Fifteen TE members joined the Walk Against Hunger on Sunday, May 17, 2015. We started out in East Rock Park and walked together with marchers from a diverse range of religious congregations and non-profit organizations for 3 miles through the local neighborhood. TE’s team included members of all ages; we wore our new blue TE t-shirts, and we were proud when observers along the way exclaimed, “wow, that’s a big group!” We raised about $ 1,000 which was donated to the Connecticut Food Bank. We had a great time!
Category: Featured
Connecticut Food Bank Walk – Sunday May 17, 1:00 PM East Rock Park
Imagine for a moment not knowing where your next meal is coming from. We at TE can help through participating in the Connecticut Food Bank’s Walk Against Hunger. Sunday, May 17 in East Rock Park, with a meet-up at 12:30. Let’s make this the best year ever and walk together to make a difference in the lives of others. All ages can participate, even pets, so please let me know that you will be a part of the TE team this year, walking with the TE team to combat hunger on a glorious day in May. Please respond to me, Jackie Koral, and I’ll fill you in on all the details and hopefully, fill you in a TE team shirt.
Shehecheyanu, or how to celebrate the moments of transition.
Judaism is all about the sacred time. To be sure, space matters too, but time – now that’s really important. Minutes, days, weeks – all of it matters tremendously – just take a look at the Jewish calendar, its’ beautiful, complicated precision. Just look at how carefully we monitor time – on March 6 Shabbat begins at 5:34 pm and ends on March 7 no earlier than 6:19pm… Does it really matter? Why do we obsess over such seemingly trivial details as minutes of an hour? Does it really matter if our Yom Kippur fast lasts full 25 hours, and do we really need to wait for the three stars to appear at the end? I’d like to suggest that we pay so much attention to those precise minutes not because they matter quite so much, but because they allow us to pay attention to an extremely important moment: that of transition. At the beginning of Shabbat, it is the lighting of candles that allows us to usher Shabbat in, creating an invisible divide between the long week we just had and a very special space in time we call Shabbat, the time of rest, of renewal, of family and friends, a Jewish space in our often very non-Jewish week… Havdalah allows us to mark the transition ‘back’ into the world of daily routine. Every time we mark the arrival of a festival with kiddush we mark that transition from the ordinary to the sanctified – and then back again. Both transitions are special, both are sacred! As I write these words, Temple Emanuel embarks on one of the most ambitious projects in over 50 years of our existence, the biggest such effort in over twenty years: to bring the entire TE community under one roof. We called this project OneCampus. The addition to our sanctuary building will contain 4 classrooms, a library/meeting room and some office space. It will enable us to bring to life our vision of TE members of all ages entering through the same doors to engage in learning, celebrating Shabbat and Festivals, working to make this world a better place through the acts of Tikkun Olam and enjoying all the wonderful things TE has to offer -all under one roof! And so I come back to marking the transitions. On Tuesday, March 10 at 11 am we will hold a ground breaking ceremony, allowing us to mark this moment in time, this moment in the history of our congregation, when we will officially begin to construct this new part of our campus. We will do so with the words of shehecheyanu, thanking God for sustaining our community for over 50 years, and allowing us to reach this very special moment. There will be many more opportunities for us to celebrate this wonderful new stage in our synagogue’s life. There are still plenty of opportunities to get involved in this wonderful project and to support it with your talents, and to donate money to help make it happen. But for now, let us just take this moment in, cherish it, and let the words ring in our ears: ‘Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech haOlam, shehecheyanu ve’kiymanu ve’higianu la’zman hazeh’. Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has sustained us, and kept us alive and allowed us to get to this very special moment.
Beyond the Shtetl: A Thousand Years of Distinctive Jewish Life in Eastern Europe – TE Scholar in Residence weekend March 20-22.
Friday March 20, 2015
6:00 pm Shabbat dinner (Register here).
*Services 7:30 pm (please note the earlier time!)
Presentation during services Building a Museum: The Saga of Polish Jewry
While many Jews see Poland as a place of tragedy, it was also the center of Ashkenazi Jewish life for 800 years. The newly opened Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw tells a rich story of cultural vitality and resilience. Why is the Museum important and how will it change the way Poles and Jews see their own history and their relations with each other?
Saturday, March 21, 2015
11:30 Dairy Luncheon
12:30 Presentation: Cultural resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto: the Ringelblum Archive
During World War II Jews resisted not only with guns, but also with pen and paper. Even in the face of death they left “time capsules” full of documents that they buried under the rubble of ghettos and death camps. The Ringelblum archive in the Warsaw Ghetto consists of thousands of buried documents. But of the sixty people who worked on this national mission, only three survived. This will be their story.
Sunday, March 22, 2015
10:00 Bagels and coffee
10:30 Presentation: Vilna: the Jerusalem of Lithuania
Vilna, the “Jerusalem of Lithuania” was a very special city. No other Jewish community in Eastern Europe inspired so many poems and stories. Vilna was the home of the great Vilna Gaon, but it also was the birthplace of the Jewish Socialist Bund, as well as the world capital of an imaginary country called “Yiddishland.” Religion and worldliness, Hebrew and Yiddish, tradition and modernity, all came together in this lovely, Jewish city.
