MISHLOACH MANOT a Community Builder, a Holiday Mitzvah, and a Fun Way to Support CBJ
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the VOL.33, NO.7VOICE | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2018 | TEVET-SHEVAT-ADAR 5778 MISHLOACH MANOT A community builder, a holiday mitzvah, and a fun way to support CBJ Purim falls on March 1 this year, and we will again be partnering with our friends at HappyPurim.com on Mishloach Manot, the giving of Purim goodie baskets to one another in the congregation and to friends and family around the country. It is a religious custom of very long standing in connection with this most joyous of holidays. Net proceeds from Mishloach Manot benefit our programming budget, but of equal benefit is the warm feeling of kindness and connection generated by the giving and receiving of the Purim baskets. Volunteers making deliveries have seen tears of joy from recipients when they read the list of friends old and new who are thinking of them on Purim. Mishloach Manot has been a positive spiritual experience and an effective fundraiser for our synagogue. If you have participated in the past, thank you very much for your support, if not, we urge you to try it this year. Religious school or preschool family? Give to everyone in your child’s class. Minyan or adult class attendee? Give to the people with whom you pray and learn every week. Or, just give to your friends and family. Watch for an e-mail soon explaining the program and the simple steps it takes to participate. We will also be looking for volunteers to help assemble and deliver the baskets. Thank you! Gary Geller, Executive Director MESSAGE FROM RABBI ILANA GOLDHABER-GORDON, Religious School Director CBJ’s partnership with IsraAID The girl, just two years old, was shivering when Yotam Kalobeyei, where children can play, learn, and receive pulled her out of the water and wrapped her in a therapy to begin an emotional recovery. survival blanket. She, and everyone, in the flimsy, overcrowded raft had travelled all the way from Syria. The child-safe space is at capacity, and new refugee She was too young to recognize the Israeli flag on her children arrive every day. So IsraAID has plans to open rescuer’s shirt, but her father recognized it. “My worst a second child-safe space in another neighborhood of enemy became my biggest supporter,” he said when the camp. That’s where we come in. CBJ has he saw it. committed to raise $15,000 to pay for water and soap stations in the new child-safe space. Yotam Polizer is the Co-CEO of IsraAID, a nonprofit, Israeli-based NGO that brings humanitarian aid to We hope you will help us. Donations can be made online, at places in crisis. As he explains, Israelis have had far https://www.classy.org/campaign/congregation-beth- too much experience with trauma, but they can jacob/c145449. We are planning several small parlor share what they’ve learned from that experience. meetings in private homes, at which an IsraAID IsraAID’s work with Syrian refugees is especially representative will speak and guests will be asked to sensational. But their work in Japan, Kenya, Haiti, contribute. If you would like to host or attend a parlor Iraq, Sierra Leone, Nepal, and thirty other countries meeting, please email me ([email protected]) is equally important. or Amy Keer ([email protected]). Several CBJ members who are physicians are planning to visit Violence in South Sudan has created 20 million Kalobeyei and volunteer in the camp for a few weeks refugees, many of them children with no adults to in 2018. If you are a physician or dentist and would like protect them. The Kalobeyei refugee camp in Kenya to volunteer in Kenya, email me or Sarith Honigstein houses over 180,000, in a space designed for 70,000. It ([email protected]). Finally, if you have other is a miserable place for anyone and for children, it is a ideas for how you’d like to be involved in supporting nightmare. IsraAID has built a child-safe space in IsraAID’s work, Amy or I would love to hear from you. 2 MESSAGE FROM BILL FUTORNICK, Ritual Director At the Arava Institute, Aleh Negev, AICAT, and so many other grass-roots organizations, Jews and Arabs are creating trust between and among each other. Chanukah 2008. A group of fifty CBJers ascends on Israel for was a kid, as so many others, the seemingly ubiquitous blue a two-week tour. With palpable anticipation, we gather for boxes of JNF dotted our religious school classrooms. “Plant wine and cheese in an apartment not far from the center of trees in Israel!” they screamed to us. But JNF does so much Jerusalem. After walking all over Jerusalem, feeling the more, as I’ve come