About Us, our school, committees, and affiliates
A Message from our President
room. We celebrated our one hundredth anniversary on June first with style: music,
laughter memories, and food. What an amazing and delightful evening it was. We
smiled at the tapestry of our long story in
looking back.
Three days later, we met to look forward. Our June 4 congregational meeting
included a frank discussion of our future and a landmark vote to continue as the
same Shaare Tefilah community, but elsewhere in Norwood. We voted to negotiate
with our new neighbors, the Solomon Schechter Day School, to relocate our
synagogue to their new campus. There were fewer smiles that evening, and they
were bittersweet. One of them was mine -- and let me tell you why.
First, for the bittersweet part: I do love our present building. I love recalling how I came
here in the 80’s and found a second home. This is the physical space I’ve shared with
my Shaare Tefilah family. My children went to Hebrew upstairs. Our sanctuary echoes
for me with countless Shabbat and holiday services, parties, Ken’s and my wedding,
my children’s bar mitzvahs, the comfort of saying Kaddish here, and so much more.
Each of you reading this knows just what I mean, because of your own special
memories here.
Now, for the smiling part: I love Shaare Tefilah more than I love the building. And,
painful as the decision was on June 4, I left that meeting happy and relieved that we
were choosing to stay together as a community, as Shaare Tefilah. We need each
other. We need a place that will be physically accessible to all of us, as we age and
grow wiser but perhaps less nimble! We need visibility in Norwood. We need proximity
to young families and other Jewish community events.
And our community needs us. The diverse Jewish community in our area needs to
see us and understand how our hundred-year history helps anchor newer congregations
by showing them a longer Jewish presence here than they had perhaps realized. Our
Norwood community needs us to revitalize our sense of justice and social responsibility.
Israel needs us to renew our commitment to action. We can pray and celebrate together
wherever we are. But we need to channel our other energies away from material worries
and toward social action, community, and creative programming.
We’re not reinventing ourselves. We’re just shedding a beautiful skin that has served
us wonderfully, for -- keep this in mind -- fewer than half of our one hundred years. And
while our “look” has continued to change since 1908, we remain what we have always been: an ever-evolving community strongly committed to each other, Jewish tradition,
Israel, and our neighbors. Let’s move gracefully together through this transition. Let’s
slip into a skin that fits us now, freeing us to do more.
We are each blessed with a questioning mind and an active imagination. Share Tefilah
needs each of us to use these gifts now. Let’s frame our complaints as proactive
questions, our concerns as imaginative suggestions. “No one will do it,” becomes, “How
can I help?” Let’s each look for opportunities to contribute our insight and experience.
Find a committee on which to serve. Find two. Say ”Yes.”
How fitting that the first year of our new century finds us anything but complacent.
Adrenaline is flowing. It’s an unsettling feeling: a shot in the arm, a kick off the
couch ...... a step into our future.
B’ Shalom,
Carol Turkewitz
presidentTST@norwoodlight. com
United
Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.