Tefillah - join us not just on Yom Kippur, but Thursday morning (10/10 - 8 am) and on Friday morning (10/11 - 8:00 am) for morning minyan.  And of course, we will pray together on Kol Nidre (Tuesday night at 6:30 pm) and Yom Kippur (Saturday morning 9 am - 2:30 pm and Mincha/Neilah/Maariv at 5:00 pm - 7:35 pm.  

Tzedakah - After our minyanim this week, we congregants performed the custom of kapparot with money.   The ritual of Kapparot symbolizes the transfer of sin from the sinner to some object or being.  This ceremony used to be performed with chickens, but we now perform this mitzvah with money instead.

To perform Kapparot with money:  

Hold the money to be given in your hand, and say the following:

This is in my stead.  May this be my substitute; may this be my atonement.  This money will go to tzedakah, that I may enter the path to a good, long life, and to peace.

Zeh halifati, zeh t'murati, zeh kapparati.  Zeh ha-kesef yeileikh li-tzedakah, va-ani eileikh v'ekaneis l'hayyim tovim arukkim u'l'shalom.

  For an article about the change from chicken to money, click here: Kaparot: Wave Money, Not Chickens. 

Where to donate?  Of course, you can make your Kol Nidre donation before Kol Nidre - click here or to a worthy cause.  

As Floridians during hurricane season when a storm is

approaching, we often have a dilemma - for some of us, it is, will the chips and cookies that we bought to survive last until the actual storm hits?

After the hurricane leaves, and assuming there is no damage, we have to figure out, how long do we keep the shutters up?

The thought process goes like this - if I leave the shutters up, I'll be protected from the next storm which is bound to hit in a week, two weeks, or a month. Leaving the shutters up gives us a sense of protection; we are ready for anything. But, here's the thing, leaving our shutters up is actually dangerous. Every year, the county has to give a public service announcement on why keeping our shutters up is dangerous. The main reason: if there is a fire in the house, fire responders cannot get in to help, and people inside cannot escape. The danger quickly turns from outside in, to the inside out...

Rosh Hashanah marks the end of one year, and the beginning of another year. In this New Year, it seems we are running away from the unprecedented anti-Semitism of the last year in this country. It is the elephant in the room that we struggle with.

On October 27, 2018, a holy space, Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, was attacked by a white nationalist leading to the deaths of eleven innocent souls whose only crime was that they were Jewish, and they showed up for Shabbat.... click here to read the rest of the sermon.

 

Jews Step Out of Line© 

My sons asked, but, 'Abba', I mean, Dad, why? It was at that moment that I choked up - I had nothing to say. What do I tell my children? Why shouldn't we wear a kippah out in the open anywhere we want, this is America after all! As I thought more about it, I realized I was asking myself the wrong questions - I kept on asking, why not, in the negative, and what I should have been asking myself is, why should we be Jewish? Why does the world need us?

I'm not here to give a sermon on anti-Semitism, rather, I want to give a sermon about why we should be even more Jewish this year in the face of anti-Semitism;

Why be Jewish and why does the world need the Jews share a common answer that might surprise you: Because Jews step out of line.... click here to read the rest of the sermon.

CSK IN THE NEWS!