Shabbat Shalom ~ Vayishlach 2021

Dear WJC Family,

It is hard to believe that we are already looking ahead to the Thanksgiving holiday and Hanukkah, which this year comes hot on the heels of Thanksgiving. Next week our Shabbat email will come out on Wednesday before the holiday hecticness ensues. Due to the short week that email won’t include a video. So this week’s video on Parshat Vayishlach has some Thanksgiving and family themes, as will my sermon on Saturday morning. Hopefully these will give you some things to talk about over Thanksgiving dinner.

I hope that you received your copy of our new publication, Kolot or WJC Voices. If you got it, give it a read. This is not your typical synagogue bulletin; rather it is a new platform for fulfilling our purpose—sharing Judaism to make life more meaningful (that’s my personal mission statement, not the shul’s but you get the idea). Kolot is the result of months of work by some of WJC’s most talented writers, editors, and layout artists. Our community is blessed with the talent of writers whose work has been published in some of the finest periodicals in the country and authors of several books. They have now contributed their skills and acumen to our WJC magazine, contributing articles on everything from mindfulness practice to our synagogue’s architecture to an in-depth bio-piece. The result is well beyond my expectations and well worth your time to give a read. Thank you so much to the leaders of the Kolot editorial board Jacques Steinberg, Evan Schapiro and Katie Schlientz and to all the contributors. I am already excited to see the Spring issue—and if you have interest in being involved in one way or another, please contact one of us!

Included with the magazine was our new Review, a smaller, more program guide oriented version that will hopefully be useful for getting information about what’s coming up on the WJC calendar. For example, the Review in the magazine is about our Hanukkah programming. Please take a good look at it and plan to join us for some of our great Hanukkah events—especially the outdoor candle lighting and movie on Saturday night December 4th.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I hope you will plan to show your thanks by sharing some of your blessings. The SOJAC Committee ran a beautiful Mitzvah Day and Mitzvah Collections over the last several weeks. The volunteers at the Fuller Center seemed to particularly enjoy the privilege of taking sledge hammers to walls to remediate damage after Ida! Who knew that volunteering could come with aggression therapy? Thank you to all who volunteered and contributed to help us fulfill this part of our mission: “we advocate hands-on, personal involvement in social action with programming and projects that engage members of all ages.”

Please see below to get the details about Shabbat services and thank you to all of you who have taken me up on my invitation to coffee. I am definitely the best-caffeinated (or at least most-caffeinated) rabbi in town! If you haven’t had a chance to make a coffee date with Rabbi Dalton, Cantor Goldberg or me, Coffee with the Clergy is still on – please drop one of us a note. We’d love to make a date.

See you in shul or online,