Times: Shabbat starts on Friday at 5:16 pm and ends on Saturday night at 6:13 pm. The weekly Torah portion is Emor.

Mincha in the CBD: Based on current numbers, we are not operating a mincha minyan. On Thursdays, there is mincha at L1 28/101 Collins at 1.50pm following the shiur & lunch. Join the the WhatsApp group to stay across the details.

Study: The Weekly Shiur continues on Wednesday at 12:45pm via zoom. BYO lunch. We can switch to combined zoom/in-person based on demand. Details here..

Thought of the Week with thanks to Annette Charak. In his book, The Jewish Way, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg writes that “The festivals are the master code of Judaism. Decipher them and you will discover the inner sanctum of this religion. Grasp them and you hold the heart of the faith in your hand.” This week’s Torah reading of Emor contains one of five instances in the Torah where the Jewish people are commanded to observe the festivals: “These are the fixed times of the Lord which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions”. In commenting on this passage, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks notes the Torah’s focus here on the “holiness of time and the times of holiness”.

The list of festivals begins with the weekly Shabbat, which seems incongruous with the rest of the annual festivals. The Vilna Ga’on sees a grander design than a simple list of seven annual holy days (the first and seventh day of Pesach, one day of Shavuot, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, the first day of Succot and Shemini Atzeret). He sees this list of the seven festival days as reflecting the seven days of the week. And just as the seventh day is the Sabbath, Yom Kippur, the “Sabbath of Sabbaths” is the seventh festival. In this way, the festivals themselves enshrine the “seven day” Shabbat principle.