Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades שבת פרשת בלק

Shabbat Parashat Balak

June 30, 2018 | Tammuz 17, 5778

Celebrating the installation of our Officers and Trustees

The Three Weeks begin tonight!

TORAH STUDY

For haftarot, we follow S’fardi custom.

CBIOTP STANDARDS & PRACTICES

1. Men must keep their heads covered in the building and must wear a talit when appropriate. Women may choose to do either or both, but it is not mandatory.2. Anyone accepting a Torah-related honor must wear a talit, regardless of gender.3. Only one person at a time may take an aliyah.4. No one should enter or leave the sanctuary during a K’dushah.One should not leave the sanctuary when the Torah scroll is being carried from or to the ark.5. No conversations may be held in the hallway outside the sanctuary, or while standing in an aisle alongside a pew.

6. The use of recording equipment of any kind is forbidden on sacred days.7. Also forbidden are cell phones, beepers and PDAs, except for physicians on call and emergency aid workers (please use vibrating option).8. No smoking at any time in the building, or on synagogue grounds on Shabbatot and Yom Kippur.9. No non-kosher food allowed in the building at any time.10. No one may remove food or utensils from the shul on Shabbatot. An exception is made for food being brought to someone who is ailing and/or homebound.

THE THREE WEEKS AND WHY (AND HOW) WE MUST REMEMBERJudaism is a religion of memory. The verb zachor appears no fewer than 169 times in the Tanach. Memory, for Jews, is a religious

obligation (see the next page). This is particularly so at this time of the year. We call it “the Three Weeks” leading up to the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, the Ninth of Av, Tishah B’Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the two Temples—in 586 B.C. and in 70 B.C.E. Jews never forgot those tragedies. During the Three Weeks, we have no celebrations. On Tishah B’Av itself, we spend the day in profound collective grief.

Two and a half millennia is a long time to remember, but should there not be a moratorium on grief? Are not most of the ethnic conflicts in the world fueled by memories of perceived injustices long ago? Would not our world be more peaceable if once in a while we forgot?

It depends on how we remember. As the late Rabbi Lord Immanuel Jakobovits used to point out, three times in Sefer B’reishit God is spoken of as remembering: At crucial moments, we are told, He remembered Noach, Avraham, and Rachel.

Memory, though, is not history. History is someone else’s story. It is about events that occurred long ago to someone else. Memory is my story. It is about where I come from, and of what narrative I am a part. History answers the question, “What happened?” Memory answers the question, “Who, then, am I?” It is about identity and the connection between the generations.

In the case of collective memory, all depends on how we tell the story. We do not remember for the sake of revenge. “Do not hate the Egyptians,” said Moshe. To be free, we have to let go of hate. Remember the past, but turn it into a blessing; let it be a source of hope.

To this day, many Shoah survivors spend their time sharing their memories with young people, not for the sake of revenge, but to teach them tolerance and the value of life. Mindful of the lessons of B’reishit, we too try to remember for the future and for life.

We undervalue acts of remembering these days. Computer memories have grown, while ours have become foreshortened. Our children no longer memorize chunks of poetry. Their knowledge of history is often all too vague. Our sense of space has expanded.

That cannot be right. One of the greatest gifts we can give to our children is the knowledge of where we have come from, the things for which we fought, and why. None of what we value—freedom, human dignity, justice—was achieved without a struggle. None can be sustained without conscious vigilance.

A society without memory is like a journey without a map. It is all too easy to get lost.Life has meaning when it is part of a story, and the larger the story, the more our imaginative horizons grow. Besides, things

remembered do not die. That is as close as we get to immortality on earth. —Adapted from the writings of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

This Week: Shabbat Parashat Balak B’midbar 22.2-25.9, pages 894-908

THIRD ALIYAH: God tells Bilam he may go with Balak’s second delegation, then blocks his way. Does God believe that Bilam set up the second delegation because he really wanted to go curse Israel?

SEVENTH ALIYAH: Verse 25.4 actually reads, “Take all the chiefs of the people and have them publicly impaled.” Our text says “take the ringleaders.” Is our text trying to cover up a grave injustice, or at least a horrible overreaction?

The haftarah, Michah 5.6-6.8, begins on Page 915.

Next Week: Shabbat M’varchim Parashat Pinchas B’midbar 25.10-30.1, pages 918-936

SECOND ALIYAH: Those available for military service in the tribe of Shimon in this census consists of 22,000. Compare this to verse 1.22. What might this suggest?

SEVENTH ALIYAH: We were already told in verse 10.10 that the horn would be sounded on all festive days, so why is there specific mention of it for “the first day of the seventh month”?

