Welcome to the DAT Minyan! Shabbat Pesach

April 20, 2019 - 15 Nisan 5779 Joseph Friedman, Rabbi | Mark Raphaely, President

Candle Lighting

Havdalah

7:24 pm 8:27pm

DAT Minyan is a dynamic and friendly Modern Orthodox synagogue for all ages and dedicated to meaningful personal spiritual development, community growth, youth involvement, Torah education, and Religious Zionism.

DAT Minyan - 560 S. Monaco Pkwy., Denver, CO 80224 - 720-941-0479 - www.datminyan.org

Shabbat and Pesach Schedule Complete Passover schedule on Page 5

(All services during the Pesach holiday will take place in the BMH-BJ Fisher Hall, 560 S. Monaco Pkwy)

Please help make our prayer service more meaningful by refraining from talking during the service.

FRIDAY, April 19 6:10 pm: Mincha, followed by Kabbalat Shabbat & Learning: “Halachot of the Seder, and Sefirat HaOmer” 7:30 pm: Maariv 8:24 pm: Earliest time for Kiddush

(Shema should be recited after 8:24 pm) 12:58 am: Chatzot (Midnight)

SHABBAT, April 20 - Pesach Day 1

Parasha: Page 354 / Maftir: Page 892 Haftarah: Page 1221

8:20 am: Daf Yomi 9:00 am: Shacharit 9:00 am: Early care (Groups start at 10:00 am) One should eat Seudah Shlishit before Mincha 6:20 pm: SHIUR: Rabbi Friedman: "Sefirat HaOmer: Kabalat HaTorah Begins Now" 7:20 pm: Mincha, followed by HAGGADAH TIDBITS ROUNDTABLE—Volunteer to Share Your Seder Insights With Us 8:25 pm: Maariv/Earliest time for Kiddush 8:25 pm: Candle Lighting 12:58 am: Chatzot (Midnight)

SUNDAY, April 21 - Pesach Day 2 8:20 am: Daf Yomi 9:00 am: Shacharit 9:00 am: Early care (Groups start at 10:00 am) 6:15 pm: SHIUR: Robert Zirinsky: "Highlights of Hilchot Tefilla" 7:25 pm: Mincha, followed by learning: Shua Friedman: “Eilu V’Eilu: Finding Truth in a Complicated World” 8:25 pm: Maariv/Havdalah

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Weekday Schedule (Chol Hamoed)

SHACHARIT Monday through Thursday: 6:20 am and 8:00 am (late Shacharit)

MINCHA/MAARIV Monday through Wednesday: 7:25 pm Thursday: 6:15 pm (Erev Yom Tov)

D’var Torah with Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

It is no accident that parshat Bo, the section that deals with the culminating plagues and the exodus, should turn three times to the subject of children and the duty of parents to educate them. As Jews we believe that to defend a country you need an army, but to defend a civilisation you need education. Freedom is lost when it is taken for granted. Unless parents hand on their memories and ideals to the next generation – the story of how they won their freedom and the battles they had to fight along the way – the long journey falters and we lose our way.

What is fascinating, though, is the way the Torah emphasises the fact that children must ask questions. Two of the three passages in parshat Bo speak of this:

And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when He struck down the Egyptians.’ (Ex. 12:26-27)

In days to come, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. (Ex. 13:14)

There is another passage later in the Torah that also speaks of question asked by a child:

In the future, when your son asks you, “What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the Lord our God has commanded you?” tell him: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. (Deut. 6:20-21)

The other passage in parshat Bo, the only one that does not mention a question, is:

On that day tell your son, ‘I do this because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’ (Ex. 13:8)

These four passages have become famous because of their appearance in the Haggadah on Pesach. They are the four children: one wise, one wicked or rebellious, one simple and “one who does not know how to ask.” Reading them together the Sages came to the conclusion that [1] children should ask questions, [2] the Pesach narrative must be constructed in response to, and begin with, questions asked by a child, [3] it is the duty of a parent to encourage his or her children to ask questions, and the child who does not yet know how to ask should be taught to ask.

