Rebecca Kleinhandler-Dahan is a longtime CBE member and our wonderful lay leader for Shir L’Shabbat, a weekly Shabbat service geared towards young families with infants and young children up to age 4. Shir L’Shabbat is a special way for families and their little ones to welcome Shabbat together, filled with singing and dancing with our extraordinary songleader Debbie Brukman. Be sure to stop by and say hi!
Read Rabbi Timoner’s review of Rabbi Mike Moskowitz’s recent book, Textual Activism, a collection of essays, articles, and teachings offering a new perspective on Torah, with an emphasis on contemporary issues of justice and inclusion, especially around gender identity.
For the past several years, CBE has been experimenting with how Friday nights feel, look, taste, and sound. We have assembled a core community of dedicated regulars, a world-class jazz quartet in partnership with the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, and a unique collection of melodies that together transport us out of the workweek and into Shabbat: a sacred time of rest, refreshment, reflection, and utter joy.
Julie Markes has been a member of CBE for over 20 years. A professional photographer, Julie has also graciously photographed many CBE happenings, including B’nei Mitzvahs, Rabbi Green and Rabbi Epstein’s Installations, camp, and Chazakah.
We are thrilled to welcome Paul Taylor to CBE as our new Aquatics Director.
Forty-four protesters were arrested while demonstrating against Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) cloud contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at a New York Amazon Bookstore Sunday evening.
Rob Raich has been a Trustee at CBE since 2010 and currently serves as our President, beginning his term in 2018. Rob works closely with our Board of Trustees, clergy team, and staff to ensure that CBE continues to be a welcoming and vibrant hub for Jewish life.
Rabbi Timoner’s article, “Hope for Independence and Peace for All”, is featured on the Union for Reform Judaism’s Ten Minutes of Torah series. In it, she reflects on visiting the village of Sanoor, where every Shabbat a delegation from Physicians for Human Rights Israel comes to the West Bank to offer a mobile medical clinic.
There were several large takeaways for me from our group trip to Israel. One, which several people have noted in their essays and became the group’s running theme, was that Israel is a complex and complicated puzzle.
Alan Herman recently joined CBE as our Executive Director & Chief Operating Officer. Alan previously served as the Executive Director of Sutton Place Synagogue, and was an active lay leader at Central Synagogue and member of their Board of Trustees.
Bobbie Finkelstein is our Director of Youth Services. Bobbie oversees our five-day-a-week after school program during the school year, as well as all of our summer camp programs!
Jonathan Fried has been an active member of the CBE community in many different capacities since his childhood. Notably, Jonathan served as CBE president from 2014 to 2017.
Aliza, Our Holocaust Survivor, Addressing the Mission. Photograph by (ret.) Lt. Col. Peter Lerner in April 2011.
Aliza Goldman-Landau buried her cousin’s son the same day she served Shabbat dinner to six members of our tour. She had agreed to be a host for the evening meal after services at Kehillat Mevasseret, a reform synagogue in a Jerusalem suburb. That Aliza continued with her commitment was incredible to us, but was a minor feat for this quiet, tiny woman—small in stature but large in spirit. Even more astonishing that evening was hearing her life story.
Aliza emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine from Poland, arriving in 1947 by way of Cyprus when she was 9, an age when our children are considering treats, swimming pools, soccer in the park, and the secret comfort of a parent’s lap. Aliza’s life was much different. By the age when she was old enough to enjoy outdoor sports, her family had left Lodz to hide in the woods during the Nazi occupation. They hid in the forest for months and ate what they could find around them while the Nazis destroyed Jewish culture and lives throughout Europe.
When innocent children are separated from their parents and held in camps, we are in a crisis.
When two synagogues experience Antisemitic murders within six months, we are in a crisis.
When hate and scapegoating are whipped up by the leader of the country, we are in a crisis.
When the president vilifies the press and threatens the freedom of the press, we are in a crisis.
When the president defies and delegitimizes Constitutionally-mandated oversight by Congress, we are in a crisis.
One aspect of my relationship with Israel has always included my interest in languages. My year-long stay in Jerusalem in 1974-75 was primarily to learn Hebrew. On the recent CBE congregational trip to Israel, language took many forms.
Congregation Beth Elohim is seeking sealed bids for sales and installation of security related enhancements.
The light in Israel is brilliant. It floated over the Mediterranean, the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River (which is neither deep nor wide). It reflected off the Dome of the Rock, emanated from the candles held in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and reflected off the Kotel; men and women praying in their separate sections. The light danced off faces: white, beige, brown, black, sparkling in the blue and brown eyes.
The light in Israel is mystical. Wandering through the cobbled streets of Tzfat, one of the four Holy Cities, I took in the blue doors, gobbled down a delicious Yemenite sandwich, and visited art galleries with work inspired by the messages of Kabbalah, and old synagogues each with its own story.
I remember the first Dyke March, organized by the Lesbian Avengers in 1993 during the LGBT March on Washington. I was there, and I remember feeling that I was finally free — that we dykes could claim all of who we were — our full and complex identities, our bodies, our love, our commitments to equality and justice for all — and be utterly unashamed. It, and the subsequent marches since all over the country, have been profoundly liberating for so many people.
Parshah B’midbar begins with an accounting/a census of military age Israelite men.
“So Moses and Aaron took those men, who were designated by name, and on the first day of the second month they convened the whole community, who were registered by the clans of their ancestral houses—the names of those aged twenty years and over being listed head by head.” Numbers 1:17
As the mother of a twenty-year old, whom we named for Jonah, the reluctant but effective prophet to the people of Ninevah, I think a lot about who counts, who serves, and what courage, service and peace-making look like.
After a comprehensive and thoughtful process led by a committee chaired by Danielle Mindlin with members Leslie Lewin, Marc Sternberg, Mara Getz Shaftel, and Jonathan Spear, and in close consultation with our clergy team and Yachad staff, we are thrilled to welcome Tehilah Eisenstadt to CBE as our new Director of Yachad and Family Engagement, effective July 15.
CBE members had an idea: what if kids around the country wrote personal letters to the kids who’ve been separated from their parents and are being held in detention in Homestead?
We are thrilled to welcome Alan Herman as our Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer, effective July 15.
Rabbi Leora Ezrachi-Vered recently joined us as part of her Golden Fellowship through HUC-JIR, which brings Israeli rabbinical students and recently ordained Israeli Reform Rabbis to intern in North American Reform congregations. Read Rabbi Ezrachi-Vered’s heartfelt reflection to CBE.
In the past week you may have noticed me around. I’ve had the good fortune to be able to visit CBE as a “Golden Fellow” (thanks to the generosity of the Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion), getting to know your wonderful community, learning from your spiritual leadership and joining activities.
A CBE member for 30 years, Carol Shuchman organizes our annual Respite Bed Shelter, which she helped to launch eight years ago. The five-week shelter – operated in conjunction with CAMBA – is hosted in the Rotunda; it provides 12 homeless men with a warm, safe place to sleep, and a hot, protein-based meal prepared and served by CBE families and volunteers.
Brian Shuman has been a member of CBE since 2010 and has been an invaluable volunteer leader for our previous and upcoming CBE Fun(d) Run on May 19.
