April Birthdays
4/6 Wills Lyon
4/8 Aviva Halley
4/9 Nancy Kleinfeld
4/9 Nancy Lyon
4/11 Sandy Nabow
4/17 Karen Greenberg
4/18 Rob Axelrod
4/20 Roger Fuller
4/21 Beth Blumenfeld
4/23 Jori Falcon
4/23 Leah Keen
4/29 Olivia Russell
4/6 Wills Lyon
4/8 Aviva Halley
4/9 Nancy Kleinfeld
4/9 Nancy Lyon
4/11 Sandy Nabow
4/17 Karen Greenberg
4/18 Rob Axelrod
4/20 Roger Fuller
4/21 Beth Blumenfeld
4/23 Jori Falcon
4/23 Leah Keen
4/29 Olivia Russell
4/1 Louis Blumenfeld
4/1 Fannie A. Levin
4/1 Israel Margolis
4/1 Henry Vogelstein
4/2 Elsie Smith
4/3 Anna P. Reichel
4/4 Sylvia S. Cooper
4/4 Blanche Lyon
4/5 Harry Packer
4/6 Samuel Lazarowitz
4/7 Aladar Hirschler
4/8 Helen Levenson
4/9 Nancy Geller
4/9 Samuel Packer
4/9 Mary Vogelstein
4/12 Jack Minsky
4/16 William M. Price
4/17 Sandra Greenfield
4/17 Bella Rabinowitz
4/17 Kurt A. Stern
4/18 Morton Mooney
4/18 Anne Schultz
4/18 Marvin Sperling
4/19 Irving Unger
4/20 Moshe Stemberg
4/21 Goldie Stemberg
4/22 Abraham Moglin
4/27 Mary L. Busch
4/28 Murray Aronson
4/28 Eunice Sperling
4/30 Marion Feinstein
From April 2018 Mensch of the Month:
Nancy Rosenberg has been a familiar face in synagogue activities since she was 3 months old. Her parents, Seymour and Linda Rosenberg relocated from Niagara Falls, N.Y. to Spartanburg, S.C. for work, an active life within Congregation B’nai Israel, and to raise their four children.
For Nancy, childhood in the congregation meant growing up in “one big family.” Adults were called “aunt and uncle.” Her friends from the synagogue were also her friends at school and in social events. The Synagogue was the center of both religious and social life. Nancy remembers how well-attended services were and very large Onegs.
One of the happiest and proudest moments in Nancy’s life was her Bat Mitzvah. She conducted Friday night service and chanted her Haftarah.
As an adult, Nancy enjoys being involved. She serves on the care committee with Sandy Smiley.
Her participation includes visiting people in their homes bringing candy and baked goods to brighten their day. Nancy has served in sisterhood activities throughout her adult life and is past president of our local chapter of Hadassah. Her lemon and almond pound cakes are famous sellers at the Sis- terhood Annual Bake Sale for which Nancy bakes 12.
Judaism with its prayers, customs and traditions means continuity for Nancy. The continuity brings her a great deal of comfort in her spirituality as well as reaffirmation in life.
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, an 1887 painting by Viktor Vasnetsov. From left to right are Death, Famine, War, & Conquest; the Lamb is at the top.
Dear Friends,
Spoiler Alert! While I am a fan of M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, The Village etc.) I cannot in good religious conscience recommend his latest offering Knock on the Cabin. Not for the weak of heart, its violence is over the top! But what really puts me off is its theology. Yes, theology! A brief summation. Two married men have adopted an Asian baby. Four strangers arrive, break into the cabin bearing weaponry out of the dark ages. This is the least violent of the violent scenes to follow. They claim to have a common vision of the apocalypse and inform the captured and bound family that one of them needs to choose to die as a sacrifice to avoid world wide annihilation of humanity. One by one the four invaders take their own lives and as each self-sacrifice occurs a series of predicted plagues accost the planet and its humanity.
The sympathetic viewers are inclined to accept the captured family’s view that their captors are deranged. Spoiler Alert! They are not! They present the Christian four horseman so described by John in his book of revelations. Ripe for interpretation, some thought they represented Christ while others saw them as harbingers of the last judgement and the coming of the Anti-Christ. Are you put off yet? You should be!
There is a thread of Christian theology that has run rampant in the media. It is one of sacrifice, the view that for some good to occur someone must die. One can readily understand that their paradigm is based on the central drama of Christianity’s passion narrative in which Jesus’s death is a necessary key to individual redemption from sin. While our ancient history did provide for animal sacrifice as a means for atonement, human sacrifice was verboten.