About our Scholar in Residence
Dr. Samuel Kassow, Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College, holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and has lectured and taught in Mexico, Lithuania, Russia, Poland and Israel. He has been a Visiting Professor at Princeton, Harvard, the University of Toronto and the Hebrew University. Since 2008 he has been serving as a consultant to the Museum of the History of Polish Jews which recently opened in Warsaw, Poland.
Professor Kassow is the author of several books including: The Distinctive Life of East European Jewry (2004), Who will Write our History: Emanuel Ringelblum and the Secret Ghetto Archive (2007), which received the Orbis Prize, was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award and has been translated into seven languages. A child of Holocaust survivors, Professor Kassow was born in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany.
CANCELLED: Come join the Sisterhood for lunch and paint pottery for Pesach! Sunday March 15 at 12 noon.
Sisterhood bringing our TE family together !
Come join the Sisterhood for lunch and paint pottery for Pesach!
Sunday, March 15th at noon in the social hall.
Lunch: Mac-n-cheese and salad
R.S.V.P. no later than Sunday, March 1st
TEMPLE EMANUEL HOSTS BLOOD DRIVE THURSDAY MARCH 12 • 1 – 6PM
Donors are needed!
“Be one of the millions who help save lives!”
Please save the date and contact Adam Spiewak to be placed on the contact list to schedule a slot.
Volunteers are needed:
1. To make calls to encourage/solicit donor signups and then to remind the donors of their appointments.
2. To develop an interest sheet of names of people who would likely be donors.
3. For two hour shifts on the day of the drive: setup and breakdown (extending the hours to 11:30am -7:30pm on THURSDAY, March 12th).
4. To bake goods or other food / refreshments for the canteen
THERE ARE MANY EASY WAYS TO BE INVOLVED!
Contact Nancy Weber or Adam Spiewak, or e-mail TikkunOlam@TempleEmanuel-gnh.
Strength—Gevurah
“Hazak Hazak V’nit Hazek”
“Be strong, be strong, and let us be strengthened”
This is the phrase we say when we reach the end of each book in the Torah. It is also this month’s Mussar trait. What is strength? Some definitions include: endurance, resistance, capacity for exertion, power, force, might, vigor, potency, energy or fire power.
At this moment, the strength that concerns me is not the power to move mountains, but the strength one needs to overcome our greatest challenges. In Mussar thought, this would be an inward look at the self. But what does this mean for a congregation? I believe this is the strength to overcome obstacles, to develop an awareness of what needs to be done and then to change things as a result of that understanding. We are in the midst of great change at TE. Adding new families and a new addition to the sanctuary building is a huge and exciting amount of change to take in. It means there will be times when everything doesn’t go as smoothly as it should or that things have to be adapted to the situation at hand. It means keeping track of all the details. It means that not everyone will agree on the details of where we go next. I am confident that we have the strength to get through these changes if we do it as a community – together.
A form of the word gevurah – gibor – means “hero” in Hebrew. This next year at Temple Emanuel is going to challenge us all to be heroes who turn our obstacles into strengths. I will be looking for TE’s heroes to help me meet these challenges.
With apologies to Dwight D. Eisenhower: “The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a congregation more than its wealth.”
Family Shabbat Dinner at TE – Friday, February 13 at 6 pm.
SHABBAT reception BEGINS AT 6:00PM, dinner will be served at 6:30 pm followed by Shabbat Service at 8. (Please note that there will be a Tot Shabbat Service for our youngest members and their families at 5:30, allowing all generations of TE families to have Shabbat dinner together!)
Please fill out the form below by February 9th.
No family will pay more than $45 to attend. Children 5 and under are free.
A Taste of Honey – an evening of inspired learning and teaching- Saturday, January 31 – 7:00 pm at the JCC, featuring TE band and choirs!
Community learning at its sweetest.
Join us for the 19th annual A Taste of Honey, a community-wide celebration of Jewish learning that includes fascinating sessions, havdallah, keynote speaker
New York Times film critic A.O. Scott, plus the Debbie Friedman Memorial Tribute Concert with the TE band and inter-generational choir. Cost $18; Students/Seniors $12.
Online registration and entire schedule coming soon at http://www.jccnh.org/taste-of-honey
RESCHEDULED – NEW DATE! Adult Education Part II Prayer: Discussion and reaction to changes in the new Reform prayer book.
Adult Education Part IIPrayer: Discussion and reaction to changes in the new Reform prayer book. Come and join the learning and conversations facilitated by Rabbi Steven Steinberg. The second in the adult ed series will be held at the home of Jim and Jean Silk on Saturday, February 28 from 3:00-4:30 pm. Everyone is welcome; no need to have attended Part I.
We will look at Mishkan Tefilah and consider it in the light of previous Reform prayer books. Why is it so heavy–what conclusions can we draw from its new physical manifestation? What prayers do or do not resonate for you in the prayer book? Is it a meditation text? Should one follow the text or wander into the alternative readings? At several places at the bottom of a page it gives the reader a choice of what to read or how to move one’s body and comments, “For those who choose.” How does its “pietism” compare to the current Reform Platform? How does the prayer book define Shabbat in contrast to the traditional understanding of Shabbat? What does it suggest about Reform worship and how we might pray as Reform Jews?