Mazal Tov to Tali and Zalman Ainsworth and families on the birth of a son!

Times: Shabbat starts tonight with candle lighting at 5:28pm, and ends Saturday night at 6:27pm. The weekly Torah portion is Shoftim.

Mincha in the CBD: Whisky and Kugel Fridays is on today at 1.00pm using the SMS system to confirm numbers. Mincha (Mon-Fri) continues next week at 1.00pm with the SMS reminder.

Study: The Wednesday shiur & lunch continues this week at Billing Bureau, following 1.00pm mincha

Thought of the Week with thanks to  Rafi Goodman. One of the commandment’s in this week’s Torah reading is to build “Cities of Refuge” where people can flee to if they kill another person inadvertently.

Our Divine soul is our true source of optimism and positive energy, which thrives on good deeds. When we allow ourselves to harbour negativity of any kind, we drain energy from our Divine soul, channelling this energy into negativity. Figuratively, whenever we commit a bad deed we are “killing” our Divine soul to some degree.

In such situations the Torah tells us to we have to take stock of our lives by going into “exile” to a metaphoric City of Refuge, so that we remove ourselves from our habitual misbehaviour and reframe our lives in a better and more positive light.
In this way, we can at any time remake ourselves into better human beings starting life afresh with a positive outlook and a clean slate.