Shul News & Notes
Rabbi Gadi And Congregants Join Israel Day Parade On Sunday June 2
Thousands of supporters of Israel marched along Fifth Avenue on Sunday, June 2, during a heavily policed Israel Day parade that took on a more somber tone this year as the war in Gaza entered its eighth month. The normally jubilant event, which has been held annually since 1964, had fewer spectators in Midtown Manhattan than usual because of intense security. The parade, which drew about 40,000 participants, all of whom needed credentials to march, focused on remembering the hostages seized by Hamas on Oct. 7. Along the entire parade route, Rabbi Gadi held a poster with photos of the hostages. He said few protests intruded on “the spirit of the day,” which attracted 158 groups of marchers, including the Long Island coalition, pictured above.
Book Circle To Delve Into Family Life in Internment In Muslim Pakistan
At the next Book Circle meeting, to be held on Thursday, July 25, at 3 p.m., in Andrew Levin Park, the group will study the effects on family members held for six years in an internment camp. Hazel Selzer Kahane has written a harrowing account of the experiences in A House in Lahore: Growing Up Jewish in Pakistan.
Drawing on extensive boarding school correspondence, the book examines the power of letter writing to bind a scattered family. When the author returns to her beloved childhood house, she finds that it still stands, but she is unprepared for what she finds.
The Book Circle meets monthly to discuss books on Jewish topics and/or by Jewish writers. For more information, email Susan Rosenstreich, coordinator, at ctigreenport@gmail.com./
Garden Cocktail Party, July 21, 4-6 p.m.
Garden Cocktail Party
Date & Time: JULY 14, 4-6 pm
Location: Andrew Levin Memorial Garden
Congregation Tifereth Israel, 519 4th Street, Greenport
RSVP here
Click here to download your invitation to our festive garden party.
An estimated 60 people attended the shul’s Yellow Candle event on Sunday, May 5, a memorial to Yom Ha Shoah and The Six Million. The event has been growing steadily since Chuck Simon introduced our shul to the project several years ago. Each shul family received a yellow candle with the name of a child affixed to the container. In past years, the event was held on Zoom, each family lighting the candle at home. This year, the program was hybrid, with two special events held live at the shul, and visible at home on Zoom. We met in Andrew Levin Park at 7 for a ceremony to bury names provided by the Yellow Candle Project but unassigned to a candle. Burial provided a resting place for those children lost in the Holocaust. Prayers and a mournful solo by Susan Schrott accompanied the burial, led by Veronica Kaliski, who commented that working with the names of the children was an emotional experience for her. She is head of the Tikkun Olam group that had added a name to each candle and saw that the candles were distributed to every shul family. Veronica Kaliski and Tom Byrne donated a plaque to mark the burial area. At 7:30, the program continued in the sanctuary. Following prayers and remarks by Rabbi Gadi and representatives from three other synagogues — Temple Adas Israel of Sag Harbor, the Jewish Center of the Moriches, and North Fork Reform Synagogue — those gathered in the sanctuary lit candles. In the quiet that followed, Leah Friedman, presented a dramatic reading of a play she had written about a Holocaust experience in her family.
Photos by Tom Byrne and Sara Bloom
Is Jewish Life In The South Different? The Book Circle Wants To Know.
In its examination of Jewish Life in the South, the Book Circle’s selection for June evokes the rhythms and heartbeat of Jewish life in the Bible Belt. In the re-release of his book, The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South, Eli Evan weaves together personal recollections while taking readers inside the nexus of southern and Jewish histories, from the earliest immigrants to present day. He offers stories of communities, individuals, and events in this landscape that reveals the intertwined strands of what he calls a unique “Southern Jewish consciousness.”
The meeting will be held on Thursday, June 20, at 3 p.m., either on Zoom or in Andrew Levin Park, depending on the availability of the group’s members. The Book Circle meets monthly to discuss books on Jewish topics and/or by Jewish writers.
For more information, email Susan Rosenstreich, coordinator, at ctigreenport@gmail.com/.
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