1. religion and spirituality
2. judaism

Welcome to Congregation Ner Tamid!
Be a part of our Family!
Call 415-661-3383 to be put on our Mailing List
or for Membership Information.
 PERSONAL EVENTS IN OUR SYNAGOGUE FAMILY 
Yom Huledet Same’ah! ~ Happy Birthday Wishes to:
Hella Weiss (10/29); Rabbi Moshe Levin (10/31)
••• UPCOMING EVENTS •••
Wednesday, November 5, 7 PM: Painting Class with Al Bernzweig
Thursday, November 6, 9:30 AM: Torah Study Breakfast Club,
hosted by Mike Lips. All welcome.
Thursday, November 6, 7 PM: Four Synagogues Introduction to
Judaism rotating class. Ongoing Thursdays. Contact Rabbi Levin.
Thursday, November 13, 7 PM: 1st Ner Tamid Young Adult Havurah
Wine & Cheese Social. Information on Ner Tamid’s Facebook page.
THE
NEW YORKER on “October 31st” with Rabbi Moshe Levin
Miryam Raphael (10/31); Henry Wartens (10/31)
Slava Yasnovsky (11/01); Lillian Volansky (11/03)
David Volansky (11/09); Bianca Hirsch (11/11)
~*~*~~*~*~*~ ~*~*
Happy Anniversary Wishes to:
Susie & Aaron Straus (10/28); Karen & Chuck Amital (11/14)
~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~
REFUA’H SHELEMA ~ We wish a recovery to:
Rose Goldkind; Charles Shafer; Esther Franco; Cheryl Lewis; Lila Kluger
SHALOM U’MENUHA ~ We wish courage and comfort to:
Sarah & Morris Rosnow; Shirley Kubel; Jacob Igra
Please inform us of any illness or life cycle event of which you are aware.
Rabbi Levin would like to know so that he can call or visit.
“So because the Rabbi’s birthday is on Halloween you want me
to trash his office? That’ll scare everyone!”
 MAY THEIR MEMORY BE A BLESSING 
Yitzhak Rabin: 9th Yahrzeit of Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s 5th
Prime Minister of Israel, assassinated Saturday night,
4 November 1995 – 4 Heshvan 5766. He was a
decorated general, strongly identified with the Six Day
War, and a highly regarded statesman. In 1994, Rabin
won the Nobel Peace Prize together with Shimon
Peres and Yasir Arafat. He was assassinated by rightwing Israeli radical Yigal Amir, who was opposed to
Rabin's signing of the Oslo Accords. Rabin was the
first native-born prime minister of Israel.
YAHRZEITS THIS WEEK
Asher Wagram; Bernie Smigel; Lorraine Siegel Rosenthal
Walter Hahn; Flora Baruth; Sophia N. Lambert; Frances Azoff
Abe Chayutin; Esther Stein Oppenheimer; Ralph B. Huberman
Ben Feinberg; Martha Bermann Loeb; Ann Lunsford
Isidor Rosenberg; Siegfried Dreifuss; Goldie Cohen
Abraham Sutterman; Harry Aaron Goldstein; Rose Feldman
To dedicate a plaque in memory of a loved one, please call the office.
Bold denotes a plaque on Memorial Wall
Torah Sparks ~ L E K H L E K H A
Sponsored by Susan Julius; Prepared by various rabbis at USCJ
Edited by Rabbi Moshe Levin
Torah Reading: p. 77
Haftarah: p. 95
This Week’s Torah Portion Summary
With Lekh Lekha, the Torah shifts from the history of the world to
our People’s beginnings as Abram and his wife Sarai become the
focal characters of the text. Abram is called upon to leave the land
of his origin, as G*d promises him a life of blessing and greatness.
He and Sarai take his nephew Lot and leave Haran for Canaan, where
Abram constructs an altar at Beth El, "calling upon the Name of
G*d." But a famine in Canaan impels Abram, Sarai, and Lot to travel
to Egypt. Sarai is taken into Pharaoh's harem because, at Abram's
express instructions, she identified herself not as his wife but as his
sister so as not to be killed by the Egyptians. Abram benefits
materially from this deception, although G*d afflicts Pharaoh and his
household with plagues. Dismayed, Pharaoh returns Sarai to her
husband, and, along with Lot, they return to Beth El.
As Abram’s nephew, Lot, grows older and has flocks of his own, Lot
and Abram go their separate ways with Lot settling in Sodom. But
in a war pitting four kings against five others, Lot is taken captive.
Accepting responsibility as next of kin, Abram takes an armed force
of 318 troops to rescue his nephew. Upon his victory and Lot's safe
return, Abram refuses any spoils of the war, saying he does not want
his future success ever attributed to anyone but himself.
(An interesting theological question is raised when Abram, upon
returning from the victory, is blessed by the priest, Melkizedek,
identified as a “Kohen of El Elyon, a priest of El Most High,” and,
while serving bread and wine Abram presents him with “a tenth of
everything.”)
