Scroll down to read Rabbi Tilchin's Shabbat message: "Honoring the Beginning of Loss"
Friday, December 25 at 5:30pm FRIDAY NIGHT BY CANDLELIGHT Our 2nd annual Shabbat and K'nishmas Celebration includes highights of seasonal holiday songs by Jewish composers. Some fun surprises in store. Performed by Rabbi Marcia Tilchin, Jason Feddy, and Raymond Zachary. Join on Zoom or Facebook.
Saturday, Dec. 26 at 2:00pm (pst) TWELVE STEPS & TORAH Shabbat afternoon Torah study informed by the of Twelve Step recovery.
With Rabbi Ilan Glazer, founder of "Our Jewish Recovery," Rabbi Marcia Tilchin, and friends.
Monday, December 28 at 9:30am ADVANCED LEARNING INSTITUTE In the second of a two-part series
"U.S. Election Law: The Total Landscape," Aviel Menter, a third-year student at Columbia Law School who volunteers with the Standford-MIT Healthy Elections Project, offers a timely overview titled, "Challenging Elections: Recent Electoral Litigation"
Sunday - Thursday at 5:30pm OC EGAL NIGHTLY MINYAN All are welcome to join our egalitarian minyan, ideal for people eager to fulfill the obligation of daily prayer and those needing to recite Mourner's Kaddish. Yahrzeits always acknowledged. No RSVP required. Join on Zoom.
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I dedicate this Shabbat message to the memory of my beloved sister, Minda Ellen Tilchin, who passed away four years ago on the 10th of Tevet– one of four minor fast days still observed on the Jewish calendar. Asarah b’Tevet marks a significant historical moment that launched the first major crisis for the Jews as a sovereign nation. According to biblical historical records, it was on this day in 588 BCE when Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzer II laid siege on Jerusalem that culminated 19 months later in the destruction of the first Temple on the 9th of Av.
This observance marks the onset of an elongated period of bloody war, highlighting that no major calamity or catastrophe that destroys a rich, centuries-old culture happens quickly. This situation in modern-day Syria is case in point. What began as a peaceful protest in January 2011 during the Arab Spring has resulted in more than 400,000 deaths and over half the country's population now living the diaspora. There are always phases of demise that build upon one another leading to the erosion and destruction of an entire society. We have seen this countless times throughout Jewish history.
In the story of Purim, Haman has more than 12 months to seed Jewish hatred in the 127 Provinces of King Achashverosh, revving up the masses to get excited about the randomly chosen day of mass killing on the 14thof Adar.
The unspeakably tragic end of the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry in the Iberian Peninsula that culminated in 1492 with execution or expulsion of the last Jews still standing actually began in 1391. The first site of persecution was the city of Seville. The crisis escalated methodically, spreading throughout the region, city by city, with mass slaughters of Jews in each place, even before royal and religious edicts were formally issued by Kings and the Catholic Church.
It goes without saying that Hitler’s Final Solution did not evolve overnight. First, Hitler had to be elected to power in 1933. Like the boiling frog that does not comprehend that his water is getting uninhabitably warmer bit by bit until it is too late to escape, isolated events and law changes were instituted beginning with Hitler’s ascension to power leading up to Kristanacht in November of 1938. Those five years revealed that terrible Jewish suffering was ahead, but no one could have imagined what would ensue between 1941 and 1945 with the death of millions.
Asarah b’Tevet is important because it highlights the truth that elongated horrific tragedy has a beginning as well as an end. At some point, the chief rabbinate of Israel designated the 10th of Tevet as “Yom Hakaddish Ha’klali– General Kaddish Day” – a day on which all of us can light a memorial candle and recite Mourner’s Kaddish for those who perished in the Holocaust and others with no descendants to recite Kaddish on their behalf.
The sweep of history teaches us that every end, no matter how tragic, has the capacity to launch new and sometimes wonderful beginnings. The close of 500 years of glorious Spanish Jewry seeded fantastic Jewish communities throughout the Netherlands, Asia, the Middle East and ultimately America. The birth of the modern State of Israel, a true miracle in our time, emerged out of the ENDLESS MOUNDS of human ash scattered throughout Europe.
As the entire world struggles to understand what we can learn from the COVID-19 tragedy that has touched every corner of the earth - killing close to 2 million people worldwide and extended physical and emotional suffering to millions more - perhaps one byproduct will be a clearer understanding that we are now a global family that must work together to find life-saving solutions that will benefit all humankind. If we can work together willingly to combat disease, perhaps we can also unite to address existential and humanitarian threats like climate change, world hunger, modern-day slavery (human trafficking), and the current, unprecedented refugee crisis that has ceased to make the headlines but continues to escalate worldwide.
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