Condolences | Sisterhood Shabbat | World Wide Wrap | Men’s Club Breakfast | Gift Shop Sale | Art Show Fundraiser | Purim Party | Blood Drive | Torah Fund | Spelling Bee | Passport to Israel | In the Community | Trivia Contest | QuickLinks

Our condolences go out to to Sam Stern and his family on the loss of Sam’s wife, Doris Stern. The funeral will be held at Temple Aliyah on Friday, January 30th at 10:00 am. Following interment at Beit Olam cemetery in Wayland, family and friends are invited to the home of Sam and Doris’s son, Dr. Alan Stern, at 86 Meetinghouse Circle in Needham. The Stern family will continue shiva at Sam’s home in Needham at 1 Stockdale Road with minyans held Saturday through Tuesday evenings (at 5:30 pm on Sunday and 7:30 pm on the other evenings).

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

Our annual Sisterhood Shabbat will take place this shabbat morning January 31. Please join us for this uplifting event, in which all aspects of the service are led by the women of our congregation.

Our special guest speaker will be Dr. Deeana Klepper.  Dr. Klepper will speak on “The Secret Life of Rashi’s Daughters: Women in Medieval Jewish Communities.”  Don’t miss this great opportunity to share in the joy of Shabbat with your sisterhood community and meet an engaging scholar and teacher of medieval Judaism. Check out all the details here.

On Sunday, February 1st, 2004, Conservative Jews around the world will celebrate the mitzvah of Tefillin at their morning minyanim, joining thousands of others in the annual “World Wide Wrap,” sponsored by the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs (FJMC). Please join us for Minyan this Sunday, and all other Minyanim for the month of February. If you have not worn tefillin before, or need a refresher course, members of our Men’s Club and our Ritual Committee will be on hand by 8:45 on each of those Sundays to help. If you don’t have tefillin, we can loan you a set. Finally, if you would like to learn this mitzvah but cannot join us on a Sunday, please call Jan at the synagogue office and arrange to borrow the video, “The Ties that Bind.”

On the final Sunday of the month (a little trivia here: 5 Sundays in February—happens only once every 28 years!), the 6th grade Family Ed / Bar-Bat mitzvah progam will also focus on the mitzvah of tefillin.

The Men’s Club is sponsoring a breakfast on Sunday morning, February 1, featuring Marc Abraham, presenter of the IgNobel Prizes and founding editor of the Annals of Improbable Research (and previously the Annals of Irreproducible Results).

Mr. Abraham’s illustrious yet dubious achievements are hard to describe briefly, so check out all of the details on the web site.

The cost is only $6. The program begins immediately following minyan, at 9:45. All are welcome. RSVPs are preferred, but you may also just show up.

The Temple Aliyah Sisterhood Judaica Shop is having a sale this Sunday from 10:30-12:30 in honor of Sisterhood Shabbat. Many items are 20-50% off so it is a great time to stock up on gift items. (Special order items are excluded from the sale.)

This year’s major fundraiser event will be an Israeli Art Show and Sale, running from February 26 - 29, 2004, arranged by the Safrai Fine Art Gallery from Jerusalem. The show wil feature original oil paintings, watercolors, lithographs, and etchings. This exhibition and sale will include over 1600 works of art by 100 Israeli artists. Menahem Safrai will be on hand to meet you and guide you through the exhibit.

For more information about the show, including a complete schedule, please check out the web page. Additional information about being a sponsor will be sent by mail.

Sisterhood’s annual Purim Carnival will be held on Sunday, March 7, from 1-3 pm. We’re looking for volunteers to help with the games and serve food. Please call Corine Milgram at 781 433-0721 or email Laurie Hersh if you could spare an hour.

The Men’s Club will sponsor its annual Blood Drive at the Temple on Sunday, March 14, from 9 am to noon. Contact Bob Rosemark  at brosemark@comcast.net for more details or if you can volunteer.

The annual Sisterhood Torah Fund Bbrunch will take place on Sunday, March 28. The guest speaker will be local author Joan Leegant, who wrote “An Hour in Paradise,” which is a collection of 10 short stories. This book won the Edward Lewis Wallant Book Award for the best book of Jewish-American fiction for 2003. Copies of her book are still in hardcover and are available for $15 (list
price is $23.95) To reserve a book to read prior to Torah Fund (and have it autographed at the brunch!) please contact Pam Glass at pamglass@aol.com or 781-449-7940 .

Calling all Spelers!!!  The Needham Edducational Foundacion is preparing for its 13th Anual Spelling Bee Fundraizer, which will be held on April 1st at 7:00 pm at the Newman Elementery School. This poppular event helps the NEF to fund programs in the Needham schols. In the past, Temple Aliyah has suported this wurthy cause by sponsering a team—and we have dune very well indede! We would love to enter the compitition again. Three persons are neaded to make up the team, so if you are interisted in partisipating in this fun event, please let Lesli know by Febuary 15th.

