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October 2011
Life Long Learning
INFORMATION
Educational programming at our Congregation offers opportunities for congregants to engage in a journey of learning and spiritual growth. Members of all ages are challenged to think, question and contribute creatively to our common journey.
Holidays
The congregation’s mission is to create a home for every soul by offering a variety of Jewish experiences to nourish the mind, heart and spirit while being a caring Jewish community.
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Upcoming Jewish Holidays
September, 16, 2017
- Rosh HaShanah
September 20 – 22, 2017
September 29, 2017
October 4 – 11, 2017
October 11 – 12, 2017
December 12 – 20, 2017
January 30 – 31. 2018
February 28 – March 1, 2018
March 30 – April 7, 2018
April 10 – 11, 2018
April 17 – 19, 2018
May 2 – 3, 2018
May 19 – 20, 2018
July 21 – 22, 2018
Daily Minyan
JOIN US FOR DAILY MINYAN
Not only will we be able to fulfill the important mitzvah of helping others recite the Mourners Kaddish,
it is a wonderful way to open our hearts and minds allowing God’s presence into our lives.
| Morning Minyan | Monday – Friday 7:30 am |
| Sundays 9:00 am |
Worship
Prayer is a language that each of us speaks and hears in a different way. When we pray together, we try to find meaning within the chorus of diverse voices. With their engaging sermons and stimulating teachings, our Rabbis show us how the lessons from the past are relevant to our lives today.
Through a wide range of truly meaningful spiritual experiences, we offer something for everyone, including Daily Minyan, Weekly Friday Night and Shabbat Services, Tot Shabbat, Pajama Shabbat, Junior Congregation, Chai Young Adult Services, Summer Beach Services, and a monthly Family Musical Shabbat Service and Dinner.
Our services are fully egalitarian (men and women participate equally). We believe we have found a healthy balance between the traditional and the creative. Services are primarily in Hebrew. We use both traditional and contemporary melodies. People who attend vary from those with Orthodox backgrounds to Jewish by choice.
You only get one opportunity to make a first impression.
After months of planning and design, this week we finally unveiled the new BRS website – www.brsonline.org We are very proud of its great features including a FAQ section for people who live here, those looking to move and those visiting. We have videos, podcasts, a blog, photo galleries, and much more. We have also included a member login where you can see your statements, pay your invoices, make donations and look someone up on the membership directory. We look forward to hearing your feedback and your help in spreading the word about this great new tool to reach people and spread the BRS mission. Look soon for the BRS app for apple and android. A tremendous thank you is due to Kerry Purcell in our office who put in countless hours, great creativity and hard work to make this new website a reality.
As we put the finishing touches on the new website this week, we kept reminding one another that it represents the face of the Shul to someone looking into who we are. You only get one opportunity to make a first impression and it is critically important to make a positive one if you want to get a relationship started on the right foot.
What is true for a website and a Shul, is true for how we present ourselves to others as well. Our faces are the homepage of who we are and how we are perceived. No matter what is happening in our hearts or our minds, we leave a strong impression on others based on the disposition carried in our faces. Do we project sadness, despair, worry, uncertainty and doubt? Or are we happy, positive, optimistic and joyful.
Rabbi Yisroel Salanter once said that our faces have the status of reshus ha’rabim, they are public domain and we therefore need to be sensitive to the public when we decide what mood we are going to project. The gemara (Kesubos 111b) says that it is better to smile at someone warmly than to provide him with food and drink. Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe writes that just as plants require sunshine to live, converting the rays of the sun into nutrients, people too convert smiles into energy and strength, and without it they wilt and perish. Smiling is a uniquely human expression. When is the last time you saw a dog or cat smile?
Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a physician at Harvard Medical School, authored a study that concludes that happiness is contagious. The same way when one person yawns, it affects others, when one person smiles or is happy it leads to others happiness and smiling as well.
This poem says it best:
It cost nothing, but creates much.
It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give.
It happens in a flash and the memory of it lasts forever.
None are so rich they can get along without it and none so poor but are richer for its benefits.
It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends.
It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and nature’s best antidote for trouble.
Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anybody till it is given away!
If someone is too tired to give you a smile, leave one of yours.
For, nobody needs a smile so much as those who have none to give.
Rotator 1
Quod a changing, si continue mutatur in naturali modo naturaliter prius
pertingit ad illud ad quod mutatur ultimum inter. Ita ‘inter’ importat
praesentiam minus tria in processu mutationis est contrarium quod
“novissimi: et si continuo movetur aliquid relinquit rima minima gap in
materia, aut tantum non in tempore (nam non intermittit quin temporibus
rebus a ‘inter’ dum, contra, nihil prohibet aliquam magnificam post infimum
supremi), sed in materia in qua motus agitur. Non modo perspicue verum est,
sed in omni mutatione locorum alia pariter. (Omnis autem importat mutationem
bina opposita et contraria esse vel contradictorie opposita sint: tum quia
contradictio non potest habere medium terminum, manifestum est quod inter
‘necesse habent par contrariorum) Hoc loco contrarium quod maxime distat in
linea recta, quia finita est certus minima linea, quae est certus numerus
limitatus constituit.
