Letter from Our President 2024
August 20, 2024
Letter from Our Heads of School 2024
August 21, 2024
Letters from Our Clergy
“Open to us in mercy the portals of the new year, and grant us life and health, contentment and peace.”
Union Prayer Book II
These words come from the old High Holiday Union Prayer Book of Reform Judaism. I grew up with that prayer book and maybe you did, too. This excerpt, recited at the opening of the Rosh Hashanah evening service, still speaks to me after all these many years.
I was just a kid, but I knew that the word “portals” speak as if a door opens as the new year begins. The sentence touched me as a hopeful plea. It spoke of the dream that goodness, health, and peace await us beyond the “portals.”
An array of worries confronts us as the closing Jewish year flows into the next. Just about everything that hosts and sustains life and the Jewish community feels uncertain, even upended. Yet, in the spirit of Jewish teaching and tradition, our prayers bring hope that 5785 will be mercifully filled with what’s good. Moreover, as we begin and move into the coming New Year, Temple Shaaray Tefila will be here for all of us as a supportive and positive institution. We are bombarded daily with discouraging news, yet, as we enter “the portals of the new year” the doors at Temple Shaaray Tefila are open as a community of hope and strength.
I am excited and grateful for the opportunity to share the holiday season with you. Our clergy, leaders, staff and I are working closely to sustain and strengthen the Temple in preparation for the arrival of your next rabbi. Our activities and offerings are described in weekly emails, and I hope you join us throughout the year, again and again. Let us enter the "portals" together.
With best wishes for the new year from our home to yours,
Rabbi Dennis Ross
Dear Friends,
The hope of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is that we will take a whole-hearted pause from our daily concerns, so that we might renew our awareness of the blessings that fill our lives. So do I hope that our services will inspire you, such that you might begin this new year with strength, vision and optimism.
Referring to Rosh Hashanah, our liturgy tells us “Today is the birthday of the world.” Perhaps not the physical world as much as the birthday of the human being. This is the birthday of the human heart, the human soul, and our very human potential to grow in depth, in wisdom, and in goodness.
Wishing you and your loved ones a sweet new year. A year of good health, much love, and great fulfillment. And blessed be our efforts to make this a more peaceful and humane world.
Rabbi David Greenberg
Another year shared together is behind us, and a new year is about to begin. A year in which we have shared countless Shabbatot, meetings, projects, laughter and songs. It has been a true pleasure to serve you and it is my wish to continue doing so with all my neshamah, with all my soul.
It is time to move forward with hope and pride in who we are. A vibrant community, with unmatched collaborators and leaders committed to Judaism and community causes. It is exciting to see Shaaray in action, it makes me feel that we can cross storms together. And so we have done in such a hard year for all the Jews of the world.
As our Machzor says: "Turn your face to the future. Believe that you can cross this sea and survive. Inside you is a Moses; within you Miriam dances, unafraid. Lift up your voice and sing a new song." (Based on Deuteronomy 1:6-7)
My song is only complete when your voice is part of it.
This year during our High Holiday services, I hope to be able to count on your voice. I hope to be able to hear the magnificent chorus of voices of this beautiful community in unison as if we were an immense Shofar. Praying to be able to improve ourselves day by day, praying for peace inside and outside our hearts.
Let's cross this sea together with a new song!
I can't wait to see you soon in our services!
May we be inscribed in the book of life,
L'Shanah tovah!
- Cantor Inés Szterenberg
