The holiday of Shavuot is the red-headed step child of Jewish festivals.  It comes in the early summer when many are finishing school or starting summer holidays.

‍ As we move through the month of May, we find ourselves in the midst of counting the Omer—the 49 days between the second night of Passover and the eve of Shavuot. While it may seem like a simple ritual of marking time, our tradition teaches that the Omer represents something far more profound.

April showers bring May flowers. Given all the rain we had this Spring, let's look forward to some beautiful flowers.

The Sinai Synagogue Board of Directors held a strategic retreat Sunday, January 25, 2026, at the Jewish Federation of St. Joseph Valley, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in order to give themselves a chance to meet in person and to discuss the “Big Rocks” facing our shul in the next 18 months.

We started downtown at the Morris Performing Arts Center with sufganiyot and speeches by community and civic leaders.

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!

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.

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