The Kibbitzer FEBRUARY 2016 Temple Am Shalom SHEVAT—ADAR 1 5776 Mentor, Ohio UPCOMING EVENTS see page 2 and page 3 Inside this issue: Bowling Party Info 2 A WORD FROM RENÉE Rock Hall Tour info 3 painting and then kitchen cabinets and Celebrating Your Birthday Twice 3 flooring. The drywall for the rest of the Putting Limestone in the Limelight 3 appy February! 2016 is a basement will be done as money allows. Torah Portions for February 4 leap year. Wonderful, one Former member, Steve Silber, who works Hmore day added to our winter at Home Depot, will be obtaining the Mishpatim, Exodus 21:1-24:18 4 flooring, plus he recommended Rich Coming Down From the Mountain... season. Hope everyone has stayed Romano, who also works at Home Depot, warm and safe so far. I had to Israel Connections—Galilee Diary to do drywall. If anyone is interested in 5 cancel one week of Hebrew school, helping with putting up drywall, please let Periphery so far, due to weather. We also me know. Painters will also be needed. It Healing prayer 5 postponed one fundraising meeting definitely takes a village to make things to the following week as well. We come to fruition. Thank you for all of your Fundraising/Activities Meeting 5 are planning a Purim Bowling support in this endeavor. I am truly Party in Painesville at Scores for grateful to know we are making the Donations/Birthday & Anniversary 6 project a reality. March. More info inside. You don’t Fundraising—how we’re doing 6 have to bowl to enjoy the event Welcome home to two of our young with our Am Shalom family. It’s a adults, Aaron Steindler and Jonah Yahrzeit List 6 fundraiser for the continuing Magid, who both spent 10 days in Israel Calendar 7 renovations taking place on the Birthright trip in December. I am anxious to hear from them about their downstairs. Continue to look in The experiences. Kibbitzer for more activities and fundraisers in the near future. In addition, I have begun working with Zoe Wherling, Josie Aitkin and Alissa SISTERHOOD— Speaking of the renovations: electrical Bittinger on their preparations for their repairs are next with the donation of future B’nai Mitzvot later on this year. Meeting for breakfast labor from Jan and Abbie Echle and SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7 donation of parts from Mars Electric. Watch the Kibbitzer for further news! 10:00 am Thank you so much! Once completed, B’ahava (with love) at Manhattan Deli, Mentor. we will be ready to begin putting up Let’s schmooz. drywall in the kitchen area, followed by Renée ¤ SCHEDULE OF EVENTS Shabbat Services Men’s Fellowship Group Youth Group Friday, FEB 12 and 26 8:00am Sunday, FEB 21, Mentor Family SUNDAY FEB meetings — contact Elise 6:30pm tot Shabbat—7:30pm adult service Restaurant. Contact Lee Hawthorne at (440) 725-6852 or at [email protected] Saturday, FEB 20 10:00 a.m. Plan Ahead Sisterhood Sunday School Bowling Fundraiser March 12 10:00am SUNDAY, FEB 7 at Details page 2 FEB 14, 21, 28 9:15-11:30am Manhattan Deli, Mentor Contact Rita Rose No Sunday school on February 7th. at (440) 867-2268 or [email protected] Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Tour Preschool Board Meeting May 15 Details page 3 FEB 14 & 28 10:45-11:45am 7:30pm Wed FEBRUARY 3 Hebrew School Congregants, get involved! February 3, 10, 17 & 24 3:30- 5:00pm Fundraising/Activity Mtg WED FEB 10 7:00pm at the temple See page 3 Page 2 THE KIBBITZER Page 3 FEBRUARY 2016 The following article is excerpted from Ten Minutes of Torah— Israel As we neared the end of the tunnel tour, we came upon a large Connections from urj.org on November 11, 2015. Aron Hirt- mikveh (ritual bath), and with water slowly flowing in through a Manheimer, is the Union for Reform Judaism’s editor-at-large. hole in one of its walls. It seems that water and limestone seek Israel Connections one another like long-lost relatives. Putting Limestone in the Limelight of Israel Makhtesh Ramon, located in the Negev Desert on the edge of Tourism the Israeli town of Mitzpe Ramon is one of Israel’s natural won- By Aron Hirt-Manheimer ders. This enormous crater, measuring 25 miles long, six miles I’ve never given geology much attention in my travel writing, but wide, and 1,640 deep, was not caused by the impact of a mete- during a recent visit to Israel, I gained a new appreciation for the orite, but by a slow process of rivers washing away sandstone origins and versatility of limestone. toward the Dead Sea, the lowest spot on earth. As