SOJAC’s Exciting Fall Events

By SHARON SILVER,  SOJAC CHAIR

 

SOJAC Shabbat Weekend, November 16-18

Join the Social Justice Action Committee at its first SOJAC Shabbat Weekend. We are excited to expand our annual Mitzvah Day Sunday into a weekend filled with activity, song, worship, and learning, starting with Rhythm & Ruach, centering on Shabbat Services and culminating with Mitzvah Day.

Rhythm & Ruach + Speaker November 16

Please donate a 32-or48-ounce plastic bottle of cooking oil.

Usher in Shabbat with services, music, and a speaker focusing on social justice themes, along with an optional Shabbat dinner and dessert for all.

To start our special weekend, we are especially pleased to welcome Joan Grangenois Thomas, a long-time Westchester resident, wife, and mother of two, who is a community activist and public engagement consultant focusing on non-profit and social organizations. I met Joan in 2015, when Ruth Obernbreit Glass and I attended a candlelight vigil for the Charlotte Nine.

Joan spoke and challenged us with this question: “What do you do nowt hat you’ve lit a candle and sang songs? What do you do to improve the circumstances that led to this monstrous act?” As a result, she formed “Read-Talk-Act,” a social justice interfaith book group, in which several WJC members are participants, and which has had a tremendous impact on me. She is a former president of the Rye/Westchester NAACP, was inaugural co-chair of the Port Chester Cares Community Coalition, is volunteer executive director of the Sustainable Port Chester Alliance and works as an anti-bias trainer in schools in the tri-state area. She will speak about “The Bias Within Us,” a topic very much on everyone’s minds today.

SOJAC Shabbat November 17

Please donate diapers in sizes Newborn through size 6.

Join us at Shabbat Services, where we honor the work done by SOJAC membersandWJC congregants, worship together, and answer the questions, “What is SOJAC?” “What does SOJAC do?” “How does SOJAC reflect our Jewish teachings?” and “What can I do?” We will then come together at Kiddush to share a meal and talk.

Mitzvah Day 2018 November 18

Everything you need to donate is on your Mitzvah Day Flyer!

Help the hungry by making snack bags for the homeless.

NOTE: Changing needs for a changing community. SOJAC partners with Caritas of Port Chester, The Community (formerly Hispanic) Resource Center, My Sisters’ Place of White Plains, and Providence House each year to help supply these organizations with items they specifically request to meet the needs of their particular clients. Your donations can ease life for a traumatized family, poor families, and individuals, those facing food insecurity, the homeless, the working poor, immigrants striving to make a better life, single mothers recovering from addiction who are rebuilding their lives, day laborers, and needy children- right here in Westchester.

Please bring only the items listed on the flyer; our partner organizations cannot accept other things.

Do you have questions or want to volunteer? Contact: Sharon Silver at sraplata@msn.com