Friday, April 4, 2003

Shabbat-O-Gram, April 4, 2003, Nisan 2, 5763


Shabbat-O-Gram, April 4, 2003, Nisan 2, 5763

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, Temple Beth El, Stamford, Connecticut

Our Prayers Go Out to Our Armed Forces and to all innocent human beings in Iraq, Israel, America and throughout the world.

 

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SPONSOR A SHABBAT-O-GRAM IN HONOR OF YOUR FAMILY’S SIMCHA AND HELP OUR CONGREGATION AT THE SAME TIME – SIMPLY SEND A CHECK FOR $100 TO THE TEMPLE OFFICE, INDICATING THAT IT’S TO SPONSOR A SHABBAT-O-GRAM, LET US KNOW WHO IT IS HONORING, AND WE’LL DO THE REST! YOUR SIMCHA WILL BE SHARED WITH THE HUNDREDS OF OTHERS WHO ARE ON OUR MAILING LIST OR WHO HAPPEN BY OUR WEB SITE.

 

Previous Shabbat-O-Grams can be accessed directly from our web site (www.tbe.org).

Check out photos from Purim at our web site www.tbe.org.

 

“E-mail from the Front” 

As these fateful weeks continue, new “E-mail from the Front” has come in.  Go to http://www.tbe.org/sog/Emailfromthefront.htm and scroll down to the most recent entries.

 

 

 

 

LAST CHANCE!!!

TO SIGN UP FOR OUR FIRST ANNUAL BETH EL SEDER, TO TAKE PLACE ON THURS, APRIL 17.

THE ABSOLUTE DEADLINE IS THIS MONDAY, APRIL 7!!!!!

THUS FAR, ABOUT 140 PEOPLE HAVE SIGNED UP, WITH AGES RANGING FROM UNDER ONE TO OVER 90.  TOGETHER, WE’LL LEAVE EGYPT AND HEAD TOWARD THE PROMISED LAND…

DON’T MISS OUT!!!

(And please spread the word to those non-congregants who might be looking for a Seder)

 

 

JUST THE FACTS…

Friday Night

Candles: 6:04 PM 

Tot Shabbat: 6:30 PM in the lobby

Kabbalat Shabbat Service: 7:30 PM, in the chapel

Shabbat Morning:

Service: 9:30 AM

Children’s services: 10:30 AM

Torah Portion – Tazria

Read the Masorti commentary at http://www.masorti.org/mason/torah/index.asp. JTS commentary is at: http://learn.jtsa.edu/topics/parashah/. USCJ Torah Sparks can be found at http://uscj.org/item20_467.html. UAHC Shabbat Table Talk discussions are at http://uahc.org/torah/exodus.shtml. Other divrei Torah via the Torahnet home page: http://uahcweb.org/torahnet/. Test your Parasha I.Q.: http://www.ou.org/jewishiq/parsha/default.htm. CLAL's Torah commentary archive: http://click.topica.com/maaaiRtaaRvQhbV2AtLb/.  Nehama Liebowitz archives of parsha commentaries: http://www.torahcc.org/nechama/gilayonarchives.htm.  For a more Kabbalistic/Zionist/Orthodox perspective from Rav Kook, first Chief Rabbi of Israel, go to http://www.geocities.com/m_yericho/ravkook/index.html. For some probing questions and meditations on key verses of the portion, with a liberal kabbalistic bent, go to http://www.jewishealing.com/learning.html. Kabbala Online: http://www.thirtysevenbooks.com/

 

Shabbat Mincha/Havdalah:

Service at 5:15 PM

MAZAL TOV to Taylor Ross, who becomes Bat Mitzvah this Shabbat afternoon

MAZAL TOV to Carin Pearce and Greg Kalt, who will be married this Saturday evening

Morning MinyanDaily at 7:30 AM, Sunday at 9:00 AM in the chapel

SUNDAY MORNING – BOOK FAIR AND SISTERHOOD PROGRAM – SEE BELOW!  ALSO A BETH EL SENIORS EVENT AT 1PM

 

The New Weekday Sim Shalom Prayer Books HAVE ARRIVED!!!  We are now using them at our morning minyan.  Come by and check them out!

IF YOU WISH TO DEDICATE ONE OR MORE IN HONOR OF A LOVED ONE, PLEASE SEND A $25 DONATION, PER BOOK, TO OUR OFFICE.