to realize over the last ten years stones of the city through our shoes, we alight for bustling especially. Yes, the forests of trees that we all planted are and hectic Tel Aviv. A winter storm arises and winds at 30+ there. But so are the reservoirs, playgrounds, monuments, mph buffer the group. We take shelter in Independence schools and research institutions that JNF has made Hall, experiencing the story of how Israel was born. We possible. We have partnered with JNF over the last few board back on the bus and are in Tzfat for Shabbat. The years to build a Medical Center in the Central Arava; support North is beautiful, lush and green in the rain, and we see and visit Aleh Negev; and raise funds and visit AICAT. thousands of birds as they migrate through the Hula Valley. We sing Carlebach tunes and trudge the cold, wet, uneven On our trip in 2008, as war broke out in Gaza, we visited the alleys, before celebrating Sarina’s Bat Mitzvah with the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (a JNF supported Chaikens. A long bus ride finds us on the edge of the project), a place where Israeli Jews, Palestinian Arabs, Makhtesh Ramon, a crater that is not a crater (look it up!), Jordanians, and international students come together to try and the most delicious homemade eggplant jelly at our and solve the most pressing environmental challenges. hotel’s buffet. They study cutting-edge renewable energy, water resource management, and sustainable agriculture. And they do it December 27, 2008. Sonic booms announce themselves as together. The day that we were at the Arava Institute was a we eat dinner in a Bedouin tent. Not too far from us, Israeli tense one. But the students were able to process together tanks roll into Gaza, marking the beginning of Operation the conflict that was actively at hand. Cast Lead, a three-week operation intended to stop the incessant rocket fire emanating from Hamas. All of our I recently attended a talk by David Lehrer, the Executive nerves are on edge as our itinerary is modified to avoid Director of the Arava Institute. David described the exciting potentially dangerous areas. We return to Jerusalem to work happening there right now, and all of the high-level finish our tour in a few days, exhilarated, but not the least initiatives taking place. As David talked about the programs bit exhausted, physically and mentally. at the Arava Institute, one statement that he made stood out to me above all of the others: Our trip was a full one, covering the entire country, but seeing only a hint of all that Israel has to offer. We are The scarcest resource in the Middle East is not water. It’s hoping that you will join us to create your own trust. At the Arava Institute, Aleh Negev, AICAT, and so experience in Israel on one of the two 2018 many other grass-roots organizations, Jews and Arabs are opportunities, in April and December, about which you creating trust between and among each other. Let’s already will have received information. continue to support those efforts. I want to highlight one particular aspect of our trips, namely the connection that we have to JNF, the Jewish National Fund. On our 2008 trip, about which I was reminiscing above, we saw many examples of the projects that JNF funds to improve the lives of people living in Israel. When I 3 2018 CBJ GALA Congregation Beth Jacob’s Biennial Gala is coming up 0n Sunday, January 28, 2018 from 5-9 pm! Join the celebration as we honor CBJ’s beloved DAN LEEMON at our largest fundraiser and community event. Dan has been an integral part of the Congregation Beth Jacob community for over 32 years. He has volunteered hundreds of hours in many ways including leading the search committee that hired Rabbi Ezray. With patience, warmth and humor Dan has led our Junior Congregation for over 20 years. He creates a welcoming environment for our kids to foster their confidence and Jewish voice. The “Different Service,” which he established in 2009 and has been leading ever since, has been “standing room only” during the High Holy Days and has been woven into the fabric of the diverse service options CBJ offers on the holidays. His knowledge of the Torah, and his entertaining reflections, creates a special and meaningful service, cherished by our community, young and old. DAN LEEMON, 2018 Gala Honoree Dan is a pillar of Congregation Beth Jacob. He is a prime example of how one person can have such a huge impact on so many. We are fortunate to be able to honor Dan and thank him for all he has done for our community. Our evening Gala is an opportunity to celebrate as a community, connecting with familiar faces and making new friends.