We begin with a Likrat Shabbat pre-service repast at 5:30 pm, the Simchat Shabbat service at 6:15, conducted by Rabbi Dreyfus.
Tomorrow morning’s Shabbat Service, beginning at 10:00 am, will be conducted by Rabbi Dreyfus. Jerry Levine will be the Cantorial Soloist.
This week’s Parsha is Vayera, Genesis 18:1?22:24 in which G-d, or at least G-d’s messengers appear to Abraham and Sarah to for tell the birth of Isaac, and appear to Lot, to for tell the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham negotiates with G-d about the destruction of the two cities, but as an insufficient number of righteous men are found, the cities are doomed, although Lot’s family is to be saved. Lot offers his virgin daughters to the mob to save the visitors, but get out of the cities before the destruction begins, Lot’s wife turns around to view the destruction and we haven’t even gotten to the other part of the story that we don’t teach in Sunday school. Abraham claims Sarah is his sister, not his wife, Sarah bears Isaac, they send Abraham’s concubine Haggar and their son Ishmael away.
Rabbi Dreyfus comments:
. . .God appears to Abraham [and] God discloses the intention to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, knowing that Abraham will try to prevent it. God says: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” Sometimes we feel like God is hiding from us, and sometimes it is we who hide from God. There is a Chassidic story on this theme:
“Rabbi Baruch’s grandson Yechiel was once playing hide-and-seek with another boy. He hid himself well and waited for his playmate to find him. When, after a long wait, he came out of his hiding-place, the other was nowhere to be seen. It seemed his friend had not looked for him at all! That made him cry, and crying he ran to his grandfather and complained of his friend. Then tears brimmed in Rabbi Baruch’s eyes, and he said: God says the same thing: I hide, but no one comes looking for Me.”
In your own game of hide-and-seek with God, who is hiding and who is seeking?
The Haftarah is II Kings, 4:1 - 3.
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