzvah, kiddush will be sponsored by her grandparents, Janet & Bob Benjamin.
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Birthdays
Friday, April 4th
Meredith Bodziner, Reggie Goldstein
Saturday, April 5th
Steven Smithberg
Tuesday, April 8th
Matthew Allan, Sandra Schneider
Anniversaries
Saturday, April 5th
Marvin & Charna Cweibel
Monday, April 6th
Lisa & Benjamin Mackowiak
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Families needed for 1st & 2nd Seders!
Please call Motti if you can help.
912-352-4737
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Shabbat services & dinner
with entertainment by Eliana Light
on April 25th.
Please make your reservation now!
Dinner is $10 for adults and free for children.
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Our synagogue will be awarding scholarships to young people interested in attending a Jewish summer camp!
We are providing financial assistance to support our belief that participation in Jewish summer camp is vital to the spiritual development of our youth.
Would like to be considered for one of the AA Jewish Summer Camp scholarships? Please call the synagogue at 912-352-4737 if you need more information and to request an application.
The deadline for consideration is Sunday, April 14th.
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New Course: Intro to Talmud: The Wayward and Rebellious Child
Does the Talmud seem overwhelming and confusing? How do you even learn a page of Talmud? How do the rabbis of the Talmud look at the Torah, how do they interpret Jewish law, and is it still relevant today? Over the course of several weeks, we will learn the answers by taking a deep dive into a section of Talmud dealing with the laws of the wayward and rebellious child. Deuteronomy commands that a wayward and rebellious child be stoned to death in front of the entire community, but is that really the law? What do the rabbis have to say? Come and learn! No Hebrew or Aramaic necessary! If you are interested, please RSVP to Rabbi Gelman at Rabbi@agudath-achim.com. Class will be Tuesdays at 4:00 PM on Zoom, and Thursdays at 10 AM in person. We hope to see you there!
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Watch for date of Motti's next class. | | | | |
SHABBAT PRAYER STUDY @ 10 AM SATURDAYS
| | Ever wanted to learn a little bit more about what we say and do during our prayers? Wanted to know what prayer is in Judaism, or why we say the Mourner’s Kaddish at the end of the service, or why we stand during the Amidah? Do you have questions about our prayers, but never wanted to take a full class? Rabbi Gelman is here to help! Starting this week, after our normal Psukei Dzimrei at 9:45, every Shabbat service from 10-10:10 will be dedicated to going over a little piece of prayer knowledge. Learn the meaning of the prayers, the order of the service, and more! The Shacharit morning service will always start at 10:10 to make sure we end on time, so make sure you get to services by 10 AM to learn a little more about our prayers! | | |
We begin the third book of the Torah this week, Vayikra, with a rather unassuming sentence: ” וַיִּקְרָא אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר הֹ אֵלָיו מֵאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֵאמֹר” “And God called out to Moshe, and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying--.” In many ways, this is like so many other sentences in our Torah. Perhaps the most common sentence in the entire Torah is some version of “And God spoke to Moshe saying.” But this sentence is different. You can see it most clearly in a Torah scroll, but even in our Etz Chayim Chumash, if you open to the beginning of the parsha on page 585, you can see the word “וַיִּקְרָא” is written with a smaller aleph than the rest of the word. There’s even a little star next to the word, which takes you to a note in Hebrew that says, translated, “A tiny aleph according to received tradition.” We say that every decoration of every letter, every oddity of writing in the Torah carries some sort of meaning. Why is the aleph small at the beginning of this parsha?
There is a midrash that tells us that when God was dictating the Torah to Moshe, he told him to write the simple sentence “And God called out to Moshe.” Moshe, however, felt that to say that God called out to him, which emphasizes the unique relationship that God and Moshe had, would be too self-aggrandizing. He decided to write the word as “וַיִּקְר” Vayikar, and God happened upon Moshe, as if God and Moshe talking were just chance. God insisted that Moshe write the word as Vayikra. So Moshe obliged, but he made the aleph at the end of the word small, as if to say “I did not want to write this word.”
Who was in the right, God or Moshe? The Midrash does not answer that question. But the fact that the Torah scroll we have today keeps the small aleph tells us that both were right. The debate between God and Moshe about the aleph is truly a debate about what it means to be a leader. Moshe, who we know was a humble man, did not want to elevate himself above over prophets. He knew he had a unique relationship with God—the commentaries tell us the opening line, signaling out Moshe, exists to tell us that Aharon was explicitly excluded from this conversation--and he did not want to advertise that fact, lest it make him seem “better” than his fellow Israelites. But God wants Moshe to be proud of his abilities, to take ownership of his skills, to not let humility drown out his talent. The end result is the middle point between those two stances: Moshe writes the word, takes the credit, but keeps the aleph small. Though he knows he is good at what he does, he reminds himself that does not make him a better class of person than anyone else.
True leadership blends humility and pride. As we move about the world, it is important to recognize what we do well, and lean into our talents. We are allowed to take pride in our accomplishments. At the same time, we must be appropriately humble. We excel in some areas, and maybe struggle in others. We could not achieve everything we have done without help. Our own successes do not make us better people than those who have failed.
With just an aleph, Moshe teaches us how to be a leader. Let us follow in his footsteps, and carry ourselves with a mixture of sensible humility and self-respect.
Shabbat Shalom!
