I do not know if any of you have heard anything about the Conservative Bible project.  It is an effort to retranslate the Bible using conservative political values as the framework for the translation.  Most of the effort is focused on Christian Bible (the Gospels and Epistles).  There are only a few passages from Hebrew Bible that have been reworked.  One of them is in this week's Torah portion.  I will examine this segment of the Torah portion and discuss this alternate translation this Friday during services.  Our Shabbat service is at the usual 7:30 PM time. 

Saturday morning will begin with Torah study at 9 AM in the Turner Adult Education room.  We will then continue with Shabbat services at 10:15 in the Gibbs Chapel.

This Sunday is a great day for food at Temple Israel.  First, you can have a delicious pancake breakfast at 8:45 AM provided by the Brotherhood.  Their pancakes are almost as good as mine!  Then at noon is the great "Matzah Ball Soup Schlepp."  This is a cook off of soup recipes.  The winning recipe will be used for the soup sold at our Jewish Cultural Festival in March.  For only 5 dollars you will taste several mouth watering soups and get to cast a vote for the best one.

I have received Camp Coleman applications.  I will put them on a table in Café Shalom.  If you have any questions about Camp Coleman, please do not hesitate to see me.

Sunday November 15 is our garage sale.  If you wish to rent a table to sell your wares, let the office know.  If you are willing to donate your unwanted items to us, then we will sell them for the benefit of Temple Israel.  Please bring us your unwanted possessions to sell.  Also, we will be selling baked goods during the garage sale.  If you can bake some cookies, brownies or something yummie, then please do so for us to sell to the visitors coming in for the garage sale.

In this week's Torah portion God tells Abraham that God is about to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gemorah because of their great sins.  This leads to an argument between God and Abraham (conducted very respectfully on Abraham's part) over whether the cities should be spared if a number of righteous people can be found in them.  At first Abraham gets God to agree to spare the cities for the presence of 50 righteous people.  Then the number gets lower finally reaching just 10 righteous people needed to save Sodom and Gemorah.  Of course all of this is to no avail because the cities will be destroyed anyway.  So we have to ask this question: If God is God, and knows what the outcome will be, then why put Abraham through this exercise in futility?  Why not simply tell Abraham that there are no righteous in the cities and decree that they will be destroyed?  Read Genesis 18:16 through 33 and tell me what you think.

Have a Shabbat of peace and blessing.

Jack Romberg
Rabbi