I have to say that March ‘17 was really quite a month in the history of our community. We had an amazing service weekend where we saw a huge range of activities. Rabbi Leah led a lovely intimate service on the Friday night where we welcomed a new member into our community.
On the Saturday morning at 10 o’clock the whole building was abuzz with activity. We had two cheder groups as in February and the numbers are growing. It’s getting quite squashed for Leah’s group in the library. The Adult Hebrew group is now into double figures. Next weekend we are starting a more advanced group to master our fluency of prayer book Hebrew, enhance our understanding and maybe take in a bit of the modern language as spoken in Israel.
Following on from this we had an excellent and very well attended service led by Joel, with drasha from Roddy. We are so blessed that we have two rabbis as well as Leah within our midst. Meanwhile, Leah saw some individual members of the community for pastoral discussion. There was so much achieved and something for everyone.
Just over a week later we held our AGM and I’m delighted to say that no one left Council. We also have two new members, who will bring our compliment to the full ten members. This is great news as it means there are more people to share in the responsibilities.
Move on to April 7th when we are holding our community meeting on the Friday evening. We will be kicking off with a short talk from Dee Robinson founder of New Routes Integration charity and then going on to a discussion about the direction the community is taking. We look for ideas from community members. Some Important items will be the charities we support, ways to fundraise and how we could plan better for Adult Education.
Then Saturday April 8th we look forward to another Bar Mitzvah. Simon Benscher, a friend of the family, and chair of Liberal Judaism, is also coming along; we are looking forward to his visit and choral contribution. There will also be a special Kiddush.
I look forward to seeing everyone at some point over the weekend of 8th April.
Annie Henriques, Chair NLJC