the sand- stone eroded over millions of years, a layer of limestone settled Limestone’s virtues are many. To name a few, it colors Jerusa- in its place. Today, the crater’s moonscape-like floor is covered lem gold. The enormous blocks of the Kotel (Western Wall) are with limestone shards of many shapes, sizes, and shades of hewn from it. And it plays a starring role in two of Israel’s most white to brown. spectacular natural wonders. Knowing how difficult it might be to imagine that this desert, The history of limestone dates to the Mesozoic Era (250-65 mil- which receives an average of only two inches of rain a year, had lion years ago), when half the world, including the Middle East once been totally submerged by an ocean, our guide, Oded was covered by the Tethys Ocean. After the waters slowly re- Schickler of Ramon Desert Tours showed us a 40-million-year- ceded, the skeletal remains of prehistoric marine organisms old shark’s tooth, shells, and a fossilized sea urchin he had sank to the bottom of the sea and were compressed into lime- found at the site. stone. People have quarried the stone since antiquity. At the end of our Jeep tour of the Mkhtesh Ramon, the largest Herod I, the Roman client king of Judea (37-4 BCE), favored a nature preserve in Israel, we washed our hands in the manner of kind of limestone called meleke (Arabic for “royal” or “kingly”) to nomadic Bedouin. First we broke off a few stems of an anabasis construct the Kotel and expand the Second Temple in Jerusa- plant, crushing them in our hands to extract its oil. We then add- lem. Meleke has a wondrous quality: It is soft enough to cut with ed a splash of water to make a soapy solution, which not only a knife when quarried, but hardens over time when exposed to cleaned but also moisturized. Our guide then treated us to cold air. watermelon, the perfect ending to our desert experience. When visiting the Kotel, you see only 60 of the more than 400 The Sorek cave at the Avshalom Nature Preserve is situated on meters of the wall. To see what’s underground, you can book a the western slopes of the Judean Hills between Jerusalem and walking tour through a tunnel that reveals more of the classic Beit Shemesh. It was discovered accidentally in 1968, when a Herodian stones, including one that’s the size of a city bus and blast detonated by workers from a nearby limestone quarry weighs 570 tons, which were transported and set in place with- brought it to light. Inside they found configurations of stalactites out mortar by workers using a system of ropes on pulleys. Ac- and stalagmites up to 13 feet long that some believed to be cording to the historian Josephus, 1,000 Levites were trained as 300,000 years old. New ones are still forming as water seeping builders and masons to renovate the Second Temple, as Herod, into the cave dissolves the limestone. who was regarded as an outsider, wanted to avoid a possible religious backlash. The nature preserve’s guides have nicknamed some of the formations created by this process. “Romeo and Juliet,” for At one stop in the tunnel tour, our guide invited us to look down example, takes the form of a stalactite positions directly a shaft that exposed an ancient quarry. We could see the out- lines of blocks on limestone that had not been cut and extracted. above a stalagmite, separated by a tiny gap of about 2 centi- Had the mining of this quarry been completed, the hollowed-out meters (0.79 inches). At the current rate of growth—100 area would have likely become a cistern, collecting rainwater for years per centimeter—the two will touch in the year 2215! domestic or public use. Until then, safe travels. ¤ Calling All Holy The following article is excerpted from chabad.org on November 26, Rock and Rollers 2015. Chana Weisberg is the editor of TheJewishWoman.org. Temple Am Shalom is planning a trip to How to Celebrate Your Birthday Twice The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & Museum By Chana Weisberg on Every 19 years, the Jewish calendar, which is based on the Sunday May 15 lunar cycle, meets up exactly with the Gregorian calendar, We would spend about three hours which is based on the solar system. touring the museum and then go to lunch At the end of 12 months, the 29.5-day lunar month falls short Car pools would be arranged for the trip of the 365.25-day solar year. But the Jewish calendar insists In order to qualify for group rates we must have at least 20 on reconciling the two cycles.