Dear Friends,

According to an important statement in the Shulchan Aruch, the most influential and authoritative code of Jewish law, a Jew “should begin inquiring into the Laws of Pesach 30 days before Pesach.” The main reason, of course, is that the laws of Pesach are numerous, complex, and famously stringent, and so we are allotted an entire month to get back up to speed. But an added dimension, not to be missed, is that beginning to study the laws of Pesach 30 days before the Seder also means beginning to study the laws of Pesach immediately after Purim, on the 15th of Adar, a feature of the Jewish calendar that places Purim in direct conversation with Pesach and that I’ve always found adds a powerful ritual and theological valence to pre-Pesach preparations. 

Like the laws of Pesach, the connections between Pesach and Purim–ritually, theologically, and spiritually–are many and complex. (We’ll explore more of those connections this coming Shabbat.) But the central theme it seems to me–communicated in the Shulchan Aruch in terse, elegant legal language–is that we are supposed to move immediately from the most lawless Jewish holiday to the holiday that is the most ardently legal. Purim is about randomness and God’s absence. Pesach is about order and God’s intense presence. On Purim we inhabit a world in which God does not save us and, indeed, does not seem to care about our struggles. On Pesach we experience God’s direct salvation. On Purim we are allowed to bend the law (the Shulchan Aruch, for example, specifically permits cross-dressing and playful stealing on Purim, two things which are traditionally forbidden). On Pesach, our joy comes precisely in the context of fulfilling manifold laws, which is construed as ultimate freedom. 

This juxtaposition is no accident and it speaks, I believe, to the great wisdom of the ancient rabbis who fixed our calendar. It is an extraordinary thing to define our inevitable experiences of doubt, alienation, randomness and brutality as inside the tradition rather than as external to it. Purim does that for us. Similarly, it is truly remarkable that our tradition asks us to live, however briefly, like children again, confident that we are held and will be saved by a strong hand and an outstretched arm. Pesach does that for us. And by asking us to begin preparing for Pesach immediately after Purim–and therefore to imagine God’s salvation immediately after God does not save us–we are reminded that the seeds of a better, brighter reality are sown already in the darkness, just as spring does invariably follow winter. 

Brachot,

Rabbi Benjamin Resnick 

Ben

"And you shall tell your child on that day, saying, 'This is what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt'." — Exodus 13:8

In just a few weeks, we will celebrate Passover and read from the Haggadah. The word “Haggadah” comes from the Hebrew verb Lehagid, meaning “to tell.” It represents the most important mitzvah (commandment) of the Passover Seder: "And you shall tell your child—vehigadeta levincha." We are commanded to retell the story of Passover—the story of our liberation from slavery to freedom. We share how a group of slaves became a free nation with a unique relationship to the Divine.

The Haggadah enables us to retell this story on multiple levels. It engages all of our senses to convey the core values and beliefs of Judaism. Through smells, tastes, songs, gestures, and visual representations, the Haggadah helps us reflect on the Divine's power to guide us, both individually and as a people. By experiencing the Seder year after year, from childhood to old age, we are reminded of the ongoing journey toward redemption.

The 15 steps of the Seder are more than rituals; they hold deep symbolism. In Hebrew, the number 15 corresponds to the letters Yud and Hei, which are part of G-d's sacred name. Jewish mystics view these 15 steps as a spiritual ascent toward the Divine. Striving to walk these steps, or Simaney Haseder, reflects our quest for connection with God.

The Seder plate is another tool to tell the story of the Exodus. Through symbolic foods—each with its color, shape, taste, and appearance—the plate offers a sensory journey. We are reminded of the bitterness of slavery, the sweetness of freedom, and the tears of the oppressed. It also connects us to the seasonal renewal of Spring, both in nature and for the Jewish people. These timeless concepts are meant to be understood at every stage of life.

Freedom is a fundamental human right and privilege. Passover encourages us to remember our own liberation, honor our freedom, and advocate for social justice in all times and places. Above all, we reaffirm the deep connection between our people and the Divine, who led us out of Egypt.

The Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, also means “narrow places.” In this sense, G-d didn’t just take us out of a geographic location; He liberated us from a spiritual condition of narrowness. To be truly free, we must break free from our limitations—both physical and mental.

Matzah, the unleavened bread we eat during Passover, represents this idea. It’s flat, without air or ego. It reminds us of the humility we need to embrace as we begin our journey toward freedom. Just as matzah has no leavening, we are encouraged to strip away the excess baggage in our lives—material possessions, inflated egos—and start fresh, seeking our own redemption.

