Holy Hollywood, Gift of Life, and Shabbat @ Chabad

1) Holy Hollywood – “Walk the red carpet” with award winning actor and comedian Shelley Berman TUESDAY night
2) Gift of Life – Bone Marrow Registry Drive Wednesday
3) Shabbat change of schedule – we will be at Chabad this Shabbat, Jewnity Shabbat has been rescheduled to Nov. 17
4) Next weekend – Shabbat dinner w. Chabad in Stanford or at the New York Shabbaton w. Matisyahu concert
5) Thought for the Week

1) Holy Hollywood – walk “the red carpet” with award winning actor and comedian Shelley Berman
Don’t miss part 2 of our exciting lecture series: Jewish LAS. A Food for Thought event.
Is Hollywood really about Jewish values? What’s it like being Jewish in “the industry”? Does it help, hurt, or neither?
Hear over 50 years worth of Hollywood memories from a true industry legend –award winning actor and comedian Shelley Berman. Whether it’s through his Grammy-award winning comedy recordings, his big-screen appearances in such movies as “Meet the Fockers” and “The Aristocrats”, his roles in such TV hits as Friends, King of Queens, or most recently Curb Your Enthusiasm, or his teaching of humor writing in the MPW program right here at USC, Shelley Berman has done it all. And throughout everything, he has maintained a very clear awareness and connection with his Jewish identity.
Walk down the red carpet, munch away on popcorn, movie treats, and a full salad bar, and enjoy Shelley’s anecdotes, reminisces, and insights.
Due to technical difficulties, we have had to drop Mel Gibson from our list of speakers for the evening….
Tuesday, Oct. 24th. 6:30 pm at the Chabad House. RSVP at www.chabadusc.com or at the Facebook event “Holy Hollywood”.

2) Gift of Life – Bone Marrow Registry Drive
Another Helping Hands social action opportunity.
Do you want to save a life? Maybe it’s a child with leukemia? Or an adult with lymphoma?
You’ll never know if you could have done something, if you’re not in the national bone marrow registry.
Statistics show that it’s most likely for matches to be found for marrow transplants from people with similar ethnic backgrounds. So the more Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews in the registry, the more likely it is that a match can be found when someone from that background is in need. That’s what Gift of Life was founded for. And that’s why we’re doing a drive for Gift of Life this coming Wednesday.
What: Bone marrow registry
Where: In front of the JEP house, at Trousdale and 34th (right near the Finger Fountain).
When: Wednesday, October 25. 11:30 am – 2:30 pm
A cooperative effort between Gift of Life, Chabad @ USC, and AEPi.

3) Change of Schedule – Shabbat at Chabad this week, Jewnity Shabbat has been rescheduled for Nov. 17
Due to technical difficulties, our joint Shabbat with Hillel has been rescheduled for a couple of weeks from now.
What that means is that you can enjoy another of Runya’s delicious home-cooked Shabbat dinners with the unique atmosphere and ambience of the Chabad House this Friday night. So if you’ve been MIA due to the holidays for a bit, this is the week we’d like to see you back.

Friday, Oct. 27
Candle Lighting: 5:48 pm
Services: 6:00 pm
Dinner: 7:00 pm
Saturday, Oct. 28
(yes, that’s Rabbi Dov’s secular birthday, but since we celebrate the dates in the Jewish calendar—it’s not until later this month)
Morning Discussion: 9:15 am
Services: 10:00 am
Lunch: 12:30 pm
(we’re starting a bit early so that if anybody needs to be somewhere at 12:30 – say due to the game or something – they can still make itJ. Remember that the Trojans have still never lost a game on a Shabbat that we’ve gotten a Minyan together. It’s been tight getting Minyans the past several weeks, but we’ve been pulling them out…)
Shabbat ends: 6:43 pm

4) Next Weekend’s schedule
Just a note for anyone planning their schedules around Friday night dinners:
Next weekend (Nov. 3) we will not be having Shabbat services or meals at the Chabad House at USC. We will be offering Shabbat dinner through Chabad in Stanford for those making the trip up to the Weekender, and of course we will be in NY for the International Shabbaton.
We were very excited this week to hear that Matisyahu will be one of the performers at the concert at the Shabbaton on Saturday night. It’ll be a closed event only for Shabbaton attendees, so if you’ll be in the NY area make sure to register now. And if you’ve been wavering until now – as of today there were still tickets available at a reasonable price, and we have made a couple more spots available. Don’t delay – frankiel@usc.edu to register.

