April 4, 2024

Shalom Chaverim (Dear Friends),

I'm writing to you while on vacation in Phoenix visiting with my son and his family. We are having so much fun spending time together enjoying favorite restaurants, working on our son’s house and even catching a Yankees vs Diamondbacks baseball game. It has been a wonderful time with family.

Back home at the Adolph & Rose Levis Jewish Community Center, this week was full of exciting and engaging events. This afternoon, our Sandler Center in partnership with Congregation B’nai Torah, presented popular and well-known lecturer Dr. Robert Watson, while this evening, we hosted our first singles event in many years. “Mitzvah Mingle” was a way for Jewish singles in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, to combine drinks and light bites with a meaningful and purposeful mitzvah – creating comfort bags for Israeli soldiers. Presenting a wide variety of programs, services, and events to our community has been part of our tradition for more than 40 years.

This week’s Torah portion is Shemini (Eighth) in the book of Leviticus, the third in the Five Books of Moses. In it, G-d commands the kosher laws, identifying the animal species that are permissible and forbidden for consumption. Kashrut is one of the strongest elements of our shared Jewish traditions.

Some of us in the Jewish community keep kosher, others do not, and others have their own individual ways of respecting these rules. Keeping our traditions alive while creating new ones is part of our collective Jewish experience, and certainly part of what the Levis JCC proudly offers our community.

Light Shabbat candles Friday evening at 7:21 pm
Shabbat ends Saturday night at 8:15 pm

Shabbat Shalom
Am Yisrael Chai!

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

Marty