Dream Center Dinners: Once a month the Havurah prepares meals for at-risk and homeless teens. It always helps to have about 2-3 per date to make it easier. Bring enough food to serve 15 - a main dish, 1 -2 sides, dessert and milk to the Dream Center at 4:30 pm. You can stay if you have an interest in doing so but the kids tend to feel uncomfortable with strangers there. There are always other adults present. The Jewish Community also provides the kids a Christmas Dinner and needs lost of volunteers to feed the 70 or so who come for this event. Here are the sign ups so far:
8/30 – Jody Moss and Suzanne DeBey 10/25 – Emily Marcus and Willie Burer
9/25 – Marsha Melnick and Dora Krutolow 11/29 – Sally & John Albiso
12/20 ish - Jody, Jill, Marsha, Emily, Willie, and Dave Bendell – More help needed! To volunteer for any of these dates, call Jill Dole at 452-5982 or email at dolesfamily@msn.com
HIGH HOLIDAYS special services provide “islands in time,” to focus on joyful and sad soul-searching and memories, both joyful and sad.
§ The Rosh Hashanah Sunrise Service, an exalted greeting to the New Year, is unique to OBSH. The beauty of the sunrise over the Strait and the soulful sound of the Shofar, welcoming the new day on the New Year, is very uplifting, well worth the difficulty of an early morning rising.
§ Tashlich, on Rosh Hashanah, is the symbolic casting away of sins, which wash away, into the sea. Bread crumbs represent the sins, to be cast into the Dungeness River. Kids enjoy this ceremony, as much as the adults.
§ Yizkor, the Memorial Service for deceased loved ones (especially parents), on Yom Kippur, is an intensely mournful, but meaningful, ceremony. Some consider this service bad luck for children with both living parents to attend. Because of the depth of emotion, it can also be disturbing to children and children can disturb participants when they get antsy. Children may need supervision to remain quiet or to leave if upset.
YARZHEIT REMEMBRANCES - If you would like Rabbi Yedwab to honor the name of a loved one during High Holy Day Services, please contact Jody Moss with the name, relationship and date. Call (417-2869), or email (baxter@wavecable.com).
FOOD DRIVE - Each year we hold a canned food drive for the Food Banks. This year we will provide a grocery bag to all Rosh Hashanah attendees to be returned, full of course, on Yom Kippur.
DUES – A separate dues notice will be sent out shortly with a return envelope. Please consider supporting the Havurah with your prompt payment of dues. If you are a friend of the Havurah, please consider a donation to help maintain a healthy Jewish community in our area. And the Getting a Jump on Dues Award this year goes to …Phyllis and Don Darling!
ANNUAL DONATIONS: Living on the Peninsula we do not have access to all the services of a regular synagogue. Neither do we encounter the very high dues, annual building funds, and having to purchase High Holy Day tickets. Back in Durham North Carolina we paid $1500 a year for membership, a calculated portion of our annual earnings for the building funds and bought HHD tickets annually. Still, we need funds to run our Havurah, and often find our dues may not quite stretch. This year, rather than raise dues we want to encourage regular donations by members. So, we created several support levels. We hope that you will all consider giving a, little extra regularly.
Chaver Level - Consider annually donating $250. This comes to just $21 per month.
Jubilee Level - Consider annually donating $500 or $42 per month.
Chai Level - Consider annually donating $1,080 or $90 per month.
WHAT IS A YIZKOR BOOK? For the last number of High Holy Days, we have offered members a chance to donate to the Havurah and share a remembrance of a loved one in an Yizkor Book. (Thanks to Dave Bendell for the following.)
The original Yizkor books were memorials to the Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. Most often they were compiled by survivors from those communities and contain the history of the town or city, biographies of prominent people, information about the various Jewish organizations of the town such as the Zionist groups, the local Jewish sports club, the Jewish schools, and lists of the people of the town who were killed in the Holocaust. The books contain many photographs, maps, personal reminiscences, charts, etc. The text is mostly in Yiddish and Hebrew but Russian, Polish or Hungarian are not uncommon. Many were published soon after the end of World War II, some even in the Displaced Persons camps that were established by the Allies to house the survivors. Yizkor books, however, continued to appear in a steady stream throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and are still being published, though in much smaller numbers.
