Category: Featured

Shabbat on the Beach! Friday, July 29 at 7:00 pm

Shabbat_on_the_Beach2015Our ‘Shabbat under the stars’ services are always a great opportunity to enjoy the beautiful TE grounds and be outside. This year, we continue the wonderful new tradition that began two years ago: Shabbat on the beach! On July 29 at 7pm head over to the Walnut Beach in Milford (113 E Broadway, Milford, CT 06460) – don’t forget a beach blanket or a chair, and bug repellent just in case! We will sing together and greet shabbat by the water. Please spread the word and invite your family and friends to join us!

 

P.S. If it rains, Shabbat services will at Tempe Emanuel – but we hope for a beautiful night under the stars!

IsraelFest – June 5, 2-6 pm at the JCC

1100 Israel Fest4x3 Monitor_050316IsraelFest New Haven | Sunday, June 5 | 2-6 p.m. The Jewish Federation and synagogues of greater New Haven have come together to celebrate the anniversary of Israel’s Independence with this community-wide event. IsraelFest New Haven will feature Israeli carnival food, educational booths, dancing, games, and the premier Israeli band, Yemen Blues. The festival will run from 2-4 p.m. and the concert from 4-6 p.m. This event is free and open to all!

Annual Meeting, June 5 at 10 am

TE_logo_smallThe Annual Meeting Notice has been mailed to all TE members.  We look forward to seeing you all at the Annual Meeting on Sunday, June 5 – Coffee and bagels at 9:30 am, meeting starts at 10:00 am in the Social Hall. Come and vote for TE Officers and Directors and the TE budget, hear reports on TE happenings, and voice your ideas. Absentee ballots will be provided by the TE Office upon request.

STATELESS at Temple Emanuel

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Please join us on Sunday, May 22nd at 2pm for a very special screening of “Stateless.”

This screening will be followed by Q&A session with director, Michael Drob, as well as members of TE who have lived through the experiences depicted in this documentary.

The event is free and open to the public, but we ask that you register ahead of time – thank you!

About the film:

In the late 1980’s, on the brink of the collapse of the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of Soviet Jews were finally allowed to leave the USSR. What these people did not expect was that their final destination, America, no longer welcomed them with open arms. In 1988, American policy suddenly changed and thousands of Soviet Jews were stranded in Italy.

Stateless.

This documentary captures that unique slice of history from the point of view of the émigrés as well as expert accounts of the situation from influential Jewish leaders including David Harris of the AJC, Mark Handelman of NYANA and Mark Hetfield of HIAS among others.

This project was originally created as part of COJECO BluePrint Fellowship generously funded by the UJA-Federation of New York and Genesis Philanthropy Group

Temple Emanuel is grateful to the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven for their support of this program.

See the trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcZQ4WPpAr4

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Temple Emanuel Board 2015-16
Temple Emanuel Board 2015-16

Judaism is wonderful at celebrating life cycle events and marking the passage of time. By the time you are reading this column, the House will have finally been taken down and the area filled in and graded. Yes, this project ran into a few road-bumps but it is finally done. So, (drumroll) this officially ends the “One Campus” campaign!! First, a huge thank-you to all the individuals who worked so hard to make it happen. This was no small task: from thinkers to donors to doers, the entire community pulled together to make it happen. But now where do we go from here?

Why, back to construction again. No, not a building project (yet) but the reconstruction of who we want to be and where we want to be going. There is so much we offer to so many groups: school-age education, adult education, life-cycle celebrations, holy day celebrations, tikkun olam projects, and social events. Can we do it all? Can we afford to do it all? Do we need to add something new: day care, preschool, more family events, elder care, openness to the LGBT community, interfaith programming to name a few? We are going to talk about it over the next several months. Hopefully we will be doing some workshops on leadership (if we get chosen by the URJ to be in their pilot program) or at least talking about leadership. TE Board elections are coming up in June, and I would love to have some new faces involved in the joys of running their community.

This is where you come in. Please volunteer to work on a project, sit on a committee, be on the Board, or hold an Office. Let me or the Rabbi or Jodi or the Office or Lew Shaffer (head of the nominating committee) or any of the Committee Chairs know how you would like to be involved. I wish I could tap each of you on the shoulder and ask you personally, but I just can’t. Consider this your “tap on the shoulder.”

 

Goodbye, old house….

 

The HouseAnd so the time has come to say goodbye to the old house. For many of us this is a moment tinged with sadness. For over 40 years this house has been the center of Temple Emanuel’s universe – religious school classes, the office, committee meetings, book clubs, meals, parties, learning, and praying – it has been a witness to over 40 years of TE history…

But it was also an old house that had all the challenges of an aging structure that has been added to throughout the years – the wet basement, summer humidity, the ice damming, the furnace that would suddenly not work in the middle of the winter – the list of challenges was long, and every TE president has had a surprise or two prepared for his/her budget by the old house 🙂

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Back in December we had a wonderful ceremony in front of the empty house. It was an opportunity for us to celebrate the amazing history that we have enjoyed together. It was an opportunity to thank the house for the wonderful service it offered our community over the years. It was an opportunity to look at for how far we have come in the last 45 years.

This house gave our community a chance to grow, a chance to develop its identity, its spirit, and its character. We made do with what we had. We made it ours, and we made it work. It is incredible to know that in a series of meetings inside this house we were able to conceive what our community would look like, what our Sanctuary would look like, what our school and library and offices would look like in the 21st century. The future is full of excitement. But as we celebrate the future, let us acknowledge and honor the past that has enabled us to get here. The house was an integral part of that past, and we shall forever be thankful for its many years of faithful service.Firefighters in the house

In the end, the house was once again a place for important learning and practice. Both the FBI and the local fire department found the house offered them an opportunity for invaluable training of their staff. We were honored to share the house with them. It was the most fitting way to end a career of the house of learning and the house of gathering. The physical structure of the house may be gone now, but the spirit of the house that has been the spirit of Temple Emanuel community lives on in all of us, in all those who have come through its doors over the decades, and it lives in the hallways of the One Campus of Temple Emanuel – and what a joy it is to know that. Firefighters in Rabbi's study

 

Goodbye old house. And thank you!

 

"MIXING RELIGION AND POLITICS: When Should Religious Leaders Speak out about Political Issues?” April 17th at 4pm

_MG_0098The Orange Clergy Association welcomes you to the 2016 Scholar in Residence program to take place at Orange Congregational Church on April 17th.
A reception will begin at 4:00 pm, with the program beginning at 4:30 pm.
Our discussion this year will be:
“MIXING RELIGION AND POLITICS: When Should Religious Leaders Speak out about Political Issues?”
Are religious organizations  best “seen but not heard” in the public sphere?
Is there a place for a religious voice in a presidential election?
Come, hear & discuss our religious leaders’ perceptions concerning religion’s role in the public sphere.