The promises of providing Abram with innumerable descendants are
repeated and then followed by the dramatic "Brit Bayn Habtarim –
the Covenant Between the Pieces." However, Abram is told that his
descendants will first be slaves in a foreign land for four hundred
years, and only then will they return and inhabit the lands of the
Canaanites. But despite those promises, Sarai is still unable to get
pregnant. So she designates her handmaiden, the Egyptian Hagar, as
her surrogate who is impregnated by Abram. Sarai then resents
Hagar’s new stature and the girl flees under her harsh treatment but
returns to the family at an angel’s command.
Hagar's son Ishmael is born to Abram when he is 86. Thirteen years
later, G*d renews the Covenant by changing the patriarch and
matriarch’s names to Abraham and Sarah, signifying elevated
stature. Then the “Brit Milah - Covenant of Circumcision” is
commanded for all Abraham’s male descendants as well as his
servants. When G*d assures him of the birth of a second son through
Sarah, the elderly Abraham laughs at the idea of his 90 year old wife
finally getting pregnant. He is then told the child will be named Isaac,
Laughter, and will serve as the genuine heir to the covenant. When
Abraham expresses concern about his firstborn son saying, "I wish
only that Ishmael might live!" G*d announces that, "He shall be the
father of 12 chieftains, and I will make of him a great nation." The
parasha ends with Abraham and Ishmael becoming circumcised at
age 100 and 13 respectively, as well as all the men in Abraham's
household.
"Spoils of War Can Spoil the Soul"
"Then the king of Sodom said to Abram, ‘Give me back the people,
and keep the possessions for yourself.' But Abram said to him, ‘I
swear to the Lord, G*d Most High, Creator of Heaven and Earth: I
will not take so much as a thread or a sandal strap of what is yours;
so that you shall not say, ‘It is I who made Abram rich.'" (14:21-23)
Commentaries, Old and New
"Abraham, true to nomadic tradition, does not wish to be beholden
to anyone. Besides, as a trader, he need not rely on plunder as a
source of income." (Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, The Torah: A Modern
Commentary)
"Abraham kept himself far away from the ease and comfort which
appealed to his nephew, Lot. Abraham struck out for a place which
would challenge his creative potential. The choice which Abraham
made all of us have to make somewhere along life's highway. The
alternative is Sodom." (Rabbi Frederick C. Schwartz)
"The focus of the story is not on Abraham's martial prowess but in
Abraham's responses to the challenges of war. There are times when
war cannot be avoided. Abraham enters the conflict only after Lot's
capture, to rescue his nephew. We need to go war to defend ourselves
and protect our families, but one should not enrich oneself through
warfare. The conventions of that day allowed Abraham to keep the
riches he seized from the defeated invaders. Abraham, however,
wisely refused all riches. He did not take advantage of his neighbors'
weakness to enrich himself and plant the seeds for future conflicts.
Abraham demonstrated that one needs to be magnanimous in victory.
Wisdom often dictates that one should not keep all that one has
conquered." (Rabbi Lewis Eron)
CONGREGATION NER TAMID
1250 Quintara Street  San Francisco, CA  94116
Main: (415) 661-3383
Fax: (415) 661-9041
nertamidsf@sbcglobal.net
www.NerTamidSF.org
Rabbi Moshe Levin
Cantor Rudy Hassid
Baal Koreh Zvi Kalinski
Administrator Adele Shafer
Co-Presidents Beverlee Hassid and Gerald Spindel
Lekh Lekha: Week of 8 Heshvan 5775 —
October 31-November 1, 2014
What Do You Think?
How do Abraham's participation in war and his behavior thereafter
make him an especially apt model for contemporary Jews?
Rabbi Schwartz brings up the fact that Sodom is later depicted as a
City of Evil, so much so that there are not even ten good people living
there, and thus it is destroyed by fire and brimstone. He says that
Abram rejected the materialism and easy life that Sodom
represented. Has the materialism of the 80’s and 90’s “Me
Generation” in which many of today’s wealthiest people grew up,
been a cause of the greed that led to the economic problems so many
are still experiencing?
According to Rabbi Efron, what motivated Abraham to decline
wealth to which arguably he was entitled? Are there any lessons that
PM Bibi Netanyahu and Israel could learn from Abraham’s response
as they face the challenge of what to do with the West Bank and the
Palestinians they defeated in the Six Day War?
This Day in Jewish History:
November 1, 1290 is the date of the final expulsion of the Jews from
England which was the very first national expulsion of the Jews. On
July 18, 1290, Edward I, pressured by his barons, the Church, and
possibly his mother, announced the expulsion of all the Jews. By
November 1st approximately 4000 had fled. The Jews had to pay
their own passage, mostly to France. They were allowed to take
movables (i.e. clothing). A number of Jews were robbed and cast
overboard during the voyage by the ship captains. The Jews did not
return to England until 1659. This wads. England was one of the only
centralized and national monarchies of that time.
“Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to
count them …. So shall your offspring be.”
In reality, we are among the smallest of nations. Yet we survived
for 4,000 years despite slavery in Egypt, the Assyrians who
captured us, the Babylonians who exiled us, the Romans
crucified us, the Crusaders who tread over us, the Spanish who
expelled us, the Germans who gassed us, the Russians who
choked us, the Arabs who fought us, and the UN that condemns
us. And we are still here, strong, bright, accomplished and
philanthropic. What a miracle!