Shabbat Shalom - 23 Tevet

This evening’s Family Erev Shabbat Service, conducted by Barry Bayer, will begin at 7:30 PM. Nancy Friedman and the Youth Choir will provide the music to enhance our service. Children whose birthdays occur in January will be blessed.

Tomorrow morning’s Shabbat Service, conducted by Michael Miller beginning at 10:00 AM. Larry Burrows will be the Cantorial Soloist. Larry Burrows, Barry Bayer, Niki Cummings and Jerry Levine will read from the Torah.
This week we begin the second Book of the Torah, with Parashat Sh’mot, Exodus 1:1 - 6:1. We begin with the names — Sh’mot — of the sons of Israel (Jacob) who came to Egypt with Jacob. Several hundred years have passed. The original generation died but their successors did well financially and were fruitful and multiplied and remained a group separate from the Egyptions. A new king, who didn’t know Joseph and all of the great things Joseph did for the Egyptians, got nervous about the strength of the Israelites, and decided to oppress them lest they be some sort of internal threat that would join with an outside enemy to overthrow the Egyptian regime.

Hard labor didn’t do much to control the Israelites. The King then instructed the Hebrew midwives to kill Israelite boys, as they were delivered, but to let Israelite girls live. The midwives, fearing G-d refused to do so, telling the King that Israelite women were so strong that they delivered their children before the midwives arrived. The King then commanded that Hebrew boys be thrown into the Nile. A Hebrew boy, the son of a Levite married to a Levite, was sent into a basket that was placed into the river. Pharaoh’s daughter saw it, had the boy pulled out of the river, named him Moses and hired a wet nurse, who happened to be his mother, to nurse him.

One day, some years later, Moses, who had been raised as a royal Egyptian, saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, so Moses killed the Egyptian. Fearing retribution from Pharoah, he ran away to the land of Midian where he found, of all things, young girls, the duaghters of the Priest Jethro, who needed help to water their flocks. He was invited back to their home, and married Zipporah, one of the girls

Moses tends the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the Midian priest, when he sees a bush that is burning but never consumed, whereupon he is introduced to G-d, who tells him to go back to Egypt and liberate his landsmen. Moses is frightened that the Israelites won’t believe that he comes from G-dl, so G-d gives him a couple of magic tricks to persuade them. Moses still doesn’t want to go, claiming that he wasn’t very eloquent. G-d, becoming upset with Moses, tells Moses to take his brother Aaron along with him, as Aaron was an excellent public speaker. Moses meets with Aaron and his Zipporah, hiw wife and Gershon, his first born and they go off to Egypt. On the way, Moses gives Gershon a brutal circumcision, which angers Ziporah. G-d tells Moses that G-d will harden Pharoah’s heart, and even with all of the magic tricks, won’t let the Israelites go. Things happened as G-d predicted, and Pharoah got even nastier to the Israelites. Moses went back to G-d and complained. G-d told Moses that things will work out.Next week. Or maybe the week after.