There is nothing natural about this at all. To the contrary, it goes dramatically against the grain of history. Most traditional cultures see it as the task of a parent or teacher to instruct, guide or command. The task of the child is to obey. “Children should be seen, not heard,” goes the old English proverb. “Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord,” says a famous Christian text. Socrates, who spent his life teaching people to ask questions, was condemned by the citizens of Athens for corrupting the young. In Judaism the opposite is the case. It is a religious duty to teach our children to ask questions. That is how they grow.

Judaism is the rarest of phenomena: a faith based on asking questions, sometimes deep and difficult ones that seem to shake the very foundations of faith itself. “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” asked Abraham. “Why, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people?” asked Moses. “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?” asked Jeremiah. The book of Job is largely constructed out of questions, and God’s answer

(Continued on Page 2)

We kindly ask you to pay any outstanding balances owed

to the shul from last year. Please call the shul office or pay

online after logging into your account at

www.datminyan.org. Dues owed for the second half of our

current fiscal year have now been posted to all applicable

accounts. Thank you!

D’VAR TORAH CONTINUED

Please help make our prayer service more meaningful by refraining from talking during the service.

consists of four chapters of yet deeper questions: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? … Can you catch Leviathan with a hook? … Will it make an agreement with you and let you take it as your slave for life?”

In yeshiva the highest accolade is to ask a good question: Du fregst a gutte kashe. Rabbi Abraham Twersky, a deeply religious psychiatrist, tells of how when he was young, his teacher would relish challenges to his arguments. In his broken English, he would say, “You right! You 100 prozent right! Now I show you where you wrong.”

Isadore Rabi, winner of a Nobel Prize in physics, was once asked why he became a scientist. He replied, “My mother made me a scientist without ever knowing it. Every other child would come back from school and be asked, ‘What did you learn today?’ But my mother used to ask: ‘Izzy, did you ask a good question today?’ That made the difference. Asking good questions made me a scientist.”

Judaism is not a religion of blind obedience. Indeed, astonishingly in a religion of 613 commandments, there is no Hebrew word that means “to obey”. When Hebrew was revived as a living language in the nineteenth century, and there was need for a verb meaning “to obey,” it had to be borrowed from the Aramaic: le–tsayet. Instead of a word meaning “to obey,” the Torah uses the verb shema, untranslatable into English because it means [1] to listen, [2] to hear, [3] to understand, [4] to internalise, and [5] to respond. Written into the very structure of Hebraic consciousness is the idea that our highest duty is to seek to understand the will of God, not just to obey blindly. Tennyson’s verse, “Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die,” is as far from a Jewish mindset as it is possible to be.

Why? Because we believe that intelligence is God’s greatest gift to humanity. Rashi understands the phrase that God made man “in His image, after His likeness,” to mean that God gave us the ability “to understand and discern.” The very first of our requests in the weekday Amidah is for “knowledge, understanding and discernment.” One of the most breathtakingly bold of the rabbis’ institutions was to coin a blessing to be said on seeing a great non-Jewish scholar. Not only did they see wisdom in cultures other than their own, they thanked God for it. How far this is from the narrow-mindedness than has so often demeaned and diminished religions, past and present.

The historian Paul Johnson once wrote that rabbinic Judaism was “an ancient and highly efficient social machine for the production of intellectuals.” Much of that had, and still has, to do with the absolute priority Jews have always placed on education, schools, the Beit Midrash, religious study as an act even higher than prayer, learning as a life-long engagement, and teaching as the highest vocation of the religious life.

But much too has to do with how one studies and how we teach our children. The Torah indicates this at the most powerful and poignant juncture in Jewish history – just as the Israelites are about to leave Egypt and begin their life as a free people under the sovereignty of God. Hand on the memory of this moment to your children, says Moses. But do not do so in an authoritarian way. Encourage your children to ask, question, probe, investigate, analyse, explore. Liberty means freedom of the mind, not just of the body. Those who are confident of their faith need fear no question. It is only those who lack confidence, who have secret and suppressed doubts, who are afraid.

The one essential, though, is to know and to teach this to our children, that not every question has an answer we can immediately understand. There are ideas we will only fully comprehend through age and experience, others that take great intellectual preparation, yet others that may be beyond our collective comprehension at this stage of the human quest. Darwin never knew what a gene was. Even the great Newton, founder of modern science, understood how little he understood, and put it beautifully: “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

In teaching its children to ask and keep asking, Judaism honoured what Maimonides called the “active intellect” and saw it as the gift of God. No faith has honoured human intelligence more.

