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 Shabbat Fridays in November

We’re welcoming Shabbat all month long with Friday night services and a dairy dessert potluck Oneg.

Bring a dish, bring a friend, or just bring your spirit — there’s a seat waiting for you.

 Fridays, November 7 at 6:00 PM (Community Potluck) & November 14, 21 & 28 at 7:00 PM

 Meaningful services  Singing  Dairy dessert potluck Oneg after each service.

 Congregation Bayt Shalom  All are welcome — come as you are.

Prayers for Healing and Words of Thanksgiving

            As many of you have noticed, our Shabbat services, Bagel/Torah learning, and adult ed evenings are slowly evolving.  Old and new songs, sharing, and deeper discussions are creating an atmosphere of care and gratitude.  This is something we are all doing together, and I am grateful for everyone who comes to join in, give, and also receive. 

One new part of our service is a silent moment right before the mishberach, the prayer for healing.  After we have lifted up names of friends and relatives in need of healing in body, mind, and spirit, we pause to inwardly search ourselves for those ways each of us also need healing:  physical, spiritual, psychological, or relational.  It is a good, and I hope, restorative moment.  We so often raise other people’s names and forget to name ourselves.  I also have my own Hebrew name on the mesheberach list that I read each service.  Anyone can add their name that way as well, and I will say it even when you are absent, and you will still be anonymous.

            We also always pause after Shalom Alechem  every service to give folks a moment to share good things that have happened in the last week:  tests passed, soccer games won (or at least survived), grandparent or grandchild visits, a new puppy, and so on. 

            It’s another good moment to share, especially on Thanksgiving.  In that spirit, I would like to share a few things for which I am thankful this tumultuous year in the US and the world:

I am grateful my parents knew me well enough to get me science and history books when I was young. They knew, too, that I would read them cover to cover, seated in my favorite olive tree.  

I’m grateful for surviving my teens (gay in rural California). I want to say to all the parents out there struggling with their struggling kids—hang on, it will get better.

I’m grateful for teachers and mentors all through my life (and a therapist or two as well). I hope I can ‘pass it on.’

I’m grateful to temple leadership through some good and some difficult times, the wonderfully supportive Board, the Religious School with lively kids and dedicated parents and teachers. For friends, confidants, and eager-to-help everybody. 

I’m grateful for our lovely, simple sanctuary. It is a good place for worship, song, and prayer.  Also, it is a good place to just sit quietly, in prayer, contemplation, or gratitude.    The walls seem to reverberate quietly with the prayers, songs and laughter of decades past.  How many announcements of new births and sharing of sorrows, weddings, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, High Holidays, Chanukkahs!  And there is certain Presence also, however you understand it, or don’t.  Come sit sometime.  We’re open before and after services.

Now comes the time for each of you to say what you are grateful for:           (It’s fill-in-the-blank.  Take your time.)

Nov. 28, the Friday after Thanksgiving, temple doors will be open at 5 for anyone who would like to come sit quietly, or be sociable, or maybe watch Fiddler on the Roof, before our service at 7.  We’ll quietly be thankful with--and for--each other, eat hallah and sweets.

As we are thanking God, let’s remember we are God’s arms and legs and heart here on earth—we are the ones who supply the arms to lift up, the hands to hold, the pockets to find tzedukkah,  time and energy to help bring sustenance to others.  As God has given us, so also we give others.  That’s the path of gratitude and in fact the way the world of giving and receiving works.  A happy and giving Thanksgiving to All.     

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