Dear TBS Friends and Family,

Over the past 6 weeks, our production team at TBS has been working tirelessly at enhancing our High Holiday Services with good audio quality, good video quality, and exhausting preparations. Taking our different voices through microphones to our mic mixer is one thing. Bringing the sound of piano, guitar, rabbi and cantorial soloist through the mixer to the laptop through the ever changing Zoom software has been complex, but seems to be completed.

I wanted to give a huge shout-out and thank you to Eric Chupack and Laurie Frankino who will be functioning as our Zoom stage managers this year. Your dedication and perseverance have been invaluable this summer! I also want to thank Jean Rhodes, Robin Selinger, and Marcy Caplin for assisting with this important effort each week as we have done our sound checks.

Despite our best efforts and intentions, there will be snafus. No wedding ceremony goes off without a glitch and no High Holiday Service will either. So please try and arrive early to get situated in the zoom room with your machzor or flipbook at the ready. Let’s try and be patient as we see technological glitches. Please remember we are all newcomers to this streaming environment, and we are going to be making mistakes as we go.

Presence in Zoom settings can be difficult as well. Take breaks as needed. Do what you can to make this Rosh Hashanah meaningful.

Let’s all enjoy this spiritual “reset” as a time to refocus ourselves and begin to become our best selves.

Journaling as a Spiritual Tool

Friday night, I will be speaking about journaling to access our inner voice. I call this type of writing, postcards from the Soul. Here are the writing prompts I will be exploring Friday night. You could take one set of questions each night before Yom Kippur to focus inspire your journaling.

1. How is your physical self doing during the past 6 months of quarantine life?
   How is your physical body doing tonight at the threshold of this new year?
   How can you imagine improving your physical wellness this year?
2. How has your emotional self been during the past 6 months?
   Is your heart open on this threshold of the new year?
   How can you imagine being more compassionate in this year?
3. What have you learned about your life during the past 6 months?
   How are you understanding this new learning tonight?
   How can you imagine learning new ideas to broaden your perspective this year?
4. How has your soul been doing the past 6 months?
   Are you present to your soul tonight?
   How might you try and be more present with the needs of your soul this year?

Additionally, I will be holding a special pre-Yom Kippur Journaling Session next Saturday, 9/27 at 9:30 a.m. We will study Kol Nidre and then do a bit of writing together.

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UPCOMING TBS ZOOM GATHERINGS

Sun. 9/20 9 am: Rosh Hashanah Family Gathering – our religious school families will join together for a special Rosh Hashanah celebration!
Sat. 9/28, 9:30 am: Special Torah Study – Yom Kippur Liturgy and Journaling

September 14, 2020

Dear TBS Friends and Family,

This year our High Holidays at TBS will be different. Most of us will be celebrating these important days from our own homes. How can we transform our homes and our families to make this time special, holy, and meaningful? Below is a number of suggestions that we can use to beautify our spaces and feel like we have a chance to truly inhabit the sacredness of these times.

Wear Something Special

• Dress up: Many of us have been living in sweats and t-shirts. Let’s dress up and feel like we look our best!
• Some wear white: It’s traditional to wear white, the color of holiness for the High Holidays.
• Buy a new article of clothing: As we enter the new year, just like we bought our kids new school clothes, we can find something new to wear as well.
• Kippah & Tallit: Experiment with Jewish prayer garb. It can make it feel like we are at TBS.

Beautify Your Home

• Think about your spaces: Where will you put your laptop, or pc, or phone, or TV? Can you place some items nearby that speak to you: flowers, pictures, candlesticks, kiddush cups?
• Buy two holiday bouquets of flowers: One for your dinner table and one for your special space.
• Clean up beforehand: We are calmer, happier when we are in tidy settings.
• Bring out the china: If you have fancy dinnerware, now’s the time to use it.
• Use tablecloths: to dress the table and your space.

Enjoy Special Festival Foods

• Prepare a feast: For those of us raised with rich family traditions, there’s special foods that mark the holidays. If you can’t prep themselves, can you buy them from someone? (i.e. Every year, I make a special trip to Trader Joe’s to buy a chocolate babka.)
• Try something new: There’s a Sephardi tradition to say a blessing over new foods like exotic, rare fruits.

Do the Rituals in Your Home

• Light the Holiday/Shabbat Candles with us
• Find a lovely Kiddush cup
• Buy or bake a round challah, with or without raisins: the symbol of returning and the cycle of the year. (Whole Foods and BJs are loaded.)
• Eat Apples and Honey
• Sing together at services: Try to sing with us even when you are on mute. I notice when Rachel sings with me during Zoom services I feel like I am in a group. We sing out loud together even when we are on mute.
• Try using a prayer book instead of a screen: this helps limit Zoom fatigue.

Journal Writing

• Free Writing: Find some time during the 10 days from Rosh to Hashanah to Yom Kippur. I will be giving us special writing prompts at our Friday Erev Rosh Hashanah Service.

Get Outside With Your Family

• Find a local body of water: stream, creek, pond or lake to toss some breadcrumbs and let go of different actions that you don’t want to repeat. It can be a special family time. This ritual can be done anytime between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
• Visit the Cemetery: there’s a tradition to visit our family members during this season.
• Go on a hike or walk: Many of us find renewal and connection in nature. Nourish yourself this year.

Dear TBS Members,

The Zoom access code for our online High Holy Day services is being sent in a separate message to all members who have made full or partial payment of their dues. It will not be sent in the e-Megillah or posted on our website. If you have not yet made a full or partial payment, please do so at your earliest convenience, and we will send you the Zoom access information. (If you need help with installing and using Zoom, we will help you with that also.)

If you are not able to pay the full dues, we still want and value you as member! Our Temple’s policy always has been and will be: No one is ever turned away because they are unable to pay. Please feel free to contact Laurie Frankino (lfrankino@gmail.com) or myself (jvselinger@gmail.com) for a confidential discussion about an adjustment, and we will send you the Zoom access information.

If you are not a member of Temple Beth Shalom, but would like to join us for our High Holy Day services, we welcome you! Please contact Amy McCormick, who is managing our guest list, for information about how to access our zoom services. She can be contacted at membership@tbshudson.org. In your e-mail please include your e-mail address and also a phone number so we can reach you easily.

With best wishes for a better year ahead,

Jonathan Selinger
Co-President

All services will originate from the temple using Zoom

As you have read in the past few e-megillahs, TBS is introducing the new machzorim – Mishkan Hanefesh for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. You have three options to obtain the new prayer book.

1. Purchase the 2 book set on-line at the discounted price of $33.60 per set through CCAR Press https://www.ccarpress.org/shopping_product_detail.asp?pid=50288
2. Use the flip-book copy available online at no cost to you. The flip-book works best when you use two screens – one to view the flip-book and one to view Rabbi, Robin and other service participants on Zoom.
3. TBS purchased 50 sets of the new prayer books intended to be used for services in the sanctuary. Since all services will be via Zoom, we are making these new prayer books available for our congregants to borrow for the holiday season at no cost to you.

Procedure to borrow prayer books

1. E-mail Beth Madis madisb@gmail.com 330-606-4424
2. Advise her how many books you will need for your family
3. Set a day and time to pick up your books at Beth’s home in Hudson (320 Atterbury Blvd, Hudson)
4. Laurie Frankino is handling books for congregants who live in west Akron.
5. If it is too difficult for you to pick up books, advise Beth and a TBS volunteer will deliver them to your home.
6. Books will be returned to TBS after Yom Kippur.