The Passover story is a metaphor for a new beginning. Just as Spring brings new life to nature, Passover invites each of us to press "restart" on our personal journey. From the first day of Passover to Shavuot, when the Jewish people received the Torah at Sinai, we have 50 days to grow spiritually. We transition from the flatness of matzah to the fullness of freshly baked bread, symbolizing our growth and progress.

By participating in the Passover Seder, we renew ourselves collectively. The Seder allows every member of the community—young and old—to engage in this process of renewal. Through the songs of our ancestors, we pass down our traditions, ensuring that future generations will continue the cycle of spiritual survival and growth.

The Seder begins with a question: "What is different tonight?" This question invites us to reflect on how we’ve changed since last Passover. Who is around the table with us this year? Who is missing? What has changed in each of us? This process of questioning and reflection is central to the Seder and to our personal growth.

At the Learning Center, we will celebrate our Model Seder on Thursday, April 3. We invite parents and grandparents to join us as we ask questions, search for answers, and explore the many lessons of the Passover story, discovering new meanings every year.

Unfortunately, we still have 59 of our brothers held captive in the dark tunnels of Gaza by Hamas. We hope, as we all celebrate our Seders, that the hostages will soon be able to enjoy freedom with their families, both the living and those who need to be brought home for burial in Israel.

Wishing you all a meaningful and joyous Passover!

Ana

Toasted

"Just about everything tastes better toasted."

One reason is the physics of the Maillard reaction. But more than that, I think, is the realization that toast is:

. Custom made (for you)

. Made with care (so it doesn't burn)

. Ephemeral (cold toast is worthless)

Here's a little treat, something extra I did that wasn't necessary, for you, right now, here, I made this.

I wonder what else (ideas, services, products, relationships) could be toasted?

Just about everything, I think.”

Seth Godin in “What Does It Sound Like When You Change Your Mind? ”says that

the Maillard reaction is a “non-enzymatic browning reaction that occurs when amino acids and reducing sugars react at high temperatures, resulting in the formation of complex flavor compounds and brown color in food”.

In more user-friendly terms, this basically means when we make toast, or prepare anything else raw in nature, there is a chemical process that transforms the rough ingredients into something warm, flavorful and delicious. This made me wonder about other definitions of toast, such as I’m toasted (drunk) or to give a toast (raise a glass).

Looking for some historical context, I learned that these references actually

stem from the ancient practice of adding toasted bread to beverages, particularly wine, to make the drink drinkable or in other cases, to make the bread edible.

Short speeches became associated with the practice of having drinks and such was born the expression of giving a toast. This fits, taking something rough or unfinished and with care, making it better.

It’s harder to explain the term “I’m toast” (done, finished). Best I could find was that this was first uttered in the original Ghostbusters. According to Grant Barrett, the head lexicographer of Dictionary.com, Bill Murray ad-libbed the line “This chick is toast.” 10 years later the reference showed up in the New York Times and it stuck.

We are experiencing raw times. But we can toast our way through them. Little things will help. Don’t tune out. Pick a cause. Be heard. Vote Mercaz in the WZC election. You have until May 4. Take care of the people around you. Stay warm inside and out. Live toasted. 

Lisa

Dear Friends,

We've selected Professor Josh Lambert to be our Scholar-In-Residence the weekend of October 24-25th 2025. Josh will join us for a community dinner Friday evening, give the drash on Shabbat, discuss the Jewish short story and sign books after Havdalah at Rabbi Resnick's home.

Josh Lambert is currently the Sophia Moses Robinson Professor of Jewish Studies and Comparative Literature at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. I have studied Jewish short stories with Professor Lambert under the aegis of My Jewish Learning and found him to be a fascinating speaker. He researches the background and times of the authors he teaches and comes up with surprising tidbits and insightful commentary.

Professor Lambert researches, writes and teaches at the intersection of Jewish studies and American literary cultural studies. As a researcher, Professor Lambert seeks out areas in which Jews and Jewishness play important and understudied roles in the development of U.S. culture. He aims to help specialists in Jewish Studies and American Studies, as well as a broader reading audience, understand 19th-, 20th- and 21st-century cultural history in complex and rigorous ways.

His books Unclean Lips (NYU, 2014) and The Literary Mafia (Yale, 2022) each take up a different area in which Jewishness profoundly shaped the direction of modern and contemporary life in the U.S. -- in the former, he discusses questions of obscenity and sexual representation, and in the latter, he discusses development of the book publishing industry.

