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September 10, 2010 Home | Contact Us | Directions |
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The Community's Campaign / Up Close and Personal | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Remember the story that begins our collective Jewish journey? The moment when God says to Abraham, “lech lecha, leave everything you know, your home, your friends, family” - and, in our case, the 92nd street Y – “and go to a land I will show you?” Well, we had one of those moments twenty two years ago this August. With our four-year and five-week old sons, we packed up our lives, entrusting the “night night” and stuffed puppy to no one, not even the Nice Jewish Boy with Truck, and set off on our journey to make a new home for ourselves. New York was where we lived but we can’t honestly say it was where we belonged. In fact, belonging anywhere was a feeling that had eluded both of us all our lives. It is probably one of the common experiences that pulled us toward each other in the first place; finding another who could join in a common struggle for belonging.  Initially we joined the Temple Beth Elohim for very practical reasons. It was critically important to us that our children belong to a synagogue in the community in which they lived. Did you catch that? At that moment in our lives it was only our children, and not our own selves, who figured into the equation, consciously at least. As our eldest son’s Bar Mitzvah approached, we experienced a small evolution as we were determined that this milestone be meaningful for us as a family. So for the first time in our lives we began to study and to learn. The learning offered a novel and unexpected benefit: it enabled us to go to services and feel like we belonged there. Now we could recite prayers and sing the melodies and participate in a way that, for us, felt authentic. In very short order, a minor miracle occurred. We realized we felt connected, not only to our own identity and sense of being Jewish, but we had developed a community, people we cared about, who we knew and who knew and cared about us. Our three grown sons – each, in their own turn, experiencing different settings - have all commented on how much they prefer and feel at home at Beth Elohim. We each discovered the magic and difference of TBE. Everyone, regardless of status, wealth, knowledge, health, or age is treated with respect, love and caring. Having been a member for 22 years and having served on the board in varying capacities for 12 years, we have witnessed first hand the many reasons why TBE is so special. As a community we think about how we care for people in need; we think about how to be inclusive and encourage diversity; how we provide opportunities for quality Jewish learning for all ages; how we help our children love being Jewish; how we help them understand and draw sustenance and pride from our rich and deeply textured tradition; how we help all families feel comfortable and encouraged to journey, and feel that when they are ready, we are there to walk with them. We care deeply about how we help our members feel essential to the community and help them develop their leadership potential. And we take seriously the Jewish value of repairing the world, leaving it a better place than when we found it, through our commitment to Tzedakah, social action, and justice. These are the actions that occur time and again and actions that our congregants carry out daily in their deeds and words. Our Clergy, our Educators, our Administrative staff, our Custodial staff, our leaders and volunteers make manifest every day the values we hold dear. We are proud to be co-chairs of the Community’s Campaign to build our new home. We hope that every single member of TBE will accept our invitation to join others on November 1 for dinner and conversation. We are planning these community dinners because we have experienced the power of our community to transform our lives and have seen it do the same for so many others. We hope you will join together with others in our community, friends reaching out to friends, neighbor to neighbor, building one-on-one relationships, finding common ground and welcoming an exchange of differences that is at the heart of TBE. It is why we have volunteered our time and resources over the years in support of our community. We are once again at the crossroads of opportunity and challenge. Our opportunity is to deepen our relationships as a community, breaking bread together, sharing ideas, bonding through learning, conversation and connection. Our challenge is to ignite the spark that will help translate that energy and those relationships into action and support as we move ahead in the holy work that lies before us - building our new home! We need you to make the Community’s Campaign true to its name. We need you to help build our new Makom, our new home, our Beit Elohim. We must build this together. We are on a journey...
Walk with us and it will be good for you Bamidbar
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