$8*867 $9 1. SET THE STAGE WITH MYSTERY. (and plenty of items for auction). 2. PREPARE THE PROPS. (and turn the ballroom into a theater). 3. APPLAUD THE MAGICIAN & ASSISTANTS (Russell Kaplan & his incredibly creative committee.) 4. GUESS HOW IT’S DONE! (with great support from TSTI members). 5. SURPRISE THE CROWD. (with marvelous drink, food and desserts). 6. THEN . . . POOF! By midnight it was gone! Our June fundraiser was magical, transforming the familiar into the unexpected, the mundane into the mysterious. From the cocktail hour, to the auction, through the magic show and into dinner and dessert, the night was enchanting and will be long remembered.
Transcript
$8*867�������$9������
1. SET THE STAGE WITH MYSTERY.(and plenty of items for auction).
2. PREPARE THE PROPS. (and turn the ballroom into a theater).
3. APPLAUD THE MAGICIAN & ASSISTANTS (Russell Kaplan & his incredibly creative committee.)
4. GUESS HOW IT’S DONE!(with great support from TSTI members).
5. SURPRISE THE CROWD. (with marvelous drink, food and desserts).
6. THEN . . . POOF! By midnight it was gone!
Our June fundraiser was magical, transforming the familiar into the unexpected, the mundane into the mysterious. From the cocktail hour, to the auction, through the magic show and into dinner and dessert, the night was enchanting and will be long remembered.
Your donation of canned goods at the High Holy Days helps the Interfaith Food Pantry of the Oranges provide supplemental and emergency food to low-income residents of Orange and East Orange.
THIS YEAR WE’RE ASKING YOU TO DO SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT. PLEASE FILL A BAG ENTIRELY WITH WITH ONE OF THESE ITEMS: peanut butter; cans of
green vegetables; cans of corn, potatoes, carrots or beets; cans of tuna or chicken; cans of tomato sauce; cans of beans; cans of fruit; jelly in plastic containers; cans of stew, chili with meat or ravioli; or cans of soup. And if possible - do NOT bring us some items we’ve requested in the past: pasta, cereal, mac and cheese, dessert, or anything in a container a hungry mouse might choose to nibble on:)
In 2013, the IFPO served over 14,000 individuals over the course of the year, nearly 40 percent of whom were children. Here’s why the IFPO is constantly seeking canned food: each month we give out almost 7,000 items! That’s 15 items distributed to each needy client each week X 150 registered clients a week (and growing) X 3 (sometime 4) weeks a month = a continual need for at least 6,750 cans and boxes a month! Questions? Contact Janet Schwamm: [email protected] or Lisa Goldberg Ozer: [email protected].
Please return to Temple by Monday, September 1
Enclosed is my $18.00 check (or more if you wish), payable to “TSTI Women’s Connection”, for a listing in this year’s
L’Shana Tovah Greetings
Please indicate on the line below how you would like to have your family name appear, using one of the following formats: Carol & Ben Jones and Family, Carol & Ben Jones or simply, Ben Jones.
Your name as it will appear:_________________________________________________________________________________ Phone: ______________________ Check enclosed for $_________
Send to: Sue Brand, 49 Wordsworth Rd., Short Hills, NJ 07078. Questions? Email [email protected]
I write this letter while sitting on the plane at the end of a wonderful ten-day trip to Israel. I cannot think of a more exciting way for me to begin my tenure as President of TSTI than to spend time in the Jewish State. My trip confirmed why I accepted the nomination to become President. To put it as simply as possible, I believe Judaism matters and I want to do my part to help build and perpetuate Jewish life.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for entrusting me with the honor of leading our congregation over the next two years. Jay has done an incredible job. He has left me with large shoes to fill. Through his and the other leaders of our community’s efforts the congregation is in a terrific place. We are financially sound and the congregation is thriving thanks to the many different programs that speak to the needs and interests of all members of our temple family. I’m looking forward to working with our Temple officers and board, our clergy, and senior staff and with all of you as we continue to build our community. Now, more than ever before, a progressive religious voice is important and our congregation is particularly poised to offer such insight and commitment. Judy’s and my ten days in Israel made me more convinced of that than ever before.
I cannot begin to express the impact traveling throughout the country with friends had on me. Each experience was more powerful than the last. Perhaps what struck me the most was the complete sense of Jewish identity one finds as you spend time in a country where Hebrew is the language and time moves according to the rhythm of the Jewish calendar. Given so many different political and religious beliefs and
differences among the population, it surprised me that things work as well as they do. Yes, politics in Israel are messy and social challenges are part of everyday existence but Israel is a thriving democracy where all voices are heard as the great challenges of the day are addressed. The same holds true for us. It is critical that our Reform Movement continue to deepen our commitment to progressive Judaism and strengthen our ties to Israel.
