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From the Rabbi's Study
A Month of Transition
The Ritual Committee of Congregation Beth Shalom, under the guidance of Daniel Schmulson as its chair, has come up with several suggestions to stimulate interest and involvement in our services this year. Among the changes that have been proposed:
- A weekly message from me to appear in your email accounts each Thursday (in addition to our more general weekly email that is distributed on Wednesday). In that email I will provide a short synopsis of my sermon for Shabbat along with any special activities that will take place that coming Shabbat.
- There will be a special Shabbat morning service featuring our students in Grades 3 – 6 so that they can become more familiar with the Saturday morning service, participate in it with small parts and take on more of a leadership role as they approach their Bar/Bat Mitzvah.
- There will continue to be a Friday night service dedicated to each of these grades as well where the class will participate in the service and the families will host the Oneg Shabbat.
- Approximately once a month we will be testing a Pre-Oneg Shabbat reception instead of one coming at the end of the service. (All other Sabbaths we will maintain our usual pattern of a post service Oneg.) - We realize that people often arrive home from work on Friday with not enough time to eat and get to services and are exhausted to stay late for an Oneg Shabbat. Our Pre-Oneg Shabbat will take place starting at 6:30 PM with candle blessing, Kiddush, HaMotzie and hors d'oeuvre type food instead of desserts.
- I would like to get the chance to know more about our members and I want them to meet me rather than simply seeing me on the pulpit. It will be during these pre-service times that we can sit down and truly learn something about one another.
- We hope that members will want to mark special times in their lives, significant birthdays, anniversaries, milestones and the like. I would be honored to invite those members to the pulpit for a special blessing on the Shabbat closest to the occasion and I hope that members will contact me in advance so that arrangements can be made for the recognition.
- Those who regularly attend B’nai Mitzvah ceremonies will notice a slight change in how congregational gifts are presented. Havurat Nashim and Men’s Club now present a gift of a Kiddush cup to our Bar Mitzvah students and candle sticks to our Bat Mitzvah students. Those presentations will be made on the Friday night of the ceremony so that the girls can join in the lighting of the Shabbat candles and the boys can use the Kiddush cup in the blessing before the Oneg.
We are excited about these new programs and changes and hope they will all meet the religious needs of our congregants. We welcome members to contact either Daniel Schmulson or me with any additional suggestions. Please watch your monthly edition of the SH’MA for special announcements regarding the celebration of religious festivals and plan on joining us for a bagel breakfast open to all on the morning of October 11 beginning at 9:45 AM prior to our congregational celebration of Simchat Torah, the Joy of Torah, as we dance and parade with our Torah scrolls and transition the annual reading of Torah moving from the end of D’varim, Deuteronomy to the beginning of Beresheet, Genesis at 10:45 AM.
Jan M Brahms, D.D.
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