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Shabbat starts on Friday at 5:04pm and ends on Saturday at 6:06pm. The weekly Torah portion is Balak. The Fast of 17 Tammuz is on Tuesday Fast begins 6:06am ends 6:00pm.

Mincha 1pm continues at Ainsworth Property – GF/459 Collins Mon-Wed. Join the WhatsApp group where we take a count to confirm each day.

Weekly sushi & shiur will continue on Wed at about 1.10pm (after mincha) at A-P GF/459 Collins – and via zoom. Current topic: borrower dignity. Details here and on the WhatsApp group.

Thought of the Week with thanks to Gabby Silver.

It is a well-known aphorism of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Rebbe of the Chabad movement (also known as the Alter Rebbe or Ba’al HaTanya), that Jews should strive to “Live with the times”. It was later clarified that we should live with the weekly Torah portion and relate it to our lives. 

The week’s Torah reading is a gimme. You barely have to open your eyes to see how a rabid antisemite seeking to curse and destroy the Jewish nation is entirely relevant to the turbulent times in which we live. 

The Torah is eternal and relevant to every Jew at every time. When the arch-hater Bilaam describes us as “a nation that dwells alone,” witnessing how G-d’s words can remain so accurate across millennia brings a chill to the spine.

Yes, we are subjects of irrational, blind hatred. Yes, we can feel like the world has abandoned us. However, mere verses later, faced with the reality of our purity and righteousness and G-d’s love for his children, Bilaam involuntarily describes us as “a people that rises like a lioness and raises itself like a lion”. “Like streams spread out, like gardens by a river, like aloes that G-d planted, like cedars by water.”

If the former, ominous descriptions are true, then so too must be the latter. We should all gain strength and courage in the unshakeable knowledge of G-d’s love and the rightness of our mission in this world.

Good Shabbos, and Am Israel Chai