The first haftarah of admonition, Yirmiyahu 1.1-2.3, begins on Page 968.

THE IMAHOT:Following is the text adopted by the Ritual Committee for use by the Prayer Leader in reciting the Amidah, and those wishing to insert the Matriarchs in their Amidot:

Присоединяйтесь к нам дл освящение и обед

This week’s kiddush & luncheon sponsor isBRUCE MINKOFF

in memory of his late father,JOSEPH MINKOFF, ז״ל

May His Memory be for a Blessing!Please join him and us!

MAZAL TOV CORNER [If we don’t know about it, we can’t print it;

if we can’t print it, we can’t wish it.]

HAPPY BIRTHDAYToday Henriette Chalom, Sasha Luchs and Steven RauchSunday Sam and Adam GershonMonday Marc-Alain WeitzenWednesday Stella KadochThurday Michelle LederFriday Madelyn Kosson

MITZVAH MEMODo you have enough food to eat?

Too many people in our community do not.Bring non-perishable food items to the shul.

This week’s Shabbat Booklet is sponsored by

CONGREGATION BETH ISRAEL OF THE PALISADES

in honor of our departing and incoming officers and trustees.

THE TEN REMEMBRANCESEach weekday morning following Shacharit, we are urged to recite a series of remembrances. For Ashkenazim, these total six items. For the S’fardim and the Mizrachi, there are 10 items. What follows are those 10 items, and the citation for each. The recitation begins with a formulaic introduction. The bold numbers in parentheses represent the location of a particular item in the Ashkenazi rite, which uses the biblical text for each one.

I hereby fulfill the mitzvah of the Ten Remembrances, which all are obligated to remember every day. And they are:

1. the Exodus from Egypt (see Sh’mot 13.3); (1)2. the Shabbat (see Sh’mot 20.8); (6)3. the manna (see D’varim 8.2-3);

4. the incident [involving] Amalek (see D’varim 25.17-19); (3)5. the assembly at Mount Sinai (see D’varim 4.9-10); (2)6. that our ancestors angered the Holy One, blessed is He. in the wilderness. especially with the Golden Calf (see D’varim 9.7); (4)7. So that we may know the righteousness of Adonai, that Balak and Bil'am conspired to do [harm] to our ancestors (see Michah 6.5);

8. the incident [involving] Miriam the prophetess [ who ws punished for speaking ill of Moshe] (see D’varim 24.9); (5)9. the commandment. "You shall remember Adonai, your God, for it is He Who gives you the strength to acquire wealth" (see D’varim 8.18);

10. and the remembrance of Jerusalem, may it be rebuilt and re-established speedily in our days (see T’hillim [Psalms] 5.9 );

Amen

This is an extraordinary moment in Jewish history, for good and not-so-good reasons.

The good news: For the first time in almost 4,000 years we simultaneously have sovereignty and independence in the Land and State of Israel, and freedom and equality in the Diaspora. There have been times—all too brief—when Jews had one or the other, but never before have we had both at the same time.

The less-good news, though, is that anti-Semitism has returned within living memory of the Shoah, the Holocaust. The State of Israel remains isolated in the international political arena. It is still surrounded by enemies. And it is the only nation among the 193 making up the United Nations whose very right to exist is constantly challenged and always under threat.

Given all this, it seems the right time to re-examine words appearing in this week’s parashah, uttered by the pagan prophet Balaam (Bilam), that have come to seem to many, the most powerful summation of Jewish history and destiny:

From the peaks of rocks I see them,From the heights I gaze upon them.This is a people who dwell alone, Not reckoning themselves one of the nations. (23.9)

For two leading Israeli diplomats in the 20th century—Yaacov Herzog and Naphtali Lau-Lavie—this verse epitomized their sense of Jewish peoplehood after the Shoah and the establishment of the State of Israel.

Herzog was the son of a chief rabbi of Israel and the brother of Chaim Herzog, who became one of Israel’s presidents. He himself was director-general of the Prime Minister’s office from 1965 to his death in 1972.

Naphtali Lavie, a survivor of Auschwitz, was Israel’s Consul-General in New York, and he lived to see his brother, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, become Israel’s Ashkenazic chief rabbi.

Herzog’s collected essays were published under the title, drawn from Balaam’s words, “A People that Dwells Alone.” Lavie’s were entitled “Balaam’s Prophecy”—again a reference to this verse. (In Hebrew, Lavie’s work was entitled “Am ke-Lavie,” a reference to the later words of Balaam, “The people rise like a lion; they rouse themselves like a young lion” (B’midbar 23.24)—a play on the Hebrew name Lavie, meaning “lion.”)

