Rabbis' Weekly Message

Dear Kol Rinah Family,

Candle lighting tonight is at 8:12pm, and Shabbat ends at 9:18pm. (And the times are the same for next Shabbat too.) Why do I begin with this? This is the latest Shabbat will begin and end this year. So enjoy the "longest" shabbatot of the year the next two weeks!

Services tonight will be a cappella in the chapel at 6pm. Tomorrow morning services will be in the lower auditorium starting at 9am. Rabbi Shafrin will be leading Torah Talk at 10:10am. Mincha Saturday afternoon will be at 7:20pm.

This past Wednesday, we had a fantastic first session of our Psummer in the Psalms, with the Pastor Carlos Smith and the Journey. We looked carefully at Psalm 16, and our second session will be this coming Wednesday evening, June 26 at 6:30pm. I will say that we had many more people from the Journey than Kol Rinah attend, so we could use a better representation from our community. You don't need to have been at the first session to come to the second.

This Sunday (6/23) from 4-6pm we'll have a purely social picnic in the park with the Journey at Villa Park in Olivette.

Next weekend, Saturday June 29 and Sunday, June 30, come to KR for Pride Shabbat, and then Sunday, join me, folks from Kol Rinah, and from the St. Louis Jewish community in marching in the Pridefest Parade. On Saturday, we'll have a pride-related Torah Talk, Rabbi Micah Buck-Yael will be giving the sermon, and we'll have a presentation following Kiddush by Dean Rosen and Philip Deitch on the history of LBGTQ inclusion in the St. Louis Jewish community. Details for our Pride Shabbat learning and parade info here.

We are particularly looking for shofar blowers for the High Holidays. If you're interested, or know someone who might be, please let me know!

Also, as we continue to work to roll out our minyan scheduling software, we are in need of a couple of people to help coordinate this effort, to send out texts/emails half a day before (not at the last minute) when we don't have enough people signed up for minyan. If you'd be willing to help with this even a day or two a week for a few minutes, please let me know!

And now for a little Torah...

I found myself Wednesday evening at the Psalms class telling the story/midrash of Adam despairing as the sun began to set on the day 6, because he'd never seen the sun set before, didn't know that it would rise again, and thought the world was coming to an end. The other version is that when Adam realized the days were getting shorter, he similarly freaked out, and it took quite a number of weeks from Rosh HaShanah until the winter solstice and then afterward for him to realize the days would lengthen again.

We are inured to and familiar with the cycle of the seasons, of long days and short days, of sunlight and darkness. But I'm always struck by the fact that at the beginning of summer, June 21, the days start getting shorter again. Baked into the beginning of summer is its winding down. And also, the moment winter begins. the days already begin to lengthen. No matter how good things are, they won't stay that way. But also, no matter how bad they are, they won't stay that way either.

Rather, it can take a long time to decline from the peak, or to emerge from the lowest point, but the only thing constant is change.

Where in your life are things on the ascension, and what is on the decline?

Shabbat shalom and see you in shul,

Rabbi Noah Arnow