MAZAL TOV to Rafi Lamm and famly on the birth of twin boys!

Times: Shabbat starts on Friday at 6:01pm and ends on Saturday night at 6:59pm. The weekly Torah portion is Ha’azinu and Shabbat Shuva. Yom Kippur starts on Sunday at 6:03pm and ends on Monday at 7:01pm.

Mincha in the CBD: Mincha is still virtual as we await people returning to work in the city. That means we all daven at an agreed time, which is 1.00pm. Details at the WhatsApp group.

Study: Weekly Shiur continues on Wednesday at 1:10pm via zoom, following mincha at 1.00pm. BYO lunch. Details here.

Thought of the Week with thanks to Menachem Wolf. Teshuvah: A Hebrew term often translated as repent, but is more correctly translated (if we go to the root of the word) as ‘settle’, ‘sit’ or ‘return’.
Aveirah: commonly translated as sin but is more correctly translated as ‘Passing by’ or ‘passing over’.
Yisrael: commonly translated as Jew but is more correctly translated as minister (senior public servant) of El (the name of G-d that means abundant flow).
Mitzvah: commonly translated as commandment but can be translated as connection.

So what happens if we retranslate the common theme of the High Holiday period: Jews, do teshuvah for the aveirot you have committed and the mitzvot you haven’t done over the last year (Jews, repent for the sins of the last year and the commandments you haven’t fulfilled)? It becomes, ministers of G-d, settle down and stop passing over and passing by opportunities to create (spiritual) connection.

Teshuvah is to return to who we truly are: empowered individuals with a purpose and role given to us by God – to realise that we and everything in this universe is an expression of Divine energy, deliberately created and placed into existence in order to bring soulful connection and meaningful consciousness into physical reality – achieved by implementing the Divine intentions described in the Torah.

This time of the year we pause and consider the lost opportunities to honour the Godliness in ourselves and other people, animals, plants & objects and resolve to seize the future opportunities to do mitzvot in every situations we find ourselves in.