JBD – Jews of the Melbourne CBD is now on LinkedIn. Follow us here.
Shabbat starts on Friday at 5:26pm and ends on Saturday at 6:25pm. The weekly Torah portion is Shoftim.
Mincha continues at 1.00pm at A-P GF/459 Collins, using the WhatsApp group to confirm a minyan each day.
Weekly sushi & shiur continues on Wed at 1.10pm at A-P GF/459 Collins – and via zoom. Current topic: property set-backs. Details here and on the WhatsApp group.
Thought of the Week with thanks to Rafi Goodman
In this week’s Torah reading, we are told to place “judges and officers at all your gates.”
Chassidut explains that every person has “gates” — our eyes, ears and mouth. Through them, the outside world enters us, and through them, we affect the world around us.
The powerful idea is this: not everything that reaches us has to become part of us.
We can’t always control what we see, hear or experience. But we can choose what we give importance to, what we absorb, and what we allow to shape us.
That is real inner freedom.
A Jew is not meant to simply be moulded by the world around them. We are meant to refine it – to take an ordinary moment, conversation or experience and bring a little more truth, kindness and G-dliness into it.
Sometimes changing the world begins simply by guarding the gate.