This evening’s Erev Shabbat Family Service will begin at 7:30 PM and will be conducted by Rabbi Dreyfus. The Junior Choir will sing, under the direction of Nancy Friedman, and Rabbi Dreyfus will bless children with birthdays in March.
Tomorrow morning’s Shabbat Service will begin at 10:00 AM and will be conducted by Rabbi Dreyfus. Our Bibles and Bagels series continues immediately after services, with a light lunch and a discussion of the week’s Torah reading.
The Parasha is Exodus - 30:11 - 34:35, with an additional reading, Numbers 19:1-22
The Torah continues with G-d’s plans for funding the construction with a half shekel per person tax, and G-d personally assigns named subcontractors to do various parts of the work. Next, G-d reiterates the commands for keeping the Sabbath and appropriate punishment for those who work on that day.
In the meantime, back on the lower part of the mountain, the Jews have prevailed upon Aaron to create a molten calf, which rather displeases both G-d and Moses, to say the leasdt. G-d agrees to let Moses see some manifestation of where G-d has been, and sets forth, for the first time, the 13 Attributes of G-d. (That’s the answer to a Pesach study quesdtion, by the way, which should be brought up at the end of the Seder when you are in the midst of singing “Me Echad Y’dahay?”. ) We continue with other commandments, such as the redemption of the first born, prohibition against cooking a kid in its mother’s milk and so forth. And when Moses comes down from speaking with G-d, the Jews see that beams come forth from his unveiled face.
As this is the penultimate Shabbat before the month of Nissan, (or maybe because it is the Shabbat immediately after Purim which seems to work out to the same thing, this year, anyhow) we append a section relating to spring purification rituals taken from Number, Chapter 19. The mysteries of the Parah Adumah, the Red Heiffer, are not easily accessed; maybe Rabbi Dreyfus will explain them over lunch.
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