Another annoying aspect of the film which Judaism ever so slightly embraced in the past is this predestination view of an apocalypse. We have more positively imagined a golden messianic age and jettisoned whatever apocalyptic anticipations were once entertained. The atavistic view of God as a puppeteer does not prevent some of our more traditional brethren from embracing such intolerable views. One Haredi rabbi in Israel commented that the recent earthquake that afflicted the Syrians in the North and the citizens of Turkey in the south was God’s way of punishing Israel’s foes. Such pernicious thinking is not only bothersome and antiquated, but cruel when I consider such theology justifies little children being buried alive for days. The hell with that! Our Jewish community can claim no full immunity to such thinking. One Jewish historian of great merit once commented in a lecture “We thank the six million for their sacrifice, so that Israel could come into being!” We must clearly assert that those six million were not offering their lives as sacrifice, their lives were snuffed out. Nor should any such horrors of the Holocaust be used to support any justification! Such a view is deeply repugnant to Judaism’s regard for every human life.
Christian theology tends to influence so much of our culture. And I am most concerned that so many of us are unable or disinterested in articulating better and more sensible theologies. We have a Spinoza and his naturalistic views. Buber and his profound philosophical offerings. Richard Rubenstein author of After Auschwitz and his evolving Jewish theologies. So many of us do not know how to fend off such thinking such as when a former president had the audacity to appeal to evangelicals by boasting he was the “Chosen
One!” Really? Jews could and should draw deeply from their heritage which contends with demagoguery and false messianic claims. God bless America! It is a land wherein we have the freedom of religion that tolerates various forms of religion some bordering on the cultic. But there is no shame, nay there should be pride in articulating our own faith’s views, even if they differ from that of the majority. Hanukkah was a rebellion against embracing the Greek obsession with externals and opulence. We Jews looked for the eternals not the externals. We built synagogues places of study, worship and charity and not museums that would only worship the past. “look not at the container but what is contained therein!” so we read in Pirke Avot the Ethics of our an- cestors. In our hope for acceptance we often go overboard in diminishing those aspects of our heritage that do not concur with other faiths, for fear of non-acceptance. Years ago, one rabbi bravely wrote a book which was widely celebrated Where Judaism differed! I wonder if it would be so embraced today!
Rabbi Yossi J. Liebowitz D.D.
Dear Congregation B’nai Israel Family,
The wonderful spring weather during the end of February made me yearn for spring much earlier than usual. I am excited for the arrival of March because spring officially begins this month. I love the renewal of spring, the budding of trees and blooming of beautiful flowers.
March at our Temple brings Purim the 6th and the 7th. Please see the Temple Topics calendar for events throughout the month.
Daylight Saving Time begins on March 12, so remember to spring your clocks forward! I enjoy the days becoming longer as we approach the summer solstice.
the main building has been completed. The cost was approximately $83,000.00. A few generous donations from Temple members, our Temple’s Endowment and our Temple’s Sisterhood provided the money to pay for the project in full. Thank you to all who helped make Phase One of the roof replacement possible.
Phase Two of our roof replacement project will need to begin in the next couple of years. This phase of the roof project is much needed and will replace the roof on the Sunday School building. The cost of this phase is estimated to be approximately $60,000.00.
We need to raise the remaining balance of the money for Phase Two of the roof project before we begin. If you have not already donated towards the roof project, please consider donating today towards this very important maintenance project. Any amount is greatly appreciated.
If you would like to donate to the roof project, please indicate on the memo line of your check to our Temple “Roof Project”.
Wishing you a wonderful March and an early spring!
Tina Lyon President
Wishing you well, those of you are under the weather or in need of healing. We have on our list at the time of this printing:
Nancy Rosenberg Mindy Slotin
We endeavor to update the list prior to Friday services. If you would like to add someone to the list, please call prior to Friday on the week you would like for them to be listed.
Generally, we leave everyone on the list for 30 days unless otherwise notified.
“May the One who blessed our ancestors —
Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
Matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah —
bless and heal the one who is ill.
May the Holy Blessed One
overflow with compassion upon him/her,
to restore him/her,
to heal him/her,
to strengthen him/her,
to enliven him/her.
The One will send him/her, speedily,
a complete healing —
healing of the soul and healing of the body —
along with all the ill,
among the people of Israel and all humankind,
soon, speedily, without delay, and let us all say: Amen!
3/3 Sarah Halley
3/7 Stanley Friedman
3/10 Ruth Friedberg
3/13 Keith Bell
3/14 David Lyon
3/25 Karen Fuller
3/26 Arielle Wilson
3/28 Forest Graff
3/28 Anne Poliakoff
3/29 Margaret Freedman
3/29 Lexi Lyon
3/30 Debbie Gordin