![]() by Judi Tennebaum Be prepared: members of the Hesed Committee will be collecting the contents of your pushkes (and any additional donations) during Purim, both at the Purim Carnival and during the Megillah readings. This year the beneficiary of the Pushke Project will be Limudiah, an intensive after-school educational program organized by the North American Conference On Ethiopian Jewry (NACOEJ) which provides needed assistance for Ethiopian students in grades one through six in Israel. ![]() by Jenny Benowitz My oldest son graduated from the Gan last spring after five fabulous years, and so began his public school journey. Graduation was bittersweet. Of course I wanted my son to grow and advance, but at the same time I worried: Would he thrive in kindergarten? Would he make friends? And how would he connect with his Jewish community now that he was leaving the cocoon of the Gan? After all, he had spent a good portion of his week at the Gan playing with Jewish friends and learning about Judaism. At his new school, there would be only a handful of Jewish kids, and he would have limited time for much of anything Jewish given his new all-day school schedule. ![]() In the 1930s, Marxism seemed an attractive new ideology to a generation of young, Jewish intellectuals growing up in New York City in the lean years of the Depression. Four radical young students at City College in New York, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Irving Howe and Irving Kristol began a conversation that continued publicly and passionately for the next six decades as each man journeyed from their liberal roots. ![]() By Ann Miller, Membership Vice President Recently, I was visiting out of town family in St. Louis when the topic of synagogue membership came up around the dinner table. I asked what I thought was a simple question,“Where do you belong?” I expected to hear the name of one congregation. The answer wasn’t so simple. “Well, we pay dues at our large Conservative synagogue nearby,but the kids go to religious school at a different shul where many of their friends attend, and we love the holiday programming at another new, but smaller synagogue across town.” ![]() by Rabbi Aaron Weininger The so-called war on Christmas doesn't happen on the outside of a Starbucks coffee cup. The war on Christmas and the war on people of all faith traditions happens when cynicism and fear are allowed to corrode what’s inside, the soul. Donald Trump's call to bar Muslims from entering the US threatens to do just that to the soul of this country. His words threaten to silence the call engraved on the Statue of Liberty, "I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" ![]() by Sharon Garber, Adath Congregant I admit it – I was a skeptic and non-believer. Ever since I started attending the SPA service in the library, I felt there was something different about this experience, unlike any service I had previously attended. I tend to fidget after just a few minutes of a typical service and plan a quick escape route. I first attended SPA because I thought my out-of-town guest might enjoy it. He did, but the big surprise was that I did too; enough to return almost every month since that first experience. I’ve even invited others to attend who have since become regulars despite the fact that they had not walked into any synagogue for a very long time. The cozy space in the library with a beautiful view out the window provided the perfect setting to match the vibrancy of the service. Over the year or so of services, I bounced to the music during snappy tunes and swayed gently to the slower melodic ones. ![]() By Mark Freeman and Elly Zweigbaum Youth Commission Co-Chairs The Adath Youth Commission is excited for another sensational year of activities in our youth department. Our Director of Youth Engagement, Sue Shrell Leon, has been fantastic and has scheduled a year full of activities for the youth here at Adath. We are drawing in more of our congregation’s teens and getting them involved in the activities at the Synagogue. By Bernie Goldblatt, Executive Director ![]() The week of October 19th the 27th World Zionist Congress was held in Jerusalem. This congress was established by Theodore Herzl and first met in Basel, Switzerland in 1897. The World Zionist Organization (WZO) was essential in the founding of the State of Israel and continues its important work today. Representatives from countries all over the world participate in the Congress and work on issues like combatting anti-Semitism, promoting aliyah and connecting world Jewry with the State of Israel. I had the honor to attend the Congress as a member of the Mercaz delegation. Mercaz is the American Zionist organization of the Conservative movement. Mercaz is the Hebrew word for "center" and it symbolizes the idea that Zionism is central to Conservative Judaism and that we reject both political and religious extremes. Masorti (Conservative Judaism in Israel) offers meaningful religious alternatives to Israelis which until recently were missing from the landscape of Israeli life. Thus, one of the key agendas of the Mercaz slate at the World Zionist Congress was pluralism in Israeli religious and political spheres. |
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April 2024
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