THE JEWISH WELFARE BOARD

Upcoming events

-The second session of the new JLI course on Jewish Business Ethics, entitled “Money Matters” will be continue on Monday the 30th of January. Money Matters will present Judaism’s approach to practical economic  dilemmas and monetary quandaries that we face daily in both our   personal and professional lives. To register and for more info, visit the website at www.myjli.com

Parasha in a Nutshell

  Bo

Exodus 10:1-13:16

The last three of the Ten Plagues are visited on Egypt: a swarm of locusts devours all the crops and greenery; a thick, palpable darkness envelops the land; and all the firstborn of Egypt are killed at the stroke of midnight of the 15th of the month of Nissan.

G-d commands the first mitzvah to be given to the people of Israel: to establish a calendar based on the monthly rebirth of the moon. The Israelites are also instructed to bring a "Passover offering" to G-d: a lamb or kid is to be slaughtered and its blood sprinkled on the doorposts and lintel of every Israelite home, so that G-d should pass over these homes when He comes to kill the Egyptian firstborn. The roasted meat of the offering is to be eaten that night together with matzah (unleavened bread) and bitter herbs.

The death of the firstborn finally breaks Pharaoh's resistance and he literally drives the Children of Israel from his land. So hastily do they depart, there is no time for their dough to rise, and the only provisions they take along are unleavened. Before they go, they ask their Egyptian neighbors for gold, silver and garments, draining Egypt of its wealth.

The Children of Israel are commanded to consecrate all firstborn and to observe the anniversary of the Exodus each year by removing all leaven from their possession for seven days, eating matzah, and telling the story of their redemption to their children. They are also commanded to wear tefillin on the arm and head as a reminder of the Exodus and their resultant commitment to G-d.

Weekly Shabbat lunch sponsor

The Mills family in honor of Dudi’s 40th Birthday, which will be on Shabbat 28th of January, 4th of Shvat. MAZAL TOV!       

Main article

 The geometry of freedom

History tells us of many revolutions that began with sublime ideals and visions of liberty, only to be followed by deep disappointment and even greater tyranny and oppression.

The French revolution began in a magnificent blaze of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" and rapidly evolved into the Reign of Terror and the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars that so devastated Europe. In the end, the French exchanged bondage of neglect under the Bourbon Monarchs for bondage of abuse under the revolution. True freedom remained as elusive as ever.

The Russian people had suffered under the autocratic rule of the Romanov Czars for centuries. When they rose up in revolution in 1917, they and the world were filled with hope for a life of freedom and a new, more just and equitable society. This hope was slaughtered in the cellars and torture chambers of the Soviet secret police and frozen in the slave camps of the Gulag. The slavery to the Romanovs was paradise compared to the bondage, absolute lack of freedom, and the slaughter of millions in the new soviet state.

Attaining freedom is not merely about leaving a yoke of bondage behind; it is about a clear vision of a new paradigm for a better world. Otherwise, the revolution will be a true revolution -- it will revolve a full 360 degrees and the same ingrained patterns will reassert themselves, and sometimes even worse. A true revolution needs to be one of 180 degrees -- a whole new direction.

We see this theme articulated throughout the Passover story. At the burning bush, G-d tells Moses to instruct Pharaoh "Shalach ami vey'avduni" -- "Let my people go, that they may serve Me." Just letting the people go is not going to accomplish anything in the long run, if they're not going to something -- to something that's the alternative, indeed the antithesis, to Egypt. Most significantly, the encounter at the burning bush takes place at Mt. Sinai where the Jews would be given the Torah -- a truly revolutionary document that would, through the agency of the Jewish people, transform and empower all of humanity.

During the wanderings of the Children of Israel through the desert, we find that every time there were those who shirked their duty, they raised the cry "Let us go back to Egypt." Did they want to suffer again as slaves? Surely not. I think that what the Torah is telling us is that abandoning the new vision and mission leads back to Egypt. Perhaps a new Egypt, but a slavery just the same.

