Exciting New Partnership Between Shaaray Tefila and Congregation Ohel Avraham Has Begun!

                    

The first official delegation from Ohel Avraham and the Leo Baeck Education Center visited Shaaray Tefila April 29-May 6, 2012!

We welcomed Rabbi Gabby Dagan and a delegation of lay leaders and staff from Ohel Avraham and the Leo Baeck Education Center for a week of planning and engaging with the Shaaray Tefila community. Our visitors joined us at committee meetings, worship services, Mitzvah Day and more; details of their visit will be posted soon, so please check back. Special thanks to our member families who provided home hospitality to our visitors.

From left: Hillel and Elana Dorfman, Ohel Avraham members; Rivi Mor, Ohel Avraham staff; Avigael Brill, Grade 3 teacher at Leo Baeck Education Center; Rabbi Gabby Dagan, Ohel Avraham; Shlomo Weinberg, HS educator at Leo Baeck; and Michal Peled, Ohel Avraham member

                                                                                                                                                           

 

 

 

Watch this video for highlights from our December 2011 planning trip to Haifa to meet with our partners at Ohel Avraham!

In another step toward strengthening our congregation’s ties to the land and people of Israel, Shaaray Tefila has embarked on a new partnership with Kehilat Ohel Avraham, a Reform congregation in Haifa that is closely associated with the Leo Baeck Education Center.

With the goal of connecting Shaaray Tefila members of all ages and diverse interests with their counterparts at Ohel Avraham, clergy, senior staff, and members of the Israel Engagement Committee began meeting with representatives of Ohel Avraham in Spring and Summer, 2011. (See Rabbi Stein's article below for an update.)    

One important benefit of this relationship will be enjoyed by our members who travel to Israel. Ohel Avraham will welcome our members with a place to spend Shabbat and an opportunity to meet Israelis on a one-to-one basis. In the same way, Shaaray Tefila will be a home-away-from-home for Ohel Avraham members visiting New York. A visit to Ohel Avraham will be part of the itinerary for our adult congregational trip to Israel in October 2012. If you have plans to visit the Haifa area on your own, let us know and we’ll set up a visit for you to Ohel Avraham!

If you have suggestions on joint learning or social action projects that we might undertake with Ohel Avraham, or if you are interested in participating in the partnership, please contact Ted Greenwood, chair of the Israel Engagement Committee, at tedgreenwood@msn.com.    

The following is Rabbi Stein's "Personally Speaking" column from our March 2012 Messenger: 

        I am enthusiastic to share with you our newest plans to strengthen our congregation’s ties to
the land and people of Israel, a crucial part of our Mission Statement! As you have read in previous
Messenger articles this year, Shaaray Tefila has embarked on a new partnership with Kehilat Ohel
Avraham, a Reform congregation in Haifa that is closely associated with the Leo Baeck Education
Center. This congregation was selected by our Israel Engagement Committee and presented to
our leadership last spring for a formal partnership.

        This past December a delegation of seven people from Shaaray Tefila travelled to Haifa to
connect with our new partners. Our group included staff members Rabbi Josh Strom, Mindy
Davids, and Hope Chernak; representatives from our lay leadership Paula Dwoskin-Sitzer and
Ted Greenwood; and TaSTY youth leaders Talia Bornstein and Benjamin Bass. Ohel Avraham’s
group was led by their rabbi, Gabby Dagan, and included lay leaders and professional staff. This
planning trip (and a return visit scheduled for late April by a delegation from Ohel Avraham/Leo Baeck staff
and lay leaders) was funded by the Global Jewish Connection Initiative of the UJA-Federation of
NY and Shaaray Tefila’s Sesquicentennial Fund.

        During this visit, the planning teams outlined ideas as to how to formally launch our partnership with Ohel Avraham and the Leo Baeck Education Center. We are excited to share with you the first project planned for our relationship. This joint effort, called “Gateways and Tents,” will enable our two congregations to connect through ongoing programs and activities.

        Through study and worship, we will share and learn together. An adult Beit Midrash will study together by video conferences several times per year. Our clergy will exchange music and sermons. Congregants will be invited to learn new songs from the other congregation during worship. We hope to use technology to bridge this connection, and additional plans include multiple online communication channels, exchanges of newsletter materials, the encouraging of visits and hospitality between our communities, the creation of joint tikkun olam projects, and connections between both congregations’ women’s programs.

        Our Religious School students and students in the Leo Baeck elementary school will share holiday celebrations, exchange cards and small gifts, connect by Skype, and perhaps share other educational and social opportunities. We hope that our teachers and educational staff will also deepen their relationship through professional-to-professional connections.

        For our older students we plan to set up a program called Bnai Mitzvah Connections. The goal is to pair up interested Bnai Mitzvah students and their families with those who share the same parashah or close celebration dates in the other congregation. This could also include students sharing ideas for their dvar Torah and mitzvah projects connected to their preparation.

        One of our most exciting partnerships is the potential for a youth exchange between our high school students. We are currently applying for a grant that will allow our students to experience a mifgash (encounter) providing student-to-student connections both
in Israel and here in our community. The curriculum would include formal and informal educational methodologies to bring our students together and to foster an ongoing connection between the students in both congregations.

        Finally, we will continue to implement Youth Group connections through interactions between our Senior Youth Group, TaSTY, and Ohel Avraham’s Youth Group using technology as a tool to link these teens.

        These are some of our many plans for what we hope will flourish into programmatic and educational opportunities for all ages in our two communities. We plan to kick off “Gateways and Tents” this spring with a program called “Faces of Ohel Avraham and the Leo Baeck Education Center.” With this campaign, we will feature specific members and students from Haifa so that Shaaray Tefila members can begin to learn about and “meet” our partners in Israel. A similar campaign highlighting our members will bring Shaaray Tefila into the hearts and minds of the members of Ohel Avraham’s Reform Haifa community.

        We are proud that the hard work of our Israel Engagement Committee is beginning to bear fruit. I hope you will join us this spring when we welcome the delegation from Ohel Avraham and the Leo Baeck Education Center to our congregation.

                                                              Rabbi Jonathan A. Stein