In This Issue:
- THIS SUNDAY: PURIM CARNIVAL VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
- NEXT TUESDAY: MARCH DINING OUT AT ISLANDS
- SIGN UP NOW: MOTAS/TBH BROTHERHOOD SEDER – SUN APR 7 (RSVP BY APR 4)
- SIGN UP NOW: NCAA (BASKETBALL) SQUARES – BY MAR 31
- UPCOMING MEMBERSHIP MEETINGS: APR 7 (TBA) / MAY 5 (HILLEL 818)
- HELP SUPPORT MOTAS: ANNUAL APPEAL TIME
- YELLOW CANDLES: TELLING OUR STORIES
- IN CLOSING
1. THIS SUNDAY: PURIM CARNIVAL VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
If you did not put it on your calendar, this Sunday is the TAS/TRZ combined Purim Carnival at TRZ. We need help setting up, serving and a little bit of clean-up. MoTAS has always supported serving food at the carnival with the participation of a majority of our members. WE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH PEOPLE SIGNED UP TO HELP US MEET OUR COMMITMENT TO THE CARNIVAL. Please find a way to help us out this Sunday.
The 10-12:30 shift will help set up the food tables and serve the food. The 12 -2 shift will serve the food and handle the remaining food on the serving tables. All “easy-peasy”. I think we need about 7-8 guys for each shift. So we really need more help with the later shift. Guys who can work the whole day 10-2 would be really appreciated. Thanks to all! Our portion of the shopping has been handled.
PARKING: White Oak and the main parking lot will be closed. I am told that there may be some parking in the kitchen parking lot (gate on Devonshire) but it is likely to be full. Please plan on coming early enough to park a couple blocks east, south or north of the temple to get to your serving shift on time.
Please call Howard Miller (818) 993-0796 or email president@tasnorthridge-motas.org if you can help. Let’s make this a solid effort from MoTAS.
2. NEXT TUESDAY: MARCH DINING OUT AT ISLANDS
Would you like an easy way to help MoTAS financially? How about taking your family to dinner. The MoTAS “Dining Does Good” allows you to go out to dinner, and have the restaurant donate a portion of your check support the Men of TAS. Our March Dining Does Good” will be Tuesday, March 26, at Islands Grill in Porter Ranch. You can find a flyer for the event at https://wp.tasnorthridge-motas.org/activities/dining/.
We really encourage you to come and support these events: we raise a little extra funds for our work, but more importantly, we come together and break bread as a Temple family on a regular basis. It is a real joy to walk into a neighborhood restaurant and see your Temple friends, to sit down and share a table and talk. This is the heart and goal of MoTAS: Building Relationships.
3. MOTAS/TBH BROTHERHOOD SEDER – SUN APR 7 (RSVP BY APR 4)
Our annual Men’s Seder, which will be joint with Temple Beth Hillel and held at Temple Ahavat Shalom, will be Sunday, April 7 at 5pm. Information on the Seder, including how to register, may be found at http://seder.tasnorthridge-motas.org. This special service and dinner, modeled after the traditional Passover Seder, provides a comfortable and ‘safe’ space to explore and celebrate what it means to be a contemporary Jewish man. Our liturgy also explores Passover traditions, new and old, from around the world, that you might bring back to your home seder. The event will take place at Temple Ahavat Shalom. The menu will consist of traditional Passover foods as well as MoTAS’s traditional Seder foods of Bar-B-Que from Stonefire Grill, with Ice Cream and Fruit for dessert. The cost of the meal is $25.The RSVP / Sign Up deadline is April 4.
We are looking for volunteers to help prepare the traditional Seder foods: Charoset, Hard Boiled Eggs, etc., as well as volunteers to help shop, set up and clean up If you would be interesting in help with this event, please contact Daniel at faigin@cahighways.org. For the meal itself, we’re planning on bringing food in from Stonefire Grill — introducing the men of Temple Beth Hillel to our Men’s Seder tradition of BBQ and Ice Cream.
4. SIGN UP NOW: NCAA (BASKETBALL) SQUARES – BY MAR 31
Now that football season is officially over, it’s time for basketball and the craziness known as the Final Four, in early April. Once again, MoTAS is happy to offer you the opportunity to help raise some needed funds for special TAS projects, and maybe you’ll earn some $$ along the way. You are receiving this email because you so generously supported our Sports Squares program sometime in the last year, and we want you to have first opportunity to play now. To get all the information (and in some cases, more than you could ever want), go to http://squares.tasnorthridge-motas.org/ where you’ll find the instructions, a sign-up form you can print, and a link if you wish to order your spaces online. NOTE: If you are registering and paying online, please specify your tiebreaker as your middle initial. What’s a tiebreaker? Read on…
To summarize: each name on the board can have up to 3 spaces. The squares are priced at $36 each. The game is for both the men’s and women’s tournament (semifinal two games each, and final games), so there are 12 opportunities to be a winner, since there is a winner at the half and final score. If the board is fully subscribed at all 100 spaces, the payout is $150 per win. Once again, we’ll use our “tie-breaker” method to determine a winner if a winning square is unsold (If there are unsold squares, the payouts will be adjusted.) The tie-breaker is your prediction of the total number of points both teams will score in any game, for example, if you think the final score will be 82-61, your number = 143. Here’s a hint for those who are unfamiliar (or don’t really care….): the average score for the men’s tournament for the last two years was 147, and the average score for the women’s tournament was 134. You get only one tie-breaker per person, so choose wisely.