Attention parents of third and seventh graders: don’t forget that the enrollment deadline for “Passport” is quickly approaching (extended to February 10).  Please contact the Temple office or Amy and Len Bard for further information.

The Bureau of Jewish Education Invites Israel Action Committees and Education Committees to “Think About The Changing Narratives of Israel – Diaspora Relations and their Impact on Our Educational Engagement with Israel,” With Dr. Rachel Korazim, Professional Development consultant and Director of Distance Learning, Department of Jewish Education, Jewish Agency for Israel, Monday, February 2, 2004 from 7:30-9:30 PM, at the Bureau of Jewish Education at the CJP Gosman Campus, 333 Nahanton St., Newton (4th floor). Is Israel our homeland? A home in time of crisis? Do we support Israel – right or wrong? What role does/should Israel play in the lives of American Jews? Do our schools, synagogues, youth groups and families reflect what we believe? What role should Israel play in American Jewish Education? Dr. Rachel Korazim is a graduate of Haifa University, with an award winning MA thesis on Holocaust Literature and a Doctorate in Jewish Education. She has vast experience and an outstanding reputation in Jewish education both in Israel and the Diaspora, creating and implementing in-service training programs for educators, writing educational materials, counseling and teaching. Alongside her executive responsibilities, Dr. Karazim continues to teach Israel-Diaspora relations and current Israeli literature. Please register with Judy Avnery 617-965-7350 x238 or Judya@bje.org.

Pre-schoolers and their parents are invited to a special Tu Bishvat party on Sunday, February 8, at 10:30 a.m. at Schechter’s Lower School, 60 Stein Circle, Newton. Children can enjoy crafts, music, stories and refreshments while their parents engage in informal discussions about the Schechter School. For more information or to RSVP, contact Laura Black at 617-964-7765, ext. 1304.

The wild West comes to Greater Boston in February as the eighth grade class of the Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston presents its all-Hebrew production of the Broadway musical “Annie Get Your Gun.” Performances will be held on Sunday, February 8, at 2:00 p.m. and Monday and Tuesday evenings, Feb. 9-10, at 7:00 p.m. at the Sorenson Theatre at Babson College in Wellesley.
Featured in the cast will be Temple Aliyah members Avi Levine, Jeremy Moskowitz, and Joshua Pankin as members of the Wild West Show, Melissa Schoeller as Mrs. Fossee Wilson, Sarah Reid as Mrs. Yellow Foot and Aaron Brown as Gomer, one of the western townfolk. Emily Lipman will be assisting with tech crew.
This is the thirteenth consecutive year that Schechter has presented a Hebrew version of a Broadway musical. The Temple Aliyah community is invited to attend the show. Tickets are $12.00; for more information, call Schechter at 617-928-9100.

Action for Post Soviet Jewry, Inc., a local organization that has been around for more than 25 years helping refusniks and lately helping bubbies, zaydes and others in the former Soviet Union by providing medicine, clothing and other vitally needed support. Their website is http://www.actionpsj.org. The local contact from Temple Aliyah is Melinda Harrison 781 431-8889. The APSJ Executive Director is Judy Patkin (781) 893-2331.

(For a comprehensive listing of all of the upcoming Jewish events in the Greater Boston area, check out the calendar page of the shalomboston web site.)

It’s here at last—the first of what we hope will be a regular installment—the Trivia Contest!

Here’s the scoop: answer a question about TA or the web site or these emails (or whatever), and one person will be chosen at random from the correct answerers to win a prize of a gift certificate to the TA Gift Shop.

So get on your thinking caps, here is this week’s question: How many unique email addresses receive the “ComingUp@Aliyah” weekly email (as of this issue)?

Click here to answer and for complete contest rules.

Make a Donation - Buy Scrip - List an event - Change your subscription - Home page - Calendar - Religious School Calendar - Temple Directory - Sermons - Email archive

Errata/Editor’s note- The January 21 mailing referred to an upcoming athletic competition between two teams called the Patriots and the Cougars. Kudos to Seth Stadfeld for pointing out that while there are many NCAA gridiron teams called the Cougars, there are none in the NFL, and the team from Carolina is the Panthers. Seth has apparently been watching either ESPN and memorizing his NFL conferences and divisions or Animal Planet and boning up on his cat taxonomy; I for one couldn’t even tell you which state the team is from (NC? SC?). In any case, GO PATS! And for the very best local early Monday morning quarterbacking and post-game analysis, please join us over coffee immediately after minyan this Monday morning at 6:45.