6:00 p.m. Shabbat dinner. Menu: Winter Salad, Moroccan Spiced Chicken, Couscous Pilaf, Carrots, Green Beans and Cauliflower. Vegetarian option: Delicata squash stuffed with spiced chickpeas. Cost: $25 for adults, $15 for children. Registration for the Shabbat dinner has closed. Register below to attend in-person services.

7:00 p.m. Synaplex Shabbat Alive Services, our jazz and pop service with a band, led by Rabbi Rachlis and Cantor Braier, during which Dr. Matthew Lupu will speak on “Holy Moses: What Do We Really Know About The Historical Moses?” Our Shabbat Alive musicians are sponsored by Gilbert Gluck and Catherine Bradley.

In the Jewish weekly cycle of Torah readings, Jews all over the world have been focused, over the last few weeks, on the greatest leader in Biblical Judaism, Moses. “Our” Moses is also considered a great prophet in Christianity and Islam, as well as in the Bahai and Druze faiths.

From Talmudic times to this very day, he is called, in Judaism, “Moshe Rabbeinu” – Moses, our teacher, our Rabbi. Importantly, Jews never raised his stature to that of a god, precisely so that he could serve as a model of a fully human being with a wide range of emotions. Humility, patience, anger, intelligence, and wisdom combined within him to remind us that even the greatest leaders are always complex and subject to a variety of psychological forces. Still, our tradition paints him, through Biblical texts and Midrashic commentaries, as a highly actualized human being.

Of course, even Biblical scholars know very little about the “actual” Moses. The Moses of religion is aspirational and inspirational, but many traditionalists don’t want to examine what history tells us lest it compromise faith. As Reconstructionists, we’re not worried about a loss of (liberal) faith; even more, we are certainly interested in what history can teach us.

Scholarship dating back to antiquity has attempted to historicize the character of Moses and the story of the Exodus. Dr. Lupu will explore the history of biblical and extra-biblical references to Moses to better understand the “Historical Moses,” the most significant Biblical figure in Judaism. He will bring us the history of Moses, situated in the facts as well as in the mysteries and myths of the Ancient Near East.

Dr. Matthew Lupu, a dentist, whose curiosity led him to get advanced degrees in archaeology and philology, is now a PhD candidate at Florida State University’s Department of Classics and has completed his Master’s Degree in Classical Archaeology and a second Master’s Degree in Latin Philology. Co-sponsored by Dr. Miriam Piven Cotler and Gilbert Gluck and Catherine Bradley. (Our Oneg Shabbat is sponsored by Ildi Good in honor of her 85th birthday.)

Register for in-person services below. Click here to watch via live stream from your home, or access the video at a later time.