JBD – Jews of the Melbourne CBD is now on LinkedIn. Follow us here.
Shabbat starts on Friday at 8:01pm and ends on Saturday at 9:00pm. The weekly Torah portion is Yitro.
Mincha is now in recess for the summer and will resume after DST ends. Join the WhatsApp group for any updates.
*NEW* Parsha discussion group for men & women led by Yudi New on Tues at 1.15pm at A-P GF/459 Collins Details here and on the WhatsApp group.
Weekly sushi & shiur continues on Wed at 1.20pm at A-P GF/459 Collins – and via zoom. Current topic: strata titles. Details here and on the WhatsApp group.
Thought of the Week with thanks to David Werdiger
“Thank God” is how we acknowledge good news. But who said it first?
Turns out there are just two documented examples in the Torah: Eliezer – Avraham’s house manager, and Yitro (in this week’s reading) – Moshe’s father-in-law.
It seems odd that the precedent for something so important – expressing gratitude to God – comes not from great leaders like Avraham and Moshe themselves, rather from ‘peripheral’ characters who had close connections to them.
Two lessons here:
- The behaviour we model is so important – we don’t know the extent to which others around us will learn from it.
- Despite (we may think) a close connection to God and an awareness of His role in the world, sometimes it takes someone from outside the fray to point this out!