News
B’nai Shalom Anniversary Shabbat
Come join us for the “simcha” and celebration on Shabbat morning, September 20th, when we will honor all couples with September anniversaries. During the Shabbat service and immediately after the Torah service, Rabbi Fisher and Hazzan Dinkin will bless all anniversary couples as they stand together under a large tallit/chuppah. Join us as the congregation sings songs of joy!
After the Shabbat service, please plan on staying for Kiddush Lunch in the Social Hall where the celebration continues. After lunch, this month’s Anniversary Shabbat speakers, Channah and Larry Katz, will lead a discussion about the High Holidays and Relationships. Please join us! Free babysitting is provided for all Anniversary Shabbat lunches and discussion groups. Call the synagogue office if you need to add your name to the list for babysitting.
Mark your calendars!!!! Monthly Anniversary celebrations will be held on the third Shabbat of each month. Free babysitting is always provided. Please contact Sue Agron with your anniversary date so we can include your name in the monthly Hadashot and in the weekly Shabbat Bulletin.
We look forward to celebrating your anniversary with you!!!
Sue Agron and Ronnie Wanetick
Tikkun Olam: Overwhelming Response to Donation Request
by Shelly Ress-Weinstein
OMG! as my daughter would say. I just couldn’t believe it. I sent out one email asking for donations for the school supply drive for the children at Garden Park Apartments in Pleasant Hill and my phone was ringing immediately and often. Our members here at CBS couldn’t have been more generous and thoughtful.
Tikkun Olam committee and CBS are involved with the Contra Costa Interfaith Housing Alliance. Through CCIH we all help support families in need. Part of this is done by helping to provide new school supplies for the children at the Garden Park Apartments which is supported by the CCIH. This year we are supporting the school needs of five elementary school age children. For those of you who have bought school supplies recently you know that it can be quite an expense.
Due to the generosity of our members we collected more than the requested supplies which included: backpacks, binders, binder paper, crayons, markers, erasers, scissors, pencil sharpeners, pencils, pens, rulers and glue sticks. Not only did CBS members offer up the supplies, they called me to coordinate what was needed so we wouldn’t have duplicates and offered money to make sure everything was covered. All this in the midst of planning my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah too. I couldn’t have asked for more help. Our CBS members really come through. I am extremely proud of our congregation and our commitment to education and Tikkun Olam.
Greetings from the Preschool
By Liz Kaufman
September brings new beginnings for many. In addition to Rosh Hashanah, there is a new school year, perhaps a new teacher, and for some, the first time a child goes to school. It is with excitement we begin our fourth year of Gan B’nai Shalom. Our classrooms are once again alive with two, three, four, and five year olds playing, singing, dancing, eating and creating happily together. Our children are hungry to learn and our families are eager to participate.
This Early Childhood Jewish Education experience is already strongly impacting our families and is helping them build their Jewish community and their sense of belonging. We are so fortunate that the community around the preschool encourages our families to continue their connection with Jewish education and involvement. With the many programs that B’nai Shalom offers, our families are beginning to expand their preschool community. The religious school, young family Shabbat, adult programming, havurot, Sisterhood, Men’s Club, and all of the family events, engage our families with the congregation. It is our hope, that with the variety of opportunities and positive experiences, our preschool families will become regular participants and congregants.
As the New Year begins, a wonderful goal for all of us is to continue to help bridge the gap between the preschool and the rest of the congregation. Together we can build the bridge for our parents to cross over to our larger community and have them become permanently involved and committed to Congregation B’nai Shalom. As Rabbi Meir Muller, Chair of the Early Childhood Conference at CAJE stated, “Imagine a tree. The tree’s roots are our families and educational programs working together. The branches are our children. The fruits are the education and nurturing that we, as educators, provide. Each of us helps create a fertile environment for our trees to flourish.
L’shanah Tovah U’metukah,
Liz Kaufman
Preschool Announcements
There are still a few openings available in our preschool classes.
Please contact Liz Kaufman for more information.
Order your challah! Each Friday, Grand Bakery challah will be available for purchase. An order form is available at the preschool and in the synagogue foyer. Simply complete the order form, include your check and each Friday your challah will be waiting for you at CBS.
