Saturday, May 18 Tanya Class 9:15am Morning Service: 10:00am Kiddush: 12:15pm Evening Service: 7:40pm Shabbat Ends: 8:59pm
Kiddush Sponsored by Shmuel and Esther Kotlyar in honor of their son Yeshoshua Tami's Birthday Mazal Tov!!
Hebrew School children beaming with Jewish pride, celebrating a year of learning and growing in Jewish education! The program included prayers, songs, awards, teacher and volunteer appreciation, flowers for Mother's Day and showcasing the children's work throughout the year! Am Yisroel Chai!
FAIR LAWN JEWISH DAY CAMP
A BISSELE HUMOR
A company, feeling it was time for a shakeup, hires a new CEO. This new boss is determined to rid the company of all slackers. On a tour of the facilities, the CEO notices a guy leaning on a wall. The room is full of workers and he wants to let them know he means business. The CEO walks up to the guy and asks, "And how much money do you make a week?" Undaunted, the young fellow looks at him and replies, "I make $600.00 a week, sir. Why?" The CEO then hands the guy $6,000 in cash and screams, "Here's ten week's pay, now GET OUT and don't come back! No room in this company for people just leaning against walls. Out of there!” Feeling pretty good about his first firing, the CEO looks around the room and asks, "Does anyone want to tell me what that goof-off did here?" With a sheepish grin, one of the other workers mutters, "Pizza delivery guy. He was waiting for his tip."
WEEKLY eTORAH
Right at the beginning of this week’s Torah reading, Emor, we come across a phrase that seems somewhat superfluous. “And G‑d said to Moses, ‘Say to the Priests, the sons of Aaron: You shall say to them not to allow themselves to become impure.” Why repeat the word “say”? Rashi explains this seeming redundancy as follows: “Say to the priests that they, in turn, shall say it to their children.” i.e., Tell the adult Kohanim that they must warn the younger ones to stay away from impurities. As ministers in the Holy Temple, the Kohanim were privileged to have been granted a higher degree of sanctity. Privilege always comes with responsibility, and one of their responsibilities was to maintain a rigorous level of purity. It is a lesson not only to members of the priestly tribe, but to all of us. Every parent and teacher has the duty to educate the younger generation accordingly. We are forever telling our kids, “Be a mensch!” But the only way our child will be a mensch is if we are a mensch. The qualities that make us a mensch are, in fact, learned more at home than at school, shul, or at yeshivah. Parents are the primary instructors when it comes to values, ethics, and what we call menschlichkeit. We may learn Torah and math at school, but values, decency, dignity and, in general, how to be a mensch are learned at home. I remember once overhearing my parents discussing how to deal with a particular individual who had wronged them badly. One of the many life lessons they taught me, almost unconsciously, was that they refused to stoop to his level of inappropriate behavior. Just because someone else behaved badly, why should they? It was a profound lesson to a teenager finding his way in life, and I learned it from their behavior more than from any instructions given to me. In real estate, they say that the three most important components of any property are “location, location, location.” And in education they say the three most effective tools are “example, example, example.” Children who see parents and teachers acting on their own life lessons are far more likely to follow in their footsteps. Otherwise, no matter how loudly we shout or how eloquently we may speak, our words remain hollow. Children who experience a family code of honor, decency, honesty, or a genuine commitment to Jewish life, will very likely feel guided by those same values in their own lives. It is up to us to be successful role models who practice what we preach and educate by example.
