Shabbat- PINCHAS

See photos for the writeup. This is the last Shabbat of the Around the World trip. I had to address the many important themes of this week's portion but I found the wonderful closure of this trip was to talk about SHALOM and the "broken vav". In this week's story, Pinchas used violence to bring peace through killing. We learn that peace is always fractured and imperfect and incomplete and we must work to make it better. By recognizing and seeing the defect in the word for “peace”, we are given the opportunity to focus our intention on bringing peace to ourselves, our homes, the world and the nation of Israel. May we all prioritize bringing peace into our lives. It has been an honor and a privilege to lead Shabbat Services the past 18 weeks!!! In addition to this week's 4 handouts, As a final takeaway, I gave everyone a list of the remaining Torah portions for the calendar year and a list of Jewish Holidays for the next 5 years.Read more