Tidbits of Torah

Shabbat Parashat Ki Tavo

Selichot Intro   

September 1, 2018 – 21 Elul 5778 

Dear Friends,

This Saturday night, at 9 p.m., Rodef Sholom Temple is hosting our annual Virginia Peninsula communal Selichot program and service.  Our guest speaker will be Mr. Keith Harward, a beneficiary of The Innocence Project.  If you would like some background on this project in advance of Saturday night, you can learn a lot about this project online. Suffice it to say that as we approach the High Holy Days, we take time to look at ourselves introspectively, and also at the community in which we live.  While our spiritual goal in this season is not to find fault with ourselves individually and/or collectively, our focus is on how we can move forward into the future with more insight, more clarity, more hope and more faith.

I hope that you will join us at services this Friday night and Shabbat morning and also this Saturday night at our very first Selichot service in our new Temple building!  I hope you will be there to find insight and inspiration as well as to welcome and greet our special guest speaker!

In preparation for Selichot, I offer the following teaching taken from midrash Bereshit Rabbah (edited sometime between the 4th and 5th centuries), 11:6:

“…everything that was created in the first six days of creation requires further preparation.  [For example],  mustard requires sweetening…wheat requires grinding, and human beings too require tikkun [continued preparation/repairing of the soul].”

Each year, during this season, we have a chance to learn more about ourselves and about our surroundings.  At Selichot this year, we are uniquely blessed with a very special opportunity to re-orient ourselves and our goals so that our future, individually and collectively, will be sweeter and more fulfilling!

I look forward to seeing you on Friday night, on Shabbat morning, and on Saturday night at our Selichot program and service.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Gilah Dror