Screaming, dancing teenagers or Jewish living and learning at its finest

It may look like a bunch of screaming, dancing teenagers but really it's Jewish living and learning at its finest.

Our USY group is full of amazing teens. Wednesday nights is BAUSY (B'nai Amoona's USY) in Pardes. Each Wednesday these teenagers get together. They socialize, spending time with their Jewish friends. They plan exciting activities like Neon Night (seen in the video), social action opportunities like cookie baking for Lydia's house, educational trips to see The Diary of Anne Frank, 9th grade leadership group that meets each Sunday morning and Shabbat dinners.

This weekend, forty of our BAUSYniks are spending the weekend together at Trout Lodge.They will pray and learn on Shabbat, they will eat together and go ziplining, they will stay up late into the night and then ride home on a bus creating memories that will last them for years to come.

Throughout all of BAUSY's programs they weave leadership oppertunitites, Jewish educational experiences, and oppertunitites for living a Jewish life. BAUSY provides our children amazing experiences for today and excellent lessons for them to take with them as they go off to college.

Come join the bunch!

Rosh Pinah Certification

B’nai Amoona is receiving Rosh Pinah Certification on November 1^st.  This is an exciting moment for our congregation. The Rosh Pinah Cornerstone Certification process offers a way for organizations and institutions to meet the requirements of their special needs populations by leading them on a year-long journey to create meaningful, enduring change, producing a truly inclusive community. Certification not only serves those with special needs but also positively impacts the organization as a whole. By making deep, long-lasting change on all levels, we ensure that individuals and families of all abilities are included as integral parts of the Jewish community. B’nai Amoona will be the first organization outside the San Franscisco Bay Area to receive this National Certification.

This past year the inclusion committee and B’nai Amoona staff members have been working on the Rosh Pinah process. Here are some of the things we have accomplished:

·         Creation of an Inclusion Statement

·         Funded and hired an Inclusion coordinator for The Meyer Kranzberg Learning Center

·         Funded and hired an Inclusion coordinator for Camp Ramot Amoona

·         Creation of a second Family Bathroom for  increased accessibility

·         Added electronic door openers in the sanctuary building

·         Hosted special needs professional development for the Meyer Kranberg Learning Center teachers

·         Acquired a portable ramp for B’nai Amoona events that are help off campus

The Rosh Pinah process has also identified the following areas which we are in the process of working on:

·         Creation of  a speakers series targeted at different populations within the synagogue around the theme of inclusion

·         Improved synagogue signage relating to inclusion and access

·         Including the topic of inclusion on the agenda of each synagogue board and committee meeting at least once a year

·         Improved PR: Both telling our story and using inclusive language in synagogue publications, both print and electronic

·         Creation of Inclusion Advisors who help with the planning of synagogue programs

We should all continue to be proud of the on-going work that our community is engaged in, attempting to make everyone who wishes to be part of our community welcome. We still have more work in the area of inclusion but thanks to the dedicated members of our community, we are more inclusive than ever.

My house shall be a house of prayer for all.  Isaiah 56:7

כִּי בֵיתִי בֵּית-תְּפִלָּה יִקָּרֵא לְכָל-הָעַמִּים:

Simchat Torah

Shalom, well we have almost survived another high holiday season. But before it’s all over there is one more holiday to go, Simchat Torah. Simchat Torah (translation = Torah happiness) is the holiday where we celebrate both the ending and the beginning of the Torah’s yearly cycle. A portion of the Torah is read each Shabbat. When the rabbi’s were deciding how to divide the Torah into Parshot (weekly sections) they organized it so that the Torah would be read, in its entirety, each year.

Simchat Torah (Thursday evening)  is also an amazing, kid friendly holiday. We basically throw a big party in the synagogue to honor the Torah. There is singing, dancing, flag waving, candy apples and lots of fun! 

For Simchat Torah we read the very last parsha in the Torah and the very first. The last line says, "Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses - Whom the Lord singled out face to face, for the various signs and portents that the Lord sent him to display in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his courtiers and his whole country, and for all the great might and awesome power that Moses displayed before all Israel" (Deuteronomy 34:7). This leaves us with the word Israel as the last word of the Torah. Israel in Hebrew ends with the letter Lamed (ל).

The first sentence in the Torah is, "When God began to create heaven and earth - the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water - God said, "let there be light"; and there was light " (Genesis 1:1). The first word in Hebrew is Bereshit (In the beginning); Bereshit begins with the Hebrew letter Bet (ב).