Sunday, November 16th – Second Annual Hanukkah Bazaar
Are you an artist/craftsperson or do you know one who might want to participate in our event? Please contact Sarah Spiegel as soon as possible to reserve a table. Spaces are filling up quickly!
Contra Costa Midrasha
by Devra C. Aarons, Education Director, Contra Costa Midrasha
Welcome to a new year at Contra Costa Midrasha! For those of you who are not familiar with our program, we are a supplemental Jewish teen school for students in 8th – 12th grade. We meet on Wednesday evenings from 7:15-9:15pm at B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek.
This new year is a great time to count our blessings. The following are the top 7 items (a very auspicious number) which are most exciting in our 2008/09 year:
- Welcoming new and returning teachers. (Proud fact: 7 of last year’s 9 teachers are returning to teach this year.)
- Celebrating our new and returning students from as far North as Benicia, as far South as Pleasanton, as far West as Albany and as far East as Rodeo. Let’s not forget our Walnut Creek, Alamo, Moraga, Danville, Lafayette, Orinda, Pleasant Hill and Concord students!
- Electives – your favorites return and some new ones will appear!
- Fall event with hip-hop theatre artist, Dan Wolf, performing his play, Stateless. For this we will be joined by Beth Chaim’s Teen Experience and Isaiah’s Teen School.
- Learning about this year’s exciting election.
- In January we host our first “Dessert and Delve,” where parents are invited to partake (that’s the “delving”) of Midrasha classes with Midrasha teachers and dive into some yummy desserts.
- Donuts, djHyim and cuties return for break where schmoozing with friends is key.
Our registration is open for your family to join us! Please feel free to visit us online at ccmidrasha.org to find out more about our program and to download registration forms.
Don’t hesitate to contact our office with questions, suggestions or comments. We want to hear from our community!
Happy New Year!
Midrasha Alumni Network
Do you know a Midrasha graduate?
We are very excited to announce the start-up of an alumni network for the Midrasha programs, and our hope is to reconnect graduates with friends from all four Midrasha campuses across the East Bay!
If you know any Midrasha graduates, we are hoping you will be able to help us out by providing their up-to-date contact information by following the link below. With your help, we’ll be able to inform graduates about the exciting plans for the alumni network (like our first-ever alumni reunion in December of this year).
http://tinyurl.com/midrasha-alumni
Donate Now to Help Jewish Children in Ethiopia
Recently, Rabbi Jerome Epstein, Rabbi Paul Freedman and a small delegation from the United Synagogue of America came home from a trip to Gondar Province in northwestern Ethiopia, where they found the last remnant of Ethiopian Jewry.
These Jews – 8,700 of them – had just learned that Israel had barred its gates against them without even checking their credentials – and that simultaneously, the North American funds that kept them alive were disappearing.
Rabbi Epstein’s group did not find the abandoned Jews rioting. They found them davening in a tin-roofed synagogue space, and learning Hebrew in crowded dirt-floored classrooms.
But what broke the visitors’ hearts was finding little Jewish children beating on the locked door of a feeding center where they had been served good meals for years. The center was closed for lack of funds, and the hungry children knocked in vain.
The fast of Tisha B’Av was August 10th. For one day, here in the U.S. and Canada, in Israel and Europe, were faint and weary with hunger and thirst. For one day. Then, we could eat and drink.
For the Jews left behind in Ethiopia, there will be no end to Tisha B’Av this year – unless we act now.
It is an ancient and honored tradition to give tzedakah on Tisha B’Av in the aid of poor Jews. This year, in an unprecedented emergency appeal, the United Synagogue is asking our congregants to stretch out their hands in generosity to the poorest Jews in the world.
All funds collected in the Tisha B’Av Ethiopia appeal will be transferred to Gondar immediately, in care of NACOEJ, the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, which has aided this community for more than 25 years.
We have no doubt that one day Israel will reopen its gates for these Jews. Let that day find them alive to pray, to learn and to come home.
It’s up to us.
Learn more | Donate now
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