Condolences | Mazal Tov | Super Sunday | Israeli Film Sunday Night | Shabbaton | Old Eyeglasses | Project Hope | Mission to Israel | Reading Tutors Sought | Hanukkah Gift Drive | In the Community | On the Web site | From the President

Our condolences go out to our Educational Director, Dr. Beverly Schwartz-Katsh, and her family on the tragic death of her nephew, Eliezer Schwartz. The funeral was held earlier this week in New York. Dr. Bev has asked that we send the following brief message to the community:

I think that by now many of you have read or heard of the tragic accident over the weekend that claimed the life of a senior at Brandeis, my nephew, Eliezer Schwartz. Elie apparently fell to his death from a third floor balcony at a friend’s home in Gloucester. Elie was an outstanding student and athlete. He had a very outgoing and upbeat personality and many friends. A beautiful light has been extinguished for all who knew him. I have been very touched by the many expressions of sympathy that have been shown to me by colleagues and friends of the Aliyah community. Your caring and concern have been a source of comfort. Thank you, Beverly

Beverly has suggested that anyone wishing to make a donation to remember Eliezer Schwartz may send the donation to the Dean’s Discretionary Fund at List College, Jewish Theological Seminary, 3080 Broadway, NY, NY 10027. (Elie’s mother is the Dean there.) Of course, they may also choose to make a donation to the Temple.

Our condolences also go out to the following members of our Temple community:

to Pamela and Daniel Landau and their family on the recent loss of Pamela’s grandmother, Belle Hillman.

to Ellen Pulda and Gerald Sherman and their family on the loss of Ellen’s father Arnold (“Marty”) Pulda, who died Tuesday. The funeral was held yesterday in Worcester, where the family will be sitting shiva.

and to Keith and Sylvia Lewinstein and their family on the passing of Keith’s grandmother, Ruth Swislow. The funeral and shiva are in Los Angeles.

May the Divine Presence comfort them, among all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Mazal Tov to Jeffrey and Karen Cohen on the birth of Jonah Simon Cohen. Big sister Shoshana is excited to have a new baby brother for her birthday (she was born on the same date three years ago).

CJP’s annual Super Sunday appeal will take place this year on November 23. Temple Aliyah has sent a delegation of volunteer callers in the past, and we’d like to do so again this year. It’s great for CJP, for the entire Jewish commiunity, and for TA. If interested, please contact Lesli Reich as soon as possible.

Temple Aliyah will be showing the Israeli feature film, A Trumpet in the Wadi, on Sunday, November 23, at 7:30 pm. This modern tragic love story will be the first of a special 3-film series at the Temple this year. Tickets are $8.00 per person and the price includes movie refreshments. Although tickets may be purchased at the door, reservations are recommended. For more information on this film and the others, check out the web page.

Please plan to attend this year’s Shabbaton weekend, which is on December 5 and 6. Our Shabbaton Artist-In-Residence, Rahel Musleah, will introduce us to the Jews of India, her distinctive heritage, and share stories, songs and her personal history. This promises to be an informative and exciting weekend. Please consider becoming a sponsor of this program. More details on the web site.

We are also requesting all members to consider supporting this event by becoming a sponsor for $125, a super sponsor for $200, or a benefactor for $360. All levels of sponsorship include two adult Shabbat dinners, and all sponsors will be acknowledged in the program booklet. Contact anyone in the Temple office at 781-444-8522 if interested.

Donate your old eyeglasses to people in Africa and China who can’t afford them.  Bring in the eyeglasses to the collection box located outside of room 17.  All sizes and prescriptions needed, especially kids’ glasses. The collection runs from Sunday, November 9 to December 14, 2003. If you have any questions please call Allison Mond at (781) 444-6784 or Michelle Krozy at (781) 444-8921, or email Mona Krozy at MoKr9@aol.com.

Social Action volunteer Lisa Heyison reports to us that Project Hope is looking for two or three people to cover the front desk on Thanksgiving Day from 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. The person(s) would be responsible for answering the phone and opening the door for residents. Staff live near by if any questions arise. If you would like to volunteer, please call Jessie at Project Hope at (617) 442-1880 ext. 21. Project Hope is located at 45 Magnolia Street in Dorchester (easy to get to by car).

The delegation from the United Jewish Communities from all over the country, with a large contingency from Boston under the auspices of CJP, have safely traveled to Israel and returned. For the record, we would like to note that also among the TA contingency was Sylvia Rose, who signed up at the last minute.
A correction: in the prior email we stated incorrectly that Rabbi Perkins would be staying on for the Rabinical Assembly (RA). He was attending the General Assembly (GA) of the UJC.
And for those interested in reading about the goings-on at the GA, Rabbi Perkins recommends this web page.
The Jewish Community Relations Council also reported on the mission, including a quote from our Past President Beth Moskowitz.

