Haftorah 3 yr cycle (Avram Israel Reisner, 2014)

How long must a haftarah be?
Megillah 23a reports a baraita that requires 21 verses in the haftarah, parallel to the
minimum of seven aliyot of three verses in the Torah reading. That ruling is represented as the
halakhah by Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chayim 284:1. But a careful reading of the Talmud text
suggests that the matter may be less clear.
The baraita is not reported by the Talmud as a matter of law. It is used by the Talmud,
there, to attempt to bring a proof about the number of aliyot that there are. But Rava sees it as a
”עולותיכם ספו“ ruling and challenges it on factual grounds, citing the haftarah
, the haftarah of
parashat Tsav, which he points out is less than 21 verses. Several other haftarot today are
likewise less than 21 verses (the haftarah of Ki Tetze, “רני עקרה,” Isaiah 54:1-10, 10 verses; the
haftarah of Vayak-hel “ויעש חירום,” I Kings 7:40-50, 11 verses, to name a few). The talmud’s
anonymous response to Rava’s challenge is: “That is different, because the issue comes to an end

Baraita, also spelled Baraitha (Hebrew: “Outside Teaching,” or “Exclusion”), plural Baraitot, Baraitoth, orBaraithoth, any of the ancient oral traditions of Jewish religious law that were not included in the Mishna (the first authoritative codification of such laws).

The Book of Psalms is an ancient anthology of poetic prayers originally written in Hebrew.
It is the first book of the third and final section of the Hebrew Bible, known as Ketuvim (Writings).
The English term title derives from the Greek psalmos, meaning “song accompanied by a stringed instrument.”
In Hebrew, the book is known as Tehillim (tehillah in the singular) or “songs of praise,”
a title that emerged as the preferred Jewish name for the collection during the first centuries of the Common Era (CE).

Hebrew Lyrics

Transliteration

התקוה

Kol od balevav p’nimah

כל עוד בלבב פנימה

Nefesh Yehudi homiyah

נפש יהודי הומיה

Ulfa’atey mizrach kadimah

ולפאתי מזרח קדימה

Ayin l’tzion tzofiyah

עין לציון צופיה

Od lo avdah tikvatenu

עוד לא אבדה תקותנו

Hatikvah bat shnot alpayim

התקוה בת שנות אלפים

L’hiyot am chofshi b’artzenu

להיות עם חופשי בארצנו

Eretz Tzion v’Yerushalayim

ארץ ציון וירושלים

History

The title of the national anthem, HATIKVA, means “The Hope.” It was written by Naftali Herz Imber (1856-1909), who moved to Palestine in 1882 from Galicia. The melody was arranged by Samuel Cohen, an immigrant from Moldavia, from a musical theme in Smetana’s “Moldau” that is partly based on a Scandinavian folk song.

Hatikva expresses the hope of the Jewish people, that they would someday return to the land of their forefathers as prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. The Jewish people were exiled from Israel in 70 C.E. by the Roman army led by Titus who destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. During the two thousand years of exile, the Jewish people said special daily prayers for return to Israel while facing the East in the direction of Jerusalem. They celebrated the holidays according to Hebrew seasons and calendar. Zion is synonymous with Israel and Jerusalem.

The Sukkah’s spiritual energy invites the souls of Judaism’s seven great leaders to partake in the divine light on Earth.

And who by fire, who by water,

Who in the sunshine, who in the night time,

Who by high ordeal, who by common trial,

Who in your merry merry month of may,

Who by very slow decay,

And who shall I say is calling?

And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate,

Who in these realms of love, who by something blunt,

And who by avalanche, who by powder,

Who for his greed, who for his hunger,

And who shall I say is calling?

And who by brave assent, who by accident,

Who in solitude, who in this mirror,

Who by his lady’s command, who by his own hand,

Who in mortal chains, who in power,

And who shall I say is calling?

The Talmud tells us that the horns of all kosher animals are kosher for shofars, except for the horn of an ox,
which is technically not called a “shofar” but a “keren,” and antlers, which are not considered shofars
(shofar means “hollow” and antlers are solid).