For both, the verse expressed the uniqueness of the Jewish people—its isolation on the one hand, its defiance and resilience on the other. Alhough it has faced opposition and persecution from some of the greatest superpowers the world has ever known, it has outlived them all.

Given, though, the return of anti-Semitism, it is worth reflecting on one particular interpretation of the verse, given by the dean of Volozhyn Yeshiva, R. Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (known as the Netziv, Russia, 1816-1893). The Netziv interpreted the verse as follows: for every other nation, when its people went into exile and assimilated into the dominant culture, they found acceptance and respect. With Jews, the opposite was the case. In

exile, when they remained true to their faith and way of life, they found themselves able to live at peace with their non-Jewish neighbors. When they tried to assimilate, they found themselves despised and reviled.

The sentence, says the Netziv, should therefore be read thus: “If it is a people content to be alone, faithful to its distinctive identity, then

it will be able to dwell in peace. But if Jews seek to be like the nations, the nations will not consider them worthy of respect.” (See his Ha-amek Davar to B’midbar 23:9.)

This is a highly significant statement, given the time and place in which it was made, namely Russia in the last quarter of the 19th century. At that time, many Russian Jews had assimilated; some even converted to Christianity. But anti-Semitism did not diminish. It grew, exploding into violence in the pogroms that happened in over a hundred towns in 1881. These were followed by the notorious anti-Semitic May Laws of 1882. Realizing that they were in danger if they stayed, between three and five million Jews fled to the West.

It was at this time that Leon Pinsker, a Jewish physician who had believed the spread of humanism and enlightenment would put an end to anti-Semitism, experienced a major change of heart and wrote one of the early texts of secular Zionism, “Auto-Emancipation” (1882). In words strikingly similar to those of the Netziv, he said, “In seeking to fuse with other peoples, [Jews] deliberately renounced to some extent their own nationality. Yet nowhere did they succeed in obtaining from their fellow-citizens recognition as natives of equal status.” They tried to be like everyone else, but this only left them more isolated.

The eternal lesson in a pagan prophet’s prophecy

If people do not like you for what you are, they will not like you more for pretending

to be what you are not….By being what only we are,

we contribute to humanity what only we can give.

Something similar also happened in Western Europe. Far from ending hostility to Jews, Enlightenment and Emancipation merely caused it to mutate, from religious Judeophobia to racial anti-Semitism. No-one spoke of this more poignantly than Theodore Herzl in The Jewish State (1896):

We have honestly endeavored everywhere to merge ourselves in the social life of surrounding communities and to preserve the faith of our fathers. We are not permitted to do so. In vain are we loyal patriots, our loyalty in some places running to extremes; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow-citizens; in vain do we strive to increase the fame of our native land in science and art, or her wealth by trade and commerce. In countries where we have lived for centuries, we are still cried down as strangers….If we could only be left in peace….But I think we shall not be left in peace.The more we succeeded in being like everyone else, implied

Herzl, the more we were disliked by everyone else. Consciously or otherwise, these 19th century voices were echoing a sentiment first articulated 26 centuries ago by the prophet Y’chezkel (Ezekiel), speaking in the name of God to the would-be assimilationists among the Jewish exiles in Babylon:

You say, “We want to be like the nations, like the peoples of the world, who serve wood and stone.” But what you have in mind will never happen. (Y’chezkel 20.32)Anti-Semitism is one of the most complex phenomena in the

history of hate, and it is not my intention here to simplify it. There is something of lasting significance, however, in this convergence of views between the Netziv, one of the greatest rabbinic scholars of his day, and the two great secular Zionists, Pinsker and Herzl, although they differed on so much else. Assimilation is no cure for anti-Semitism. If people do not like you for what you are, they will not like you more for pretending to be what you are not.

Jews cannot cure anti-Semitism. Only anti-Semites can do that, together with the society to which they belong. The reason is that Jews are not the cause of anti-Semitism. They are the objects of it, but that is something different. The cause of anti-Semitism is a profound malaise in the cultures in which it appears. It happens whenever a society feels something is badly amiss, when there is a profound cognitive dissonance between the way things are and the way people think they ought to be. People are then faced with two possibilities. They can either ask, “What did we do wrong?” and start to put it right, or they can ask, “Who did this to us?” and search for a scapegoat.

In century after century, Jews have been made the scapegoat for events that had nothing to do with them—from medieval plagues, to poisoned wells, to inner tensions in Christianity, to Germany’s defeat in World War I, to the underachievement of many Muslim states today. Anti-Semitism is a sickness, and it cannot be cured by Jews. It also is evil, and those who tolerate it when they could have protested are accomplices to evil.