Rabbi Sacks (Continued from Page 1)

This Day in Jewish History - 20 April / 15 Nisan

15 Nisan 2047 (1713 B.C.E.) - On the third day following his Brit Milah at the age of 99, Avraham is visited by three Malachim who inform him that in exactly one year, a son will be born to him and Sarah. Exactly as promised, on this same date one year later, 91-year-old Sarah gives birth to a son. Upon Sarah’s declaration that “Hashem has made laughter for me; whoever hears will laugh for me” the child is named Yitzchak, the Hebrew word for laughing. (Bereishit / Genesis 21:1-6)

April 20, 1865 - Synagogues throughout the country are filled with mourners attending memorial services for slain President Abraham Lincoln. The Jewish mourners were among an estimated 25 million Americans who went to Washington or to their local houses of worship where memorial services for Lincoln were taking place.

April 20, 1867 (15 Nisan 5627) - Jews in Alaska celebrate their first Passover as U.S. citizens as a result of the purchase of the Alaskan territory from Russia 11 days earlier. With U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward signing the seven-million dollar purchase treaty (a bargain price of roughly two-cents per acre), the purchase of Alaska became known as ‘Seward’s Folly.”

April 20, 1978 - Yitzhak Navon is elected the fifth President of Israel. He is the first Israeli president to be Sephardi and born in Jerusalem, with all previous presidents having been born in and immigrating from the Russian Empire.

April 20, 1986 - Irish woman Anne-Marie Murphy is released in London after two days of questioning in regard to an attempt to blow up a crowded El Al flight to Tel Aviv. She was found to be carrying 10 pounds of explosives in a false bottom of her bag as she was about to board the flight at Heathrow Airport. Police believed she may have been tricked into taking the bomb on board by her fiancé, a 35-year-old Jordanian who was eventually arrested.

DAT MINYAN NEWS, EVENTS AND MILESTONES

Please help make our prayer service more meaningful by refraining from talking during the service.

Missing the taste of that delicious Brooklyn Pizza already? Join us on the last day of Pesach (Shabbat, April 27th), when we’ll be auctioning off the first two “post-Pesach pies” from Brooklyn Pizza. Proceeds from the auction will benefit the DAT Minyan. Our thanks to David Lustig and Brooklyn Pizza!

The DAT Minyan is proud to once again be a community partner in the Celebrate Israel Walk and Festival at South High School on Sunday, May 5th. We would appreciate several volunteers to help us staff our information table at the Festival, which runs from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. Any amount of time you can provide would be most appreciated, and you will receive a complimentary event tee shirt. Please contact the shul office at 720-941-0479 if you are able to volunteer.

Join the DAT Minyan at the Mountain States Jewish National Fund Breakfast for Israel on Thursday, May 9th, 7:00 am at Wings Over the Rockies. To register, https://secure.jnf.org/site/Ticketing;jsessionid=00000000.app204a?view=Tickets&id=36273 and designate DAT Minyan as your Table Captain, or call the synagogue office at 720-941-0479 .

Our annual Graduation Kiddush will take place Shabbat, May 25th. Sponsorships and graduation tributes can be registered online at www.datminyan.org/form/graduation-kiddush-2019 .

Thank-you to all of those who contribute to our Shabbat services by signing up to help with our weekly leining. We remain in need of continued help with this and all able-leiners are encouraged to please volunteer! In addition, with a goal of expanding our roster of Haftarah readers, we have now opened up the weekly Haftarah portions for sign-up as well. The sign-up website is www.datminyan.org/laining. Slots are open from now through May. Please contact Steve Hutt for questions and additional information.

COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENTS The community is invited to this year’s Survivors’ Memorial - from Generation to Generation, “Anti-Semitism - Then & Now,” will be

held on Sunday, April 19th, 4:00 pm at EDOS. The program is sponsored by the Holocaust Awareness Institute at the University of Denver and EDOS.

