As I conclude my first month as your rabbi, I want to share my gratitude for how welcoming you have been. Settling into South Bend and Sinai Synagogue has felt like a homecoming.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are already in our rearview mirror, and we're getting ready for the end of Sukkot with a special in-person Friday morning minyan at 8:30 at Sinai to celebrate Hoshana Rabbah. This will be followed by Shemini Atzeret at 9:30 a.m. on Shabbat (October 3rd).

We are wrapping up our fall holiday season! We hope everyone had a meaningful New Year and an easy fast. It was wonderful seeing so many familiar faces. A very warm welcome again to our new Rabbi, Rabbi Tyson!

Impending storm clouds could not dampen the spirits of the 100-some people who attended the first Sinai picnic in about 10 years. Many thanks to Betsy Rossow and Kim Cossman for spearheading the picnic’s revival, and for each and every member who helped in making it happen! You know who you are, and we appreciate you!

On Sunday, May 31, 2026, Schuster Hall at Sinai Synagogue was transformed into a fancy event center with spectacular floral arrangements, delicious kosher hors d'oeuvres and red and white wines, a big screen photo montage with a live piano soundtrack peppered with lively conversations. The social hall was later transformed into a dessert reception with wonderful concoctions fashioned by the chefs of Navarre Catering. In between the two receptions, a truly momentous program for a man that 250-some people came to honor: Rabbi Emeritus Michael Friedland.

If you weren't able to make it, click here to see what you missed.

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