ATTENTION: TUITION-FREE Kindergarden for ALL Families! B'nai Israel is pleased to announce that, effective immediately, Kindergarden at the B'nai Israel Religious School (BIRS) will be TUITION-FREE to both congregant and unaffiliated families. We are proud to welcome the community to experience our wonderful Kindergarden program.Contact Religious School Director Susan Pinsky Bleeks for more information at Blinskys1@aol.com.
Dear B'nai Israelites, your Judaica Beautiful Online store is live and ready for shoppers.
BIRS Life in Photos 1.Confirmation Class 2010. 2.Rabbi Eric visits Kitah Daled to field difficult questions from nine & ten year olds! 3.Sand Art during religious school's Chanukah Family Workshop. 4."Stained Glass" Window Art.
5.BIRS Grade K/1 and teacher Diane Fuchs. 6.Tzipporim - Alice Manning,Anna Pekovich,Musical Director Linda Goodman,Joshua Ross,Jordan Burwin,Melissa Shohet,Jillian Weitz,Michael Wasserstein(not shown).
Confirmation Ceremony on Erev Shavuot B'nai Israel recently held its Confirmation Ceremony on Erev Shavuot, celebrating its students who completed the congregation's special program for two years of post Bar/Bat Mitzvah religious study. Pictured are the recent Confirmants and the upcoming class, as well as their religious instructors. Left to right: Front Row: Victoria Messinger, Rebecca Nerzig, Rebecca Hill, Teaching Assistant Shoshana Rabinovsky. Back Row: Teaching Assistant Billy Crotty, Jr., Rabbi Eric Polokoff, Drew Berkowitz, Brendan Rabinovsky, Melissa Buccino, Alex Lampel, Nathan Rubinstein, Evan Merrill, B'nai Israel Religious School Principal Roz Koch and Instructor Liz Wojnar. Missing from photo: Sam Rubinstein.
AGGRESSION AND RELIGION: CAUSE OR SOLUTION? Interfaith discussion at Sacred Heart Church in Southbury on May 26 - participated Rabbi Eric Polokoff, Father Joseph Donnelly, Imam Gaxmed Aga - click to read detailed info
IAC CREATES INTERACTIVE GROUP ON FACEBOOK It will allow us to post news of Israel Advocacy Committee activities and information about Israel and the Middle East. Join us - click to read detailed info
YOM HASHOAH & YOM HAATZMAUT 5770 Public Speech of Rabbi Polokoff at Taft School, April 15, 2010. Click to read
Mitzvah Day success provided by young B'nai Israelites - see photos
by Rabbi Leora Kaye I’m a rabbi, and my husband’s an atheist. My husband Doug’s atheism is well thought-out. He’s a loving, intelligent guy who doesn’t believe in God and hasn’t since he was eleven. He is moral, compassionate and Jewish, and he does not believe that his ethics are related to God. We believe parenting should be deliberate and purposeful, much like Reform Judaism. Choices should be based on knowledge, specifically knowledge about what kind of parent you want to be, what works in your family system and what works for your son or daughter. In this week’s Jewish Parenting Podcast, psychologist Richard Weissbourd says that while most parents do care about raising moral children, few make it their number one priority. Outside of the conversations my husband and I had trying to decide if a relationship between an atheist and a rabbi could work, we had one discussion [...]
The first I ever heard of Debbie Friedman was to see her name printed on the inside covers of my synagogue’s prayer books, naming her the author of the modern Mi Shebeirach tune. Growing up, that was all I ever knew of her – just a name above the words on a page. I grew up attending a Reform congregation, but I did not grow up “in the Movement,” per se. My mother and I were members of a small congregation in Northeast Ohio where there was no organized youth group, no NFTY or BBYO. There were just six students in my bat mitzvah class, and though we considered ourselves friends, we all attended different schools, which made friendships difficult outside of synagogue-related activities – and at my suburban public school, I was one of just two Jewish students. Needless to say, though I always identified as Jewish, I did [...]
by Lucy H. F. Dinner This year, I have the pleasure of studying the Book of Exodus together with the lay-led Hebrew Bible study group at Temple Beth Or in Raleigh, North Carolina, where I serve as senior rabbi. Thisd’var Torah draws on comments and realizations from members of the study group. The Ten Commandments, iconic through the ages, open with a statement of God’s redeeming power. The Israelites are poised at the base of Mount Sinai; a thick cloud has descended. God’s Voice bellows in the thunder: “I the Eternal am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods besides Me” (Exodus 20:2–3). Some say that the first two commandments were all that the Israelites actually heard. The rest were transmitted to them through Moses. Rabbi Hezekiah b. Manoah, who compiled an anthology of earlier commentators, explains: [...]
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