Upcoming Events Pesach Practicum with Rav Ezra Tomorrow • Thursday • March 18 • 8:00pm A primer with Rav Ezra on how to Kasher and prepare one's kitchen for Pesach - from refrigorator shelves to teaspoons. Click here to join on Zoom or dial-in audio at +1 646 558 8656; Meeting ID: 613 613 3703.
Shabbat HaGadol Derasha with Rav Steven This Motazei Shabbat • March 20 • 8:30pm Join the rabbinic team, Bayit community, children and adults of all ages for Havdalah onn Saturday night, March 20th.After Havdalah Rav Steven will deliver the Shabbat HaGadol Derasha titled "Kos Yesuot Esa: How the Four Cups Chart Our Seder Journey and the Pandemic Road Ahead." Click here to join on Zoom or dial-in audio at +1 646 558 8656; Meeting ID: 613 613 3703.
Today's Way to Help If you would like to suggest a way to help please email yael@thebayit.org.
Helping Our Neighbors As Pesach approaches, even as we are in a much different place than last year, there is still so much that will be different than our usual Pesach observances. Check in with a neighbor - do they need assistance with shopping? Will they be able to spend the seder with relatives this year? If not, how can we help? Do they have a haggadah to use? And it's a good time to continue to check in with our front line workers and service workers - have they been able to be vaccinated? Can we help them get an appointment? May we continue to support those around us so that this Pesach can be experiences with as much freedom as possible by as many as possilbe.
Closing Message - Rav Steven A beautiful midrash on this week's parashah (Vayikra Rabbah 2:10) describes how our forefathers offered sacrifices long before the system of sacrifices, korbanot, described in this week's parashah, was instituted. The midrash offers explicit Biblical evidence and homiletical interpretations to track sacrificial offerings all the way back to Adam.
A common understanding of this general midrashic approach is to show how those who came in the generations before Mt. Sinai already kept the Torah - an indication of their piety (and foresight!). But this midrash follows the practice of sacrifice all the way back to Adam - not just Avraham, as that approach normally does.
It seems the midrash has a different goal - to help us see the universal power of this system. Whether we relate to the specifics of animal sacrifice or not, the sense of wanting to give something of ourselves to God as an instinctive response in certain moments, long before such a system was prescribed, is a powerful reminder. This is not just a Jewish ritual practice, but a human instinct.
Even as we traditionally say that prayer replaced the system of animal sacrifice, I wonder this week if there are other parts of our lives and practice where we do things that express that desire to give back to God, to that which is beyond us, as expressions of wholehearted devotion to God (korban olah), as expressions of gratitude (korban todah), as movements to seek forgiveness for our wrongdoing (korban chatat), as expressions of human fellowship (korban shelamim). What are the other expressions of "sacrifice to God" in our lives? May we look for and appreciate them this week. Reminder to all to take good care of ourselves and each other. Try to do something specific today that strengthens you, and something else that strengthens someone else.
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