All that is true of nations and world history is true of what the Talmud calls the "small world" of each individual person. Passover is not a commemoration. Passover is reliving and experiencing the liberating power of G-dliness in our lives.

The Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, means "constraints." We suffer under the constraints of the habits we maintain simply because we had them yesterday. We are slaves to ingrained pathways of our lives and our world, because we are too busy dusting the covers of our Book of Life to read its pages.

On Passover, and especially at the seder, we put all else aside to concentrate on receiving the power of freedom that flows from G-d to each one of us. But for this experience to have a lasting effect, we need to remember that not only do we have to leave the old habits ("let my people go"), we need a vision and program of the new ("that they may serve Me"). Otherwise, we end up not far from where we started from.

The Hebrew term vey'avduni -- "that they may serve Me" -- actually means "That they may transform themselves thorough Me." When we look to the Torah -- the receiving of which is the sole purpose of the Exodus -- we discover that the freedom to realize the potential of every aspect of our being lies within its Mitzvot. Every area of life stands ready to yield purpose, meaning and fulfillment if we are willing to dare to be truly free. "Truly free" is not freedom from the bondage of whichever pharaoh, king or czar happens to be oppressing us at the moment, but freedom from the bondage of all self-imposed limits on our capacity to truly realize our G-dly potential.

Elite kosher shop

The Kosher shop stocks a wide range of products such as meats (imported from Australia),poultry, dairy products, as well as a large variety of wines. 

The Kosher Shop also just received a wide range of products form Israel at very affordable prices such as popular snacks (Bissli etc…), canned foods and much more.

The Awafi Restaurant

Open for Lunch and Dinner To make a reservation call 6336. 5166

Also serving breakfast every morning after Shacharit.Awafi also provides for outside catering.
 Feel free to contact us at: 6336 5166 

Halacha Corner

 1. Circumcision - Milah

We are commanded to circumcise male children on the eighth day after they are born [as it says "And on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised"].

Circumcision was the basis of G-d's covenant with Abraham, as it says "And I will make my covenant between Me and you... [you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin and it shall be a sign of a covenant between Me and you; every male of all your generations shall be circumcised at the age of eight days...]". 

The responsibility rests on the father; if he does not do it the courts are responsible; and when the child grows up the responsibility devolves on him. If the child is not well his circumcision is postponed until he recovers. Circumcision consists of cutting away the foreskin and peeling off the membrane under it.

Growing Each Day-With Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski

 Man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7).

Rabbi Leib, the son of the Chassidic master Rabbi Mordechai of Nesh'chiz, related that he remembered being a small child sitting on his father's lap. His father told him, "The Targum (Aramaic translation of the Torah) interprets living soul as a speaking spirit. In other words, people acquire the capacity to speak by virtue of the Divine soul that is instilled within them. Inasmuch as God is truth, the Divine soul, which is part of God, is also truth. Since people's souls are linked with this ability to speak, speech can only be truth. That is why," the Rabbi continued, "if someone lies, that is not speech, only meaningless noise."

"Ever since then," Rabbi Leib said, "whenever someone lies to me, all I hear is undistinguishable sounds, just noise. I cannot make out words, and I cannot understand what the person is saying."

How wonderful it would be if we too could so refine our hearing that our ears could perceive only truth, and that untruths would be just scrambled sounds! Still, if we cannot rise to the spiritual heights of Rabbi Leib, we may nevertheless understand that if we lie, we are not really speaking, but only making noise. To lie is to distort the God-given gift of speech into meaningless sounds that cannot possibly achieve anything truly beneficial to us.

Arseth

 27 January/ 3 Shvat

Loolo bat Girgee

2 February/ 9 Shvat

Tifaha bat Habiba

May Their Memory Be A Blessing

Today in Jewish history...

 3 Shvat

-Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, 1933. The same day saw the founding of the Society of Youth Aliya, which brought to    Israel over 115,000 children 12-16.

7 Shvat

-Jews no longer required to attend conversionist services, 1430 Fifth Aliya began, 1930.