 

Spiritual Journey on the Web

 


 

 

 

 

Passover:

USCJ Passover Guides and Seder Supplements:

http://uscj.org/item13_813_815.html (how to Kasher your home)

http://uscj.org/item13_813_814.html (Ten Tips for a Great Seder, by Ron Wolfson)

More Ways to Enrich Your Seder Rabbi Barry Dov Lerner offers a wealth of ideas to enrich the content of your seder. He invites you to download his free Passover Guide and Seder Supplement (featuring all those funny song parodies): http://www.jewishfreeware.org/

http://uscj.org/item13_813_1103.html (Afikoman Treasure Hunt)

http://uscj.org/item13_813_826.html (Empty Seder Chair for Murdered Israelis)

http://uscj.org/item13_813_416.html (Seder Table Checklist)

http://uscj.org/item13_813_415.html (Changing over your Kitchen tips)

http://uscj.org/item13_813_414.html (Searching for Leaven)

http://uscj.org/item13_813_819.html (Matzah of Unity Reading -- Solidarity with Israel)

From CLAL:

Steve Greenberg: Passover -- http://click.topica.com/maaaiRtaaRvPXbV2AtLb/

David Kraemer: Pesach - To Ask Questions -- http://click.topica.com/maaaiRtaaRvPYbV2AtLb/

Dianne Kohler Esses: To Tell the Exodus Story http://click.topica.com/maaaiRtaaRvPZbV2AtLb/

An Interactive Passover Holiday Card -- http://click.topica.com/maaaiRtaaRvP0bV2AtLb/

New Rituals for Pesach (The Shalom Center) http://www.shalomctr.org/html/seas03.html

New Israel Fund’s 20 page Haggadah Supplement:  http://www.newisraelfund.org/content.cfm?id=1597&currbody=1.

The Forward: Finding Personal Meaning in Passover Rituals: http://www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.03.22/fast7.html

http://www.rabassembly.org/info/pesahguide/ Rabbinical Assembly guide to Passover practice

http://www.thejewishweek.com/bottom/special.php3 Jewish Week Passover supplement

Kashrut.Com - The Premier Kosher Information Source on the Internet http://www.kashrut.com/Passover/;

http://www.ou.org/chagim/pesach/default.htm;

http://www.kosherquest.org/html/passover.htm

http://www.kosher.com/?ad=11 -- Order Passover food online

http://all-worldtravel.links2go.com/more/www.kosher.co.il/ An extensive array of Kosher links

www.iabolish.com/passover/ a valuable new web site that provides materials and activities about modern day slavery; are appropriate for Passover.

My Jewish Learning http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Passover.htm (also see the fascinating section on Bar/Bat Mitzvah on the home page this week)

 

FIFTEEN WAYS YOU KNOW PESACH IS COMING TO JERUSALEM by Judy Lash Balint

1. No alarm clock needed here-instead we have the clanging of the garbage trucks as they roll through the neighborhood every morning during the 2 weeks before Pesah to accomodate all the refuse from the furious Cleaning going on in every household.  The day before the seder they make their rounds at least twice during the day.

 

2. Street scenes change every day according to what's halachically necessary:  For the week before the holiday, yeshiva students wielding blow torches and tending huge vats of boiling water are stationed every few blocks and in the courtyard of every mikveh.  The lines to toyvel(dunk) cutlery, kiddush cups and the like, start to grow every  day, and, at the last minute, blow torches are at the ready to cleanse  oven racks and stove tops of every last gram of hametz.


3. The day before the Seder, the yeshiva students are replaced by families using empty lots to burn the remainders of their hametz gleaned from the previous night's meticulous search.  Street corner flower vendors do great business too.


4. Most flower shops stay open all night for the two days before Pesah, working feverishly to complete the orders for delivery to grace Seder tables.

 

5. Meah Shearim and Geula merchants generally run out of heavy plastic early in the week before Pesah.  In a panic, I make an early morning run to the Mahaneh Yehuda market to successfully snap up a few meters of the handy material.


6. No holiday here is complete without a strike or two.  Last year, the doctors came to agreement to end their month long walkout just hours before the start of Pesah and gas suppliers at Ben Gurion airport decided to use the opportunity to cause havoc to the plans of 200,000 Israelis who travel abroad for the holiday.  A wildcat strike caused delays in arrivals and departures at the airport too.


7. Good luck if you haven't scheduled an appointment for a pre-Pesah/Omer haircut.  You can't get in the door at most barber and beauty shops.


