Connect
Check back here periodically for Sinai news and updates, events and surveys…to connect with messages, members, and mitzvot!
President’s Message
Kislev. The month Hanukkah is celebrated. Don’t miss out on the community menorah lighting of the first candle Sunday, December 14, at 5:00 p.m., in front of the Morris Performing Arts Center.
After we publicly share our love of light with the world, we shall all continue the celebration with our fellow Jews back at Sinai. Like last year, we plan to invite our many Temple Beth-El friends to join us. We had a great turnout and a lot of fun last year. Let’s make it a repeat performance this year!
Rabbi’s Message
As we enter this year of 5786 and survey the Jewish world, we find that once again the concept that the ‘Jewish people are One’ is a lovely myth, but not an actuality.
Jews in Israel draw ever closer to civil war over the fate of the hostages, the Gaza war, and Judicial reform. Jews in America are at odds over the war in Gaza, and the Trump administration policies. And a major dividing line today, as it has been throughout Jewish history, is between a Jewishness that focuses inward on separateness from the world and a Jewishness that embraces the world.
But where do we embrace each other?
Five Minutes of Torah
Five Minutes of Torah from Sinai is an email Rabbi Friedland sends 2-3 times a week. Each email contains material from rabbinic texts on the Torah portion of the week with a contemporary interpretation. Ask to receive the emails and start reading the Torah with new perspectives!
Read Hebrew America
This fall, we will have another Read Hebrew America class on Sunday mornings. It will begin November 16 (which is after the holidays and a personal trip to see Rabbi Friedland’s father-in-law). The class will run for 8 weeks.
The materials we receive are from the National Jewish Outreach Program. It costs nothing, but we do want to know how many people are interested in the class so we can get enough materials before the class begins to start on day one. We will run the class on Zoom.
Unscrolling the Torah
These are challenging times for Jews all around the world. What can we do? The same thing we’ve always done: Reconnect to your Jewish roots. Take a few minutes each week and read the Torah. So grab a friend or a relative and join us, where our community reads just one Torah portion a week, and discover some surprisingly modern wisdom in a very old book. Go to simchattorahchallenge.org
Connections
We asked members recently, “what makes Sinai special?”
Here are some responses:
“Sinai is a place where I feel safe to be the kind of Jew I am comfortable being.”
“I’m relatively new to Sinai, but I love how welcoming and inclusive it is (very different from the conservative congregation I grew up in). I would love to see the new Rabbi follow in this tradition!”
“An interesting combination of robust Jewish practice + laid-back attitude: Truly a big tent for many flavors of Jewish identity and observance.”