Campaign for Youth Engagement

For sharing your hopes, thoughts and concerns about youth @ Holy Blossom Temple!

• We held listening conversations with teens & pre-teens; parents of  pre-school, school-age and Hebrew day-school youth; educators, senior staff and our clergy.
• On our Listening Wall we collected over a 120 post-it notes with your dreams for you(th).
• We conducted one-on-one phone conversations with parents unable to meet with us at the temple but still wanted to participate.
• We listened to over 300 community members and we continue the listening through the sharing of our community’s wisdoms with our Holy Blossom communities and committees.

We also thank Rabbi Karen Thomashow for her leadership, deep connection and commitment to our youth, and her reminders that this is sacred work.  We welcome Rabbi Jordan Helfman who is already stepping in to collaboration and leadership for our youth!

When we Listened, this is what we Heard:

The Listening Wall

Our Current Reality:  What we offer as a congregation does not meet everyone’s needs and expectations for youth, and congregants have many competing priorities. There is a strong desire for change, and an interest in greater relationship and sense of community.

Our Community’s Visions for the Future:

Congregational Commitment to Youth – For the interests of youth to be supported, for youth to be involved at all levels and consideration of youth to be embedded in all decision-making.

Diversity and Differentiation - To support youth in their own unique, personalized Jewish journey. This can include diversified programming, education, and volunteer offerings, worship choices, and connections with external organizations.

Deeper Community Relationships - For all clergy to be actively engaged with youth. For the congregation to support building a meaningful community for all youth.

Our CYE Team has been sharing these wisdoms with the Holy Blossom Temple Board, Senior Staff, and various committees including Education, Renewal, Transition, Worship – and these learnings are receiving a positive response from all we talk to.

What’s Next & How To Be a Part of It:

The Listening Wall

Now, we are reaching out to invite you to join us to co-create the future where we will have you(th). here. always.

We need your thoughtful and imaginative approach to creating this future. We are setting up task forces to work collaboratively to take the great ideas and make the vision happen.

Please consider joining one of these task force teams:

• Early Attachment: Preschool and parenting Jewishly
• Building the Relationship: the broad Jewish education experience (including, but not just religious school or day school) and opportunities to develop Jewishly based on strengths and interests
• Bnei Mitzvah Experience: making a meaningful, personal journey to becoming a Jewish adult
• Teens & Beyond: deepening the attachment through a diversity of opportunities that enable youth to chart their personal Jewish path
• Building Community: family engagement and member retention
• Overall task force coordination

Please join us:

If you have questions, want to help shape the future of youth at Holy Blossom by serving on a task force, contribute, have ideas, please talk with of our CYE Team members or email us at cye@holyblossom.org.

Erin O’Connor, Vision Team Chair
Sandi Smith, Vision Team Vice Chair
Emily Albert
Josh Berger
Michael Cincinatus
Jeff Dicker, Board Member
Karen Kollins
Sandra Rotholc
Barbara Sandler
Cheryl Sylvester

View of Gardens and New Ava Road Entry

Please join in this open conversation about the physical renewal of Holy Blossom Temple building.  As we embark on this new era for our congregation by renewing our building, we want as many voices as possible to contribute to the visioning.

One way we hope to collect your ideas is through online conversations, and there will be other opportunities to come as we go forward.  What we need now is to establish the high level look and feel, program and space needs by mid-July to keep moving toward our Fall 2014 ground-breaking. The online conversation is meant to elicit your ideas about what our community needs now and in the future in these areas.

Just as a reminder, the footprint of the building itself, and location of major use spaces like the boardroom, sanctuary, etc. – are already set and constrained by cost, timing and other issues.  Yet within these constraints, we have many options to make the space right for all of us. So we urge you to think ahead, think laterally, think about your children and even their children.

Of course we won’t be able to satisfy everyone or use everyone’s ideas.  That is just the nature of the process.  Please understand your ideas matter; please also understand we will do our utmost to balance all the ideas we hear, always keeping in mind the best interests of the Holy Blossom community as a whole.

Thanks in advance for joining the conversation!

As fellow members of the Holy Blossom community, we’re pleased to join you in this important conversation about the physical renewal of Holy Blossom Temple.  Our commitment is to engage actively in this conversation with you – listening to your ideas and responding to your posts promptly – within 24 hours, where possible. We will forward specific clarifying questions to the Building Committee or to others, as needed. This first phase of conversation, including both on-line and in-person conversations, will be completed by July 12.  We hope you’ll join the conversation!