8. Mailboxes are full of Pesah appeals from the myriad of organizations helping the poor celebrate Pesah.  Newspapers are replete with articles about selfless Israelis who volunteer by the hundreds in the weeks before the holiday to collect, package and distribute Pesah supplies to the needy.

 

9. The biggest food challenge to those of us ashkenazic, non-kitniyot (legume) eaters is finding cookies etc. made without kitniyot.  But most years, many restaurants in the city stayed open offering special Pesah menus-most without kitniyot, to accommodate the largely Ashkenazic tourist population that used to be their bread and butter  (matzo & butter?)  This year, with the dearth of tourists, we may end up spending most meals at
home.

 

10. Since most of the country is on vacation for the entire week of Pesah, all kinds of entertainment and trips are on offer, despite the jihad being waged against us.  Ads appear for everything from the annual Carlebach festival to a "Tour de Pesah" bicycle extravaganza at the Bloomfield Science Museum.  There's Jewish Film Week at the Jerusalem Cinematheque and Tel Aviv weighs in with a Drag Festival.


11. Pesah with its theme of freedom and exodus always evokes news stories about recent olim.  Last year's focus was the Jewish community of Cuba.  Hundreds of Cuban Jews and their non-Jewish relatives arrived in Israel during the year to fill up absorption centers in Ashkelon and Beersheva. 

 

12. This just in: According to Israel's Brandman Research Institute study, 43 million people hours will be spent nationwide in Israel's cleaning preparations for Passover this year. How does that break down?  Of those cleaning hours, 29 million are done by women and 11 million by men.  Persons paid to clean do the remaining 3 million hours at a cost of NIS 64 million ($15.6 million).


13. On erev Pesah, dozens of members of various movements intent on preserving our connection to the Temple, re-enact the ritual Pesah sacrifice on Jerusalem's Givat Hananya.  The hill is located in the neighborhood of Abu Tor and is named for the High Priest Hananya of the Second Temple period.  Participants emphasize that their slaughter and roasting of a young goat is a preface to making the sacrifice, since they are wary of creating the impression that they are renewing the sacrificial act outside the Temple Mount.

 

14. Israel's two chief rabbis sell the nation's hametz to an Arab resident of Abu Ghosh. Estimated worth: 150 million shekel.  

 

15. In the Galut (Diaspora), Pesah is observed...in Israel it's celebrated.

 

 

 

Required Reading and Action Items

 

 

 

 

 


http://www.alisrael.com/hover_english.html Forwarded to me by Beth Boyer, an inspirational view of Jerusalem.  This site is a great resource about Israel and its history -- go the home page at http://www.alisrael.com/.

 

Russian Intelligence Assesses the War - Martin Sieff (UPI) Daily assessments of the war from Russian journalists and military analysts are posted on the Internet at the iraqwar.ru web site. The reports are described as based on "Russian military intelligence reports" and contain alleged Russian intelligence intercepts of radio communications between U.S. and other coalition forces in Iraq.

 

U.S. Bombed Palestinian Volunteers for Iraq - Walter Pincus (Washington Post)
U.S. intelligence has confirmed that the Syrian bus struck by a U.S. bomb on March 23 near the Syrian-Iraqi border was carrying Palestinian and other volunteers into Iraq and not tourists leaving that country, as first reported.

 

U.S.: After Iraq, We'll Deal with Other Radical Mideast Regimes - Aluf Benn
A communique received in Jerusalem from the American administration this week says the U.S. is operating with strong resolution to neutralize the Iraqi threat to Israel. After the war, the message continued, the U.S. will deal with other radical regimes in the region - not necessarily by military means - to moderate their activities and fight terrorism. The American message also said Israel must play its part to help ease tensions between the U.S. and the Arab world by taking action with regard to settlements in the territories. However, the heads of the U.S. administration chose not to raise the issue of the settlements in their meetings with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom in Washington this week. The principal issue discussed in Shalom's meetings was the appointment of Abu Mazen. Washington, like Jerusalem, is not convinced of Abu Mazen's ability to take real power out of Arafat's hands. Nor does it know if Abu Mazen will be able to impose his will on the elements of power and the terror organizations on the Palestinian side. Shalom stressed Israel's demand that the process begin with steps by the Palestinians to prevent terror and implement government reforms. He made it clear that Israel was not prepared for a parallel process of mutual steps. (Ha'aretz)

 

