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From the Board - Archive 2008
December 2008
David Eppinger
2nd Vice President
Hanukkah Magic
Our Temple is always a magical place during the Hanukkah season. Our children are happier. Dreidels spinning, songs from the sanctuary with Robin, chocolate nibbling, laughter abounds. Families greet each other so warmly in the lobby (even more than a regular Sunday). It's a beautiful thing.
There will be a vendor fair on Sunday December 7. You can pick up wonderful crafts and gifts from some of your fellow Temple members. It's a great place to find that special gift for a friend. There is also a Men's Club meeting. Lox and Bagels - what could be better.
The Judaica shop is stuffed with amazing treasures. New items have been arriving each week. The Gift Card table is stocked with lots of cards, and other special items. There is an amazing cookbook celebrating the lives and recipes of Holocaust families. There is a new opportunity to purchase discounted treatments at a Day Spa. A wonderful gift for that loved one you want to pamper, and seems to have everything else.
Then there are the latkes. Dozens and dozens of latkes. The Men's Club gets up well before dawn on the 21st , slicing and dicing potatoes and onions; frying to perfection those amazing semi round potato latkes. Even the crumbs are yummy.
Our lobby and our Temple family truly come together during celebrations of our faith, and in support of our members. Just sitting in the lobby during Sunday School, greeting the members, sharing a cup of coffee, helps connect you with our Temple. Members offer to help with minor projects around the building. Ideas for programs are shared. Movies and books discussed. Politics is still being discussed.
It is a magical time to be a member of our wonderful Temple. Are you getting the most from your membership?
B'Shalom
David
November 2008
Allan Mendelsohn
Financial Secretary
My Jewish Family
At Yom Kippur morning services, I found myself becoming immersed in the service as never before. I must admit that in past years, I was not so "into" the prayers and the music and that, at times, I thumbed the pages to see how many were left until the service was over, and we could take a break. That this year's services held a different feeling for me was, I have realized, very appropriate. For, indeed, the year since Yom Kippur 5968 had been one of life changing events.
As some of you may know, my daughter Jana presented us with a granddaughter, Casiel Emma, in May. Cassie's latest pictures from Holden, MA have been shown to any and all of you at every possible occasion. As I told you at my last writing, my daughter was part of the Temple Beth Elohim family and although she had been away for 7 years, she still wanted her Rabbi to perform her wedding ceremony. The joyous reaction of the Rabbi and congregation to the news of our first grandchild was to us the expression of a family's love.
In May came not only love but an outpouring of concern for my health after you learned that I had suffered a heart attack. That familial support contributed greatly to my physical and psychological rehabilitation. I cannot put into words the depth of my appreciation for your words of comfort and support.
July 30, 2008 was my last day of working for New York State, for I retired after 39 years of public service. How do I find retirement? As I told those of you who have asked me: "It's great!!" Your congratulations only added to my enjoyment of this new phase of my life.
Perhaps this past year's events have caused me to become more introspective, for I have looked inward as the words our Yom Kippur prayers urge us to do. The communion that I felt during the service with those praying around me led me to a deeper spiritual feeling and helped me travel from "fear to faith".
So I can say to you that my past realization that the "good vibrations" are still here at Temple Beth Elohim has grown into an even greater awareness of all that Temple Beth Elohim means to me. I hope to use my newly found free time to "be there" with my heart, hands and mind to help both my own family and the Temple Beth Elohim family to continue "to live long and prosper!"
B'Shalom
Allan
October 2008
Brian Jenkinson
Financial Secretary
A Spiritual Homecoming . . .
How many of us, when we look back to our Jewish upbringing, remember how much we loved going to religious school, looked forward to Hebrew instruction, and enjoyed sitting through High Holy Day services? I'll bet not many! If you were like me, you were probably proud to be Jewish, but at the same time, wished that being Jewish required less of your free weekend time!
I was relieved and elated after my Bar Mitzvah, not just because my "performance" was over, but because my obligation to attend Sunday School was over! I elected to endure the confirmation class and when done, packed my yarmulke and tallit away, and thought I would never look back.
As the saying goes, "never say never."
At this point in my life, in middle-age with two "tweens," I've come to believe the "turning away" from a temple affiliation is for many Jews a rite of passage. We go out into the world, wherever life takes us. If we're lucky, we meet and associate with people of all religions and ethnicities, and we learn to make our way. We join our parents at their temple for High Holy Days, or we purchase tickets from a local synagogue so we can feel we are still Jewish.
