By now you have received a full schedule of adult education classes and opportunities for our "Spring Semester." A list of approaching sessions is included in this issue of Temple Talk. I urge you to join us for these events, and to continue the life-long process of grappling with our history and tradition, and learning more of its beauty and wisdom.
Our "Fall Semester" of adult study featured our first "Mini-Tikkun" - a "marathon" of lectures and presentations on a variety of topics of Jewish concern. A very special THANK YOU goes to LNJC members Herb Launer and Peter & Eva Kessner, who "headlined" the Mini-Tikkun with moving and passionate presentations on the Jewish past, present, and future! Thank you also to Rabbi Cooper, Cantor Raber, and Dr. Ora Horn Prouser, who brought their usual expertise and professionalism to the proceedings. Rabbi Cooper, LNJC Educational Director, has already recruited Herb for a lecture at his home congregation - he knows a valuable educational opportunity when he sees one!! I hope you will have the same kind of "vision" and make full use of the classes, workshops, and lectures scheduled at LNJC in the coming months.
On a different matter: LNJC's regularly scheduled religious services include weekly Shabbat services Friday evening, Saturday morning, and Saturday Mincha ("afternoon" services - in the Spring & Summer, actually, early evening), as well as a Sunday morning minyan. A group of LNJC members have valiantly struggled to maintain weekday morning minyans each Monday and Wednesday at 6:30 a.m. These early morning services have unfortunately - and I hope just temporarily - been suspended, due to the frequent lack of a minyan. I have always found it fascinating that a minyan is ten worshipers - whether the community is of ten families or a thousand families!! A communal service with ten participants is a minimum standard. and a communal obligation, allowing for a fuller worship experience, a greater sense of community, welcoming of guests, and, of course, recitation of Mourner's Kaddish. Just as we as individuals have PERSONAL obligations, we as a congregation have a COMMUNAL obligation to fulfill - which we can only fulfill TOGETHER: the communal obligation to provide for PUBLIC PRAYER - prayer in the company of a minyan. Obviously, not everyone can participate each and every Monday AND Wednesday at 6:30 a.m. (Where would we put everyone?!?!?) Far more of us, however, have the ability to participate OCCASIONALLY in morning minyan so that we AS A CONGREGATION can fulfill or COMMUNAL OBLIGATION. One Monday a month? Two Wednesdays a month? One full week of attendance each month? One full week of attendance every other month.?? A cadre of scheduled "intermittent" participants - added to those individuals prepared to attend minyan on a regular basis - will change the nature of LNJC's religious life!! PLEASE do YOUR part. so that WE ALL can do OUR SHARED PART. Contact me directly: jprouser@aol.com, or at the LNJC Office: (718) 224-0404.
Professor Rabbi Louis Finkelstein is often quoted as saying: "When I
pray, I speak to God. When I study, God speaks to me." Through both
continuing adult study and communal worship at LNJC, I wish you many moving
conversations!!
Rabbi Joseph Prouser
rabbi@lnjc.org