Yet, of all the possibilities, the preferred source for the shofar is the ram, for the following two reasons:
1. It evokes the ram that was offered instead of Isaac, bringing to light the merit of Abraham who was ready to
sacrifice his only son for G‑d.
2. Its bent shape symbolizes the humility we feel as we stand before G‑d.

The primary shofar blowing consists of the following 30 blasts:

Tekiah-shevarim-teruah-tekiah
Tekiah-shevarim-teruah-tekiah
Tekiah-shevarim-teruah-tekiah

Tekiah-shevarim-tekiah
Tekiah-shevarim-tekiah
Tekiah-shevarim- tekiah

Tekiah-teruah-tekiah
Tekiah-teruah-tekiah
Tekiah-teruah-tekiah gedolah (extra long blast)

During the Musaf prayer, we have 7 more opportunities to blow the shofar, producing the following 10 blasts each time:

Tekiah-shevarim-teruah-tekiah
Tekiah-shevarim-tekiah
Tekiah-teruah-tekiah

================

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4837/jewish/Shofar.htm

Quarantine

Eavan Boland

1944 – 2020

In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking—they were both walking—north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.
Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.

“Quarantine” is a political poem written by Irish poet Eavan Boland about the Irish famine of the mid 19th century

URJ blog High Holidays

On Repentance and Repair: A Reform Movement Program for the High Holidays and Beyond

The Reform Movement is coming together to advance our understanding of t’shuvah, particularly in the context of our ethics accountability work, with video resources and a discussion guide that will enhance your congregational, communal, or individual experiences during the High Holiday season of reflection and repentance.

The term Jew is derived from Hebrew יְהוּדִי Yehudi, originally the term for the people of the Israelitekingdom of Judah. According to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe of Judah and the kingdom of Judah derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob.^[48] Genesis 29:35 and 49:8 connect the name “Judah” with the verb yada, meaning “praise”, but scholars generally agree that the name of both the patriarch and the kingdom instead have a geographic origin—possibly referring to the gorges and ravines of the region.^[49][50] The shift of ethnonym from “Israelites” to “Jews” (inhabitant of Judah), although not contained in the Torah, is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE),^[51] a book in the Ketuvim, the third section of the Jewish Tanakh.

The Hebrew word for “Jew” is יְהוּדִי Yehudi, with the plural יְהוּדִים Yehudim.^[52] Endonyms in other Jewish languages include the Ladino ג׳ודיו Djudio (plural ג׳ודיוס, Djudios) and the Yiddish ייִד Yid (plural ייִדן Yidn).

The English word “Jew” continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe. These terms were loaned via the Old Frenchgiu, which itself evolved from the earlier juieu, which in turn derived from judieu/iudieu which through elisionhad dropped the letter “d” from the Medieval Latin Iudaeus, which, like the New Testament Greek term Ioudaios, meant both “Jew” and “Judean” / “of Judea“.^[53] The Greek term was a loan from Aramaic*yahūdāy, corresponding to Hebrew יְהוּדִי Yehudi.^[48]

The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., يَهُودِيّ yahūdī (sg.), al-yahūd (pl.), in Arabic, “Jude” in German, “judeu” in Portuguese, “Juif” (m.)/”Juive” (f.) in French, “jøde” in Danish and Norwegian, “judío/a” in Spanish, “jood” in Dutch, “żyd” in Polish etc., but derivations of the word “Hebrew” are also in use to describe a Jew, e.g., in Italian (Ebreo), in Persian (“Ebri/Ebrani” (Persian: عبری/عبرانی)) and Russian(Еврей, Yevrey).^[54] The German word “Jude” is pronounced [ˈjuːdə], the corresponding adjective “jüdisch” [ˈjyːdɪʃ] (Jewish) is the origin of the word “Yiddish”.^[55]

According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition (2000),

It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun Jew, in phrases such as Jew lawyer or Jew ethics, is both vulgar and highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as There are now several Jews on the council, which is unobjectionable, the substitution of a circumlocution like Jewish people or persons of Jewish background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun.^[56]