8 Shvat 

-The period of the Elders (Z'keinim, the contemporaries of Yehoshua) came to an end; marked by an ancient fast day.

-Public execution of 9 Jews in Damascus, 1969.

9 Shvat

-Yahrzeit of Rabbi Eliezer Silver, leader of American Orthodox Jewry, 1968.

10 Shvat

-Yahrzeit of the "Previous" (Chabad) Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Shneerson 1950,And the Day the The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn O.B.M assumed the mantle of leadership of the Chabad Movement 

Ask The Rabbi

 Question:

Why is Judaism passed down through the mother? I understand in olden times it was easy to know who your mother was and there was no way of proving fatherhood. But these days we have DNA testing, so why can't someone be Jewish even if only their father is Jewish?

Answer:

Jewishness is not in our DNA. It is in our soul. The reason it is passed down through the maternal line is not just because it is easier to identify who your mother  is. It is because the soul identity is more directly shaped by the mother than the father. From a purely physical perspective, a child is more directly connected to their mother. The father's contribution to the production of a child is instantaneous and remote. The mother, on the other hand, gives her very self to the child . The child is conceived inside the mother, develops inside the mother, is sustained and nourished by the mother, and is born from the mother.

This is not to say that a father and child are not intimately attached. Of course they are. But as deep and essential as the bond between father and child may be, the child's actual body was never a part of her father's body. But she was a part of her mother. Every child begins as an extension of their mother's body.

This is a simple fact. It doesn't mean she will be closer to her mother, or more similar to her mother, or follow her mother's ways. We are not discussing the emotional bond between parent and child, but rather the natural physical bond. There is a more direct physical link between mother and child, because a child starts off as a part of her mother.

The body and its workings are a mirror image of the workings of the soul. The physical world is a parallel of the spiritual world. And so, the direct physical link between mother and child is a reflection of a soul link between them. While the father's soul contributes to the identity of the child's soul, it is the mother's soul that actually defines it. If the mother has a Jewish soul, the child does too.

If the mother is not Jewish but the father is, his Jewish soul will not be extended to the child. There may be a spark of Jewishness there, but if it was not gestated in a Jewish mother, the child will have to go through conversion for their Jewishness to be activated.

Jewishness is passed down by the mother because being Jewish is a spiritual identity, it defines our very being. And our very being we get from our mother, both in body and in soul.  

The Weekly Recipe  

Banana Zucchini Bread

Ingredients

• 4 Eggs
• 2 Cups Sugar
• 1 Cup Vegetable Oil (or sub Apple Sauce)
• 2 Medium Ripe Bananas (Mashed ~ 1 cup)
• 3 Cups All-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
• 1 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
• 1 1/2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1 1/2 Cups Shredded unpeeled zucchini

1. Grease two 9x5 inch loaf pans. Preheat oven to 350.
2. In a bowl, beat eggs. Blend in sugar and oil. Add bananas and mix well.
3. Stir in zucchini until combined.
4. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt, stir into egg mixture.
5. Bake 50 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Ongoing Events & Programs

Weekly Minyan, stories and snacks for children after reading of the Torah. For more info contact The boys.
One on one learning with the Yeshiva Boys for adults and children. Contact Mrs. Rivni@ 92327095.
Lunch & Learn Tuesdays at Awafi, JBC. Contact Rabbi Abergel
Talmud class every Wednesday@ 9:00pm in tractate Sanhedrin. Contact Rabbi Abergel
Mikva: Mrs. Simcha Abergel 9673 9184
Mrs. Odelia Rivni 9232 7095
(Appointments at least one day before)

Yeshiva Boys

• Mendy Ash: 9459 8690
• Yisroel Drihem: 9459 8125
• Dovid Knapp: 9459 8152
• Sroli Gutnick: 9384 3236
• Mendel Kranz : 9488 8610
• JWB Offices, Julia: 6337 2189 ext 103
• Awafi Restaurant, Sushil: 6336 5166
• Kosher Shop, Maya: 6337 2189 ext 107

www.singaporejews.com
enquiries@jwb.org.sg