Shabbat Shalom ~ Nitzavim-Vayelech 2023

Dear WJC Family,

Our big kick off Shabbat and weekend is finally here! We are so excited to see everyone! I wanted to highlight a couple of events that we are particularly excited about:

• Please join us as we get things started tonight at 6pm with a very different, especially joyful, kind of Friday night service. We will meet in the newly pitched outside tent (weather permitting), and the Rhythm & Ruach Band will be in rare form. Rebbe Nahman of Bratzlav believed that dancing is one of the best ways to access joy and tonight we are testing the theory – for Kabbalat Shabbat we’ll be dancing like its Simchat Torah or a wedding.

Join us to celebrate Shabbat like a real celebration. What a way to start our Joyful Together Season!

• This Saturday night the joint Conservative synagogues of Westchetser will host our annual Selichot Services at CSAIR in Riverdale. Congregations, cantors and rabbis from Congregation Kneses Tifereth Israel, Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale, Greenburgh Hebrew Center,  Jewish Community Center of Harrison, Pelham Jewish Center, Temple Israel Center, Shaarei Tikvah, and Westchester Jewish Center will join together for a musical Selichot service. Selichot is a chance to start really focusing on the spiritual task the High Holidays set before us – teshuva and  chesbon hanefesh – repentance and an accounting of the deeds and relationships of the past year. I hope you’ll join us.
• Sunday is our Kick-off Cook Out, which has become an annual tradition. Join us 12-2 for food, fun and music.
• The Kol Nidre Appeal is open – we are hoping to expand those who participate in the campaign, not only because giving tzedakah is a particular mitzvah for the HIgh Holidays, but also because we need your help. Over the last few years inflation has gone up like we haven’t seen in years. The Kol Nidre Appeal is an essential and significant part of the synagogue budget. WIth inflation that is true now more than ever. If you haven’t made a pledge before, I ask you to please consider making one, every dollar helps. And, if you have given before but not yet this year, please go ahead and make your pledge. You can make your pledge by clicking here to log in to ShulCloud. And thank you in advance.

There is so much more going on, including two b’nai mitzvah this Saturday – mazal trove tov Asher Taubenfeld who will celebrate his bar mitzvah in the morning, and to his parents Stephen and Jennifer, and to Zohar Rivel who will celebrate her bat mitzvah in the afternoon, and to her parents Jill and Josh.

See you in shul!