Israel's new foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, met with top U.S. officials Monday including President Bush. Shalom said the pending confirmation of Abu Mazen as Palestinian prime minister opens a "new path" toward a renewed peace process, but efforts will go nowhere unless he launches an early crackdown against Palestinian terrorist factions. "I think that, if Abu Mazen will not take the right measures against terror when he comes into office, in his first or second month, he won't be able to do it after that," Shalom said. Earlier, White House security adviser Condoleezza Rice told the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC that the administration expects comments from the two parties on the roadmap, but said the document itself will not be renegotiated. (VOA News)
See also Text of Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's Address to AIPAC (Foreign Ministry)

 

Raid Finds al Qaeda Tie to Iraq Militants (AP/ABC News)
A U.S.-led assault on a compound controlled by the Ansar al-Islam extremist Islamic group in northeastern Iraq has turned up a list of names of suspected militants living in the U.S. and what may be the strongest evidence yet linking the group to al Qaeda. Among a trove of evidence found were passports and identity papers of Ansar activists indicating that up to 150 of them were foreigners, including Yemenis, Turks, Palestinians, Pakistanis, Algerians, and Iranians.Coalition forces also found a phone book containing numbers of alleged Islamic activists based in the U.S. and Europe.


http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old&section=current&issue=2003-03-22&id=2908 The new anti-Semitism; Melanie Phillips says that hostility to Jews is strongest among those on the Left who claim to be fighting racism  (The Spectator)
 

NFJC: Report On the Future of Jewish Culture in America (03-28-03) 

 

Palestinian Ambulances Used for Terror - Sami Viskin (Lancet)
Palestinian ambulances were repeatedly used to transport combatants and weapons, prompting the IDF to send an official protest to the International Red Cross on May 2, 2002.  There is a fundamental difference between the civilian losses suffered by Israel and the Palestinians. Genuine, continuous efforts are being made by the IDF to keep Palestinian civilian losses to a minimum, at times at the cost of Israeli soldiers' lives. Deaths among unarmed Palestinian civilians, caught in the crossfire between fighting forces, were unintentional. By contrast, civilian losses in Israel are deliberate.  This article includes photos of a bomb-vest found hidden inside a Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulance.

 

Israel Should Not Pay the Price for Iraq - Dore Gold
The British prime minister's repeated need to refer in the same breath as Iraq to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and especially the diplomatic road map for resolving this conflict, is perplexing, for the present Iraqi conflict has absolutely nothing to do with Israel. It is as though the war on Iraq requires that the West now balance its military activities in an Arab state by taking a harder line on Israel. If the EU, Russia, and the UN failed adequately to confront Iraq's non-compliance with UN resolutions, why should Israel expect that they will provide any fair judgment of its security situation? If the quartet were to give the Palestinian leadership a passing grade in the war on terrorism, when it still has done nothing at all to root it out, the lives of Israeli citizens would again be put at risk. The best way to help the postwar peace process is to stop the diplomacy of linkage, which undermines the credibility of its advocates and their ability to play any role in an eventual Arab-Israeli peace settlement. (Financial Times-UK)

 

Road Map to Where? - Editorial (Washington TimesThe last two and a half years of Palestinian terrorist violence against Israel, most of it orchestrated by Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat (who rejected then-President Clinton's July 2000 Camp David proposal for a two-state solution to end that conflict) make it clear that peace will require a wholesale change inside the leadership of the Palestinians. But, based on the details made public thus far, the road map now being advanced by Messrs. Bush and Blair is a flawed instrument for achieving this.

 

People Have to Know the Horrors I've Seen" - Valerie Grove (London Times)
"Look into my eyes!" With these impassioned words, Freshta Raper mesmerized viewers during Question Time on BBC1 Thursday night as she confronted anti-war columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Her experiences, she told the program, included being imprisoned three times by Saddam’s regime, being burnt and blistered by a chemical bomb, and having 21 members of her family killed. "No human being on this Earth should have to witness what I have witnessed," she said.

