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Phone: 074-7800643
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Please mail a check to:
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Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
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For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
Your donation will be tax deductible in the US to the extent allowed by the IRS.
To make a tax-deductible donation by wire transfer in the US, please contact:
Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
To make a tax-deductible donation in Israel, please contact:
Dina Gudai, Israeli Representative
Phone: 074-7800643
Email: dina@schechter.ac.il
Please mail your check to:
The Schechter Institutes, Inc. (a 501(c) 3 tax exempt organization)
Box #3566
PO Box 8500
Philadelphia, PA 19178-3566
Attn: Mr. Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
Please indicate the donation is "for your joint Schechter Institutes program."
Checks should be made payable to the Jewish Theological Society of Canada and mailed to:
Jewish Theological Society of Canada
c/o Camp Ramah in Canada
3845 Bathhurst St., Suite 310
Toronto, ON, M3H 3N2
Phone: 416-789-2193, ext. 2139
E-mail: accounting@campramah.com
Please mail a check to:
The Schechter Institutes
Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
Israel
For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
The Talmud asks the question why it is that we have prescribed prayer?
Why, we as a Jewish people must pray every morning Shacharit and every afternoon, late afternoon, early evening Mincha?
They say it could be because of the sacrifices we did in the Temple. But that doesn’t quite make sense because in the Temple they sacrificed twice-a-day and we Jews pray three times a day.
They suggest that maybe instead of the sacrifices, we learn it from our forefathers: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Isaac, in this week’s parashah, goes out, לָשׂוּחַ בַּשָּׂדֶה to ‘discuss in the fields’ right before evening.
Our tradition says there is no discussion, there is no discourse, but instead a prayer.
This makes so much sense to me, because Isaac is a man who has gone through terrible trauma. Separated from his brother Ishmael because of something that Ishmael maybe did wrong or maybe because they just couldn’t grow up together.
Accompanying his father and discovering that maybe, he was the sacrificial lamb and escaping right before the knife comes down.
Losing his mother, and his servant going to a far-away land to create a marriage with a person that he doesn’t know.
Isaac is post traumatic. When he goes out to talk to God he is not just speaking, he is perhaps angry, he is scared.
Isaac has this opportunity to let his heart shout and say, “After all that I have been through, what is next?”
The fact that our tradition says that this is Mincha, this is our afternoon prayer, says that is OK for us to struggle with what we have experienced.
I am recording this a month after the ceasefire and we are asking ourselves where do we go now?
As I say these words, we have four families waiting still for their loved ones. Grateful for all who have come home and come home for an eternal rest.
When we look to the Talmud and we say, we can learn from Isaac.
We need not only give thanks but we can give thanks for all that is good and scream for all that we still need.
Shavua Tov
Rabbi Arie Hasit, Associate Dean, Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, was ordained by the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in 2016 and was in the second cohort of the Mishlei program. Prior, he served six years as the founding rabbi and CEO of 70 Faces — Mazkeret Batya, a unique community that promotes the values of Masorti Judaism and religious pluralism in the public sphere.
Rabbi Hasit volunteers as co-chair of the Masorti Movement’s Youth Committee and as a member of the Law Committee for the Israeli Rabbinical Assembly.
He lives in Mazkeret Batya with his wife, Sara Tova Brody and their two children.
