This message has 702 words, and will take about 2-3 minutes to read.

Campaign Opening with Wiesel Almost Sold Out
If you haven’t yet purchased your tickets for our Campaign Opening with Elie Wiesel, don’t wait too much longer. There are only a limited number of seats still available and they will likely sell in the next week. Click here to purchase now, or call us at 604.638.7281.

Hear the Call of the Shofar
During the month of Elul, which began two weeks ago, it is the custom to blow the shofar every morning following the morning service. Elul is regarded as the beginning of the period of repentence, which continues through Yom Kippur. Some commentators have linked that period to the time that Moses spent on Mount Sinai, preparing the second set of tablets containing the Ten Commandments.

Even in our time, the shofar call is a stirring sound, calling us both to thought and action. As we enter the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe, take a few moments to hear the shofar, and reflect on the year ahead for yourself, your family, your community and your people.

Exploring Jewish Education in Boston
The two communities in North America that have done the most work in developing and implementing comprehensive community strategies to strengthen Jewish education over the past twenty years are Cleveland and Boston. The common denominator is Barry Shrage, the peripatetic CEO of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, who moved there from Cleveland, where he initiated the first of the major community Commissions on Jewish Continuity. I had the opportunity earlier this week to visit Boston together with my counterparts from 10 other intermediate sized Federations to learn about the range of major Jewish education initiatives there. While the scale of the community is much larger, and there some unique characteristics to Boston’s Jewish life and culture, much of what they are doing is replicable and scalable to our community. It just takes vision, will, focus, tenacity, and a fair amount of funding.

Over the past 20 years, Boston has launched numerous serious community-wide initiatives focused on adult Jewish learning, strengthening day schools, strengthening synagogue-based education, outreach to interfaith couples and families, Birthright Israel follow-up on campuses and more. In every case, what characterizes their approach is starting small with a new model, leveraging community partnerships with schools, synagogues, Hillels and other institutions, and rapidly scaling up to ensure community-wide impact.

We are at the very earliest stages of starting to convene a new community planning process around Jewish education for our community. The opportunity to see how Boston has approached this area couldn’t have been more timely.

Parashat Ki Teitze
This week’s parasha is rich with content, listing 72 commandments, the largest number of any weekly parasha. Many of them have to do with ethical behavior – how we are to treat neighbours and enemies; leaving gleanings for the poor, the widowed, the foreigner, and otherwise helping those in need; and our responsibilities in dealing with lost or forgotten items.

The parasha concludes with a commandment to remember the Amalekites and how they attacked the Israelites in the desert. The Amalekites preyed upon the weaker Israelites at the rear of the moving group. The placement of this warning about the Amalekites, coming after so many commandments related to ethical treatment, serves to remind us that we know what it means to be weak and vulnerable. The set of ethical behaviors outlines how we can use that reminder to meet our responsibilities, and to create a more humane society. We can turn our experience of being preyed upon to motivate us to avoid that experience for others, inside our community and beyond. It is just that sensitivity that has driven Elie Wiesel throughout his life-time quest for social justice and human rights.

Shabbat shalom!