We did interesting outreach last Sunday when FPS was represented at the AJEX Remembrance March 2019, as the photo of Melvyn Newman and Stanley Volk shows. We were also volunteering in Highgate Cemetery planting bulbs on rather ancient graves, creating eco bricks and then joining the Somali Bravanese Welfare Association in their new building on Tarling Road.
A modest crew attended MITZVAH DAY from our synagogue, perhaps because we are engaged in reaching out to the wider community all year. It's of interest nonetheless and Zoe and I will explore this to understand better, all the time, what our community wants to be doing.
This Shabbat our member Richard Greene will read from the portion Chayyei Sarah when Sarah dies and Isaac is comforted after the death of his mother. Zoe and I will be away for the weekend taking our Kabbalat Torah class to Amsterdam; this year our class is so big, 12 children and 10 travelling, that we are not combining with another synagogue. Our young people have been studying this term in our new course, Rabbi Harry Jacobi Memorial Project, where they are learning about the Holocaust and framing it around Harry’s own journey. Amsterdam will be a culmination of their learning; and we’ll be visiting where he lived in the orphanage in Dam Square.
Some of you will have joined us on Tuesday for our conversation with Mike Freer MP and Ross Houston, the Labour Party candidate for Finchley & Golders Green, has confirmed he will come at 8.00 pm on Tuesday 3 December and told me he was keen to discuss ‘everything' (candidates have full schedules and we are taking the dates they have available!).
Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Rebecca