From the Rabbi

The High Holy Days are behind us. I hope you will agree that it was a wonderfully uplifting and spiritual time with learning opportunities, beautiful services and meaningful experiences. Ahead of us lies the new year 5785. As in the past, we are pleased to start our post Chagim programming as a partner in Clean Speech Colorado Vol 5 (CSC 5). 

It’s always a good idea to be mindful of our words but especially so right now as the war in Israel continues on more than one front and a political season reaches its apex with voting scheduled this coming Tuesday.

This week’s Torah portion, Noach, contains two well-known stories – one about the Flood which destroyed the world and the other about the Tower Builders. Words and language figure prominently in both stories. In the Tower Builder story, God multiplied languages spoken by people, because the “devarim achadim – the uniform single language” spoken by everyone was apparently being used to hurt and oppress humans and threatened to undermine and destroy the ultimate goals of Creation. In the story of Noah, it is less the role of words but the role of refraining from words which is at the core of the story. Noah is criticized in Jewish tradition – in spite of his being singled out for salvation – for his silence. He is not prtrayed as saying anything that might have saved the world, or might have allowed a few more people onto the Ark. The ark is called the “teivah”. In Hebrew, teivah also means letter and sometimes can mean word.

We will update you on the progress of CSC 5 throughout this month of November.

I wish everyone a Shabbat Shalom…and as usual, I urge everyone to make it to shul!