I look forward to studying with Professor Lambert and hope you will find his perspective on Jewish short stories and American culture as interesting as I do. Closer to the time of the Literary Speaker weekend, we will announce the short stories that Professor Lambert will be discussing so you can read ahead if inclined to do so - it's not an assignment!

Barbara

Lolita at Leonard's of Great Neck and Other Stories

by Shira Dicker

These surprisingly intimate Jewishly-redolent stories take me back to the 1960's and my adolescence in Queens, NY. Although the author is ten years my junior, she captures the flavor of the life of a middle class, Jewish teen growing up as mores change. In my youth, Leonard's of Great Neck was where B'nei Brith girls went to meet Jewish boys.

Dicker's five compelling stories sweep the reader along on a uniquely Jewish journey from 1974 through the first decade of the new millennium as the characters wrestle with identity, independence, ambition, sexuality, faith, and love.

Eighteen-year-old Anna, a Jewish college student, meets a German businessman at a Greek diner on Queens Boulevard. Claire Seltzer of Great Neck has the honeymoon from hell in Paris. Rebecca, a spunky eighth grader, is in love with Mr. Miller, her math teacher. Sarah Reinhardt, the wife of a celebrity doctor living in Central Park West, finds herself in a complicated love triangle. Rachel Rosensweig awakens one morning to find that her husband of thirty years, a Columbia professor, has become a dangerous radical.

The characters of this unforgettable collection inhabit the golden era of the postwar, pre-pandemic world. Age-old power struggles—between lovers, between friends, between parents and children—are illuminated and analyzed. Heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious, their stories disclose and document what it meant to be American, Jewish, and female. Rich with cultural touchstones and reference points, they are suffused with self-awareness, longing, and sensual awareness.

Barbara

Something Rotten



The PJC

Players



On Sunday, March 17, our PJC Players performed the comic musical "Something Rotten". "Welcome to the Renaissance" endearingly sung by the Minstrel, Michael Weissman, brought the audience back in time to the 1600's.

Marc Shepherd, as Nick Bottom, set the tone of the play with the clever refrain, "God, I Hate Shakespeare". Lori Weber enthusiastically seeks marital equality in her beautiful rendition of "Right Hand Man". Her hapless husband, Nick Bottom, is trying create a play to compete with William Shakespeare.

The idea for the creation of the first "musical" misguidedly called "Omelet" by the black-cloaked seer Nostradamus (Joel Serebransky), along with Nigel Bottoms, Jonathan Schulman (twin of Jeremy), introduces the audience to the madcap plot.

Marc Shephard belted out the comic "Bottom's Gonna Be On Top". Jeremy Schulman played the conceited William Shakespeare in the hilarious number, "Hard To Be The Bard". The Troupe, played by Liz Tzetzo and David Ploski petitioned the glamorous Lady Clapham, (Marjut Herzog), to sponsor the misguided "Omelet" play. The lovers, Portia, (Sari Schulman) and Nigel, (Jonathan Schulman), are menaced by Portia's father, Brother Jeremiah, played by Marshall Jaffe channeling the pastor, Arthur Dimmesdale from "The Scarlet Letter". The choreography was cleverly danced and directed by Mira & Davi Schulman. And, the keyboardist, Jenny Xu stood in for an entire band and expertly turned the play into a musical.

Intermission was highlighted by Danishes served in the library, a sly move for a play that owes a lot to Hamlet. Omelets also might have worked.

Directed by the multi-talented, Sari Schulman, "Something Rotten" tickled the fancy of the audience. As an extra treat, the audience was asked to note all the allusions to Shakespeare's plays and modern musicals. Attendees laughed and clapped enthusiastically, finding the show "Better than The Book of Mormon".

Barbara

Lori Weber

Recital

Library Scene

by Robert Pinsky



Under the ceiling of metal stamped like plaster

And below the ceiling fan, in the brown lustre

Someone is reading, in the sleepy room

Alert, her damp cheek balanced on one palm.

With knuckles loosely holding back the pages

Or fingers waiting lightly at their edges.

Her eyes are like the eyes of someone attending

To a fragile work, familiar and demanding--

Some work of delicate surfaces or threads.

Someone is reading the way a rare child reads.

A kind of changeling reading for love of reading,

For love and for the course of something leading

Her child's intelligent soul through its inflection:

A force, a kind of loving work or action.

Someone is reading in a deepening room

Where something happens, something that will come

To happen again, happening many times

As she is reading in as many rooms.