 

Anti-Semitism in the Post-Soviet States - Betsy Gidwitz
In both Russia and Ukraine, the average age of the Jewish population is in the late 50s and increasing. The great majority of Jewish adults are Jewishly illiterate, intermarried, and indifferent to the Jewish religion. Violence against individual Jews, particularly those who are easily identifiable as Jews, has increased, and recent months have witnessed the emergence of anti-Semitism in mainstream publications. Few Russian Moslems have attacked Jews, unlike France, where most anti-Jewish violence seems to have been perpetrated by local Moslems, although the Russian population includes about 18 million Moslems. (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)

 

Sharon: Israel is Already Talking with the Palestinians - Gideon Alon (Ha'aretz)

 

Israel Quietly Playing Key Spy Role - Kenneth R. Bazinet and Thomas M. DeFrank (New York Daily News)
From a spy satellite orbiting overhead to clandestine operations in western Iraq, Israel is a strong ally in the U.S.-led war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
   

The Escalating Palestinian Rhetoric toward the U.S. - Eric Leskly
Historically, Palestinian militant groups maintained that their conflict with Israel did not translate into hostility against the United States. In the months leading up to the current U.S.-led war in Iraq, leaders of Hamas and Hizballah have issued a chilling series of statements calling for holy war against American targets in and beyond the Middle East. (National Review)

 

http://www.jewishledger.com/ Outreach to Interfaith Families Grows (CT Jewish Ledger)

 

 

 

Quotes of the Week 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


“I’m writing this a few hours before deadline. So by the time you read this, Saddam may have won. That would seem to be the upshot of the BBC’s coverage, and CBC’s in Canada, and Peter Jennings on ABC… Pay no attention. An innovative war is going very well, and none of the ‘setbacks’ are unexpected… The allied loss of life is wretched for the families involved, but strategically only as an historically unprecedented low… Civilian casualties? So low that Western correspondents in Baghdad can personally visit each one… Something’s changed in a significant proportion of the American people, and the media still don’t get it… The more the Coalition of the Whining bleat about things that never happen—from mass deaths to tough UN action—the less heed anyone in the real world will pay them. Keep your eye on the big picture, not the radio-serial cliffhangers. The ‘story of the day’ is not the story.”—Columnist Mark Steyn (Jerusalem Post, April 1)

 

 “[The] British prime minister’s repeated need to refer in the same breath as Iraq to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and especially the diplomatic ‘road map’ for resolving the conflict, is perplexing… It is as though the war on Iraq requires that the West now balance its military activities in an Arab state by taking a harder line on Israel… The danger is that if the E.U., Russia and the UN are chiefly driven by the postwar scramble for influence in the Middle East, the quartet will not respond to the true needs of Israeli-Palestinian democracy but rather to their desire to outmanoeuvre the U.S. If these same three international actors failed adequately to confront Iraq’s non-compliance with UN resolutions, why should Israel expect that they will provide any fair judgment of its security situation?…”—Israel’s UN ambassador from 1997-1999, Dore Gold (Financial Times, March 31)

 

“When Saddam has been defeated and this awesome war is over, we would hope that, having now had firsthand experience of what we Israelis have been confronting over the years, our American friends will have a better understanding of what we still face on our doorstep. They will realize that we too battled barbaric terrorists who were in fact financed by Saddam and that many of our soldiers also lie in graves because of our thankless efforts to minimize Palestinian casualties. Perhaps this will encourage the Americans to resist the efforts of their British allies to offer us up as a sacrificial lamb after the war in order to rebuild bridges with the Europeans and Arab world.”—Senior Vice-President of World Jewish Congress, Isi Leibler (Jer. Post, April 1)

 

Announcements 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AT THE BOOK FAIR ON SUNDAY APRIL 6, RABBI HAMMERMAN WILL  BE DISCUSSING HOW TO TALK TO OUR KIDS ABOUT GOD, BASED ON A NEW BOOK FOR WHICH HE IS A CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR, “I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT GOD.”  THIS IS AN ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT TOPIC THESE DAYS.  THE DISCUSSIONS WILL TAKE PLACE AT 9:30 AND 12:30

Sisterhood Spring Brunch
Sunday, April 6, 10 a.m., in the Rosner Room. Passover Stories, origami frogs, and more. Special Guest: Judi Kenter, president of the Hudson Valley Branch, Women's League for Conservative Judaism.

 

Excitement and celebration!

SAVE THE DATE

 

IT’S NOT EVERY DAY THAT WE INSTALL A NEW CANTOR HERE!

JOIN US AS WE CELBRATE BETH EL, ITS FABULOUS PAST AND ITS GLORIOUS FUTURE AT AN HISTORIC, CAN’T MISS EVENT!

 

Sunday, May 4, 2003

5:00 pm

Installation of Cantor Deborah Jacobson

Light Supper Reception

 

Followed by...

 

Spectacular Musical Concert with

Danny Maseng "Soul on Fire"

Watch your mail for your invitation.