The children at the Philbrick elementary in Roslindale need your help. Give just one or two hours per week in grades K-3. Tutor training will be given in January 2004, sponsored by the Greater Boston Jewish Coalition for Literacy. Call Judy Varon at 781-444-3812 or email Judy at oomajhv@mac.com.

Temple Aliyah is collecting Hannukah gifts for children of families who receive distributions from Family Table, the Greater Boston area's Jewish food pantry. This year, Temple Aliyah has been asked to purchase gifts for 40 children in 25 families. The gifts need to be age-specific, must be wrapped, and must be delivered to Temple Aliyah by December 8.  We need your help—and quickly!  For information about what gifts are needed, and to be assigned a specific child or children by age and gender, please contact Linda Gotthelf at 781-455-8128 or lgotthelf@comcast.net.

As part of its “Fresh Ink” Program, Hebrew College is sponsoring Rabbi Summit, Executive Director of the Hillel at Tufts University and ethnomusicologist, presenting “Abayudaya: The Music and Culture of the Jews of Uganda,” on Monday, December 8 at 7:30 p.m. at Hebrew College. Admission is $5 in advance, $10 at the door. For more details, please visit the HC website at
http://www.hebrewcollege.edu/freshink.

The Friends of the Israel Defense Forces cordially invite you to IDF Musical Ensemble in Concert, Sunday, December 21 at 4:30 p.m. at Congregation Kehillath Israel, 384 Harvard Street, Brookline. You may register online at www.israelsoldiers.org, or for more information, please contact (888) 318-3433 ext. 38.

In light of the recent terrorist events in Turkey, the Joint Distribution Committee has issued the following alert:
We continue to be in contact with the leadership of the Turkish Jewish community following the terrorist bombing of the Neve Shalom and Beth Israel synagogues in Istanbul.  Six members of the Jewish community were among the 24 people were killed.  More than 300 were injured, including several who lost limbs.  The Jewish community is committed to repairing Neve Shalom and rebuilding Beth Israel, where damage to the structure of the synagogue and the neighboring buildings was extensive. We look forward to hosting Turkish Jewish community leadership in the near future. We have received many calls regarding assistance to the community.  The JDC has opened the JDC-Turkey Assistance Mailbox to assist victims of the attack.  JDC representatives are on the ground in Istanbul assessing the physical and human needs of the Jewish community, which numbers 25,000.  Through this special emergency mailbox, JDC will provide medical care and economic assistance to all the devastated families, care for all the Jewish victims, aid in the rebuilding of the synagogues, and extend assistance to other innocent victims of the attack.  Contributions can be made by credit card via JDC’s website: www.jdc.org, by telephone 212-687-6200 ext. 866 or by check payable to “JDC-Turkey Assistance”, Box 372, 847A Second Avenue, New York, NY 10017.

WThere is a lot of new stuff on the site:

We have even more new pictures for you to look at! The last set of albums we uploaded were popular links, so here are more, of the Retreat 2003, Mitzvah Day 2003, and Rabbi Perkins’s summer trip to Israel.

We have added several sermons, including this year’s High Holiday sermons from Erev Rosh Hashanah and the first and second days of Rosh Hashanah. So if you didn’t get a chance to attend those days, or if you did and you’d like to enjoy them again, check them out. We have also uploaded Shabbat sermons from the parshiyot Tazriah, B’ha’alotcha, and Pinchas, as well as the Study Guides to Pinchas and Mishpatim.

And we’ve updated our copies of the Shofar on-line, in Acrobat (pdf) format, including the most recent November issue. If you want to read these, we ask that you log in with a user-name and password, which will be the same for everyone. The User-name is tkiah, and the password is shvarim. (Please don’t give these out to anyone outside the Temple community.)

Even more updates to the site will be coming soon...

If you ever see a simcha, or the memory of a departed dear one, listed here in one of these emails, and you are so inclined, a donation in honor or in memory is only a click away. Just go to the Donations page on the web site—it takes just a few minutes to fill it in.

If you would like to change the email address for this subscription, or to unsubscribe (although we’d hate to see you go), please don’t send an email to us. You can make your changes via either of the links at the bottom of this page: “Update your profile” or “SafeUnsubscribe”.

If you have any items that you ever want publicized in this email, please send the information to ComingUp@TempleAliyah.com. Be sure to include the date, time, location, sponsoring organization, and contact information (including email address and optional phone number), and please include the title of your program or event in the subject line. (Please, if you respond to this email, delete the original message.)

We have had a few evenings recently when we haven’t had enough people to make a minyan in addition to covering minyan on nights when there is no group assigned.  I want to remind people that minyan duty is part of our shul’s membership responsibility. Please make every effort to fulfill your obligation.

B’Shalom,
Lesli (Leslireich@rcn.com)