Shabbat Candlelighting 8:36 p.m.                                             Friday, May 18, 2012/26 Iyar 5772
 

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The PJ Library at Almost 500 Local Participants
This week, we hosted Paul Lewis, part of the staff of the The PJ Library head office, who was checking in on our Lower Mainland program, one of PJ’s 175 communities across North America. In the past six years since the program was initiated, The PJ Library has grown tremendously, with free monthly shipments of Jewish books and CDs to 100,000 children. In the process, the program has single-handedly revitalized the Jewish children’s literature niche of the publishing industry and brought back about a dozen titles that had gone out of print.

Now completing our second year of the program in the Lower Mainland, we have just under 500 participants receiving monthly deliveries, demonstrating one of the fastest growth curves among participating communities. While here, Lewis met with program staff from Jewish Federation and the JCC, explored collaborative program opportunities with schools and synagogues, and also met with local donors who helped us bring the program to our community.

Because enrolment filled so quickly we have done fairly limited marketing. We are now looking at expanding funding so that we can broaden our marketing efforts, in order to extend the program to include 6-8 year olds. For more information about placing your name on the waiting list, or if you are interested in helping fund the program’s growth, please contact Samara Bordan.

And the Winner Is…
Today, the first annual Dragon Boat Festival in Israel concluded. Over the past 24 hours I received periodic updates from our Director, Israel and Overseas Affairs, If’at Eilon-Heiber. At 7:10 this morning (Israel time) our local team of Vancouver paddlers, Pacific Chai participated in their first heat, and won with an amazing time of 1:48. In the second round they shaved five seconds and won again, finishing at 1:43. This placed them in Division C, and at about 1:30 p.m. the Pacific Chai team took gold in their division, finishing 7th out of 39 teams competing in the regatta. In their last race, Pacific Chai started out slowly but was able to come from behind to win.

Sponsored by our Coast-to-Coast partnership with the Upper Galilee, the festival involved over 2,000 participants, coaches, family members, and spectators from across Canada and Israel. Our Pacific Chai team took some time to visit our partnership community, including a stop at Beit Vancouver. The 39 participating teams raised $53,000, which will support two programs for at-risk youth, also supported by Jewish Federation through the Federation Annual Campaign: Youth Futures and Net@.

Parashat Behar-Behukotai
This week’s reading is a double parasha. The second part begins with a delineation of blessings that the Israelites will receive from God if they follow the laws of the Torah, and a corresponding set of curses that will descend upon them if they disobey. How do we understand such literal warnings in our time, when perhaps more of us struggle to feel or find a divine presence in our lives? And of course many bad things that happen to good people, and vice versa.

Shalom Noach Barzovsky, known as the Slonimer Rebbe, who passed away 12 years ago, was a very influential contemporary Chassidic rebbe, impacting Chassidim and many other Jews as well. He taught that the blessings and curses should be understood in a “spiritual” sense. If we bring Torah into our lives, we will also bring “spiritual” blessings into our lives as well.

Shabbat shalom!

 
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