We have nothing to apologize for in our insistence on being different. Judaism began as a protest against empires, symbolized by Babel in Sefer B’reishit and ancient Egypt in Sefer Sh’mot. These were the first great empires, and they achieved the freedom of the few at the cost of the enslavement of the many.

Jews have always been the irritant of empires because of our insistence on the dignity of the individual and his or her liberty. Anti-Semitism is either the last gasp of a declining culture or the first warning sign of a new totalitarianism. God commanded our ancestors to be different, not because they were better

than others—“It is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land” (D’varim 9.6)—but because by being different we teach the world the dignity of difference. Empires seek to impose unity on a

plural world. Jews know that unity exists in heaven; God creates diversity on earth.

There is one fundamental difference between anti-Semitism today and its precursors in the past. Today, we have a State of Israel. We need no longer fear what Jews discovered after the Evian Conference in 1938, when the nations of the world closed their doors, and Jews knew they had not one square inch on earth they could call home in the Robert Frost sense, namely the place where “when you have to go there, they have to let you in.” (Robert Frost, “The Death of the Hired Man.”) Today, we have a home—and every assault on Jews and Israel today only serves to make Jews and Israel stronger.

That is why anti-Semitism is not only evil, but also self-destructive. Hate destroys the hater. Nothing has ever been gained by making Jews, or anyone else, the scapegoat for your sins.

None of this is to diminish the seriousness with which we must join with others to fight anti-Semitism and every other religious or racial hate. Yet let the words of the Netziv stay with us. We should never abandon our distinctiveness. It is what makes us who we are. There also is no contradiction between this and the universalism of the prophets. To the contrary—and this is the life-changing idea: In our uniqueness lies our universality. By being what only we are, we contribute to humanity what only we can give..

—Adapted from the writings of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Anti-Semitism is evil, and those who tolerate it

when they could have protested are accomplices to evil.

May He who blessed | מי שברךMay He who blessed our ancestors bless and heal all those whose names are listed here, those whose names will be called out,

and those whose names we do not know because either we are unaware of their illness or they are.We pray He mercifully quickly restore them to health and vigor. May He grant physical and spiritual well-being to all who are ill. אמן

Sydelle KleinBonnie Pritzker AppelbaumDeenah bat Sarah LeahRut bat EstherMiriam Zelda bat Gittel D’vorahMiriam Rachel bat ChanahHarav Mordechai Volff ben Liba MiryamMichael BybelezerM’nachem Mendel ben Chaya DinaSimchah bat ZeldaAdina bat FreidelBaila bat D’vorahChavah bat SarahChayah bat FloraDevora Yocheved bat YehuditEsther bat D’vorahHaRav Ilana Chaya bat Rachel EstherMasha bat EtilMasha bat RochelMatel bat FrimahMindel bat D’vorahNinette bat Aziza Pinyuh bat SurahRuchel Leah bat MalkahRita bat FloraRifkah bat Chanah

Rivkah bat RutRut bat HadassahShimona bat FloraSura Osnat bat Alta ChayahTzipporah bat YaffaYospeh Perel bat MichlahMatel bat FrimahMichelle BlatteisDiane FowlerMarj GoldsteinRuth HammerGoldy HessFay JohnsonMicki KuttlerKatie KimElaine LaikinMira LevyRobin LevyKaren LipsyKathleen McCartyGail SchenkerLinda StateMary ThompsonMichelle LazarNorma SugermanJulia Yorke

Susan YorkeAlter ben HassiaAvraham Akivah bat Chanah SarahAvraham Yitzhak ben MashaAharon Hakohen ben OodelChaim ben GoldaEzra ben LuliGil Nechemiah ben YisraelaMordechai Yitzchak ben TirtzachHarav R’fael Eliyahu ben Esther MalkahHarav Shimon Shlomo ben Taube v’AvrahamYisrael Yitzhak ben ShayndelYitzchak ben TziviaYonatan ben MalkaYosef ben FloraZalman Avraham ben GoldaLarry Carlin Harry IkensonShannon JohnsonItzik KhmishmanAdam MessingGabriel NeriJeff NicolSteve SaikinFred SheimMark Alan Tunick

We pray for their safe return...May He who blessed our ancestors bless, preserve, and protect the captive and missing soldiers of Tzahal—Ron Arad, Zecharia

Baumel, Guy Chever, Zvi Feldman, Yekutiel Katz, and Zeev Rotshik—as well as those U.S. and allied soldiers, and the civilians working with them and around them, still missing in Afghanistan and Iraq, and all other areas of conflict, past and present.