Free tickets are now available for ADL’s 38th Annual Governor’s Holocaust Remembrance Program at support.adl.org/ghrp2019. The program will be held on Thursday, May 2 at 6 pm at Temple Emanuel in Denver and features a conversation with Holocaust Survivor Gene Klein and his daughter, author and professor Dr. Jill Klein, author of “We Got The Water: Tracing My Family’s Path Through Auschwitz.” The program will include a memorial service, a message from Governor Polis and recognition of the winners of ADL’s A Tribute to Moral Courage student essay contest. Information/phone orders: 303-830-2425.

The Denver Chapter of Hadassah presents “Zionism: It’s Not a Dirty Word,” a program featuring a panel of experts who will discuss Israel and the world, Israel and the US, and the rise of antisemitism in today’s politics, Monday, May 6th, 6:30 pm at Temple Sinai. The panel will be moderated by ADL Mountain States Regional Director, Scott Levin. Register at http:www.hadassah.org/events/zionismitsnotadirtyword .

Kol Nashim, the women’s choir of the Colorado Hebrew Chorale, presents Woman to Woman 2019, a concert for women only benefitting the Jerusalem Shelter for Battered Women, Thursday, May 23rd, 7:00 pm at Temple Sinai, 3509 S. Glencoe St. To purchase tickets: www.coloradohebrewchorale.org .

Avanim Adventures is offering a 4-day Women's Wilderness Trip to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains with Israeli author, Gila Manolson. Dates are June 17-20. The trip includes hiking, mountain climbing and a rafting trip on the Arkansas River. Sign up is on the website. www.avanimadventures.com .

We would like to thank our Legacy Society donors for investing in our future by naming the DAT Minyan with a gift in their will, trust, retirement account or life insurance policy. Our Legacy Society includes:

Rob Allen Graeme and Irit Bean

Myndie Brown

Steve and Ellyn Hutt Nathan and Rachel Rabinovitch

Mark and Sarah Raphaely Harley and Sara Rotbart

Michael Stutzer Steve and Lori Weiser

You can add your name to this list with a legacy gift to the DAT Minyan. To arrange for your gift or for more information about our Legacy Society program, please contact any of the following Committee Members: Rob Allen, Myndie Brown, Sarah Raphaely or Steve Weiser.

THANK YOU FOR INSPIRING FUTURE GENERATIONS WITH YOUR GENEROSITY

DAT Minyan acknowledges the following milestones* of our members this Shabbat and in the coming week:

Danya Caplan, Naftali Caplan, Hannah Katz, Moshe Khalepari, Naama Mezer, Lillie Shafran

Rose Feldman - Tue., 4/23/19 (18 Nisan) Gilbert Stein - Wed., 4/24/19 (19 Nisan) Max Cohen - Thu., 4/25/19 (20 Nisan)

*These details were obtained from the DAT Minyan database, which contains information provided by the members when they joined. We apologize for any omissions or errors. For changes, please log on to your account and update the information as needed, or contact

the synagogue office at 720-941-0479.

Refuah Shelayma Please include the following names in your prayers. May each be granted a Refuah Shelayma. Names are kept on the list until the next Rosh Chodesh. Help us keep the list accurate by verifying the necessary details each month on the Cholim Document

at https://goo.gl/aeyJG2.

Bella bat Malka

Benyamin ben Hinda Sarah

Eliyahu Chaim ha Cohen ben

Sara Rifka

Eliyahu Dovid ben Ita Sheiva

Gitel Sarah bat Ita Golda

Guy Chaim ben Rita

Karit Elisheva bas Sarah

Leibel ben Harriet

Levick Yitzchak ben Bracha

Leya bat Sara

Mascha bat Rus

Mayer Benya ben Nechama

Meir Leib ben Sarah

Mendel Ila ben Frida Miriam

Michel ben Leah

Michoel Zisel ben Barbara

Noach ben Minna Batsheva

Raphael Lior ben Miriam

Roshka bat Bryna

Yonatan Zeev ben Netaa

Learning Opportunities @ the DAT Minyan

• Kitzur Shulchan Aruch: Daily, after Shacharit

• Daf Yomi Shiur (30 min): after Shacharit on Sun through Fri , and 8:20 am on Shabbat

• Mishnayot: Daily, between Mincha and Maariv

• Halacha Chaburah: Sun, 10:00 am—11:00 am, returning soon

• “Short & Sweet Talmud Class” (30 min-never longer): Wed, 9:20 am, DAT Minyan offices at BMH-BJ (men only)

• Rabbi Friedman Wed. Night Class: returning after Pesach

EDUCATIONAL AND YOUTH ANNOUNCEMENTS

Our teen “Morning Motivation”

program will not meet during Pesach.

