Parshat T’tzaveh/Shabbat Zakhor

This week’s parashah, T’tzaveh, describes the garments that the kohen gadol, the high priest, wore “for honor and for glory (l’khavod u-l’tifaret).” It reminds us of a time when holiness resided in a person, the kohen, and a physical location, the Temple.

Every Shabbat, in the final blessing after the haftarah, we quote that same phrase — “l’khavod u-l’tifaret (for honor and for glory).” We apply those words not to the kohen, but to Shabbat, not to a holy person but to a holy time.

After the destruction of the Temple, Judaism took the holiness that had resided in the Temple and the priests and transferred it to a particular day. Now, instead of holy people in a holy place, we have what Abraham Joshua Heschel called our “sanctuary in time.” The transfer of holiness from the physical domain to the temporal domain  means that what was once accessible only to a special few, in a special place, is accessible to all of us, wherever we might be. It depends only on the choices that we make.

Together, may we always work to make Shabbat a source of “honor and glory.”

• The New Shul’s Shabbat services are on Friday evenings from 6 to 7 pm, and on Saturday mornings from 9 am to 12 noon. This Shabbat, March 7, the kiddush-lunch will be sponsored by Carol Wolintz.
• Childcare is available on Shabbat mornings from 10 am to noon.
• Minyanim during the week are on Sunday mornings at 9:30 am, and on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings at 6:30 pm.
• Purim begins on Monday evening March 9. Join us at The New Shul for our megillah reading and sh’piel at 7:15 pm. We will read the megillah again on Tuesday morning. Minyan will begin at 8 am.