As we reflect on the past year and look to the coming year, we acknowledge this is a time for renewal and commitment to our community and to our traditions. As our New Year 5786 begins, let’s build a stronger tomorrow together. This is also a time to remember our shared responsibilities to our community. Your presence at services and programs and simchas helps to sustain our sacred community. Your gift now will ensure [...]
Every morning for the last 15 years or so, I log-on to “Religion News Service,” an online publication with reliable, well-researched and documented coverage of global religion news. I learn about faith as practiced around the world by Islamists, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews and indigenous and folk tribalists living in the far corners of this earth. Through the years, I have passed on to readers of The Shofar many of these stories about Jewish traditions [...]
Coming up on Thursday, Oct. 23, at 3:30, at the shul, the Book Circle will meet the Fletcher family and come to terms with a deep-seated generational trauma and how that morphed into the destructive nature of wealth, identity and personal fulfillment. The October selection is titled Long Island Compromise, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. The Book Circle meets monthly to explore books by Jewish writers exploring Jewish topics. For more information about the group, email [...]
Families celebrated on Monday, Oct. 13, as Hamas released all 20 remaining living hostages under the Gaza ceasefire deal. Hamas is yet to release the remains of all the dead hostages despite being required to do so under the deal that would bring some closure to the national trauma that began when the terror group took 251 hostages back to Gaza after massacring some 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023. The first seven living [...]
A new session of Strength Trifecta Begins Thursday October 16th and ends Monday December 22nd Classes are at 5:30 p.m. every Monday and Thursday at the synagogue No class Monday November 24th and Thursday November 27th The fall session is 18 classes/$180 with cash or check due the first night of class Equipment required: three pairs of dumbbells 8lbs-5lbs-2lbs OR 7lbs-5lbs-3lbs A Mat and a water bottle Use a carry-on bag with wheels to transport [...]
This has been an extraordinary year! At home and around the world. Now, the 2025 High Holidays sharpen our perspective, highlight our fears, stir old memories and, at the same time, bring hope for the future. This year in 5785, we recognize with a renewed commitment that we are linked by tradition, by community and, at the very core of our beings, by a shared identity as Jews. In the excruciating years since October [...]
The Goal Is To Fill The Barrel To Fill Tummies Once again, our shul will participate in a worldwide movement to feed the hungry as part of the annual observance of Yom Kippur. This mitzvah often is referred to as the “Fast of Isaiah,” the Biblical prophet who said, “And if you spend yourself in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, [...]
The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia has returned an Israeli flag to its façade after two incidents of vandalism. The flag, which hangs on an exterior wall of the museum with the words “The Weitzman stands with Israel,” was vandalized with red spray paint. The museum had planned to swap the damaged flag with a hostage-focused sign, but drew criticism on the premise that by removing the Israeli flag, the vandals [...]
Behind an inconspicuous wooden door, the Jewish Theological Seminary in downtown Budapest harbors one of the largest and most valuable Jewish book collections in Europe, according to an article in the Sept. 9 issue of The New York Times. But about 20,000 books and many valuable manuscripts have been missing since German troops marched into the city and seized books. Now more than 80 years later, the books are slowly returning to the 150-year-old seminary, [...]
Caught On Shabbat at Yankee Stadium: A Personal Story Do you remember the illicit embrace caught on camera at last summer’s Coldplay concert in Boston? Andy Byron, the former CEO of the tech company Astronomer, and Kristin Cabot, the company’s chief human resources officer, were embracing on the concert’s kiss cam; both were married to other people at the time. The incident gave me a shudder and sent me back 24 years to when I, [...]
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