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Times: Shabbat starts on Friday at 6.57pm and ends on Saturday at 7.53pm. The weekly Torah portion is Tzav and Shabbat HaGadol. Move the clock one hour back on Saturday night.
Mincha switches to 1.00pm from Monday at Ainsworth Property – 7/459 Collins St (North Tower). We will initially use the WhatsApp group to confirm numbers.
The weekly lunch & shiur is in recess and will resume on Wed 19 Apr at 1.10pm at A-P 7/459 Collins – and via zoom, following mincha. Current topic: disputes between buyers and sellers. Details here and on the WhatsApp group.
Thought of the Week with thanks to Gaby Silver.
Who are you? What are you? Take a step outside yourself and think about that for a minute. You are one of 7.9 billion people scurrying around one of 8 planets associated with 1 of 100 billion stars in 1 of an estimated 2 trillion galaxies. Thinking about your existence from this rather sobering cosmic perspective, it’s challenging to come to conclusion other than our lives are infinitesimally insignificant and utterly meaningless.
Before you plummet into life crisis mode, consider this week’s Torah reading. It’s name, Tzav, means “command”, and in it, we read about G-d’s commandments to Moshe and Aharon regarding the various sacrifices to be offered to Him.
Okay, but that doesn’t really help me with my sudden onset of existential malaise now, does it?Consider this, then: the word “tzav” also means “connection”. These two seemingly disparate definitions are, in fact, intimately related. The issuing of mitzvot creates an intrinsic connection between the Commander (G-d), and the commandee (us). As we hurtle through the cavernous infinity of space and time, our seemingly inconsequential lives suddenly take on an essential, integral significance in the fabric of creation. Every time we fulfil one of G-d’s commandments, we actualise this supernal connection. At that moment, each of us, despite our microscopic stature in the cosmos, becomes the focal point in completing His divine plan for the creation of the world. Nothing could be more meaningful.
This concept takes on added poignance on the cusp of Pesach. The celebration of our freedom and exodus from Egypt, culminating in the giving of the Torah on Mt Sinai was the seminal point at which this sublime connection was established. And thus, on our microscopic speck of dust floating through this remote, unremarkable corner of the universe, our lives and what we do with them take on the ultimate majestic meaning.
Wishing you a Good Shabbos and Kosher and Freilich’n Pesach.