September 2024
Dear Neighbors & Friends, Newcomers & Long-Timers,
The RIJC invites you to join us for the start of this New Year, our first Shabbat with our new Spiritual Leader, and for our High Holidays, with our visiting Rabbi from the Pacific Coast and our returning Cantor. Your presence will help us fulfill our long tradition of observing services and celebrating the Holidays as a community. This year we are excited to share what’s new about the coming days, months and year ahead.
Just in case you don’t know us or would appreciate a refresher, the RIJC is a neighborhood congregation, small enough to know one another personally, which makes our community very friendly and caring. We welcome everyone who wishes to become members - as individuals, couples, or families - and we represent a wide diversity of backgrounds, cultures, knowledge and especially opinions. We do not belong to any specific movement or sect but we are an inclusive community with egalitarian participation.
We will start this New Year with something & someone new. We are joined by Cantor Sarah Myerson, a fellow New Yorker & Brooklynite as our Spiritual Leader, invested by the Jewish Theological Seminary & commissioned by the Cantors Assembly. She is a skilled and talented musician & brings to the RIJC a joyful revival of Jewish liturgy through song. She will lead our first Friday night service on September 13th. We will learn new melodies to traditional lyrics, and fresh perspectives on our traditional texts.
Cantor Myerson cannot join us for our High Holidays this year. We are, however, very fortunate to have a guest Rabbi, Marna Sapsowitz, of Olympia, Washington join us. Rabbi Sapsowitz has a long & varied resume, including a few Island-based pulpits in Hawaii and St. Croix. She comes to us via RIJC members Angela Santamaria & Howard Schwartz, who’ve known her for over 30 years. Rabbi S will be joined by our returning Cantor from last year, Sandra Goodman. These will be very compelling HHDs, with Rabbi Sapsowitz bringing her West Coast & Islands experiences East, and Cantor Goodman bringing her impressive musical training back to us. We appreciate all that our HHD leaders bring to and elevate our services out of the ordinary into traditions specific to this time of the year.
This is also the time to particularly remember those who are no longer with us. Please let us know if there is anyone whose name you’d like included on our days of remembrance; their names will be read.
Whether you are returning to your RIJC home, or are joining us for the first time, we are happy to welcome you to all our upcoming gatherings — Shabbats and High Holidays, festivals and observances, Hebrew School & Song Circles, and more.
Wishing all of you a healthy, happy Shana Tovah.
Nina Lublin, President
212-688-0003 / ninalublin1@gmail.com / RIJC.org