This year, Shir Hadash’s Torah Study is looking at each week’s portion through the lens of Mussar (think of Benjamin Franklin’s plan for self-improvement, but with Hebrew added), using the Mussar Torah Commentary (affiliate link) as a jumping-off point.
This week’s portion is Vayera (Genesis 18:1-22:24); the Mussar attribute that goes with this portion is z’rizut – alacrity. Our lay leader, David Bamberger, led a lively discussion about the portion and how Abraham demonstrated (and didn’t demonstrate) alacrity. I enjoyed it, though I was a little distracted by serving as the Zoom master.
After Torah study and services, we headed to Tony and Alba’s Pizza. There’s a Best Buy across the street; we wanted to see whether they had refrigerators that would fit our space. And, since we were still waiting for University Electric to tell us about availability of the cooktop we wanted, we didn’t ignore the salesperson who asked if she could help us. It turned out that she could help us more than we expected – twenty minutes later, we’d placed an order for the cooktop, with delivery scheduled for the Monday before Thanksgiving. Alacrity indeed!