5) Thought for the Week
I looked around for something to share but couldn’t find anything more appropriate than my thought from a couple of years back, so here it is:
Tell me if this strikes a chord. You feel like you're on a small boat, being buffeted about by huge stormy waves. Wave upon wave of pressures, stresses, classes, and (shudder) midterm tests crash about you, threatening to drown you beneath the onslaught.
It's not just midterm season. Life is like that. We're constantly faced by a deluge of obstacles and pressures, whether they are emotional, financial, social, etc.

It reminds you of this week's Torah portion. It reminds you of the Great Flood in Noah's days.

Yet, Noah declared: "The great waters, i.e. the great pressures of the world around me, cannot extinguish the flames of my love for G-d."
The Sages refer to the waters of the flood, not as a negative punishment, but as positive and purifying, comparable to the waters of the Mikvah on a global scale.

The same is true of the obstacles we face. They may seem, at times, purely negative--like a pain in the neck that we would much rather be without. Yet, we know that the opposite is true. Without applying pressure, no oil issues forth from the olive. Without facing obstacles, we never truly grow.
The more we apply internal pressure to ourselves, i.e. recognize the personal need for constant movement and growth, the less need there is for us to be faced with external pressures.
Let's discuss this a little bit more in-depth.
When you think of the Flood, what normally comes to mind?
The picture usually painted for us is one a fire-breathing, vindictive G-d, out to get His revenge by meting out a terrible punishment upon mankind for their sins. G-d created man. Man turned away from G-d. G-d punishes him by wiping him out.
That whole perspective lies underneath so much of people's problem with religion, and has greatly colored the way we look at the Bible. (This follows on last week's discussion of G-d's imperfect creation. Did He just make a mistake and choose to wipe out the evidence?)
Chassidism looks at the whole story and paints a completely different picture.
Sure, we believe in reward and punishment. We even believe in Hell and Heaven. (A comment I often hear from students when I say this: "Noo! You're kidding, right? Judaism doesn't believe in Hell!")
The difference is that we don't believe in Hell as purely punishment.
G-d isn't petty. He's not looking to get back at people who have angered Him. What He is interested in is people following the path He has laid out for them, people fulfilling the mission He has charged them with.
That mission includes a spiritual journey. He created us with a soul, and He wants us-- through involvement in the world around us in a positive manner, through actually fulfilling the commandments of the Torah--to elevate that soul, to bring it to a higher degree of spiritual perfection.
Sometimes we deviate from this path. We spiritually dirty and harm our souls, by getting involved in things that we shouldn't, in things that have been forbidden to us because of the spiritual danger they pose.
But, G-d still wants us to succeed. He still wants us to be able to reach the goals we've set out, to achieve the degree of spiritual connection that is our soul's greatest desire.
In order to do so, we have to get rid of the dirt.
That's what Hell is perceived as in Judaism. Just as a rug may be beaten to clear it of dirt and allow its beauty to shine, just as clothing is scrubbed to remove stains and restore its pristine cleanliness, so too are our souls put through a cleansing process, a process which involves intense spiritual pain, so that they may once again connect to G-d in purity and perfection.
This same is true of the Great Flood. If all G-d was trying to do was punish those who had angered Him, why waste all that good water? (After all, G-d's a conservationist. He created nothing without purpose.) What purpose was there in all that tumult, and that great deviation from the rules of nature He had implemented? Why not just kill them off with a plague or something?
The Flood seems to be about something completely different as well. In Judaism, water is purifying. When someone has become ritually impure, they immerse in a Mikvah, a body of water. Before a man and woman can join in marriage, or rejoin in familial relations after the woman's menstrual period, she immerses herself in a Mikvah. Similarly, when the world had become filled with improper and immoral behavior, it had to be immersed in a Mikvah.
It wasn't about revenge. It wasn't about vindictiveness. It was about allowing the world to refresh and re-focus on fulfilling its Divinely ordained spiritual journey.
Have a great Shabbos!