 

WE ARE LOOKING FOR PATRONS TO SUPPORT THIS HISTORIC MOMENT IN THE ANNALS OF TEMPLE BETH EL!!!

 

8th Grade Brunch
and discussion with
Rabbi Hammerman,
Cantor Jacobson and Barb Moskow
Sunday, May 4th, 2003
10-11:30am
R.S.V.P. by 5/2 to
Jennifer Greenman - jgreen147@aol.com
Daniel Madwed - laser315@aol.com
Joelle Braun -
 chilichik77@aol.com

 

 

SAVE THE DATE

 

“Six Million Times One”

 

Community Yom Hashoah

April 28, 2003

7:00 PM

at

Temple Beth El

 

Request to the Community:

If you would like to include photographs of your loved ones who perished during the Shoah in our community event, please call Ilana De Laney, 321-1373, ext. 114.

 

 

 

This one is absolutely true – talk about your search for leaven… From the Jerusalem Post

'Hametz' in Viagra Raises an Uproar
By Judy Siegel


JERUSALEM (April 3) - The authors of the Pessah Haggada didn't have this in mind when they asked: "Why is this night different from all other nights?" but observant Jews who need Viagra will be disappointed to hear that the popular anti-impotence drug is not kosher for Pessah. Although the vast majority of locally made medications - and many imported pharmaceuticals - are produced without leaven, Pfizer's Viagra is hametz and missing from Clalit Health Services' list of kosher-for-Pessah medications, which is the standard authority for the various rabbinical authorities. The list can be viewed on the health fund's Web site (at www.clalit.org.il and queries may now be made by calling the Health Ministry's pharmaceutical division (02-5681212 or 5681214), at the initiative of Health Minister and Shas Rabbi Nissim Dahan.

Dr. Alexander Olshinitzky, a Dan Region physician who treats impotence and diabetic foot, said he has received numerous queries from observant patients about whether they can take Viagra during the holiday. Another impotence  expert, from Jerusalem, said he has had calls from abroad on the same  question.

Olshinitzky added with a smile that some women may welcome the news that Viagra contains hametz, as "surveys show that before Pessah and during the first days of the holiday, women are so tired and stressed from preparations that they're not very interested in sex."

Rabbi Menahem Rosenberg, the rabbi of Clalit Health Services, confirmed yesterday that Viagra (sildenafil citrate) indeed is not kosher for Pessah. "The coating apparently has a leavened substance," he explained.

He noted that all drugs taken for life-threatening conditions, even if they contain leaven, can - and must - be taken during the holiday. "The Bnei Brak rabbinical arbiter, Rabbi Shmuel Wosner, has ruled that patients must take drugs for chronic illnesses. If an effective substitute drug that does not contain leaven is available, it should be taken. Some might argue whether impotence is a life-threatening condition, but one should consult one's doctor."

Rosenberg added that when a Jewish patient wants to know whether he can and should fast on Yom Kippur, "he should ask a secular - and not a religious - physician. An Orthodox physician would say to himself: 'Oy! Can I tell a Jew to eat on Yom Kippur?' But a secular physician will merely determine: 'Can this person safely fast or not?' One could say the same is true of Pessah medications. Patients with chronic illnesses should not be overly strict with themselves about drugs they need that have leaven."

Decades ago, the active ingredient in most medications was bound together with wheat starch. Since then, most companies - even those abroad - have switched to potato flour and other unleavened materials, said Rosenberg. 


Every year Clalit Health Service collects information from manufacturers and
importers on medications sold here, and Viagra was found to contain a leavened coating. "There are still problems with some syrups and suspensions, as well as flavorings containing sorbitol (a form of alcohol that may be made from grains)," he said. "Sometimes an antibiotic can be switched to a non-hametz substitute; it's best to consult one's doctor."

Attention high school students!

Absentee letters, for the attendance office at your school, are now available for the last two days of Passover (April 23-24).  Call Mindy at ext. 301 or e-mail your request to office@tbe.org.

 

 

The Web link for this week's Shabbat-O-Gram is - http://www.tbe.org/sog/030404.htm - The site is continually updated during the week with corrections and additions.  Feel free to forward this link to your friends. People can subscribe to the weekly Shabbat-o-Gram at www.tbe.org.   I also send out mailings to college students, Gen Xers and teens, so let us know if you wish to be placed on any of those lists.  If you wish to unsubscribe, contact office@tbe.org.  

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