“Announcing Our New Sister Congregation on Israel”

On behalf of the ARZA Committee, I am excited to announce that Temple Beth El now has a sister Reform congregation in Israel. The congregation, Kehillat Birkat Shalom, is located on Kibbutz Gezer, located between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

This new relationship is important for a myriad of reasons. First and foremost, we now have a very tangible and direct way to help support the Reform movement in Israel. Reform and Conservative congregations in Israel, unlike Orthodox congregations, do not receive state funding and are thus desperately short of funding. Our relationship with Birkat Shalom will allow us the opportunity to see how our dollars are truly helping Reform Jews in Israel (as opposed to sending our money to an organization and letting them spend it without any specific report to us on how our money is helping those we want to help).

There are many other wonderful advantages to this new relationship. Our Religious School students will be able to interact with Israeli children through various class projects and Internet correspondence. We are looking forward to presenting to each of our children, as they enter sixth grade, a new “friend” in Israel.

Additionally, we look forward in the future to staging a “rabbi-exchange.” Rabbi Miri Gold of Birkat Shalom has agreed to come to Charlotte at some point and serve as a rabbi in our congregation for a week. She will teach, preach, lead services, and be available for all sorts of special Israel related programming while she is in Charlotte. At the same time, one of our rabbis will go to Israel and serve as rabbi at Birkat Shalom for the week. This exchange is a wonderful way for our congregations to bond as sister congregations and to share together our love for Judaism and worldwide Jewry.
Finally, Rabbi Gold will provide updates on her congregation and on the situation in Israel through articles that she will submit to our Voice. Likewise, our clergy will send articles to Birkat Shalom for use in their newsletter.

We are very excited to be joining with Birkat Shalom and providing our congregation with an immediate contact and friend in the land of Israel. On our congregational trip to Israel at the end of February, we will be visiting Birkat Shalom as part of our itinerary. We are certainly honored and excited to make “first contact” with our new friends.

In the future, you will be offered many opportunities to support Birkat Shalom, to interact with their members, and to help them with their mission of bringing Reform Judaism to the people of Israel.
May this new year be a happy and sweet new year for us and for our brothers and sisters in Israel.

L’Shalom,
Jeremy Barras