Dear [first_name],

In our weekly parasha we read of the Law of the New Moon (Rosh Chodesh), the very first commandment that the Jewish People, as a whole, were commanded. (The previous commandment of Brit Milah had been commanded to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob personally - it was obligatory upon the entire Jewish People).

Why was this the law of Rosh Chodesh chosen as the first commandment?

Our Rabbis tell us that the Jewish People are compared to the moon in contrast with the non-Jewish world which is compared to the sun.

The sun is always more or less the same. The moon varies constantly. It waxes and wanes. It grows stronger, then weaker, then stronger again.

The Jewish People, too, have had many ups and downs. "When they rise, they rise to the stars; when they fall, they fall to the earth," says the Midrash. But no matter how far or hard they fall, they do always rise again.

In our own time we have seen our people fall to a level they had never fallen to before. But we have also seen the rebirth of the Jewish State and the Jewish People in every country of the world - a phoenix rising from the ashes - in a national and spiritual renewal the scope of which is totally unprecedented. Here too the mind boggles at the awesomeness of the miracle.

Looking at the terror in the world around us, and especially that faced by Israel, it is easy to become discouraged. Just when we thought that the baseless hatred of our people had run its course, here we are again. But there is no reason to give up hope - for until the coming of Moshiach - it appears that this is the destiny of the Jewish People, rises and falls, ebbs and flows. The constant is that whereas others rise and then fade from the stage of history altogether, we Jews remain eternally present.

Or as Shlomo HaMelech - King Solomon - had inscribed on his ring, “This too shall pass". And so when things went well, he didn't allow them to go to his head. And when things were not so good, he didn't throw in the towel.

And just as this is true for the Jewish People as a whole, so too, for every individual Jew.

With best wishes for a Good Shabbos on behalf of the Rebbetzin and all of us at South Head,

Rabbi Benzion Milecki OAM

President's Message

When I was a student at Oxford University in the mid-1970s, one of the most influential young philosophers was Saul Kripke. He had given a series of lectures at Princeton in 1970, later published as Naming and Necessity, which challenged the way the philosophy of language was done. He said that reference is not achieved through associating a name with a description; rather, names are what he called “rigid designators”: they apply in all possible worlds or counterfactual situations. For example, “Nixon” is a rigid designator but “president of the U.S. in 1970” is not. In Kripke’s view, reference is fixed through an initial “baptism” (i.e., a naming) after which the name is passed on from link to link in the community. It is possible for someone to use a name without knowing very much about the referent at all. Kripke also examined identity statements that have implications for the mind-body problem: what is the relationship between the mind and the body -- between the mental realm (the realm of thoughts, beliefs, pains, sensations, emotions) and the physical realm (matter, atoms, neurons). Many years later, my older son, Adam, who is now a barrister, studied philosophy at university and wrote his honours thesis on this subject.

Some ten or so years ago, when I was in New York I caught up with my friend Arie Bucheister. Arie and I had been students together at Columbia and then Oxford. His parents were Holocaust survivors. He grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, where his father had the only kosher butcher shop. After working as a lawyer, Arie changed course and worked for Jewish Holocaust organisations; for the past 20 years, he has been a senior executive at the Claims Conference (the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany). As I told him about my family and Adam’s career, he told (or reminded) me that he had grown up with Saul Kripke in Omaha (Arie is 11 years younger than Saul). Read More

So I didn’t go to Israel but, in 1956, the Rebbe sent me on a short mission there. At that time, there had been an attack in Kfar Chabad – Arab terrorists entered the village synagogue during evening prayers and murdered five children and their teacher in cold blood. In order to lend moral and spiritual support to the Chabad community, the Rebbe sent a delegation of twelve yeshivah students to Israel as his emissaries, and I was one of those selected to go. Read More

Read all about the remaining plagues which Hashem sends upon the evil Pharaoh and all the Egyptians and how the Jewish people are finally set free from Egypt.

Please share our Parasha sheet around your Shabbat table and let your family and friends explore the Parasha of the week together with you.

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