Shul News & Notes

Rabbi Gadi was one of 18 Jews honored in a ceremony held on May 7 at the H. Lee Dennison Building in Hauppauge. The event capped the Suffolk County Legislature’s annual observance of Jewish American Heritage Month. Each County District leader was invited to select one honoree of distinction. Legislator Catherine Stark of District 1 selected Rabbi Gadi for his leadership at our shul and his interfaith work with Project Genesis and the GEM (Greenport Ecumenical Ministries) organization of Greenport clergy.

The event, presided over by County Executive Edward P. Romaine, and planned by the Legislature’s Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Suffolk County Jewish Advisory Board, included acknowledgments to Jewish Americans who have contributed to this country in academia, entertainment, and community service, prayers for Israel and the Israelis still held hostage in Gaza, citations for all of the honorees, entertainment, and a lavish buffet dinner featuring Jewish cuisine.

The Rabbi told The Shofar that interfaith education helps to foster peaceful relations here and in Israel He said he was honored to have been selected by Legislator Stark.

SMBloom photo

In a Yom HaShoah program held on the evening of April 23, a sizeable crowd of 50 people from our shul and the North Fork Reform Synagogue paid tribute and honor to the Six Million lost in the Holocaust. Rabbi Gadi Capela of our shul, and Rabbi Barbara Sheryll of the North Fork Reform Synagogue led the gathering in a moving program of prayers and remembrances.

Rena Wiseman, one of our shul members and the daughter of Holocaust survivors, spoke movingly about her parents and how her father had escaped death numerous times to help others survive the harsh conditions behind the Nazi concentration camp enclosures.

At the conclusion of the program, the rabbis invited all to light their yellow candles, just as Jews throughout the world had done throughout the day.

At Peconic Landing, the senior continuing care community in Greenport, shul member and Peconic Landing resident Judith K. Weiner arranged for a Yom HaShoah program that afternoon. She introduced the meaning behind the Yellow Candle Program observed on Yom HaShoah, lighted six candles, one for each of the Six Million Jews murdered, and asked Rena Wiseman to tell her story about growing up as the daughter of Holocaust survivors.

The Greenport High School Program

            The candles were distributed free of charge, but many elected to make a charitable donation for the gift. Those donations paid for the bus to transport the 10th-grade world history class at Greenport High School to the Holocaust Museum and Tolerance Center in Glen Cove — the culmination of the students’ unit of study on the Holocaust.

On Friday, May 2, members of the class attended a Zoom Shabbat service at our shul to talk to congregants about what they had seen and what they had learned. Some of the students were unaware of the Holocaust before the unit, others had attended the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. Each of the students talked about what hate can bring about, and how the experience of meeting a survivor of the camps at the museum had touched them and made them more aware that antisemitism is still prevalent against Jews, just as other groups, too, are targets of hate.

Local newspaper coverage

The shul thanks the Suffolk Times newspaper and its reporter, Amanda Olsen, for coverage of the Yellow Candle Project and the connection to the Greenport High School history department’s focus on the Holocaust. The reporter interviewed shul members Judith K. Weiner, co-chair with Rena Wiseman of the event at Peconic Landing; Chuck Simon, who had created the Yellow Candle Project many years ago through synagogue Men’s Clubs and who introduced the program to CTI and to the NFRS; and Sara Bloom, president of our shul. The writer included quotes from the students who attended the Shabbat service at Congregation Tifereth Israel: Isabella Sarabia, Stella Squire; Devin Stanton and Noelle Stevenson. Also attending the service were Brian Toussaint, the students’ teacher, school principal Gary Kalish, and Elizabeth Doyle, the superintendent of schools.

The photo that accompanied the article showed a cohort of 77 10th graders about to board the bus for the museum and what, for some, was perhaps a life-changing experience.

This month, the Book Circle will read and discuss The Hebrew Teacher by Maya Arad, winner of a National Jewish Book Award for Hebrew Fiction in Translation. The group will meet on Thursday, June 19, at 3 p.m., in the community room of the shul.

Three Israeli women, their lives altered by immigration to the United States seek to overcome crises in their lives. In three novellas, the celebrated Israeli writer Maya Arad probes the demise of idealism and the generation gap that her heroines must confront.

The Book Circle meets monthly to explore books by Jewish authors writing on topics of Jewish interest. For more information about the Book Circle and its current selection, email ctigreenport@gmail.com with a message for Susan Rosenstreich, coordinator of the group.

Author Reuven Fenton visits the Book Circle Group

Reuven Fenton, pictured right, author of the novel Goyhood, the Book Circle group’s May selection, visited the session to talk about the storyline and his inspiration for writing it.

The narrative conceives a devoutly Orthodox man, who discovers in middle age that he is not, in fact, Jewish. He is, however a Talmud scholar, married into one of the great rabbinical families in the world. The big question: Now what?

The sessions are held on Zoom and in person. Those attending in person display the book cover. Susan Rosenstreich, in blue, leads the group’s monthly meetings.