Join us when we resume next month.

We welcome all children through 6th grade to join our Junior Congregation Program.

ALL youth groups meet at 9:00 am (10:00 am on the first days of Pesach)

If you or someone you know (college age and above) is interested in working in the Youth

Groups Program, please contact Mor at youth@datminyan.org.

Please help make our prayer service more meaningful by refraining from talking during the service.

Important Security Reminder

For the safety and security of everyone attending the DAT Minyan, we

ask that all children either be in attendance at one of our childrens’

programs or with a parent AT ALL TIMES when in the building. Children

may not be left unescorted to roam hallways.

Thursday, April 18 7:20 pm Mincha/Maariv

After 8:23 pm Bedikat Chametz

Friday, April 19—Erev Yom Tov 4:50 am Ta’anit Bechorot

6:35 am Shacharit, followed by a Siyum

9:00 am Late Siyum at Brooklyn Pizza

10:45 am Latest time to eat Chametz

11:00 am Chametz burning at the Rabbi’s house

11:52 am Latest time to burn Chametz

6:10 pm Mincha (at Plag), followed by Kabbalat Shabbat & Learning:

Halachot of the Seder, and Sefirat HaOmer

7:24 pm Candle Lighting

7:30 pm Maariv

8:24 pm Earliest time for Kiddush

12:58 am Chatzot (Midnight)

Shabbat, April 20—Pesach Day 1 8:20 am Daf Yomi

9:00 am Shacharit

9:00 am Early care (Groups start at 10:00 am)

One should eat Seudah Shlishit before Mincha

6:20 pm SHIUR: Rabbi Friedman:

"Sefirat HaOmer: Kabalat HaTorah Begins Now"

7:20 pm Mincha, followed by

HAGGADAH TIDBITS ROUNDTABLE—Volunteer to Share Your Seder Insights With Us

8:25 pm Maariv/Earliest time for Kiddush

8:25 pm Candle Lighting

12:58 am Chatzot (Midnight)

Sunday, April 21—Pesach Day 2 8:20 am Daf Yomi

9:00 am Shacharit

9:00 am Early care (Groups begin at 10:00 am)

6:15 pm SHIUR: Robert Zirinsky:

"Highlights of Hilchot Tefilla"

7:25 pm Mincha, followed by learning:

Shua Friedman: “Eilu V’Eilu: Finding Truth in a Complicated World”

8:25 pm Maariv/Havdalah

Monday, April 22—Wednesday, April 24 – Chol Hamoed 6:20 am Shacharit

8:00 am Late Shacharit

7:25 pm Mincha/Maariv

Thursday, April 25—Erev Yom Tov 6:20 am Shacharit

8:00 am Late Shacharit

6:15 pm Mincha (before Plag)/Maariv (don’t forget to make an Eruv Tavshilin!)

7:30 pm Candle Lighting

Friday, April 26—Pesach Day 7 7:30 am Hashkama Shacharit

8:20 am Daf Yomi

9:00 am Shacharit (Groups begin at 9:00 am)

5:15 pm SHIUR: Shua Friedman:

“Establishing the Border of Eretz Yisrael:

Creating Kedusha; Creating Community

6:15 pm Mincha/Kabbalat Shabbat/Maariv

7:38 pm Candle Lighting

Shabbat, April 27—Pesach Day 8 7:30 am Hashkama Shacharit

8:20 am Daf Yomi

9:00 am Shacharit (Groups begin at 9:00 am)

Before Yizkor: DERASHA

10:30 am (approx.) Yizkor

One should eat Seudah Shlishit before Mincha

6:35 pm SHIUR: TBA

7:35 pm Mincha, followed by learning:

Rabbi Friedman: "Mechirat Chametz: How It Works, and How It Concludes"

8:41 pm Maariv/Havdalah

9:30 pm Earliest time to eat Chametz

PLEASE NOTE: All daily services throughout Pesach, beginning with Mincha on Friday, April 19th, will take place in Fisher Hall.

OUR COMPLETE PASSOVER SCHEDULE