So, if you take the last letter of the Torah, the Lamed of Israel and place it next to the first letter of Bereshit, the Bet you have a new word, בל which means heart. One explanation for this is that the words of the Torah are there for us only as words, but they come alive when we add our hearts into the conservation.  

It's not babysitting

So what exactly are our children doing on the high holidays while the adults are in the main sanctuary? 

Over the years we have spent a lot of time considering what our children need to learn about Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We mapped out the major themes and then created a spiral curriculum with learning objectives for each grade level. Many of these goals we return to year after year with increasing sophistication. For example, in Kindergarten we talk about how everyone makes mistakes,that we need to say we are sorry for the things we have done wrong and how Yom Kippur is the day we focus on this. In third grade we discuss how there is atonement between people and atonement between a person and God. And finally in fifth grade we take a look at examples of forgiveness in the Torah. 

We took these educational objectives and created engaging activities for our students. Finally, we pair these activities with an age appropriate service.  So when you pick up your child on the playground at the end of the service, engage them in a conversation about what they did that morning because it was not just babysitting. 

Personal Reflections

Personal Reflection Season

Looking for a new way to do some personal reflection this holiday season? Check out doyou10q.com

How It Works
Each day, from September 24th, a 10Q question will land in your inbox along with a link. When you click on the link, you will be taken to a private and personal space where you can answer the question. Your answer will be stored. The next day, you will receive another question and a link.

And so on, for ten days.

At the end of the ten days, you have a day or so post-Yom Kippur to reflect on your answers. With each question you will decide whether you are happy to share your answers with the 10Q editorial staff and the wider audience, either anonymously or attributed.
You will then be invited to hit the magic button and send your answers to a locked online vault.
Next year, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, your answers will magically appear in your inbox, full of revelations

Purim Carnival

The Purim Carnival is coming up in three weeks… but wait Purim is not until the middle of March. 

Have we completely confused you?  Purim this year is on Saturday night and Sunday, March 15^th & 16^th. We will have a great Purim program that Sunday morning complete with a performance by Circus Harmony! However, it does fall during spring break and many of our teenagers plan to be out of town. Since we pride ourselves on the fact that our teenagers plan and run almost our entire carnival, this year we decided to move the date of the carnival. But why Feb. 23^rd? During the month of Adar it is important to increase our happiness and joy as we lead up to Purim. This year there are two months of Adar, Adar I and Adar II, due to the leap year. So on Feb. 23^rd we will actually be having a Be Happy It’s Adar Carnival! There will be all your favorite Purim games, food, door prizes, music and even a raffle for a new car. 

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the Be Happy It’s Adar Carnival on Feb. 23^rd at 11:30am. 

(We will have regular MKLC classes from 9am-11:30am)

Announing Our 1st Tzedakah Total!

One of my favorite Jewish stories is about an old man who was planting a carob tree one day.  A stranger walked by and asked the man, “Why do you bother to plan this carob tree?  It will take 70 years to grow and bear fruit, do you think you’ll live long enough to see that?”  The old man replies, “Perhaps not. However, when I was born into this world, I found many carob trees planted by my father and grandfather. Just as they planted trees for me, I am planting trees for my children and grandchildren so they will be able to eat the fruit of these trees.” 

This old man realized he played an important role in the world, beyond the immediate he could see in front of him, even beyond what he would see in his lifetime.  At MKLC, we want to empower our students with this same feeling.

One step we’ve taken towards this goal is our new tzedakah program.  We split the year into 4 units. During each unit, the whole school learns about one organization and donates to that organization any tzedakah collected during those weeks.  We just wrapped up our first unit about Mazon: The Jewish Response to Hunger.  We are proud to announce that we raised $296 during this unit. 

Our next unit began this past Sunday and it is for Gateway 180 Homeless Services in St. Louis.  One goal of the tzedakah program is to help students realize the breadth of organizations that exist in our community and help them figure out their personal priorities among the various types. To this end, we chose organizations from 4 broad categories:

1. a national Jewish organization that serves both Jews and non-Jews

2.  a local non-Jewish organization that provides an important service the whole St. Louis area

3. an organization that provides support in Israel

4. a special project to help strengthen B’nai Amoona (our synagogue can only serve others with all these important tikkun olam projects if B’nai Amoona itself is financially stable and our members taken care of)

We look forward to exploring homelessness and the pressing issues facing the entire St. Louis community, Jewish and otherwise, with our students.  We hope during this process, our students will find a personal connection with one of these organizations (or another that speaks to them) and begin to plant their own “carob trees” that will leave a lasting legacy for the future of the Jewish community and St. Louis at large.