Temple Beth El

Join us for Friday night services featuring a mix of kids songs and the regular service components, followed by a community dinner. Although the service is geared towards families with children of all ages, everyone is welcome to join and stick around for the meal. This month the 4th grade class will be helping lead the service. We hope to see you there!

RSVPs for the dinner are due by 5pm on Tuesday, May 26th. RSVP here: https://tbemaine.shulcloud.com/event/family-shabbat-and-community-dinner4.html

Join Jewish veterans and volunteers on Sunday, May 24th as we visit Portland’s Jewish cemeteries to place flags at the gravesites of our veterans. Please contact Sherri Quint at [email protected] for arrival instructions and location.

We have lots of new babies in our community, so why not bring them over to TBE for a baby playdate where they can meet their future friends and classmates! Come join Shane and Jordy on the playground, grab a bagel, and get to know the other parents a little better while the babies have some fun in the sun. All kids age 2 and under are welcome to join.

It looks like it's going to be a beautiful day this Sunday! See you there!

Order a cheesecake to support KBE, celebrate Shavuot, and enjoy a delicious treat baked in TBE's kosher kitchen by Dan Merrill of Cecile's Cheesecakes! Dan's cheesecakes are sold at Pizzaiolo, Hilltop Superette, and many other locations around Portland. Each cheesecake costs $54, is 10'', and cut into 12 generous slices. All proceeds will support our Hebrew School, Kadima Beth El.

The deadline to order is May 14th. Cheesecakes will be available for pickup at TBE on Sunday, May 17th from 8:30-9am and 12:00-12:30pm, and on Wednesday, May 20th from 3:30-6:30pm.

We will also have individual slices of cheesecake available for sale during the pickup hours.

Members of the TBE community aged 60+ are invited to enjoy a delicious lunch and hear a compelling speaker at our monthly series. Our speaker this month is Emily Isaacson, Artistic Director of Classical Uprising and TBE member. Emily will give a talk titled "How Being a Bad Musician Made Me a Better Conductor." Feel free to bring a friend, Jewish or not. RSVPs are due by Monday, May 11th.

RSVP and learn more here: https://tbemaine.shulcloud.com/event/60-lunch-series-may1.html

Coffee and Conversation is back tomorrow!

Join Rabbi Simmons for a casual gathering at Coveside Coffee (28 Vannah Ave.). There’s no specific agenda or prompt, just an opportunity to chat about anything that’s on your mind. Drinks are on them!

We're getting ready for Passover at TBE!

Visit TBE's Passover website for more information on how to prepare for Passover, sell your chametz, and our full schedule of Passover events, including a Kosher for Passover Dessert Social on Sunday, April 5th at 11:30am.

tbemaine.org/passover

KBE Cancelled Today, Sunday, March 22nd

Due to the snow and freezing rain forecasted for today, we are cancelling KBE. Stay safe and warm!

Rabbi Simmons gave the Invocation at the opening of the Legislative Session of the Maine State Senate this morning!

Read their invocation here:

Good morning, everyone.

It is an honor to stand before you today and to offer words of blessing at the opening of this legislative session. I am grateful to you all for your service to this state and to our nation.

In the Jewish tradition, we speak of rabbis from centuries and generations past, considering them to be our teachers even though we did not know them personally. In keeping with this custom, I would like to invoke my teacher Simcha Bunim, a Chassidic rabbi from the early 1800s. Rabbi Bunim famously carried two pieces of paper every day, one in his right pocket, and one in his left. One of the pieces of paper said “I am but dust and ashes.” The other piece of paper said “For me the world was created.”

In other words, every day Rabbi Bunim carried with him reminders of the great paradox that comes with being human-- the paradox of both having immense agency and power because of our free will, and at the same time the necessary humility that comes with knowing that our time on Earth is limited, and that we are part of a system that is much bigger, and much more powerful and ancient, than anything any one human life.

That is to say: we are all but dust and ashes, and for all of us, this world was created.

This teaching especially resonates with those of us who are burdened and blessed with the mantle of leadership, whether political, religious, or otherwise. To lead effectively means, often, embodying and embracing this paradox. It means being both curious and confident; being both bold and adaptable: and both believing that we can truly make a difference, while also knowing our limitations, and letting go of unrealistic dreams and unreachable goals. Maintaining this paradoxical balance can be challenging even in easy times, but all the more so in difficult times, like the ones in which we find ourselves today.

This chapter of history is shaking the very foundations of this nation, and it is reminding us both of how far we have come as Americans and how far we have yet to go. As Mainers, too, we are at a crossroads: deciding what will come next for our beautiful State, and what kind of a legacy we will leave behind for our children, who will inherit the world as we leave it.

This is all to say that Rabbi Bunim’s paradoxical teaching is not just a series of empty words for all of you in our legislature. We private citizens need you more than ever to lean into both the humility required to hear and learn and work together, and into the bravery and confidence to act for what you believe is right in the greater scheme of things. We need you to remember that you have real power, and also that you are beholden to forces greater than yourselves. We need you to understand that although the votes you make in these halls may take only seconds to cast, their impact affects real lives today and in the future.

As caretakers and leaders of our wonderful state, you carry both the power and the weight of knowing that life for Mainers will be easier, or worse, fairer, or more unjust, because of the choices you make here today.

And so, as a citizen and a faith leader, I stand before you today and offer you blessings as you embark on another day of service to the people of this state. May God bless you all with the courage to take a stand for causes you can be proud of; may God bless you with the humility to stop talking and listen to the world around you and to its many lessons (this one is hard for rabbis, too!); may God bless you with the compassion to see that our fates are all interconnected in one human family; and finally, may God bless you with the balance and wisdom to remember both that this world was made for us… and that we are all but dust and ashes.

May the Source of Life bring peace to us and to this whole world, and let us say: Amen.

Members of the TBE community aged 60+ are invited to enjoy a delicious lunch and hear a compelling speaker at our monthly series. Our speaker this month is Peggy Grodinsky, Food Editor for the Portland Press Herald. Peggy will give a talk on how she got started writing about food and how much has changed since then. Feel free to bring a friend, Jewish or not. RSVPs are due by Monday, March 16th.

RSVP here: https://tbemaine.shulcloud.com/event/60-lunch-series-march2.html

Peggy Grodinsky has been the food editor at the Portland Press Herald since 2014. Previously, she was executive editor of Cook’s Country, a now-defunct national magazine that was published by America’s Test Kitchen. She spent several years in Texas as food editor at the Houston Chronicle, seven years at the James Beard Foundation in New York, and a (magical) year as a journalism fellow at the University of Hawaii a long while ago. Her work has also appeared in "Breaking Bread: Essays from New England on Food, Hunger and Family" (2022); "Best of Food Writing" (2017) and "Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing (2008). Writing and cooking are two of her favorite things, so if people would just read/subscribe to newspapers again, it'd be a dream job.