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Click here to read (and hear) the Torah blessings.
This week's Torah portion is Parashat Emor. Havdalah starts 42 minutes after sundown, at 8:51 pm on Saturday, May 10. Courtesy of hebcal.com |
Candle lighting is at 7:50 pm on Friday, May 9.
 The Associated recently featured an article about Beth Am's Social Action activities on their website. Click here to learn more. The Social Action Committee offers opportunities for Beth Am members to practice tikkun olam (healing, repairing the world) at varying levels of intensity, from once-a-year Mitzvah Days to monthly neighborhood meetings and weekly tutoring. The main focus of our activities is the diverse and historic Reservoir Hill neighborhood immediately surrounding the synagogue. As members of an urban congregation whose building has been an important part of the neighborhood for more than 80 years, the Social Action Committee acts as an outreach arm of Beth Am. We believe the well-being of Reservoir Hill and the well-being of Beth Am Synagogue are closely connected. Since the early 1990s, the Social Action Committee has helped the Reservoir Hill Improvement Council offer entrepreneurship training, obtain grant support for a community organizer, and beautify the neighborhood with colorful flags and flowers. Social Action members tutor children at the local public elementary school and mentor older children through a dynamic neighborhood-based nonprofit organization, Kids on the Hill. We have celebrated the deep past, at Interfaith Seders that draw on Jewish and African-American culture, history and music. We have explored the neighborhood's 20th century history at a gathering of former and current Reservoir Hill residents. More recently, residents of the blocks closest to the synagogue joined Social Action members to create a new organization, the Lakeside Neighbors Coalition. In collaboration with the Improvement Council and city government, Lakeside Neighbors has played a vital part in the revitalization of northern Reservoir Hill. Recently it has begun purchasing, rehabbing and reselling abandoned homes to homeowners. Rabbi Jon Konheim and his wife Rena have renovated a house in this area and moved into it in December 2004. In addition to our work in Reservoir Hill, Social Action members also help the disadvantaged throughout Baltimore. Members volunteer in the city's largest soup kitchen, Our Daily Bread, and collect clothing from synagogue members for Suited to Succeed, which fits disadvantaged job seekers with appropriate professional wear. In Spring 2004 a Social Action member organized the collection of used bicycles for Pedals for Progress, which repairs the bikes and sends them to residents of developing nations who need better transportation to work and school.
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