Shavua tov, friends. This weekend, a candidate for our Director of Congregational Learning position will join us, co-leading our Shabbat evening service on Friday (7:30 pm) and leading us in Havdalah on Saturday (8:00 pm). Thank you, Scott Hannula and the search committee, for bringing another wonderful candidate to our community. I hope you will all attend services to meet the candidate, and pray and learn with them.
This week’s parashah includes commandments about the celebrations of Shabbat, Pesach, the counting of the Omer, Shavuot, Rosh HaShanah, and Yom Kippur. The commandments about Yom Kippur, at the end of Vayikra (Leviticus) 23, reiterate three times that on this holy day, we are to make ourselves uncomfortable (or humiliated, or afflicted; translations vary). The root of this word in Hebrew is three letters: ayin-nun-hey. The exact same root forms words that mean “to answer,” and connected words in other languages of the Bible lands give ayin-nun-hey as “to turn, to turn around and face.”
