TWO SHULS, ONE PARSHA

This week David spoke twice on Parsha Terumah - which also happens to be our wedding parsha, yesterday being our (Hebrew) year anniversary.

The first occasion was on Tuesday night. David was given an extremely rare opportunity to speak with Rebbetzin Jungreis during her Tuesday night parsha class at Congregation Kehilat Jeshurun. The Rebbetzin has only once been known to share this platform, but that all changed this week.

David gave a great half hour talk on Parshat Terumah. He spoke about the imperative for every generation to build the Beit HaMikdash (The Temple), but that this can only happen in a way that creates peace. He did inspirational, tuned to the frequency of an affluent Upper East Side audience.

Last night (Friday night) we went to the Carlebach Shul following an invitation extended at the Kabbalah18 conference for David to speak at a members-only dinner - an invitation which we were honoured to accept. David spoke again on the parsha and this time his focus was on the importance of the Jewish people fully fulfilling our role and destiny in order to bring peace to the world and to provide the necessary environment for the building of the Beit HaMikdash. He emphasised the need for people to learn Hebrew so that we can take responsibility for our own spiritual journeys. By doing this, we are playing our part as Jewish people to be the vessels of spiritual promise in the world - and in doing so, to help make the world a better place.

As part of this we were fortunate enough to be part of the Carlebach Friday night service which was as amazing and inspiring as we had been led to believe it would be. The singing was wonderful, the melodies beautiful; the shul was also incredibly welcoming and warm. We were also privileged enough to meet Rav Carlebach's sister - who overwhelmed us with her welcome.

You may also be interested to know that the food was great and, apparently, it was all cooked at the shul.

Despite the shul kindly offering to organise somewhere for us to stay on the Upper West Side, we decided to walk the 60 blocks home. It was a brave decision because the cold returned last night, after a couple of beautiful moderate winter days. Unfortunately it was cold, but the walk was OK and took a little over an hour.