Back Row Of The 'Beis

Aufruf Divrei Torah

Well, the aufruf went well -- thanks in no small part to the bicycle helmet the gabbai gave me before I started the haftorah. Those things really do prevent head trauma, lemme tell you...
As I told my father, exhausted and worn out, on the way home from shul Saturday night -- "Abba, let's never do this again, OK?" To which he resonded, "if we do, its on your cheshbon."
And as he told some of my friends, "you know, you lose an SR credit for being in Bayswater for Shabbas..."
There were some good divrei torah:

Friday Night:
My Father spoke about the arrangement of the lights of the menorah, with the three lights on either side pointing towards the middle light which in turn pointed towards the qodesh qodashim. He made the wedding analogy to two people from two families meeting at a common center, aligning themselves towards God.

Dani's Father stayed with the theme of threes and ones, but focused on the order of the Torah. If we assume like those midrashim that consider the parsha of "va-yehi binsoa ha-araon" to be a seperate book of the Torah (in explanation of the double nuns that seem to bracket it off from the rest of Sefer Bamidbar, it turns out that we actually have seven books of the torah, and that the middle book that the other six would be aligning towards (if the torah is like the menorah) would be the first half of bamidbar, which talks about the organization arrangement of the Israelites' camp under their various tribal and family flags and banners. The point is that the key to Jewish society is for each social unit (in this case, new couple) to be confident in its own uniqueness and individuality yet still being able to subsume itself into the greater whole.

Shabbas Lunch:
My Great-Uncle Sandy spoke about the menorah being the instrument of mediation that manifested the light of the shekhinah to illuminate the Jewish people and his role, as being from "the previous generation," to make the presence of the relatives who were there literally in spirit more tangible at our simcha. He then spoke about the menorah's ner tamid as my grandfather, Rabbi Gerald Fleschner, z"l, and his steadfastness and committment to God and Torah. It was the same thing he said about my grandfather at my bar mitzvah shabbas, and as I listened to him I remembered crying then.

David Polsky spoke about Moshe being the most humble of people, explaining that one definition of 'anavah is just doing what you need to do, without a need for taking yourself too seriously or making too big of a production out of things. He said that Dani and I have this trait. We thought it was funny that he was calling us humble since it was entirely possible that we had the two biggest egos in attendence (although in what order remains a matter of dispute).

Bryan Kinzbrunner spoke about matan torah as a wedding between the Jews and God, and explained that the Jews' troubles started when the travels through the desert began, according to the midrash, in an effort to flee Sinai and the Torah that came from it. He pointed out that in order to make married life work, the couple has to try to always maintain a the connection to levels of closeness and excitement from the first year and not to assume that "real life" means a breaking away from the honeymoon period.