This evening’s Family Erev Shabbat Service, conducted by Rabbi Dreyfus, will begin at 7:30 PM. Nancy Friedman and the Youth Choir will supply the music to grace our service.
Tomorrow morning’s Shabbat Service will begin at 10:00 AM. Anna Tenny will be called to the Torah to celebrate her Bat Mitzvah. Nancy Friedman will be the Cantorial Soloist.
The Parsha for this week is Ki Tisa , Exodus 30:11 ?34:35. G-d instructs Aaron about the half shekel census, and how to spend some of the money that comes in. Aromatic balms, incense, anointing oils, and so forth. (The priests will smell good, at least.) G-d also specifies the artisans among the Israelites with the skills, directly from G-d, required to embroider, carve, make jewelry and so forth. Another demand that the Israelites keep the Sabbath, but the people get restless because Moses has been on the mountain so long.
Moses comes down from the Mountain (after 40 days) with two tablets upon which the Ten Commandments have been carved by G-d, to see the molten calf that has been created by the Israelites while Moses was on the mountain. Moses asks what happened. Aaron answers “I just took the gold jewelry from the people, tossed it into the fire, and the calf came out.” G-d kills the people responsible for having Aaron make the molten calf, Moses goes back up to the mountain top for 40 days and 40 nights, and comes back down with duplicate During this period Moses see’s G-d’s glory, and Moses skin becomes radiant, and takes to wearing a veil to block the radiance from the view of others. G-d lays out three harvest festivals a year, the Sabbath, that first born males belong to G-d and must be redeemed.
None of this has anything to do with the Parah Adumah, the mystical red heifer that is the subject of the special Maftir, Numbers 19 - 21, selected for this Shabbat after Purim, known as Shabbat Parah.
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