Beth Shalom Schedule for the Week of April 12th

With H-shem's ever loving kindness, we will meet at the synagogue at 956 J Street in Crescent City this Friday evening at 7:00 pm for Shabbat services. These will be lay services and all friends and congregants are welcome to attend.

We will meet to light candles, hear about some Torah and have a little kiddish as a community before we retire to our respective weekends.

The following Saturday morning at 10:00 am we will meet again at the synagogue for our weekly Torah study. This week we have a double portion of Tatzria and Metzorah (Leviticus 12:1 - 15:33) and while these parshiot cover a lot of details there is one unifying theme: the laws of ritual cleanliness. From the rituals to cleanse after childbirth and the diagnosis of "tsaras" (some kind of skin condition often mistranslated as leprosy) to the cleansing of a dwelling that has become impure we learn about the laws governing the medical practice of our ancestors.

Of course, there are many more layers or meaning to the text at this point. G-d willing we will discover many more.

Additionally, this Wednesday evening will be Rosh Chodesh Iyar which, for our ancestors, fell on the first Shabbat after they crossed the Yom Suf (reed sea) after leaving Egypt. You can learn more about the significance here http://www.ou.org/chagim/roshchodesh/iyar/roshch.htm