Social Action Reflections

Hi everybody, happy summer! I hope you are having a great June and soon to be the beginning of July! 

I  hope your lives are getting back to normal with regard to Covid, with regard to dining out, going to theater, enjoying yourselves. if you have young children I hope you are enjoying them being in camp! 

As you are aware, Social Action has been busy over the last 2 1/2+ years during Covid. 

To review a bit, back near the beginning, along with the Zaro family we sold many, many challahs to raise money to buy PPE for NWH, support the Bedford Fire Department and the Armonk EMTs. We were feeding neighbors in quarantine (with/for the Mt. Kisco Interfaith Food Pantry) or for the holidays (7500 people for Thanksgiving and Christmas this past year) or feeding the homeless in shelters or the working poor who are clients of food pantries. We gave out thousands of dollars of supermarket gift cards apart from our holiday distributions. We were instrumental in organizing and executing food distributions to the clients of Neighbors Link and other members of the Northern Westchester community who were in need. We have brought to TST, speakers and movies  and books focused on Social Justice. We have made sandwiches or hot meals, with friends of TST, totaling well over 40,000 since April 2020 which continues 4 days per week til this day. We “Cooked to Care” and fed hundreds of people with cooking lessons over Zoom. We have delivered thousands of diapers for our partners, 914Cares, Neighbors Link and The Community Center of Northern Westchester. We have delivered hundreds if not thousands of medical items/equipment to AFYA to be distributed where there is medical need around the world! We rallied to supply 300 tourniquets to Ukraine. And our Rabbi Wilfond visited the Polish/Ukrainian border to not only witness the devastation but to show empathy, humanity and compassion so desperately needed there. And we continue to clothe people, house some during the winter, grow fresh vegetables in our community garden for those in need and most recently create (and be a founding member of) along with other temples, churches and civic organizations, ReSet Westchester  in order to resettle  three Afghan families and a family of five (and a dog) from Ukraine!

Thank you Gary, Adam Barnett, Judy Fensterman, Shoshana Dweck for leading us  and all of you who have donated funds or volunteered and continue to do so! And one of our Afghan families is having a baby very soon! Additionally, Wendi and Stacey, Stephanie D., Sharon, Leslie, Stephanie Ben Simon, Dina Newman, Abbe Marcus and many others have been instrumental in creating a new Teen Center. Thank you! (I apologize if I left anyone out) And I can go on and on. TST has been busy over the last 2 1/2+ years. A pandemic will not stop us.

Now it’s time to have some fun. A little music, a little wine, a lot of recognition of Social Action and all of  TST’s volunteers. EVERYONE IS INVITED TO TST’s SECOND ANNUAL VOLUNTEER RECOGNITION DINNER ON JULY 20th at 5:30PM. Yes, it may be a little early for dinner because you are just getting home from work but please come straight to TST that night.  I truly appreciate your effort to do so, and you won’t regret the dinner, the music, the kehilah (community) and the recognition! As long as the weather cooperates we will be outside. In any case we will be safe as possible inside or outside. We only ask you to RSVP by July 10th but as we said before, EVERYONE IS INVITED whether you are part of the social action or not! We are a community, we are a temple, we are one!

We just have to figure out how many to cook for and that’s why we ask for the RSVP.  If you were at the first annual Volunteer Recognition  Dinner you will remember the food, fun and frolic! Don’t miss out. Be there or be square!

We’d love to see you! Thanks for reading, thanks for your time and all of your efforts. Please RSVP as soon as you can to rleroy634@gmail.com or socialaction@tst.org.

Tikkun Olam Baby!