But as we "mature," many of us, like me, start to drift back. When we get married, we want God to recognize our union, not just the State government. We experience the joy and blessings of a child's birth, and we want to celebrate that miracle with God. We yearn to give our kids a heritage, a religious identify - a sort of immortality for us, after all. And when we lose someone we love, we want the support of those who share our own faith and beliefs, who can surround us with the traditions of our people, the irreplaceable comfort of familiarity.
Much to my mother's surprise, I had a yearning to come back to temple life in my mid-late 30s, for all of these reasons. To my own surprise, I now sit on the Board of the Temple! I "force" my own children to wake up at 7:30 on Sundays to attend religious school and "torture" them by taking them to Friday night services. Funny thing is, I enjoy Shabbat services now, and somehow, three hours at High Holy Days service flies by much quicker than it used to. I can identify with the moral and ethical lessons of the Torah - they're no longer the ancient, irrelevant stories I thought they were. If a psychic had predicted these things 20 years ago, I would have asked for my money back.
This time of year I'm grateful to belong to such a wonderful Temple with a warm, friendly congregation. It feels so nice to "belong," to be involved - to have, in a sense, returned home. I suppose not everybody makes the full circle and returns. The circumstances of our lives take us in all different directions. But as for me, I look back at the years I "wandered" freely in the land of the unaffiliated - with my Friday nights and weekends free of religious obligations - and I think, "God, it's good to be home!"
Shalom,
Brian Jenkinson
September 2008
Ava Saperstein
First Vice President
Ritual Committee Chairperson
Another year has gone by, and we again reflect back to the year before. Have I done my best? Have I given of myself? Have I held back? Can I do better? Can I give more? I know what you're thinking: here we go again, they want money. I am sure that some of you are tired of hearing that we need money. It isn't easy for us to ask.
Yes, of course we need money, but we need more than money. We need a commitment from you to help our Temple family any way you can. Not all of us have more money to give, times are difficult. If you don't have money to give, give us some of your precious time. Some might say I don't have time either. I find that the busiest people are sometimes the ones who seem to find the time to squeeze one more thing in. Give us an hour if that's all you have. Come in to the office and see if there is anything you can help with.
In these troubled times it is a comfort to know that we have a Temple family to turn to. In order to sustain the programs and services that the Temple provides we need you. When you receive your High Holy Day pledge card, be generous; when we ask for volunteers, please step up. With the help of all of you we can make the year 5769 a special year in our Temple's life.
L'shana tova from my family to yours,
Ava
March 2008
Allan Mendelsohn
Recording Secretary
A Tale of Two Buildings
Recently, as I was driving up Route 22 to a Board of Directors meeting, my eyes caught sight of the "old building" and the changes to it, including the words "Town of Southeast" over the entrance. My heart felt a twinge of regret and remembrance. It has been almost 23 years since our family joined Temple Beth Elohim. We had come from another congregation, and I was somewhat hesitant about joining a new Temple whose members I did not know. However, any apprehension I may have felt quickly disappeared as we were quickly made to feel welcome by Rabbi Acrish and the congregation. We soon realized that we had joined more than a building; we had joined a family. There were fewer members in 1985, and both the size of the congregation and the building itself gave a feeling of intimacy.
As the years rolled by and we celebrated the B'nei Mitzvah of our children, Jana and Ian, as I joined Men's Club and put up and took down the Sukkah each year, as I helped maintain the building with "do it yourself" repairs, as we attended services and other congregational events, the feelings of warmth and family only grew stronger. To illustrate: When my son, Ian, received a letter from the Rabbi inviting him to a Shabbat service for college students, he came home to attend. When I told him that I was somewhat surprised at his making the train trip from Skidmore, he simply replied: "My rabbi asked me to come: how could I not?" In 2005, when my daughter, Jana, was planning her wedding in Waltham, MA, she called to ask me if I thought the Rabbi would perform the ceremony. She had been away for 7 years and yet her thoughts still included the Temple.
Now, our congregation has grown. We have many more members in 2008, and we have a new, larger and beautiful Temple on the hill to house the congregation. I wondered if the increase in size would lessen the sense of intimacy. That evening when I walked into the building, the twinge of nostalgia disappeared as I realized that the "good vibrations" were still there. I hope and pray that all of you share these feelings, and may we all work to keep the Temple Beth Elohim family strong and growing.
