Dear Kol Rinah Family,
After a quieter time at Kol Rinah in December and January, the pace is picking up in February, with lots happening!
Let’s start with tonight though. We’ll welcome Shabbat at 6pm in the chapel with our classic Shabbat Rinah with Rabbi Shafrin, Karen Kern and me. Candle lighting is at 5:03pm.
Tomorrow morning, services will begin at 9am in the lower auditorium. I’ll be leading Torah Talk at 10:10am, and Junior Torah Talk (for our elementary school-age kids) at about 11:15 (after the sermon). Both will be in the Sara Myers Community Rom. Tot Shabbat with Melissa Bellows and Karen Kern will be at 10:45am in one of the Journey classrooms on the lower level.
Because of a Journey program tomorrow morning happening in the social hall, Kiddush will be downstairs in the lower lobby. We ask you to please keep things quiet in the upper lobby so as not to disturb the Journey’s program.
Continuing our lead-up to Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann’s visit February 14-15 (more info below), Rabbi Shafrin this Shabbat morning will speak on recent trends in American spirituality.
Mincha will be at 4:05pm and Shabbat ends at 6:04pm.
Sunday at 2pm is the first of our three Discovering Differences programs, co-sponsored together with PJ Library, WeStories and the ADL. Sign up is closed, but I’m really proud of us offering this program, which is funded by Community Impact’s early childhood request for proposals through the Jewish Federation of St. Louis.
In two weeks, February 14-15, we’ll welcome Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann to Kol Rinah for Shabbat. I wrote in the Voice about her visit here. Sign up and more details are available here. It’s going to be an extraordinary weekend and very thought-provoking for us as we think about our goals and hopes for our prayer experiences here at Kol Rinah. Please join us for dinner Friday night, and for our full morning of programming Saturday morning.
Note that the Saturday morning service will begin at 9:30am, will have some instruments (guitar and drum), and will not cover of all of the liturgy. We will have a complete, lay-led davening in the chapel beginning at 9am.
And coming up even sooner is our Tu Bishvat wine tasting Sunday evening February 9. 5:30pm, babysitting provided. Details here.
And… the World Zionist Congress Elections have officially begun. EACH OF YOU can have a voice in the future of the Jewish State and help shape how funds are allocated, vision is set, and the leadership in Israel is formed. Here’s a little more information:
Vote in the World Zionist Congress Election - Beginning in January, you, along with millions of other American Jews, will have the opportunity to Vote for Your Voice in Israel. From January 21 through March 11, 2020, American Jews can vote online in the election for the 38th World Zionist Congress and impact the Jewish future in Israel and around the world. Click HERE to cast your vote!
A special note: I’ve voted already. It takes five minutes. It does cost $7.50 ($5 if you’re under 25). If you’ve already voted, email me, so I can keep a count of how many of our members have voted—let’s see how high we can get this number by March!
And now for a little Torah…
After the 8th plague, locusts, which begins this week’s Torah portion, Pharaoh says to Moses and Aaron, “I stand guilty before the Lord your God and before you. Forgive my offense just this once, and plead with the Lord your God that God but remove this death from me” (Ex. 10:16-17). So, Moses asks God to make the locusts go away, they do, and then God hardens Pharaoh’s heart and Pharaoh refuses to let the Israelites go, again.
Some say this was an insufficient, insincere apology, and was just too little, too late. Others say that Pharaoh’s contrition was real, but God was not interested in allowing Pharaoh to apologize, but rather, God needed to make an example of Pharaoh and the Egyptians.
Let’s imagine, though, that everyone here is sincere—Pharaoh is legitimately apologizing, and God is legitimately not accepting it. After we’ve made up our minds, do we ever change them, as Pharaoh does? Do we have anything to gain by admitting we’ve been wrong? And when someone finally admits they’ve been wrong to us, are we willing to listen, or not? There are all kinds of reasons to listen, and all kinds of reasons and situations also in which one should not listen.
May we have the wisdom to admit when we’ve been wrong, and the humility to accept that someone else has changed.
Shabbat shalom and see you in shul,
Rabbi Noah Arnow
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Phone: 314-727-1747