This Sabbath morning, Sadie and her mother plan to attend the second special-needs worship service at Rodeph Sholom.
The Torah portion for this Sabbath, April 20, includes Leviticus 19 16, the verse about not standing idly by "while your neighbor's blood is shed".
But why had I, a long-lapsed Jew, chosen this Sabbath bacchanal to break my 11-year avoidance of Jewish events?
This Sabbath, the seventh day of rest after the six days of creation, is Pico's ultimate allegory of mystical union, the secret encoded not only in the letters of Bereshit but also in the sevenfold structure of the Heptaplus itself.
But we can make this Sabbath, and, if we dedicate ourselves to making it so, the one after that and the one after that, a Sabbath of Comfort.
On this Sabbath of Sabbaths of Sabbaths, I greet you, one Kohen Gadol to another, I pray that where your feet stand is the holy of holies, and that every word that comes from your mouth is God's name.
(Deuteronomy 23 3-4 23 3-4ropheTheechariah, whose words we read in tandem with our Torah prophet on this Sabbath of Chanukah, envisions Israel's homecoming anew - after yet another displacement, following the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem - as not just our own story: "In that day, many nations will attach themselves to the Eternal One and become God's people".
"We offer peace and unity to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all... .. "With trust in Almighty God, we set our hand to this Declaration, at this Session of the Provisional State Council, in the city of Tel Aviv, on this Sabbath eve, the fifth of Iyar, 5708, the fourteenth day of May, 1948".
