April 3, 2025

Shalom Chaverim (Dear Friends),

As we begin a new month, I find myself one week into a two-week stint as a bachelor while my wife Lori visits family in Arizona. April brings with it Tax Day, Passover, and baseball. Our community’s snowbirds are preparing to journey back up north, while year-round residents navigate construction everywhere, part of the continued growth and development of our burgeoning community.

Our Adolph & Rose Levis Jewish Community Center continues to be a sanctuary of warmth, inclusion, and community. Yesterday, we honored World Autism Awareness Day and celebrated the life-changing work our Helene & Roy Schwedelson Special Needs Department has done for over thirty years and will continue to do with pride.

It’s been a wonderful week for our Camp Kavod Spring Break Mini Camp campers. Twelve Pre-K–5th grade campers spent the week on campus having fun in therapeutic yoga, art with Miss Nina, fitness with Coach Matt, and even stuffing their own teddy bears with Universal Mobile Bears. Meanwhile, our fifteen middle and high school campers adventured off-campus with trips to the bowling alley, movie theater, Plaster Carousel, Mod Pizza, and Off the Wall. Both groups enjoyed therapy ponies, a dazzling show by Magician Brent Gregory, and an exciting, hands-on Wild Animal World experience. Camp Kavod picks up again this summer, when we’ll welcome over 100 campers for a summer filled with new adventures and unforgettable experiences.

Our new “Relationships 101” course for young adults with special needs is now in its third week. Led by a licensed social worker and created in partnership with Ruth & Norman Rales Jewish Family Services and the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, this program helps participants build friendships and establish boundaries in relationships through role-playing, guided lessons, and group exercises.

Looking forward, we are thrilled to introduce “Project L.I.F.E. – Learning. Independence. Friendship. Experience.,” a brand-new program for young adults with special needs launching in September. “Project L.I.F.E.” will focus on growth, inclusion, community engagement, as well as both life and social skills. More information is available here, and I can’t wait to see the program in action!

This week’s Torah portion is Vayikra (And He Called), the first portion in the book of Leviticus, the third in the Five Books of Moses. In it, G-d calls to Moses from the Tent of Meeting and communicates to him the laws of the korbanot, the offerings brought in the Sanctuary. At your Levis JCC, we take tremendous pride in our “offerings” – the enriching, engaging, and inclusive programs and services we provide to our community throughout the year. Our season is still in full swing. I sincerely hope you’ll join us and see firsthand what makes our Levis JCC so very special indeed.

Light candles Friday night at 7:21 pm
Shabbat ends on Saturday night at 8:14 pm

Shabbat Shalom
Am Yisrael Chai!

If you would like to support the Levis JCC and its programs and services, click below.

Marty