CELEBRATE TORAH!
Friday, October 10th at NSCI
The NSCI community is warmly invited to dedicate our brand new Torah scroll. Bring the whole family for this once-in-a-generation event!
TORAH TOT SHABBAT
4:30 pm
Celebrate Simchat Torah with a Torah-themed Tot Shabbat! Come see what a Torah looks like and enjoy crafts and songs. Stick around after the Tot program for an NSCI community pizza dinner at 5:30 pm.
TORAH FEST: DEDICATION & CELEBRATION
5:00 pm
Be part of NSCI history and witness our soferet scribing the final words of our Torah scroll. Stay for a celebratory pizza dinner followed by a special Shabbat and Simchat Torah service in which we will chant from and dedicate our new Torah scroll. The entire congregation will be invited to participate in a group aliyah and to chant together the very beginning of Bereishit, the Book of Genesis. We’ll conclude the evening with a festive oneg with taffy apples.
Doors open at 4:45 pm. Please note the program will begin at 5:00 pm sharp.
5:00 pm: Witness the final words of our Torah being written
5:30 pm: Pizza Dinner
6:15 pm: Shabbat Simchat Torah Service & Torah Dedication
7:30 pm: Festive Oneg with Taffy Apples
Registration is required for the pizza dinner.
Check out the video below to see soferet (scribe) Linda B. Coppleson writing the first word of the Torah alongside consecration and thanking the Goodman Center for Jewish Education’s Machoniks and teachers. Stay tuned for new opportunities to engage with Torah.
TORAH IS FOR ALL OF US
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The experience was so moving. It was quiet and I was able to reflect as the scribe wrote in our Torah. As I pass the Torah onto my children and grandchildren I know la-dor va-dor is scribed in the Torah of my family. I dedicated this in memory of my parents. Watching this there was a connection to NSCI as this will be here forever. May this new Torah bring peace. |
This is just one of many meaningful congregant reflections after accompanying our scribe in writing NSCI’s new Torah scroll. Letter by Letter is a chance for every member of our NSCI community to learn, grow, and connect to the Torah. Over the course of the project, there will be many ways to embrace and deepen your relationship with the Torah. Please know that helping to write a letter is for everyone. Join us!
“Each of us recognizes that the Torah is not just an ancient relic of history, but rather the living thread connecting the entirety of the Jewish people and those who love them through space and time. … By helping to write a letter of Torah, we will bring ourselves to the Torah and in doing so, bring the Torah to the next generation and
even the next century of our congregation.”
—Rabbi Wendi Geffen
“Our tradition speaks of Torah being ‘black fire on white fire.’ The black fire represents the letters themselves and the white fire represents all the space in and around the letters. One way to think about this tradition is that Torah and its ongoing revelation relies on the engagement of each of us adding to the collective understanding of the text through our individual letters, words, paragraphs, and stories. We might never understand all of Torah, but we certainly can bring our whole selves to it.”
—Cantor David Goldstein
"When we bring our lives to Torah and Torah to our lives, we deepen the meaning of our sacred story and connectedness to the generations that came before us."
—Rabbi Lisa Greene
“It is an extraordinary privilege to be a part of the new Torah project at NSCI. Some of my most cherished moments have been around the Torah: chanting from Torah the Shabbat before my wedding, giving Torah blessing honors to my family, and becoming a rabbi before the open ark. I am so excited to help foster these and other formative sacred moments in this community, especially with the new Torah, letter by letter, word by word, verse by verse, and beyond.”
—Rabbi Jacob Leizman