I’ve always believed in the importance of American Judaism for the well-being of Israel and the importance of Israel for the well-being of American Judaism. This trip, particularly my visit to Yad Vashem, made that belief stronger than ever. But just as we must never forget what happened, so too do we need to make clear the powerfully positive ways Judaism speaks to modern life. Without strong community there is no Jewish future. To that end, it is one of my top priorities as President to expand the breadth of our lay leadership by developing a leadership training program to ensure that the we have a deep bench of future leaders. Similarly I look forward to working to make sure the programs offered by temple serve to expand our connection to one another.
I look forward to getting to know as many of you as possible. Please feel free to reach out to me at anytime. I also look forward to working with our clergy and the entire temple staff, whose excellent leadership has brought us to the place we are today. There are real challenges faced by both TSTI and Judaism in general, and I am excited to work with all of you to address as many of them as possible. Thank you again for the honor to lead TSTI for the next two years.
Craig Krandel, President
We hope you saw Rabbi Cohen’s email to the congregation written while he was in Israel in mid-July. Rabbi Cohen’s regular column will appear in the September Bulletin.
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And on that Note . . .
(cont. on page 7)
The Iris Family
The anticipation of the first day of camp is fraught with a range of emotions from outright ‘hang on to anything familiar, deer in the headlights fear’ to ‘see you later, I’ll be fine’, and everything in between. Will I have a friend? Will my counselor be nice to me? Will I find the bathroom? Do I have everything in my camp bag to make it through the day? Will I like the food they serve me? All valid questions. And those are the questions I’ve been asking myself as, once again, I have committed to an adventure without asking ‘what’s involved?’
I am registered for a 5-day woodworking intensive at Peters Valley School of Craft in Layton, New Jersey. Not that woodworking is foreign to me, but when I received my supply list I realized that other than safety glasses, I didn’t own one of the tools listed. With all my years of building with Habitat for Humanity and my extensive undergraduate and graduate industrial arts classes, I’ve never learned how to use basic hand tools. A low-angle block plane, combination square, bevel and a set of chisels are pretty much new to me. Uh oh, what kind of woodworking class did I sign up for? I’m used to working with hammers, saws and drills. I’m good with a sledge hammer and a giant auger, but a 6” ruler with tiny little incremental lines for fractions . . . not so much. I can’t see the numbers even when I’m wearing my trifocals.
And it’s not just the class itself that has me questioning my decision; the dorm rooms and studios have no air conditioning, the bathrooms are co-ed and I have to be on the lookout for ticks and bears. Besides, there are only 8 people in the class leaving me nowhere to hide the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing. The website notes that Peters Valley is 15 minutes from the nearest town. I’m more interested in where the local hospital is. The class is 7 hours a day for 5 days. That adds up to lots of concentrated effort and focus. I’m not so good with that. My mind starts to wander after an hour of artistic work and then I forget the safety rules. My hands have already seen their share of surgeries and casts. They are arthritic and tire easily which means my tools miss their mark and hit my body instead. Do they actually think I won’t need stitches at some point? While campers may not worry about self-inflicted wounds as much as I do, the rest of our questions asked in the beginning of this article are the same. We all want to know that our basic needs like food, shelter, and companionship will be met. Once those needs are taken care of, we are better able to relax and enjoy the experience.
When I think of summer I think of long hot days spent with my family. The most pressing issue I want to think about is what book to read next. This summer has gotten me thinking about more serious things. Ten years ago I moved to Jerusalem for a year of study in Israel as part of my curriculum to become a Cantor. It was a great year to be there. It was a very quiet year. Only one bombing in 12 months. That was almost unheard of at that time. This summer has not been nearly as quiet for those living and visiting Israel and my heart breaks for them.
Every day Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper and online news source, posts a word of the day. Recently the word was haslama. The word means escalation and it comes from the word sulam� ladder. Haslama refers to the escalation of violence and ten-sion with regards to recent events between Israel and Hamas. A sulam is what is told about in the Bible when Jacob has his dream of angels moving up and down a ladder. The word sulam�has inspired other Hebrew words. A musical scale is a sulamot musikaliyim. Earthquakes are measured on the sulam Richter.
While in English the word “escalate” means to increase, raise or intensify, the meaning of sulam isn’t quite as simple. In Hebrew the word aliyah means to go up. Sulam, like the ladder with the angels in Jacob’s dream, implies that you can go both up and down. Hopefully, this means that while the tensions and violence that are recently a part of Israel’s day to day reality can rise up suddenly, it also means that the hostility and fear can decrease and allow cooler heads on both sides to prevail .
