Parshat Lech Lecha

October 11-12, 2013 / 8 Cheshvan 5774

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Mazel Tov to Shari & Joshua Goldberg on the birth of a baby boy!

Mazel Tov to Adina & Simon Brief on the birth of a baby boy! 

Exciting new programs!

WSIS is offering a couple of cutting-edge new programs:

• Check out our Sunday morning art class for kids in grades 4-5 below or on our website!

Having a Larger Mission

Yesterday I took a cab back from Newark with a very talkative driver. Some cabbies are interested in small talk, but not this one. He wanted to talk religion. One consequence of being a Rabbi is that random strangers want to ask you their deepest unanswered questions on religion. I'm happy to oblige to whatever extent I can. However this driver didn't want to ask me questions - he wanted to convert me to Christianity. So I spent the vast majority of the 45-minute ride explaining to him why I had no such plans. In our conversation, he struggled to grasp the concept of Jewish nationhood. Judaism is a religion, not a nationality, he thought. You should be able to switch religions with ease.

This concept of Jewish nationality goes back to Avraham Avinu in this week's Parsha. When Hashem promises to build a covenant with Avraham's unborn descendants and give them the land of Israel it created the foundation of a religious/nation state unlike the world has seen before or since. The powerful concept of "Kol Yisrael Areivim Zeh La Zeh", all Jews are connected, carries with it Halachic and philosophical significance. We are all responsible for one another.

Our Shul must always maintain that mindset. We are a Shul for our members and our community, but there is a part of WSIS that will be for the entire Jewish community. The Jewish people's numbers are too small to be overly concerned with "Shul competition". Especially on the Upper West Side with such a diverse collection of Jews living in such close proximity, every Shul needs to be a Shul for the Jewish people. I always chuckle when a WSIS regular apologizes for being at a different Shul on a Shabbos morning, as if I should be upset or insulted. Obviously I feel that WSIS is an exceptional Shul that has a tremendous amount to offer, but that doesn't mean any one Shul has a monopoly on Torah or Tefillah. We can all offer something a little bit different, thereby creating a cornucopia of options that together make up a larger whole.

We are about to kick off a number of new programs. The goal of some is to meet specific needs in the WSIS community, but others are to target needs of the entire UWS community. Our new Shabbos Club afternoon youth groups beginning this Shabbos at 4:00pm is meant to be a home for children throughout the West Side. The goal is to provide a fun, warm and educational experience to help our youth see the joy of Shabbos from beginning to end. So too, our partnership with Oorah in hosting the ChillZone Saturday night program for girls helps provide a safe, wholesome and nurturing environment for girls throughout the UWS. We look forward to it starting on October 19.

Our new "Building a Jewish Marriage" program is meant to help young Jewish couples start off on the right foot. With the young men and women in our community getting married so much younger than the national average, it becomes a collective responsibility to help give them the tools to build a strong foundation for their marriage.

We are responsible for one another and ultimately complement one another. Our collective responsibility reminds us that our whole is truly greater than the sum of our parts.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Joshua Strulowitz

SHABBAT SCHEDULE

Friday Night, October 11

6:03pm - Candlelighting  

6:00pm - Mincha & Kabbalat Shabbat

Shabbat Day, October 12

9:00am - Shacharit

10:45am - Sermon: "Not Confusing the Politics With the Torah"