B’Shalom
Allan
February 2008
Janet Mauro
Parliamentarian
V'ahavta
As many of you may know I have committed these last two years to study. I enrolled in Rabbi Acrish's Adult B'Nei Mitzvah class last year and am looking forward to achieving this milestone this coming July. In addition, I have been attending as many of Rabbi Leah's prayer classes this year as I can. Our Rosh Chodesh group also has me exploring where I come from and who I am as Jewish woman. Needless to say I am truly looking at my world through a new lens…. a Jewish lens.
What exactly does this mean? Up until last week that was hard for me to define, but after attending Rabbi Leah's class on the V'ahavta my evolution has become more clear. We spent quite a bit of time reading each part of this prayer, examining what each phrase might mean. The V'ahavta has always been a prayer that resonated within my heart so exploring it so intensely was a very spiritual experience for me.
What does it mean to ‘love G-d with all your mind, with all your strength and with all your being?' How does one ‘teach these words diligently to one's children?' How does that play out in one's daily actions? I found that during the week following this class I paid much more attention to my actions, thoughts and words. I tried to be more caring in conversation with my loved ones. I tried, although with less success than I'm proud to admit, to stay out of the gossip and politics at work. By keeping the words of this prayer in the forefront of my thoughts I was able to recognize when I was being my best self and when I needed to step back and realize that I was not. It was quite an enlightening week.
When next you attend Shabbat services and we recite the V'ahavta pay attention to the English words. The injunction is really very simple…keep God in your mind, in the words of your mouth, in the actions of your hands. I hope you will find the words as enlightening and enriching as I do.
In October, during Rabbi Acrish's Friday night sermon, Rabbi asked the congregation why we thought more young adults were involved in what appears to be random acts of violence. Random acts of violence such as that which recently happened on December 5, 2007, at an Omaha Mall, when a teenager randomly gunned down eight people.
I believe one of the issues is that families juggle so much that it is hard to find quality time together. This phenomenon mentally affects children and young adults more because they require the morals, values, caring, nurturing and guidance that only a parent can truly provide. Also the child or young adult may not understand the pressures a parent can be under. Thirty or forty years ago this lack of time between parent and child may not have affected the child as much because there were other family members (grandparents, aunts, uncles) that would fill in. But as our society became more affluent and mobile, this support no longer exists for most families. Relatives have moved away for job or retirement; or the family has moved away from relatives for a job.
Today many parents feel the pressures of work and may not realize that they are not giving their children “quality time.” The parent is spending time with their children, but it is not “quality time.” It is unintentional and parents believe that they are doing the right thing. The parent may feel compelled to put in that extra office work at home in the evening to avoid the termination of their job. It is justifiable because the family might not survive the loss or interruption of income. The interruption of income could put a strain on the family relationship, which could be more detrimental than a lack of "quality time."
I see examples of time versus "quality time" when we are at a sporting event. It could be a family outing to a professional baseball game or watching the kids play a little league game. Somewhere in the stands a family will be enjoying time together watching their team or child play when the cell phone rings. For some reason the parent feels compelled to answer (doctors on call are exempt). Why answer the cell phone? What is more important than family "quality time"? Ultimately the parent will leave to talk on the cell phone, whether because of the surrounding noise or for privacy The family's quality time has been interrupted, and it becomes just time spent in a different environment. I am sure that we have noticed this and other examples of interruptions in family "quality time."
Increasingly parents have relied upon teachers and youth leaders (coaches, mentors, scout leaders, religious leaders, etc.) to take on what had been traditionally the responsibilities of the parent because of time constraints. While teachers and youth leaders do the best they can, they are only with the child 40% of waking hours. The parents must be reinforcing these teachings the other 60% of waking hours, which can only be accomplished with "quality time." Also, we as adults need this "quality time" with our children to keep our sanity.
How about this idea? Instead of just dropping your child off at Sunday school and heading home to read the newspaper, why not walk into Temple Beth Elohim with your child. Meet your children's teachers. Join your children in their Sunday school classrooms and see what is going on. You will also find out that there are other things going on at TBE while your child is attending religious classes. Many TBE social groups meet during the same time period. Check out the Men's Club (1st Sunday of the month and Sisterhood (3rd Sunday of the month). There is also usually coffee and other goodies available in the lobby. You can just hang with the rest of us; make new friends and catch up with old acquaintances. If you do this, you will start to get to know people and feel very comfortable and involved in Temple life.
Hopefully I will see you soon at TBE and we can interact, face to face, without interruption, and have some “quality time” to share stories about what our children are doing as they grow. Quality time is a non-renewable resource – use it wisely.
Shalom
Joe