I am not naïve enough to think that all this will pass away like a summer thunderstorm. I know that, unquestionably, there are very scary realities facing the State of Israel and those of us outside Israel who support it. However, I am optimistic enough to think that if we are all calm we have a better shot at under-standing one another. If we can find the humanity in each other then perhaps we can at least stop the immediate violence. When Jacob woke from his dream of the sulam he said that “God was in this place and I did not know it.” Perhaps we need to see that spark of divinity in each other in order to work together for a lasting peace.
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Linda and Rudy Slucker Religious School
Mindy SchreffReligious School Director
A Thought to Share
I try to meet the deadline when submitting my article for our Temple Bulletin. This month, I put off writing it for as long as I possibly could. Most of my attention has turned to Israel. My “Red Alert” app lets me know each time a rocket is fired into Israel. I’ve exchanged emails with family and friends in Israel to make sure that everyone is okay. I’ve read more articles than I ever thought possible on the current situation, thanks to Facebook. While I know that this conflict in Israel will come to an end, I just don’t know how peace between Israel and the Palestinian people is possible. And to be honest, it is heartbreaking to start to lose hope.
During my February trip to Israel, I had the opportunity to go to Ramallah in the West Bank. My group met with bright, articulate, well-educated Palestinians. Three men in particular, all men in their 60’s, spoke to us with great urgency. They felt strongly that if a two-state solution was to be possible, it needed to happen very soon. The younger and next generation of Palestinian leaders have very little desire for a two-state solution. We also met with a woman who serves as a negotiator for the PLO. She laid out what seemed like a very clear and good plan for creating a two-state solution until she began talking about Jerusalem. She was asked if she believed that Jerusalem is a holy city for Jews. She responded by saying that Jews had always lived in the land. What I later learned was that an earlier group that day had asked if Israel had the right to exist. “Sure, of course” she answered. Then she was pushed a little and asked, “As a Jewish State?” And she was quick to respond, “NO! Not as a Jewish state.”
How will peace ever be achieved if the conversation starts by saying “Israel has no right to exist?”
For now, I sit watching news that is mostly biased against Israel, listening to my phone signaling that more rockets are flying into a land that I love. I feel proud that Israel was quick to agree to a cease fire on July 15 even though the Palestinians would not. Mostly I pray for peace, wholeness and well being for all Israelis and that calm and a feeling of safety can be restored to Israel quickly.
Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya’a-seh shalom aleinu v’al kol Yisrael v’imru. Amen.May the One who causes peace to reign in the high heavens make peace for us, for all Israel and all who inhabit the Earth. Amen.
Over the past few weeks there has been so much sadness and so much bloodshed in the world. It breaks my heart to think about the families of the innocent teens who have been murdered in Israel, of the children who accidentally shoot a sibling, or them-selves, when they find an unlocked handgun. Violence against children makes us feel hopeless and despairing for our future, if we let it. It is hard not to feel like nothing we do matters, when actually the opposite is true.
A recent Facebook post by a friend (Thank you, Rabbi Ariann Weitzman) amidst all the reports of bloodshed from Israel really resonated with me. Rabbi Weitzman says: “I feel like I should give blood. Like maybe that would be a pertinent way to put some good into the universe after a week+ of bloodshed, injus-tice, and mourning that has gone on this week.” Many people protest, pray and mobilize others to put an end to violence, but there are others ways to do a little “karmic balancing” so to speak. Her idea of counteracting the bloodshed made me stop and think. Even though we cannot bring back those whose lives have been tragically cut short, we can by giving blood, save someone else’s life. That does not mean we don’t need to rally and pray and change the world, it is another way to do Tikkun Olam, to help heal the world.
Judaism teaches that if we save one life, it is as if we have saved the world. I love teaching that concept to children; it empow-ers them to do the smallest acts of kindness. It IS the little things that matter, you never know how you brighten someone’s day by a hello, a smile or a wave. We think that in order to have an impact on the world we need to do BIG things to make a differ-ence. I am here to tell you that what we really need are those small gestures that are thoughtful, kind and generate more of the same. We can do so many amazing things every day on our own, one pint of blood at a time, one action at a time.
6
We encourage carpooling to services and programs.The Congregation gratefully acknowledges
the High Holy Days musical enhancement provided by the Bildner Family.
By the time you are reading this article, the majority of campers will be having a great time enjoying their summer activities and their daily routine. Their fears and concerns will have been replaced by joy and excitement. I will have completed my course and I’m sure I’ll come back with great stories, a new set of skills, and hopefully all my appendages intact. Just in case, I packed lots of bandages.
WITH TSTI COLLEGE CORNER! Students receive emails connecting them to clergy and “care” packages 3 times per school year. In addition, The Women’s Connection sends a Chanukah package to each student. Please fi ll out the form and mail to : TSTI 432 Scotland Road, South Orange, NJ 07079 Attn: College
Contributions in memory of loved ones and in honor of the simchas in our lives are acts of loving kindness. We are grateful for your generous support of Temple through various Temple Funds.7(03/(�)81'
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