Shul News & Notes
It’s a Birthday Party…
Shul members, friends, toddlers, newborns, and two rambunctious dogs joined together on the grounds of the parsonage on August 28 for an old-fashioned pot luck supper to celebrate Rabbi Gadi’s 50th birth-day. Revelers also saluted the rabbi’s colleagues, Father Roy on his 65th birthday, and Don Russo on his upcoming 80th.
Pictured, from left, shul members Phyllis Bocien, Sara Bloom, Ann Hurwitz, Lou and Helaine Tepperman, Rabbi Gadi, and Mark Solomon.
Rob Canberg photo
It’s A TOI Trunk Show…
It’s a TOI Trunk Show, starring school supplies. Wow! Check out the trunk.
Talk about a successful drive — here’s the results of the Tikkun Olam Initiative’s recent school supplies drive for the children of CAST clients.
Just the sight of all those notebooks and markers puts all of us in the back-to-school mood.
Hey kids, come and get ‘em, and do your best in school this year, compliments of the contributions made by the members of Congregation Tifereth Israel.
…and veggies from the Common Ground garden. All for CAST.
Tom Byrne photo
It’s A Launch Party For Journal 2022
Shul family and friends, and journal honoree Roberta Garris and her family ushered in the month of September with a Zoom launch party for Journal 2022. Folks popped in to join the fun, many offering mazel tov and best wishes to Roberta, and all of us raising our glasses to toast our honoree. We then viewed the pages of the journal with its many messages of tribute, and we oohed and aahed over the elegant design and layout created by Andrea Blaga. Capturing everyone on a screen shot, ideally smiling and without an elbow in an ear, proved challenging, but you get the idea. Great honoree. Great fun. Thank you to Judith Weiner for spearheading the project and to all who contributed time, talent and funding for our shul.
SMBloom screen shot
Book Circle Chooses Prize-Winning Family Drama As October Selection
The Book Circle will meet on Friday, Oct. 21, at 4 p.m., at the shul, to explore a prize-winning family drama by Yaniv Iczkovits titled The Slaughterman’s Daughter, winner of the 2021 Wingate Prize and a finalist for a 2021 National Jewish Book Club Award.
Two sisters take separate paths from their shtetl lives in Czarist Russia. One once considered following in her father’s footsteps as a ritual slaughterer. She may have abandoned the profession, but not the slaughter knife that she keeps tied to her leg as she sets off to find her sister’s husband, who has disappeared. The story has been described as a comedy of errors that somehow pits the Czar’s army against the Russian secret police. How it all sorts out makes for an imaginative work of fiction.
For more information about the Book Circle, email ctigreenport@gmail.com with a message for Susan Rosenstreich, coordinator of the group.
Oculus: Eye On Art
This painting, titled “First Day of School,” is the work of a contemporary Israeli artist named Boaz Noy, who lives and works in Haifa. I had been introduced to Noy’s work in an oil-painting class that focused on his compositions’ use of color to indicate atmosphere, emotions, weather and mood.
Curiously, I found nothing particularly Jewish about his paintings, except that they reflect Israeli locations. So, on a whim, I inquired in an email whether the Torah had influenced his art. To my surprise, I received a detailed note explaining that although he wasn’t a student of Torah, his deep Jewish identity likely was evident in all his work. He wrote that he had painted this piece after taking his children to school for the new year, noting that he had embedded a prayer for their success and well-being within the work.
I’m not sure I see it, but I know it is there, somewhere, and certainly it is in his heart.
—Saul Rosenstreich
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