Temple B'nai Brith Open House Weekend: September 20th and 21st

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

As Jewish holiday season rolls around and the school year starts, some people might be looking for
Jewish connections this time of year.  Here's an announcement for an open house at Temple B'nai Brith on Winter Hill
in Somerville.

Looking for a vibrant, egalitarian, and welcoming Jewish community?
Temple B'nai Brith is an independent Jewish congregation serving
Somerville and surrounding communities for over 100 years. We offer
regular Shabbat and alternative worship services, High Holiday
services, and other Jewish holiday services; non-members are welcome!

We will hold an open house weekend on Saturday, September 20th
(10:00am-1:00pm) and Sunday, 21st (11:00am-1:00pm).

On September 20th, you can meet members, visit our Shabbat services,
and attend a special kiddush afterwards. On September 21st, you can
meet congregants, enjoy a light brunch, join the Children's School for
its short concluding service at 11:45, and meet our school staff. TBB
is located at 201 Central St, in Somerville, just off Broadway in
Winter Hill.

Full disclosure:   I'm a member of TBB, and I'm on the board of directors and a co-chair of the Membership Committee.
I've been a member of TBB since sometime after I moved to Somerville, and really like the place!  I'll be at the open house, and otherwise can occasionally be found at Shabbat services, other holiday services, or various programs that catch my interest.
Feel free to ask me more about Temple B'nai Brith!

edit: oh yeah, www.templebnaibrith.org is our website.

Comments

[closetalker11.livejournal.com]

A quick question: are y'all a more "reform" type synagogue, or more conservative? Should I just message you with this stuff?

[ron_newman]

I'm a member of this shul. It was historically affiliated with the Conservative movement, but hasn't been in several decades. Still, I'd say that the style of worship is closer to Conservative than to Reform. We don't have a choir or an organ, for instance, and the prayer books we use come from the Conservative movement.

[closetalker11.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Ron. I still may check it out. I'd love to ideally find a reform temple I like, but most I've found are either too big, or out in the burbs and difficult for me to travel to.

[ron_newman]

You may also want to check out Havurat Shalom on College Ave.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you've tried them already, but the closest reform temple I know of is Beth El Temple Center in Belmont. They're at 2 Concord Ave in Belmont, and there are several buses that go there from Harvard Square. I prefer Havurat Shalom these days, but Beth El seems like a friendly version of the kind of reform temple my parents belonged to when I was a kid.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

It's more complicated than that. "independent" is the word used up above.
Like Ron says, it was Conservative, up until around the 1980s, I think.

The services, on high holidays or Saturday mornings, are typically are the lots-of-hebrew, fairly long and traditional kind (egalitarian, though everyone participates equally) - though we're working on a new Friday evening service that will start up in November that will probably be a lot shorter.

The attitude is more what you might expect from a Reform synagogue, though - or perhaps from a socially and politically liberal part of Somerville in general. I've never felt people though it was odd that I don't keep kosher, don't know a lot about traditional practice, drive on Shabbat, am married to a Catholic, etc. (Similarly, I don't find it odd if I offer someone a ride home on a holiday and they say they'd rather walk, or that I can't invite some of the kosher-keeping people to my house for dinner.)

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Or Reconstructionist? Which would be awesome. Or something else?

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

"something else" that isn't willing to try to stick one label from one major movement of Judaism is more like who we are.

If you think reconstructionist would be awesome, you probably want to at least check out both TBB and Havurat Shalom, both of whom have no official label, but one or the other might resonate well with what you're looking for.

our alternative minyan that meets one saturday a month might be particularly interesting to you. I don't know a lot about the reconstructionist movement, but I know that every single reading from a reconstructionist haggadah I looked at one passover resonated with me, in a similar way as most of the teachings on Torah that I've learned from people at TBB have.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

*nod* Thanks! I find most people don't mesh 100% with any one label, but that doesn't mean shorthands aren't useful for communicating information without getting into every little details, even if it's just a "none of them, really, but closest to Foo/Bar".

I have been to the Hav, a very nice place and conveniently located, who may not sum up in a single word (or even several), but they do have a website with many words to help get the point across. :)

I will see if I can motivate myself to bike up Winter Hill on a Saturday morning!

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

in one word (ok, many, but to use those one word labels), I'd probably say services: (the regular ones, not the alternative minyan): conservadox
people: ranging from reform to reconstructionist to orthodox
politics: closest to reconstructionist

and purposely independent because we like to span all of those ranges

if that helps any?

the website (www.templebnaibrith.org) will tell you which services are when:
http://www.templebnaibrith.org/shabbatservices.html

(oh, and all of this is my own perspective, of course - the first announcement is how TBB would more officially describe itself)

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

It just occured to me that high holidays are less than a month away! How packed to HH services get around here?

[wallacestreet.livejournal.com]

Rosh Hashanah first day morning service, Kol Nidre, and to a lesser extent Yom Kippur morning service are reasonably full at TBB, but you should be able to get a seat in the balcony at least. Other services are no problem at all. The sanctuary is big and beautiful.

[ron_newman]

Havurat Shalom really stuffs people in ... they won't turn you away, but it can get crowded and uncomfortable at times.

[bobobb.livejournal.com]

What is the role of women in your temple? I have shied away from joining a temple in my adulthood due to the way women and girls were treated in my reform temple growing up. I have passed by your temple however and have been interested....

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

Women and men participate equally in everything at TBB - leading services, being called to the torah, etc. When appropriate prayers that reference forefathers in the traditional verses reference forefathers and foremothers.

(that shouldn't be dramatically different from the reform movement in practice, though, as far as i know - women have been rabbis and cantors for quite some time in reform temples; 13 year old girls did the same at their bat mitzvah as 13 year old boys did at their bar mitzvah in the 1980's in my experience, though...)

[bobobb.livejournal.com]

That's true, I had a bat mitzvah, but at the end of the day I felt like the greatest contribution I could give to my people was to bear jewish boys. If you're temple is different however, I'll come and check it out.

Thanks!

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

yeah, that sounds like more of a social message than a ritual significants thing. I don't think that's the social message we send to girls growing up or to adult women, and we make a pretty strong effort not to. On the other hand, I may be kind of deaf to those "girls don't do that" messages, having not noticed anyone telling me I shouldn't become an engineer or that math and science should be hard for me.

[ron_newman]

The roles of women and men at Temple B'nai Brith are entirely indistinguishable. At least that's how we try to do things.