Bulletin MARCH 2021

בס״ד   

Rabbi Eichenholtz’s Message:

I feel like I should be blowing shofar in the morning. On one hand, I know that this is an absurd statement. We blow shofar each morning in the Hebrew month of Elul, the last month of the year, as we prepare for Rosh Hashanah. And no matter how strange this year has been, I’m still relatively aware that it is almost spring, not fall and we are preparing for Passover not Rosh Hashanah. But still there is this nagging feeling, the one that says something is happening and I should be preparing. I should be marking these days from Purim to Passover, this month of time. If we look at the calendar in the Torah, the month of Aviv, the month of freedom, the spring month is the first month of the year. We are approaching that beginning, and new beginnings need preparation. 

Traditionally, the time leading up to Passover is a time for very particular preparations, we become more conscious about our use of chametz (I even stop buying any, and just use up what’s in my house). We begin the process of cleaning out our homes, spring cleaning you may say. Any of us who love eating matzah, now is the time to take a break, have some challah or a bagel and give up matzah so on Passover it is once again a new experience. One halacha of the season is to be more careful about spreading chametz around your spaces, so that it’s easier to clean. While, I believe strongly that cleaning for Pesach should not drive us to exhaustion or frustration, there is something to be said for the consciousness of what we spread in our spaces. As a person who eats so infrequently in the kitchen that I don’t even have a kitchen table, I’m particularly aware of the spread of chametz, I have to check every room in my house, because someone has had food in practically every room of my house, and let’s be honest, the car as well. 

But, is all of this preparation really just about the food stuff in our houses; I can’t possibly think so, which brings me back to shofar and the new year. In Elul, we embark on a process of teshuva, taking stock, apologizing, trying to make our behavior in the new year reach higher than what we accomplished in the past year. Maybe in Adar, we need to look at the chametz we’ve spread in our lives. What are the unintentional or even unnoticed crumbs we have left behind? Is it a hurt feeling, or a pile of papers waiting to be filed, a task or tasks left undone? When we get to Passover will it be cleaned up, or will we seek to nullify it with a legal formulation, or will we sell it for a week and pick it up a week later once again a part of our lives?

A year ago we were rushing around adapting to a changing reality on a daily basis and trying to determine what seder and Passover were going to look like in a totally new world. This year we have time. What are you going to do in this month, between Purim and Passover to prepare? What chametz in your home and in your soul are you cleaning up? Let’s all make the most of this month, so we can make the most of our freedom at Passover.

–Rabbi Eichenholtz

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• Thursday Morning Minyan: We will be holding morning minyan at 7:15am or 8:30am on alternating weeks (see below)

• Friday Kabbalat Shabbat 6:00pm*

• Saturday Shabbat Service 9:30am

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Yahrzeits for March 2021

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