Dear Beloved Shomrei Community –
We did it! Last month 56 individuals and families from Shomrei either had or hosted Shabbat dinner. We’re hoping to have 50+ again for Shabbat Your Way this month, February 23, 2024. Our goal is to become a community where at least 100 out of our 225 individual and family members have or host Shabbat dinner at least once a month. Continue reading
I love you, God, because you created the universe from nothing.
I love to look at the moon and stars.
I love to wake up to the sunlight on the grass.
Thank you, G-d for letting me wake up every morning to another precious day. Continue reading
As we all know, every word in the Torah means something.
The Ten Commandments appear both in Exodus and Deuteronomy. However, the last commandment has changed in Deuteronomy.
In Exodus 20:17, the wording is as follows: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his man servant or maid servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
By using the semicolon, we infer that house means all property owned by your neighbor, including his wife.
Bruce and I attended the Yom HaShoah Commemoration of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest and Kean University Holocaust Research Center on April 11th, featuring Robert Bielsky as Speaker.
Director of the Holocaust Council of Greater MetroWest, Barbara Wind, said Jews did not go to slaughter quietly during the Holocaust. Between 1941 and 1943, underground resistance movements developed in approximately 100 ghettos in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe (about one-fourth of all ghettos), especially in Poland, Lithuania, Belorussia, and the Ukraine. Their main goals were to organize uprisings, break out of the ghettos, and join partisan units in the fight against the Nazis. There was widespread resistance by fighting and killing Nazis, Jews risking their lives to save other Jews, escaping from killing fields, ghettos and slave labor camps, keeping the Jewish religion alive and fighting with the Partisans in the forest. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising lasted more than a month before the Germans overcame the Ghetto. That is longer than France or Belgium held up against the Germans before surrendering. Continue reading
I had actually been thinking about visiting Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland for at least 3-4 days, especially when learning it was only twenty minutes, give or take, from the condo we are renting here in Coconut Creek. Fact is, Natalie and I were following each day’s developments quite closely ever since the fateful Wednesday, February 14. Continue reading
On Tuesday, June 6th, Bruce and I attended a screening of the feature film, “Destination Unknown”, at Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy in Livingston. In 2014, director & editor, Claire Ferguson, started to work with the Film’s Producer – Llion Roberts of Wales on a feature-length account of the survivors’ stories.
The film’s Producer, Llion Roberts, was present and told us why he made this film. In 2003, he visited Auschwitz and experienced extreme cold while wearing a winter coat. He could not imagine the freezing cold felt by the victims, wearing only their camp uniform. After speaking to the son of a Holocaust survivor, he decided that he had to make a film. He travelled the world, interviewing survivors. The result of the entire fourteen year process is “DESTINATION UNKNOWN.”
Come see “Guys and Graggers” during the Megillah-reading service on Erev Purim, Wednesday, March 23rd.
Based on the hit show “Guys and Dolls”, this shpiel was adapted for Purim by Craig Eichner, produced and edited by Lisa Pendola, and directed by Jennifer Moss. Continue reading
Natalie Baff sends us a news dispatch from St Lucia. She and Bruce are on a Caribbean cruise and Natalie has been leading Erev Shabbat services every week. Continue reading
The Jewish Family Service of Clifton sponsored a community commemoration of Kristallnacht on Monday, Nov. 9th, and Bruce and I attended the movie, Once Upon A Family, the history of Jews in Poland. Holocaust survivors spoke in the film about their family’s experiences before, during and after the holocaust in Poland. Their stories were very powerful, expressing horrors and cruelty beyond human understanding. Some of their children and grandchildren were there to speak about their relatives after the film. Continue reading
The Bar Mitzvah was poised and prepared. His parents were proud and poignant. The social hall tables were dressed in gold and covered with platters waiting for the hungry congregants to file in after the motzi and Kiddush. All 200 … Continue reading