Renewal Project Engagement Committee

Thank you and keep your eyes on this space: there will be more opportunities for engagement to come.

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Please join us on Thursday evening July 4^th at 7:30 PM for a stimulating conversation with Jim Lederman.

Jim will present ISRAEL – THE FACTS BEHIND THE NEWS.

JIM LEDERMAN, An Israel based analyst, he is the Senior Middle East regional analyst for Oxford Analytica.

He advises the writers and analysts on whom we rely. He has lectured widely at universities and to independent public affairs groups. Has been an invited speaker at academic colloquia and symposia on the relationship between the press, politics, and popular movements.

Don’t miss this event!

Maayan Sharon and Tali Epstein

I am honoured to introduce our new Shinshiniyot (plural for Shinshiniya – they are both female this year)… Maayan Sharon and Tali Epstein arrive in Canada at the end of August. We are excited to welcome them.

Maayan Sharon (left) is from Haifa. She is an active member of her school (Leo Baeck) and youth community. Maayan has been involved with a variety of activities from Teen exchanges in New York and Italy, a youth advisor at her synagogue, and has done a lot of volunteer work with the young and the elderly through Municipal and Regional Councils..

Tali Epstein (right) is also from Haifa. She attends the Reali School. Tali has been involved in many activities throughout her high school years. She has been a youth leader in the Israeli Scouts, a participant in numerous youth missions abroad including the Diller Teen Fellow program out of Boston, and a major force in a project helping new immigrants from Ethiopia. This project brings gifted youngsters into the leadership ranks and special missions in the Israeli army.

…and watch the video below

Rabbi Edward Goldfarb

By Dr. Harvey Schipper, President.

I had a favourite uncle. He was a dentist and a very secular, spiritual person who taught me the love of learning for its own sake. He had a vast library about almost anything, and a quiet way of teasing me with an idea or snippet of a book. He spoke Hebrew and adored Yiddish.

Rabbi Eddie Goldfarb reminds me of that uncle. He connects. Learning with him is like sharing a secret, whether it comes from the pulpit or one of his classes. He makes Reform Judaism an intimate experience.

Rabbi Goldfarb retires at the end of June after 13 years with us, at the Golden Age of 75. For those so connected, he’ll be around. He has offered to teach occasional courses and perform life cycle events for members of Holy Blossom who so wish.

We wish Rabbi Goldfarb, Fagi and his family continued years of health, happiness and the blessings which come from a life dedicated to teaching, living and guiding the Jewish experience.

By John Freund.

John Freund, age 10

At my age of 83, I am surely not the only Holocaust survivor member of our Temple, but I am probably the youngest. Having lost my freedom in April 1942 at the age of 12, as a second son of a pediatrician in a small town in Czechoslovakia, I was free and alone in April 1945.

My journey with my family and a thousand other Jewish people in my hometown took me first to Ghetto Terezin and that was thankfully in the country of my birth. From there after living there badly, but more and less safely, I was shipped to the worse Concentration Camp “Auschwitz”. It was there that over a million people-mainly Jews-were killed by gas and burnt in large ovens.

Little did I know, that some official in the Nazi German Government cautioned that the world might find out about the bestiality and arranged for an International Red Cross Commission to visit two camps: Terezin and if required another location. So, the Nazis quickly cleared of overcrowding in the Terezin Ghetto, beautified its streets by planting flowers, built some humane housing and allowed the Red Cross to spend a few hours there. No inmate was allowed to talk to them and they were not to ask questions.

Meantime, in Auschwitz where I was sent with about 5 thousand people from Ghetto Terezin, I was languishing-living is too strong term for that life, in a so called “Family Camp”. Here our function was to send out postcards to the “outside world” telling the readers that we are well and together with the family and being available if the Red Cross inspecting Ghetto Terezin required some evidence that the gassing of people in Auschwitz was a lie. Unfortunately, it was actual as we could see hundreds of transports arriving from all of German occupied Europe from which only the strongest men and women were selected for work and the rest-all the children, the old and the weak were killed in the gas chambers.

John Freund, age 81

When the Red Cross finished its 3 hour inspection of Terezin in June 1944 and had no further interest in what happened to all those deported to Auschwitz, the so called “Family Camp” was no longer required and was liquidated. Again, only the strong men and women were selected for hard work in mines or factories and the rest was killed by gas. I was fourteen and was among about 90 boys that the infamous DR Mengele considered strong enough to do hard work.