What happens outside that calm like water braiding

Over green stones? The ones of little reading

Or who never read for love, are many places.

They are in the house of power, and many houses

Reading as they do, doing what they do.

Or it happens that they come, at times, to you

Because you are somehow someone that they need:

They come to you and you tell them how to read.

"Share a Simcha" allows congregants to share their news with our PJC community. Please submit news about family members -- engagements, births, job updates, kid achievements, community acknowledgements and any other milestones -- to the HaKol Editor, Barbara Saunders-Adams.

. Mazal Tov to our March Birthday Celebrants:

Daviel Schulman, Julia Myerson, David Sasson, Daniel Levitz, David Yelsey, Brian Katz, William Mazur, Hildy Martin, Patricia Levinson, Alex Jacobson, Donna Weissman, Glyn Morgan, Phillip Jaffe, Mark Levine, Lilyan Pauley, Romy Kushnick, Melissa Kagan, Marcela Hoffer, Marshall Jaffe, Irina Dynov, Timothy Singer, Reid Singer, Alex Adou, Aviva Malkis, Jeremy Schulman, Matthew Schwarz, Michael Glickman, Joel Serebransky, Nicole Sasson, Jonathan Liesman, Madison Cohen, Sam Charney

. Mazal Tov to the Israelis released from Gaza this month: Abera Mengistu, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Weinkert, Hisham al-Sayed, Eliya Cohen and Tal Shoham

Share a Simcha is a regular HaKol feature, so keep your news and updates coming!

Tributes

Donations to the General Fund

• Lisa and Andy Neubardt

Thank you to all those who support the synagogue through the Purim Mishloach Manot Fundraiser (FUN-raiser?!!)

Maria Abeshouse

The Antar-Charnam Family

Spencer & Ronnie Barback

Alec Cecil & Diane Zultowsky

The Cepler Family

Diane & Larry Cohen

Judy & Len Cooper

Eleanor Dreyfus

Michael & Michelle Dvorkin

The Garvett Family

The Gerber Family

Meryl Druckerman

Elise Goldenberg

Jill & Barry Goldenberg

Janice Goldklang & Dan Kushnick

Bob & Sandra Goldman

David Haft & Jaqueline Schachter

The Hauslaib Family

The Herzog Family

Gloria & Sheldon Horowitz

The Ilkowitz Family

Naomi & Marshall Jaffe

Andrea DeRose & Bob Kahn

Jonathan & Tina Kasper

Arthur & Lois Katz

Jack Klebanow

The Krulak Family

John & Leah Leonard

Mark & Linda Levine

Maria Kogan & Eugene Lief

Hildy & Steve Martin

Lisa & Andy Neubardt

Cheryl Goldstein & Marcello Nacht

The Owen-Michaane Family

The Papo Family

The Pauley Family

Shelli Goldberg & Joel Peck

Elaine & Joel Peck

Elaine & Marc Prager

Meredith Price & Seth Lieberman

Andrea Prigot & Haig Hovaness

David & Jeanne Radvany

The Resnick Family

Sybil Rosenberg

Rob Rossman

Andrea & Peter Rothberg

Melanie & David Samuels

Sam Adams & Barbara Saunders-Adams

Jeremy & Sari Schulman

Rebecca & Matt Schwarz

Beth & Joel Serebransky

Judy Shampanier& Mike Bowen

Frederica & Efrem Sigel

Rhonda Singer

Doris-Patt Smith

Melanie Stern & Zach Ehrenreich

The Teitlebaum Family

The Temes Family

Evelyn & Gary Trachten

Liz Tzetzo & David Ploski

Ana & Neco Turkienicz

Donna & MIchael Weissman

Jessica Winquist & Family

Beth & Neil Yelsey

Billing statements are emailed monthly. 

Checks made out to the Pelham Jewish Center can be mailed to Pelham Jewish Center, P.O. Box 418, Montvale, NJ 07645. Credit card payment instructions are on your monthly emailed billing statement, or go to https://thepjc.shulcloud.com/payment.php. 

If you are interested in paying via appreciated securities or IRA distributions, please email Mitch Cepler.

It is the policy of the Pelham Jewish Center to make every effort to assist members experiencing financial challenges. Financial challenges should never be a barrier to being an active member of the PJC community. You can reach out to President, Lisa Neubardt, Treasurer, Mitchell Cepler or Rabbi Benjamin Resnick to speak confidentially concerning your ability to pay PJC dues and Learning Center tuition.