In the news release, AS NATIONAL RELIGIOUS INVOLVEMENT DECLINES,
CHICAGO-AREA SYNAGOGUE MOTIVATES
200 PEOPLE TO READ TORAH, issued 10-Sep-2024 by North Suburban Synagogue Beth El
over PR Newswire, we are advised by the company that certain of the
information attributed to Arnold
Eisen was misquoted when originally issued. The complete,
corrected release follows:
AS NATIONAL RELIGIOUS INVOLVEMENT DECLINES, CHICAGO-AREA SYNAGOGUE
MOTIVATES 200 PEOPLE TO READ TORAH
HIGHLAND
PARK, Ill., Sept. 10,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Chanting from the Torah scroll,
a ritual observed three times a week in synagogues around the
world, can be daunting. The Hebrew words cascade across the scroll
with no vowels, punctuation or musical notation. The obligation is
typically fulfilled by a paid reader or by a small number of
well-trained volunteer congregants.
Highland Park,
Illinois synagogue increases community engagement with a
year-round Team Torah reading initiative.
North Suburban Synagogue Beth El, a Conservative synagogue in
Highland Park, Illinois, has taken
a different path. At a time when just one in five Jews attend
synagogue monthly and many Conservative and Reform temples have
closed, its Team Torah committee radically expanded its community's
involvement.
Beth El's first "Back-to-Shul
Challenge: Everyone Reads Torah!" launched in fall 2021,
post-COVID-19, with a "stretch" goal of 100 Torah readers during
the Jewish year. It met that goal after just six months. As the
current Jewish year, the program's third, nears its end, the
synagogue is on track for more than 200 people to chant from the
sacred scroll.
"It's an amazing accomplishment," said Arnold Eisen, former Chancellor of the
Jewish Theological Seminary and a
nationally recognized expert on American Judaism. "This is a
project that any shul (temple) of any denomination can make
its own."
There are adult classes in trope (the Torah's musical
notation) and outreach to parents and kids years before the bar or
bat mitzvah. Emblematic of Beth El's
success in motivating what is a time-consuming commitment is that
readers have ranged in age from 13-year-olds celebrating their bar
or bat mitzvah to a 98-year-old congregant celebrating the
anniversary of his bar mitzvah 85 years earlier.
A Team Torah posterboard in the synagogue's lobby overflows with
stickers naming each reader. Everyone reading for the first time in
the year is given a large Team Torah sugar cookie.
"The sweet token is a symbol of the goodness that's reflected
when people take the time to read Torah and thereby work to repair
the world," said Rabbi Michael
Schwab, Beth El's senior
rabbi.
Added Eisen, "When you're chanting the Torah, as Jews have done
for generations, you take part in a ritual more than 2,000 years
old, and the Torah magically becomes part of you."
Video of 98-year-old congregant Eli
Krumbein practicing his Torah reading with Ritual Director,
Hazzan Jenna Greenberg, here.
Press Contact:
Rebecca Hoffman
Rebecca@GoodEggConcepts.com
Mobile: 312-282-4254
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SOURCE North Suburban Synagogue Beth El