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Congregation Brothers of Israel
530 Washington Crossing Road • Newtown, PA 18940 • (215) 579-2200
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Jewery Duty Communal prayer is the foundation of congregational life at Brothers of Israel, as it is at every other house of worship. In a recent meeting of our Ritual Committee it was noted that Service attendance at our various Sabbath and holiday Services has been trending upwards and that the size of the Sunday morning Learners Minyan has doubled in recent months. Not to rest on our laurels your Congregation’s leadership is continuing to expand our Service offerings and hope you will approve and attend even more. Allow me to share with you some of the Services that we currently offer and encourage you to speak to myself or one of our other ritual leaders if there’s something else you might be looking for, spiritually speaking. Three Friday nights per month we offer our traditional eight o’clock offering which includes a lot of Congregational singing and responsive English readings. Many weeks you will find members of our upcoming B’nai Mitzvah class helping Cantor Bob Winter and I to lead the Services and three or four times a year we will be joined by our wonderful Machela (Adult Choir). The next two evenings that our Choir will be singing are Friday night April 9th and June 18th. In addition some of our Friday night Services have a special theme, for example recently we celebrated 100 Years of Scouting in America and dedicated a Friday night to the Jewish National Fund’s work in Israel. If you can’t join us for our eight o’clock Service following your Shabbat dinner at home, consider coming to our Family Service which is a complete service held earlier once per month and replacing our eight o’clock Service (6:00 on Friday night March 19th followed by a Congregational Shabbat Dinner). If your youngsters have shpilkes (ants in the pants) please join us for our monthly Tot Shabbat (Friday night March 5th at 7pm), preceding our eight o’clock service, led by Amy Deutsch. The Tot Shabbat features games, prayers, puppetry and creative movement. I look forward every Shabbat morning to partnering with our Cantor Dr. Robert Winter, our Baal Koreh Cantor Jim Jacobs, our Gabbis (lay leaders) Mitchell Packer, Michael Dubrow, Lou Kalnitsky, Diane Strauss, Alan Agree, Ellier Russ and Mark Nemiroff. A highlight of our Shabbat morning Service in recent weeks has been the participation of a number of Congregants who have graced us by chanting from the Torah or Haftorah including Tony Brickman, Ellen Weiner, Mark Nemiroff, Rivka Kerachsky, Daniel Lester and Eva Strauss. Please arrange a meeting with me if you would like me to teach you this valuable skill or if you would like to volunteer to participate in our Services. We assign two responsive English prayers for the United States and Israel every Shabbat morning and if you would like to volunteer to read one please speak with one of our Gabbis. This month the 7th Grade and the 6th Grade are each sponsoring a Kiddush following their children’s grade level Shabbat on March 6th and March 20th. If you would like to sponsor a Kiddush, like the Ring family recently did in honor of Lou Kalnitsky’s 95th Birthday please call the office. Each month on a Shabbat morning Levi Minsky or Bert Arwas leads our Junior Congregation for our 2nd through 6th graders in the TEM (March 13th). Occasionally we will have a special presentation like a soloist Lisa Waldman singing Hatikvah and America the Beautiful on March 13th or a discussion of “Jewish Experiential Learning and Camping” on March 20th . As you can see there are dozens of individuals and families helping to raise their voices, infuse their spirits and breathe life into our Congregation’s davening. If you would like to come to Services but need a ride, please call us at the synagogue. Please feel free to share with our Ritual Committee any ideas that you have to enhance our Services. Wishing you and your family a happy and sweet Passover, Rabbi Shalom Plotkin
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Information Contact: Send e-mail to
office@brothersofisrael.org with questions or comments about this web site.
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