I want to share something kind of neat with you--a little Torah from scholar and artist Noam Sienna along with an image (link below).
This week we read Parashat Beha’alotekha, which includes a mysterious passage (Numbers 10:35-36) set apart by “inverted” or reversed letter nuns. In the Talmud, this passage is interpreted midrashically as constituting its own book of the Torah! Later Qabbalistic commentaries explain that it is bracketed by the letter nun specifically because this letter represents the Fifty Gates of Wisdom hidden in this “book,” which will be revealed in the Messianic Age.
In the words of the Moroccan rabbi Khalifa Ben-Malka: “the Fiftieth Gate was hidden even from Moses… This book is as great as the rest of the Torah, but even Moses did not merit more than 85 letters of it.”
I call this piece "The 49 Gates of Wisdom": I copied all these from the special “inverted nuns” of various extant Torah scrolls or Masoretic manuscripts, dating from the 10th-20th centuries. The fiftieth will have to wait to be revealed…
I'm excited for this Shabbat. Tonight at 6pm we'll have our first Shabbat in the Park, at the South Shelter of Shaw Park, with an abbreviated Friday night service with Karen Kern, Will Soll and me. We'll bring the grape juice and challah, feel free to bring a picnic dinner.
Candle lighting is at 8:12pm.
Tomorrow morning starting at 9:30am (not 9am, like regular Saturdays), we'll have our musical Kol Chadash service. Much of the music we do is on this Spotify playlist. Some links to other melodies that aren't on Spotify are here. And here's a link to a wordless melody we'll be singing for the first time at Kol Rinah this Shabbat--written by my friend Ben Dreyfus back in 1999 for Rosh Chodesh Sivan, which felt appropriate for the rest of this month of Sivan too.
Shabbat ends Saturday evening at 9:18pm--the latest it will end here in St. Louis this year.
June 29 will be Pride Shabbat.
Things are quieting down a bunch for the summer, but much planning is in the works for the fall, and next year.
May the one who makes peace in the heavens make peace over us, and over all Israel, and over all who dwell in the world.
Shabbat shalom and see you at the park and in shul,
Rabbi Noah Arnow
ZOOM AND STREAMING LINKS
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Services (all times Central)
Evening Minyan on Zoom
Sunday-Thursday evenings at 6pm (but not on Jewish holidays)
Morning Minyan on Zoom
Monday-Wednesday and Friday mornings at 7am; Sunday mornings and national holidays at 8am (not including Jewish holidays)
(Please note that Thursday morning minyan is now being held in-person at 7am (8am on national holidays) and is not on Zoom)
Friday nights and Shabbat mornings
Fridays, 6pm in the chapel (no streaming)
Saturdays, 9:00am (9:30am when we are doing our musical Kol Chadash service)
Click the link below, for the stream, as well as for additional instructions: https://www.kolrinahstl.org/kr-streaming
MISSION: Create a welcoming community that embraces Torah, meaningful worship, lifelong learning, music, Israel, and tikkun olam, guided by the tenets of Conservative Judaism.
Phone: 314-727-1747