I hope you'll join us this Monday evening for Temple Jeremiah's Annual Meeting, where I'll have the privilege of leading our keynote presentation sharing lessons from my capstone project, which culminated in my recent graduation from the HUC Executive Masters program in Jewish Education in New York. I'm incredibly grateful to our Temple Jeremiah community for all of the support, encouragement and love throughout this journey, and I'm excited to share some of what I explored through a meaningful conversation about the tension between "knowing" and "feeling" in Jewish life, and how those experiences shape us both as individuals and as a congregation.
This week's Torah portion, B'midbar, begins with the Israelites being counted and organized as they prepare to journey through the wilderness together. While the portion is filled with names, numbers and structure, underneath it all is a deeper reminder that Jewish community is built one person at a time. Each individual mattered, each tribe contributed differently, and everyone had a place within the larger story of the Jewish people. As we approach the end of another calendar year together, I find myself thinking about the many ways we continue to see that reflected in our Temple Jeremiah community.
That message felt especially relevant this past week as we celebrated our Confirmation students. Watching our teens stand before the congregation and share their stories of finding their place within Jewish life filled me with immense pride and hope for our future. Each student arrived at this moment through their own unique journey of learning, relationships, experiences and questions, and it was beautiful to celebrate the many ways they continue to build meaningful Jewish identities and connections within our Temple Jeremiah community.
Over the past two years, I've shared with many members of our community just how meaningful this EMA program has been for me. Part of that came from incredible teachers and an amazing cohort of fellow educators, but one of the most unexpected gifts was how often I found myself bringing the learning directly into our work at Temple Jeremiah. I never needed to search for ways to connect what I was studying to our congregation because the connection was already there. Please join me this Monday evening as I share a taste of what I've learned, and I hope the conversation will leave all of us thinking even more deeply about the different layers, experiences and connections that exist within our amazing Temple Jeremiah community.