Rotator 3
Quod a changing, si continue mutatur in naturali modo naturaliter prius
pertingit ad illud ad quod mutatur ultimum inter. Ita ‘inter’ importat
praesentiam minus tria in processu mutationis est contrarium quod
“novissimi: et si continuo movetur aliquid relinquit rima minima gap in
materia, aut tantum non in tempore (nam non intermittit quin temporibus
rebus a ‘inter’ dum, contra, nihil prohibet aliquam magnificam post infimum
supremi), sed in materia in qua motus agitur. Non modo perspicue verum est,
sed in omni mutatione locorum alia pariter. (Omnis autem importat mutationem
bina opposita et contraria esse vel contradictorie opposita sint: tum quia
contradictio non potest habere medium terminum, manifestum est quod inter
‘necesse habent par contrariorum) Hoc loco contrarium quod maxime distat in
linea recta, quia finita est certus minima linea, quae est certus numerus
limitatus constituit.
Rotator 2
Quod a changing, si continue mutatur in naturali modo naturaliter prius
pertingit ad illud ad quod mutatur ultimum inter. Ita ‘inter’ importat
praesentiam minus tria in processu mutationis est contrarium quod
“novissimi: et si continuo movetur aliquid relinquit rima minima gap in
materia, aut tantum non in tempore (nam non intermittit quin temporibus
rebus a ‘inter’ dum, contra, nihil prohibet aliquam magnificam post infimum
supremi), sed in materia in qua motus agitur. Non modo perspicue verum est,
sed in omni mutatione locorum alia pariter. (Omnis autem importat mutationem
bina opposita et contraria esse vel contradictorie opposita sint: tum quia
contradictio non potest habere medium terminum, manifestum est quod inter
‘necesse habent par contrariorum) Hoc loco contrarium quod maxime distat in
linea recta, quia finita est certus minima linea, quae est certus numerus
limitatus constituit.
We are a people only because of the book
Imagine the following scene playing out on CSPAN: On a specific day of the year, the Supreme Court justices together with the member of Congress take copies of the United States Constitution and dance around the floor of the House of Representatives while singing, clapping and lifting the law books high in the air. With each circuit of those carrying the Constitution, the others lean in to affectionately kiss the books before they pass by. This entire scenario seems impossible and the very suggestion of this scene is ludicrous.
And yet, this is exactly what we do on Simchas Torah in Shuls around the world. We collect all the Torahs from around the shul, sing and dance in a spirited fashion and kiss each Torah as it passes us by. What explains our seemingly bizarre behavior, especially in contrast with the attitude and approach every other legal system and religion brings to their law books?
Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explains so beautifully:
“A Torah scroll is the nearest thing Judaism has to a holy object. Still written today as it was thousands of years ago — on parchment, using a quill, by a master-scribe — it is our most cherished possession. We stand in its presence as if it were a king. We dance with it as if it were a bride. We kiss it as if it were a friend. If, God forbid, one is damaged beyond repair, we mourn it as if it were a member of the family.
The Koran calls Jews a “people of the book,” but this is an understatement. We are a people only because of the book. It is our constitution as a holy nation under the sovereignty of God. It is God’s love letter to the children of Israel. We study it incessantly. We read it in the synagogue each week, completing it in a year. During the long centuries of Jewish exile, it was our ancestors’ memory of the past and hope for the future. It was, said the German poet Heinrich Heine, the “portable homeland” of the Jew. Some Christians have found it hard to understand the Jewish love of law. To them it sometimes seems like an obsession with detail, the “letter” rather than the “spirit.”
To us, though, it represents the idea that there is no facet of life that cannot be sanctified and turned into the service of God: eating, drinking, relationships, the workplace, the economy and our welfare system. God belongs to society as well as to the inwardness of the soul. Which is why we need law as well as love.”
We live in a world of great darkness in which people are desperately searching for meaning, purpose, happiness, joy, direction, fulfillment, family values, and more. While so much of the world struggles, we are amazingly blessed, fortunate and privileged to be charged by the ideals, values and laws of the Torah that truly provides a prescription for a meaningful life. It is not ours alone and we have no monopoly on its message. Etz chaim hi, lamachazikim bah, it is a tree of life for all those who hold on to it.
As we close in on seven long and intensive weeks that began with the first of Elul and ends with Simchas Torah, many of us feel burnt out, tired, and sick of cooking, eating, long davening and yes, even preparing and listening to sermons and classes. It is no coincidence that exactly when we begin to feel Jewish holidays and observant life are burdensome and difficult that we observe Simchas Torah and remember how fortunate and blessed we are to have Torah and the true simcha it brings.
As we head into the final stretch of this marathon season, I wish you a Chag sameach and a year filled with the simchas Torah, the joy of Torah and simchas ha’chayim, the joy of life.
Chag Sameach