Shabbat is about joy. Our tradition schools us about reaching for relaxation and joy during Shabbat. We will get there this week and we will celebrate our wonderful Bat Mitzvah, Lilibeth, this weekend as she deserves. But first we must navigate this.
Right now we are hurting as a community. We operate as a kehillah, a community, by being so closely linked to 
each other as we join in each other’s joys and sorrows. So it is with great sadness I have been sharing the news that our beloved and hugely charismatic Lesley Urbach was taken ill last Friday and died last night. Lesley was a woman in her prime and we are not ready for this in any way.
Lesley was the finest of women, hugely loved, amazing in her energy and commitment to building a better, fairer world. She has been responsible for so much here at FPS, for making us a Synagogue of Sanctuary, not just for the guests we welcome but in looking after our own as well and in ensuring our congregation is a safe and loving place. Lesley could often be found in the kitchen after kiddush, and playing Scrabble on a Tuesday afternoon. She was the link between us and HIAS JCORE, as well as leading our Welfare group and being editor of Shofar with her friend, Sheila King-Lassman. Her magnum opus is the outstanding charity G2G that she created with friends and partners in crime Sharman Berwald, Bernice Krantz, and Helen Stone, to ensure the legacies of Holocaust survivors will be carried forward, narrated by family members to sustain their witness. Many such families are within FPS. Fiercely moral, she abhorred the idea of being a bystander and not standing up for justice and righteousness.
Such a shock within our tight-knit community has been devastating for so many of us. We operate as an extended family; members of our family matter. So forgive me acknowledging this ahead of Shabbat when, as she’d want, we will meet joyfully, with wine and joy, ready to be proud of the coming of age of our young person.
In this week’s Parashat Balak, after the wisdom of his talking donkey, Balaam offers a blessing rather than a curse over the Israelites and it’s a blessing that has migrated from Torah into our liturgy. We offer it every week:
Mah Tovu Ohalecha Ya’acov mishkonetecha Yisrael
How beautiful are your tents O Jacob and your dwelling places O Israel.
May we be worthy of this blessing.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
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