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This Shabbat
2025 | 5785
Vayikra
Candle Lighting: 7:29 pm
Havdalah: 8:24 pm
(all times are for Savannah)
Annual Torah reading: Leviticus 1:1-5:26 (Etz Hayim pp 585-605)
Triennial Torah reading: Leviticus 4:27-5:26(Etz Hayim pp 599-605)
Haftarah: Isaiah 43:21-44:23 (Etz Hayim pp 607-612)
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Service Leader Sign Up
Are you interested in leading services? Reading Torah? You can sign up on our service leader sign up sheet! If you are interested in learning how to read Torah or lead services, contact Rabbi Gelman at rabbi@agudath-achim.com.
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In Person Service Times
Tuesday: 7:30 AM
Wednesday: 8:00 AM
Friday: 8:00 AM
Shabbat: 9:45 AM
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Yahrzeits
Thursday night/Friday, April 4 – 6 Nissan
Helen Bebeman – aunt of Michael Konter
Suzanne Bernard – wife of Ed Bernard
Linda Cohen – 1st wife of Edward Cohen
Menachem Mendel Neidich – great grandfather of Linda Hoffman
Friday night/Saturday, April 5 – 7 Nissan
Bonnie Bober – mother of Haim Bober
Herman Cranman – father of Lynn Reeves & Paul Cranman,
grandfather of Kasey Berman & Morgan McGhie
Evelyn Mann – mother of Linda Sacks
Leon Stein – father of Stephanie Zerden
David Ullman – brother-in-law of Harriet Ullman
Saturday night/Sunday, April 6 – 8 Nissan
Miriam Sadik – mother of Carla Blumenthal
Monday night/Tuesday, April 8 – 10 Nissan
Meyer Karlin – father-in-law of Harriet Karlin
Emanuel Strugatch – father of Bruce Strugatch
Tuesday night/Wednesday, April 9 – 11 Nissan
Alex Epstein – father of Marlene Dobbs
Wednesday night/Thursday, April 10 – 12 Nissan
Ruth Hammer – grandmother of Preston Feiler
Irwin Klein – father of Reggie Goldstein, grandfather of Douglas Goldstein
Robert Seidman – father of Alan Seidman
Commemoration of the Yahrzeit begins the evening of the first noted date.
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Please join the community for the first ever public archival exhibit of the US State Department Apology to the Jewish refugees of the ocean liner, SS St. Louis, featuring:
- Commemorative ceremony for Yom HaShoah and the 86th Anniversary with a Proclamation of Remembrance presented to the local and state officials.
- Tour of the Exhibit with creator and curator, Robert M Krakow, Executive Director of the SS St. Louis Legacy Foundation.
- SS St. Louis passenger eyewitness accounts of the transatlantic voyage and life aboard the ocean liner on the way to Havana.
- Live Zoom engagement with surviving SS St. Louis passengers who will relate their emotional responses to the US and Canadian apologies.
- Dramatic and tearful passenger accounts of being turned away by the Cuban and US governments and the frightful prospects of having to return to Germany and face death and torture in the concentration camps.
- Recognition of the outstanding contributions the SS St. Louis passengers made to America in the fields of medicine, science, law, religion and education.
- Video from the American and Canadian apologies to the delegations of SS St. Louis passengers that attended the ceremonies in Washington, DC (September 24, 2012) and Ottawa, Canada (November 7, 2018).
- A video segment of The Trial of Franklin D Roosevelt that was performed as part of the State Department Apology Ceremony. The play explores the political motivations of FDR in refusing to assist the Jewish refugees during the prewar and wartime period.
- Special SS St. Louis artifacts section including excerpts from St. Louis Captain Gustav Schoeder’s diary describing his efforts to land the ship on the Miami coastline, newspaper coverage of St. Louis from May 27 – June 7, 1939, never before seen diplomatic exchanges between the German Foreign Ministry, the German Legation in Havana and the Cuban Secretary of State, describing the intense debate on whether the St. Louis passengers should be granted asylum by the Cuban Government
- Senate Resolution 111 passed by the Senate in 2009 to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the SS St. Louis and signed by 36 St. Louis passengers. This document is housed in the National Archives and the Museum of American Diplomatic History.
To sign up to read from the list of names of lives lost during the Holocaust during Yom HaShoah, register here:
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C094DACAE2CA7FEC07-55377635-yomhashoah#/
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Congregation Agudath Achim
Donor Dues
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Benefactor
$9,999 - $5000
Melvyn & Eleanor Galin
Leader
$3,599 - $1,800
Stephen & Annette Friedman
Patron
$1,799 - $720
Aaron & Dayle Levy
Allan & Arlene Ratner
Sherwin & Sara Robin
Sol & Stephanie Zerden
Chai Member
$719 - $360
Michelle & Matthew Allan
Gerald Caplan
Linda & Joe Cooper
AM Goldkrand
Paul & Harriet Kulbersh
Andrew & Leslie Walcoff
Michael & Linda Zoller
Supporters
$359 - $100
Lynn Berkowitz
Adam & Lauren Fins
Ted & Adelle Geffen
Doug & Lisa Goldstein
Lynn Goodman
Seth Grenald
Steve Herman
David & Gale Hirsh
Jonathan & Tova Javetz
Harriet Karlin
Michael & Suzanne Konter
Larry & Betsy Lehner
Rene Lehrberger
Steve & Linda Sacks
Victor & Elise Shernoff
Judy Todtfeld
Ed Wexler
Thanks to these donors for going above and beyond by participating in the Donor Dues Program this 2024-2025 fiscal year.
If you would like to participate by making this additional commitment, please contact the office.
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Rabbi Samuel Gelman
Morgan McGhie, President
Motti Locker, Executive Director
Congregation Agudath Achim | office@agudath-achim.com | 912-352-4737 | www.agudath-achim.com
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