This evening’s Erev Shabbat Service, conducted by Rabbi Dreyfus, begins at 8:00 pm. The Adult Choir will provide our music, Rabbi Dreyfus will bless those couples with wedding anniversaries in the month of December, and we will celebrated the naming of Grant Goldberg. son of Sarah and Jeff Goldberg, and grandson of Marilyn and Marvin Goldberg. Our congratulations to the proud parents and grandparents.
Tomorrow’s Shabbat Morning Service will be lead by Rabbi Dreyfus, beginning at 10:00 AM. Niki Cummings will be the Chanzanit.
The Parsha, the final one in the book of B’reishit, is Va-Y’chi, Genesis 47:28 - 50:26. Whenever, or so it seems, that a reading for the week begins speaking of someone’s life, we know that person is near death. So it was with Sarah, and so it is, this week, with Jacob - Israel, who, we are told, lived for 147 years, the last 17 in Egypt. Before he dies, he makes his son Joseph swear that he will take Jacob’s body up to Canaan to be buried. He then proceeds to bless Joseph’s sons, Ephriam and Mannaseh as his own, but switches the order in which Joseph has set his hands, in effect giving the younger brother his primary blessing. He blesses and curses his other sons And dies. Joseph has him embalmed, they mourn for 40 days, and Joseph gets Pharoah’s permission to return to Canaan to bury his father
“in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field, for a possession of a burying-place, of Ephron the Hittite, in front of Mamre.”
We move to Joseph’s death, learn that he lived for 110 years. He makes his children swear that he, too, will be taken to the land where his ancestors were buried, and promises his brothers that G-d will remember them, and take them out of Egypt.
chazak, chazak, v’nischazek
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