Last month, our website Editor, George Alexander, was kind enough to place my eulogy for my mother in this space. That was very meaningful for me personally, and it allowed me to share my feelings with the congregation. I always have found that the most personal is the most universal, and that my experiences and feelings relate in different ways to different people. (more…)
I hope everyone has managed well through this unusual, but not drastic winter. Our Pandemic Committee has worked hard to keep everyone safe when in the Temple. We now have air purifiers in all the rooms. Throughout this year, we will continue to wear masks. Also, we will continue to modify and adjust our protocols per CDC and appropriate guidelines, as we have throughout this Pandemic. (more…)
By Raffi Berg – BBC News, Jerusalem
Giselle Cycowicz (born Friedman) remembers her father, Wolf, as a warm, kind and religious man. “He was a scholar,” she says, “he always had a book open, studying Talmud [compendium of Jewish law], but he was also a businessman and he looked after his family.”
Before the war, the Friedmans lived a happy, comfortable life in Khust, a Czechoslovak town with a large Jewish population on the fringes of Hungary. All that changed after 1939, (more…)
Click for February 2022 Bulletin Will open with Adobe Reader or equal.
When reading or hearing about Israel in the news these days, it seems that there are only two stories repeated over and over again – the latest round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or Israel’s leading edge in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. While aspects of both of these have been addressed here, we at Israel Matters pledged broader coverage of Israel the land and stuff that happens there. (more…)
This is my eulogy for my mother, Judith Edidin Scolnic, given at Beth El of Montgomery County on Jan. 13, 2022
In one of the most popular movies of all time, half the population of the universe disappears in what is called “The Snap.” Thanos, the personification of death, snaps his fingers. The people are there, and then in a flash, they’re gone. (more…)
Our religious history is as much of our present as it is our past. As you know, the Torah scroll is the center of our religious beliefs. The most important fact about our Torah scrolls is that every one is identical in that they all have 304,805 letters in 79,976 words in 5,844 verses. (more…)
Click for January 2022 Bulletin Will open with Adobe Reader or equal.
The New Jersey-Israel Commission (https://nj.gov/state/njic.shtml) was established to foster a spirit of cooperation between the State of Israel and the State of New Jersey. New Jersey is not the only American state with such an office, but here at Israel Matters we have discovered that New Jersey and Israel do in fact have a lot in common. For starters, Israel and New Jersey take up roughly the same amount of space on a map, that is, they are about the same size! But how do people get around? (more…)
(Sermon given on the 75th Anniversary Shabbat)
It’s a famous story in the Torah. There are two brothers, twins, Esau and Jacob.
Esau goes out hunting and he doesn’t kill anything,
and he’s really tired, and really hungry, and when he comes back to the camp,
he sees his brother Jacob cooking something. He wants what’s in the pot,
and Jacob offers to give it to him in exchange for the birthright. (more…)