Dear Friends:
You probably noticed that a week ago today you did not get my “Rabbi’s Update” in the morning or the Shabbat Shalom email in the afternoon. Our bulk email provider, Vertical Response, was down for several days.
When you click on a link in a Vertical Response-generated message, even if you received it as a forward from the office, it does not actually go directly to that web address but rather it goes via the Vertical Response website. I do not know why this is, but I can tell you that I recently received a FedEx delivery which originated in Herndon, VA, and went from there to my home in Montgomery Village via Nashville, so I assume there is some logic at work here. At any rate, this means that if Vertical Response is down and you click on the link in a Rabbi's Update or the Weekly Announcements to get to our Zoom, you will get an error message and be unable to get to Zoom. (You will notice that the URL for the error message is at "vresp.com" which is Vertical Response). This meant that we did not have a minyan last Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday nights and a number of you contacted me to let me know that you were unable to get into our Zoom meeting room.
You do not need to go via VerticalResponse to get to our Zoom. If you open the Zoom app on your desktop or phone and click on "Join Meeting", it will populate a list of Zoom meetings you have joined lately and one of them should be "Charles Arian's Personal Meeting" which is our Zoom. Alternatively, you can copy the link in the email rather than click on it, and paste that link into your browser, and voila.
We've had this issue in the past but not for a while so you may have forgotten what to do to get to our Zoom if you get an error message or just find nothing happening when you click on a link. Rest assured that Zoom is working, the problem lies with Vertical Response.
Next Thursday night I am going to present a session of my occasional series on “Contemporary Jewish Controversies” exploring the breakdown of the American Jewish consensus on Israel. (This class was originally scheduled for last week but was not held because I was recuperating from being hit by a car earlier in the week.) There have been a number of indications in the past few weeks that this consensus has indeed broken down. As a few examples: a number of mainstream Jewish organizations (including the Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue) last week issued a statement opposing any Israeli attempt to reestablish Jewish settlements in Gaza; last month, nineteen senators -- including a number of Jewish senators -- voted for an unsuccessful resolution to withhold offensive weapons from Israel because of civilian deaths and injuries in Gaza; and also last week, 77 House members -- many of them Jewish, including Jamie Raskin -- sent a letter to Secretary of State Blinken and Defense Secretary Austin encouraging them to force Israel to allow more humanitarian assistance into Gaza. As of this writing I have not seen anything from the JCRC, ADL, or the American Jewish Committee, condemning the House members who signed this letter. Please note that my intention here is neither to criticize nor endorse any of the above-cited examples but simply to point out how things have changed in the last few months.
A reminder regarding lighting Chanukah candles on Friday and Saturday nights: the procedure is as follows: tonight, first we light the Chanukah menorah (three candles plus the shamash) and only then do we light the Shabbat candles -- the reason of course being that once we light the Shabbat candles we have started Shabbat and aren’t permitted to light the Chanukah menorah. Tomorrow night we say Havdalah first including the Havdalah candle and only then light the Chanukah menorah, since we cannot light the Chanukah candles until we have ended Shabbat.
As a reminder, I am having drop-in hours on Thursday afternoons from 2 to 4 at the shul. For my drop-in hours, you do not need to make an appointment -- that would negate the whole point of drop-in hours -- but I’d urge you to check and make sure I am there regardless as sometimes there are unavoidable pastoral or other emergencies which might take me away from the building.
As always, if I can do anything for you or you need to talk, please contact me at rabbi@kehilatshalom.org or 301-977-0768 rather than through the synagogue office. I am happy to meet you at the synagogue by appointment; if you want to speak with me it’s best to make an appointment rather than assuming I will be there when you stop by.
Additionally, if you know of a Kehilat Shalom congregant or another member of our Jewish community who could use a phone call, please let me know.
L’shalom,
Rabbi Charles L. Arian
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