Shavua tov! Looking forward to Shabbat Sh’mot at CBI – and, some dates to save!

Shavua tov: a good new week to all. And happy 2021!

Happening This Week

Join us in the CBI Zoom room at 7:30pm on Friday night for our first Friday Night Zoom Shabbat Dinner (At Home):

Many of us are feeling disconnected or lonely during this pandemic winter. So we’re starting a monthly Shabbat dinner gathering over Zoom, intended to connect us with each other and with our community. Whether you’re brand-new to CBI or your family’s been here for generations, join us, meet each other, chat and schmooze, and enjoy Shabbat dinner together from all the places where we are!

Read more about it here on Facebook. All are welcome! Have your own meal on hand. And if you can rustle up candles, juice or wine, and bread or challah, we’ll begin by blessing them together.

join us also in the CBI Zoom Room also on Saturday morning at 9:30am for Shabbat morning services, led by R’ Jarah Greenfield.

Torah Portion and Commentaries

This week we’re reading from parashat Shemot. If you’d like to read some commentaries on this week’s parsha, here are a few:

And here’s commentary from the URJ:

Save the Dates

Don’t miss a special Zoom speaker event with Rabbi Laura Duhan-Kaplan at 8pm on January 13 on The Infinity Inside:

Join us on Zoom for a conversation with Rabbi Laura Duhan-Kaplan. Rabbi Laura is a spiritual teacher, professor, and writer. Her studies of world traditions have helped her understand what is both unique and universal about Judaism. As a teacher, she brings big concepts to life with personal experience. Rabbi Laura lives in Vancouver, Canada, where she is Director of Inter-religious Studies at the Vancouver School of Theology and Rabbi Emerita of Or Shalom Synagogue. She shares a home with her husband and musical partner Charles, their young adult children, and a changing array of companion animals. She blogs at www.sophiastreet.com.

And save the date also for two Tu BiShvat celebrations the weekend of January 30 — an outdoors and socially distanced Tu BiShvat walk at Stone Hill at 10am on Saturday January 30, and a Tu BiShvat seder on Zoom with two other small communities at 4pm on Sunday January 31:

We’ll meet at 10am on Saturday, January 30, in the parking lot at the Clark Art Institute. We’ll take a (masked, socially distanced) gentle contemplative walk up Stone Hill — learning a bit about local trees as we go — and at the top of the hill, we’ll toast to the health of the trees, with etrog spirits or citrus fizzy water!

JOur Zoom seder at 4pm on Sunday, January 31, will take us through the four seasons and the Four Worlds, experienced through the theme of hitkashrut, interconnection — enlivening our connections with each other, with our traditions, and our source. A joint offering between Congregation Beth Israel and Temple Beth-El of City Island. Zoom login information will not be publicly posted but will be available in each congregation’s e-newsletter.

Hope to see you soon on Zoom at CBI.

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