Recap for 23 Av 5776 (Parsha Eikev)

This Shabbos, Rabbi Males spoke about the commandment to love thy fellow Jews, regardless of where they are in their life journey. He mentioned, in particular, welcoming and helping newcomers to the community. Norm shared that he appreciates the welcoming and help he received when his family came hear following hurricane Katrina. I appreciate that I have always felt welcome by everyone, especially when I was a newcomer and very early in my journey back to my religion.

I want to thank Rob Golder for hosting our Kiddush and learning this week. We discussed some interesting questions and issues. Rob Golder led discussion.

We discussed the practice of bringing out Sefer Torahs during Sukkot. In particular, we discussed how on the 7th day, some shuls bring out as many Torahs as they have, but usually no more than 7. We discussed how we circle the shul with these Torahs.

We discussed the origin of the 3 tefillah services, Shacharit, Mincah, and Mariiv. There are 2 sources. The first source comes from the patriarchs, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who prayed at these times. These patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, correspond to Shacharit, Mincah, and Mariiv, respectfully. The second source is the sacrifices, which we now replace with prayer. These were done during the morning, afternoon, and evening.

We discussed how the patriarchs, do not account for Mussaf, and how the sacrifices do not account for Mariiv.  We discussed how we use a combination of these sources, to come up with the 3 prayer services, plus Mussaf, which is known as the additional prayer. We discussed how we only repeat the Amidah part of Mariiv once, because it is only indicated by 1 out of the 2 sources.

We discussed the practice of doing Mincah/Mariiv early, in particular during the summer. We are allowed to bring in the new day early by 1.5 hours. The definition of these "hours" is 1 "hour" equal to 1/12th the total daylight hours of the day. We discussed that if we bring in the new day early, we should be consistent.

We discussed how during the summer, it is common to bring in Shabbos early by amounts that are less than 1.5 hours. We discussed that there is opinion that this is allowed, as long as we would not get a minyan earlier, and/or there are people who could not get to the earlier minyan.

We discussed that it is not problematic to do business with Christians, as they have a monotheistic religion and moral values. It is ok for Christians to not follow all of our halakah, but as Jews we are commanded, and have a covenant, to do so.

This is a summary of what we discussed.  No halachic rulings are intended or should be inferred.