5. UPCOMING MEMBERSHIP MEETINGS: APR 7 (TBA) / MAY 5 (HILLEL 818)
Due to the fact that the Temple will be closed on our normal April and May meeting dates. we’re moving the meeting to the first Sunday of each month: April 7 and May 5.
The topic of our April meeting is still being determined, as our joint Seder with Temple Beth Hillel is that evening. We may work on Seder Preparation, or we may do something that Howard is yet to determine. In any case, April marks the start of our election season, so if you are interested in running for MoTAS office, please contact the chair of our nominating committee, Bob Levine (tasboblevine@gmail.com).
Our May meeting will be a speaker meeting. The topic is Working with Hillel 818. As our speaker wrote, “Today, while many of our students live at home, they are still searching for meaningful communities and they are eager to find their place on campus. At Hillel 818, we are creating a not-so-far-“home away from home” for students on all three of our valley campuses! From Pierce in Woodland Hills, to CSUN in Northridge, and finally, to Valley College in North Hollywood, we are finding meaningful ways to create communities and strengthen our students connections to their Jewish identities.” Our speaker is Gary Cohn, Senior Vice President, Israel and Global Philanthropy, for The Jewish Agency for Israel.
Gary began a fifteen year career in banking in 1977 and worked in several banks including Manufacturers Bank, Los Angeles, Bank Leumi, Union Bank and served on the Northern California Advisory board for City National Bank. From 1991 until 2007, Gary was the Executive Director of Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco, a 2,500 member congregation. In 2008 he joined American Technion leading the Pacific Northwest Region for Technion University in Haifa. He joined the Jewish Agency in 2018 where he heads major gift development primarily in California. Gary serves on board of Hillel 818 and previously on the boards of the Union for Reform Judaism, Wilshire Blvd. Temple Camps, The San Francisco Food Bank, Bentley School, and the National Association for Temple Administration. Gary graduated from Cal State University at Long Beach in Business and was awarded the 2009 Distinguished Alumni in the College of Business.
6. HELP SUPPORT MOTAS: ANNUAL APPEAL TIME
In 2012, the Men of TAS eliminated the dues requirement for membership. We moved to an inclusive model where every man in TAS is part of the Men of Temple Ahavat Shalom. Since we don’t have dues, we don’t have steady revenue. So, every year Men of TAS asks you to support our work financially.
By now, you should have received our Annual Appeal letter. You can also find the message on our support page at http://support.tasnorthridge-motas.org/. On that page, you can find a printable donation form that you can mail in, as well as a link to contribute online. It is through your contributions that MoTAS is able to do that work that we do for the congregation. Please think about how much MoTAS means to the congregation, and how much the relationships you have with MoTAS mean to you. Then add 20%, and make a donation :-). Seriously, the MoTAS leadership works hard to make MoTAS valuable to you and the congregation. This is your chance to let us know what we mean to you.
See your friends and fellow congregants that have really stepped up to support us on our website’s Wall of Honor at http://wallofhonor.tasnorthridge-motas.org/. Join the Wall of Honor yourself by donating $100 or more. Your generous gift will provide fun events for all Temple members, kids to adults, teachers and staff. Continue to repair and improve our facilities. Most importantly, it will help us continue teaching and living the Jewish values that guide and enrich all our lives.
7. YELLOW CANDLES: TELLING OUR STORIES
By now, you should have received your Yom HaShoah Yellow Candles in support of the observance of Yom HaShoah 2019/5779. MoTAS mails the Yom HaShoah candles to all members of the congregation; we depend on your support — either by a Yellow Candle donation or donating to our Annual Appeal, to cover our costs in doing so. The Yom HaShoah candle program is an effort of the Federation of Jewish Men’s Club (the Conservative Men’s Club organization), working with the Men of Reform Judaism.
New in 2019: the FJMC Yom HaShoah Yellow CandleTM program requests your participation in a new project to shed light on what the Holocaust means to us. Lighting Yellow Candles honors the Six Million Jews who perished in the Holocaust through home and community observance. Telling our stories is important, as each of our stories is unique and taken together all of these stories provide a powerful lesson to coming generations. Zachor! Never Again!
To honor the Holocaust and teach about it, we are asking you to tell your story: write, or make, or share videos about what the Holocaust means to you. If your family immigrated before the Holocaust but had family members who did not and were murdered in Europe, please contribute your thoughts as well. Pictures of family members including second generation (2Gs); third generation (3Gs) the grandchildren of survivors; and now we have the fourth generation great-grandchildren (4Gs) and family heirlooms can be included as well.
Post on the Shoah Yellow Candle Facebook Page, on your own social media feeds accompanied by the hashtags #yellowcandle #neveragain and #fjmc_hq, and/or send them to FJCM via e-mail at info@yellowcandles.org and we can post for you, all leading up to Yom HaShoah, May 2, 2019.
IN CLOSING
As always, remember that the Men of Temple Ahavat Shalom is *your* organization. Keep up to date on our activities at http://www.tasnorthridge-motas.org/ and participate. Sign up for our action alert list at http://tinyurl.com/motas-action-alert. We want to serve all the men of Temple Ahavat Shalom and welcome new participants from the TAS membership. Join our Facebook group and “follow” our website. Come be part of the Men of Temple Ahavat Shalom!
Men of Temple Ahavat Shalom 