And, so after many more weeks of train transports and death marches, I was still alive when the beautiful GI US army liberated me in April 1945. I came to my hometown alone. Only 35 people out of the original one thousand deported Jews survived.

In March 1948, I came to Canada as one of the Jewish orphans, not yet eighteen years old.

On June 15th, I will be called to the Torah to recreate my Bar Mitzvah in Ghetto Terezin 70 years earlier.

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Israel Engagement Award

It was Holy Blossom that first stepped forward to not only provide the home we needed (for Israel Engagement), but also the professional and volunteer focus required to make it all work.

Holy Blossom was the leader and continues to be a leader in helping us to grow our Israel engagement aspirations, not only by working effectively with their Shinshinim each year but by being the first Shul to commit to the investment of real dollars into our programs, and then becoming the first Shul to launch an institutional change process which continues today. Without the commitment of Holy Blossom, our earliest adopter, no success would have been possible or proven.

For taking that chance and giving our Israel engagement efforts an opportunity to succeed and for Holy Blossom’s continuing commitment to nurturing those successes, we are forever grateful.

Adam Joseph,
Vice-Chair, UJA Federation Israel Engagement Committee

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Irving J. Fain Social Action Honorable Mention for Living with Dementia Program

Holy Blossom Temple received the URJ Irving J. Fain Social Action Award – Honorable Mention – for our Living With Dementia program.

Living With Dementia program is a 10 week program offered to help those family members who are caring for a loved one who has dementia. It is run at Holy Blossom in partnership with Mount Sinai Hospital.

For more information and to register contact Elana Fehler at 416-789-3291 ext. 523.

I have had the pleasure of singing ‘back up vocals’ for our wonderful cantorial soloist, Lindi Rivers, as a member of the Holy Blossom Temple Singers for the last 10 years. I have also had the pleasure of singing with her in Cantor Maissner’s Lachan Jewish Chamber Choir. Our connection has been music. But our connection has changed.

I have known her husband, Steve, about 35 years longer than I have known Lindi, going all the way back to high school and summer camp in the Ottawa Valley in the 1960s, the same camp that Bob Smolkin attended. The Jewish community was small and tightly knit then and teenagers knew virtually all other teenagers, regardless of age differences. The Ottawa community of that era still maintains strong ties even though time has spread us out geographically. I know Steve well but oddly enough, only Lindi knows for sure if he can carry a tune.

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Sadly, the Rivers family is encountering tough times. Steve suffers from Multiple System Atrophy (MSA), a progressive and fatal neurological disease in which the afflicted gradually loses control of all voluntary muscles. One eventually loses the ability to walk, answer the phone, open a door, speak and brush one’s teeth – the many daily, automatic tasks of life. Increasing amounts of personal care are needed. Recognizing how difficult and exhausting this is for the family, in the spirit of Bikur Cholim a group of Lindi and Steve’s friends, family and colleagues have been providing many different kinds of assistance to ease the family’s growing burden of care. Last July the Friends of Steve Rivers Care Project was created to raise funds for Steve’s personal care. The response has been heart warming. While successful, more needs to be done.

Most singers will tell you that music is a balm, a soothing influence unless you are listening to the Ramones. Recognizing this, the Friends of Steve Rivers is holding a benefit concert at Holy Blossom Temple on June 2nd to raise money for the Care Project and to support MSA research. The Ramones will not be on the program. The music has been carefully chosen to celebrate and to lift our spirits in recognition that even in tough times, there can be joy. Come hear the performers and choirs and enjoy the moment.

We hope to see you on June 2nd. If you cannot attend the concert but would like to make a donation to support the Care Project and MSA research, please contact Lewis Molot via stories@holyblossom.org for more information.

Dear friends,

With the intense celebration of Music Week in Toronto throughout this past week, it is my honour and privilege to share with you some photos and video clips from our own concert of the Musical Heritage Series at HBT — DIVAHN an Eastern Serenade — music of our Sephardic tradition in all its colors and grandeur.

Five gifted young women formed a unique ensemble of eastern music with a most professional presentation of Jewish oriental and Sephardic heritage. Galeet Dardashti, a renowned musicologist of Sephardic tradition on all of its aspects lead the group in a most electric format of being informational and educational program and most of all entertaining. The audience was mesmerized and responded with much enthusiasm to the exotic sounds of Yemenite, Moroccan, Syrian, Persian and a multitude of mid-eastern sounds. The instrumental musical arrangements were superb and the percussionists gave their best to bring the audience to their feet.

Your Cantor
Beny

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