The model for Yizkor books may have been the memorbuecher (community prayer books) once common in Jewish communities throughout Central Europe. These consisted of prayers, a list of deceased leaders, and a martyrology of people and places. The memorbuch—the first appeared in about 1600—reflected the religious life of the community and accompanied it in its tribulations and migrations. Though yizkor books were on the whole secular in nature, their compilers, like those of the memorbuecher, attempted to keep the history of their communities from being forgotten.
As the years have passed since the Holocaust the tradition of the Yizkor book has changed, and has become part of a living tradition in modern Judaism. Many post holocaust communities, particularly in the United States maintain such books as memorials to deceased members and to provide a historical context for their congregation. The concept of the Yitzkor book has also seen a revolution in the age of modern communications and the internet. Many communities and groups provide Yizkor books in the form electronic based media. Searchable databases allow Yizkor books to be sources of genealogical information as well as remembrance.
OBSH YIZKOR BOOK: And now that you know what a Yizkor book is…– We are again producing a memorial book to be distributed during the Yizkor Service to honor family and/or loved ones thanks to Don Darling and Straitview Mail. The rates are $20.00 for business card size, $30.00 for 1/4 of a page, $50.00 for a half a page and $75.00 for a full page. If you would like to include a loved one’s name in this book, please contact Phyllis Darling by phone (457-1835) or by email (phyllisdarling@olypen.com) by September 19.
SUKKOT – we will celebrate Sukkot on Saturday, October 18th beginning at 3:30 pm at Suzanne DeBey’s home. Bring flowers and vegetables to decorate the Sukkah, and a dish to celebrate during the dinner to follow our service.
Directions to 112 Old Black Diamond Road. Remember the 8th Street Bridge is out. To get to Lauridsen from the east, take 101 to Race, left on Race and right on Lauridsen - 4th light. Turn right at the first light past Albertsons – sign will say to Pine Street and Black Diamond. Take short road up hill and through a sharp left curve. Turn left at stop sign onto Black Diamond. Follow Black Diamond on bridge across 101 and up the hill. At the first intersection (right turns only) take the left Y – this is Old Black Diamond. If you miss that turn, the next right is also Old Black Diamond. If you get lost – 452-2471.
Author Lecture: On November 22nd from 1:00 to 3:00, we have invited Aaron Elkins, one of my favorite authors who lives on the Olympic Peninsula and is a well known mystery writer to join us. Mr. Elkins writes about an anthropologist, Oliver Gideon who continuously finds himself called into help solved cases all over the world involving evaluation of bones. Mr. Elkins will give a talk about his research for one of his award winning books, Old Bones, on the German occupation of France and the French Résistance. Please join us for this unique program. (There may be a small charge for this program, but it will be well worth it!)
High Holy Day Schedule – 2008 – For hanging up as a reminder!
Monday, September 29, 2008: Erev Rosh Hashanah
Set Up - 5:00 pm - come help if you can
Potluck - 6:00 pm
Services - 7:30 pm
Tuesday, September 30, 2008 Rosh Hashanah
Sunrise Service at City Pier – 6:40 am (7:12 Sunrise) Breakfast Following Sunrise Service at Crab House
Morning Service - 10:00 am – Led by Rabbi Stan Yedwab
Annual Meeting - 12:00 pm (lunch to follow)
Clean up - All volunteers welcome
RAILROAD BRIDGE IN SEQUIM **Tashlich 2:30 pm at Rail Road Bridge Park - Led by Marsha Melnick – Don’t forget to bring bread crumbs .
Directions to Railroad Bridge: Coming from Port Angeles, get off Hwy 101 at River Road. Turn left toward town. Go around the traffic circle to get onto Washington Road. The first traffic light is Priest St. Turn LEFT onto Priest. Take Priest till it dead ends at Hendrickson. Turn left. Follow the signs to the park. There is a big parking area when you first get into the park. If you bypass that one, you come to a smaller lot closer to the bridge. From Sequim, take Washington to the traffic light at Priest, just before Wal-Mart at Home Depot. Turn RIGHT at the light. Follow the directions as above.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008 Erev Yom Kippur
Set up - 6:30 pm
Kol Nidre Service - 7:00 pm
Thursday, October 9, 2008 Yom Kippur
Morning Service - 10:00 am
Torah Study - 2:00 pm
Afternoon Service – 3:30 pm
Yizkor, Neilah and Havdalah to follow Break the Fast Dairy Potluck
Clean up - All volunteers welcome
Rabbi Stan Yedwab will be leading our services.