And may He bless the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces and Tzahal, and those who serve the United States and Israel in foreign lands in whatever capacity, official or unofficial, members of our community or related to members, and their colleagues and companions. Guide them in peace and return them speedily to their families alive and unharmed. אמן

Are we in your will? Shouldn’t we be?When people prepare their wills, they usually look to leave a mark beyond the confines of their families. Thus it is that general

gifts are left to hospitals, and other charitable organizations. All too often ignored, however, is the synagogue, even though its role in our lives often begins at birth, and continues even beyond death. We come here on Yom Kippur and other days, after all, to say Yizkor, the prayer in memory of our loved ones. Our Virtual Memorial Plaques remind everyone of who our loved ones were, and why we recall them. All of us join in saying the Kaddish on their yahrzeits.

Considering this, it is so unfortunate that, in our final act, we ignore the one institution in Jewish life that is so much a part of us. The synagogue is here for us because those who came before us understood its importance and prepared for its preservation. By remembering it in our wills, we will do our part to assure that the synagogue will be there for future generations, as well.

Think about it. We have always been here for anyone who needed us in the past. Do not those who need us in the future have the same right to our help? Of course they do. Do not delay! Act today! Help secure the future of your communal home.

yahrzeits for today through next FRIDAY!May their memories be for a blessing — זכרונם לברכה

30 Joseph Minkoff, Bruce Minkoff’s father Leonard Trachtenberg, brother of Marcia Strongwater Gussie Kupferberg* Lillian Lebowitz* Lillian Savitt, mother of David Savitt Slater, Paul, son of Ralph & Anne Slater1 Miriam Abbott, sister of Ray Kaplan Samuel Wyman*2 Zev Wachtel, father of Adit Gershon Max Drobner* Lena Weiss* Rose Dolinsky Siderer, Marilyn Korman’s mother3 Gustav Krisow* Samuel Karel* Sarah Schlanger * Yitzi Baer Stulzaft* Wendy Gottlieb, Norman Gottlieb’s wife Gertrudis Picciotto, Paulette Chame’s mother Joseph Shechter, Nanette Matlick’s father4 Channa Greenbaum* Harry Dolinsky* Samuel Klinger*

4 Melech Wisner* Etta Solomon*5 Lenore Dreyfuss Chaim Mayer Cooperstein* Pessia Cooperstein* Rafael Pinchos Cooperstein* Dovid Cooperstein* Jenya Ulman* Hinda Ella Ulman* Fanya Perr* Louis Ellis* Louis Lever* Sam Blum* Sadie Safyer* Philip Korman, Marilyn Korman’s husband Emily Lieber, Sondra Wengrofsky’s mother6 Heinrich Frimet* Morris Bloom** Ellsworth A. Beck* Isaac Friedman* Millie Shapiro, Susan Ringel’s mother

HONOR YOUR DEPARTED LOVED ONES WITH A PLAQUE ON OUR VIRTUAL MEMORIAL BOARD.

Is there a yahrzeit we should know about?

Kaddish listRobert CohenNancy FriedlanderEvyatar Shabbetai GidaseyRaul GreenJay GreenspanSusan Jane GreenbergLisa Beth HughesHarvey JaffeKarol LangArline Levine

Judith LorbeerQingshui MaMarcia Weis MeyersDavid RosenthalLenore Levine SachsMarvin SakinEvan SchimpfBila SilbermanLeah SolomonAbe TauberRegina TauberRandolph Tolk

* A plaque in this person’s name is on our memorial board; yahrzeits are observed beginning sundown the night before.

Shabbat ends tonight with havdalah at 9:18 p.m. DST

Join us tomorrow at 10 a.m. as we meet a candidate

for High Holy Days cantor and review some of the others who have applied.

1585 Center Avenue

Fort Lee, NJ 070024-4716

Cliffside Park Phone: 201-945-7310

Fort Lee Phone: 201-947-1555

website: www.cbiotp.org

general e-mail: shul@cbiotp.org

Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisadesק״ק בית ישראל של הפליסד

1585 Center Avenue, Fort Lee, NJ 07024-4716Shammai Engelmayer, Rabbi rabbi@cbiotp.orgNadia Massuda, Co-President nadia@cbiotp.orgCraig H. Bassett, Co-President craigbassett@cbiotp.orgJudy Golub, Vice-President judygolub@cbiotp.orgErrol Kaget, Secretary membership@cbiotp.orgAl Glick, Co-Treasurer alglick@cbiotp.orgGarrison D. Miller, Co-Treasurer garymiller@cbiotp.org

Attention All Vets!If you’re not yet a member of

JWV Post 76,YOU SHOULD BE!

For more information, call 201-869-6218