Uncategorized

Sandy has been active in Jewish life for over 50 years. She was involved in many organizations in various capacities in Youngstown, Ohio prior to her family’s relocation to Tampa three years ago. She served as President of the local and district Hadassah chapter, was a board member of the Jewish Community Center, Jewish society, serving as Chairman of the Relay for Life and Co-chair of the American Cancer Center Cattle Barron’s Ball.

At the age of 60, Sandy became a Bat Mitzvah and within her synagogue, El Emeth Temple, served as President from 2012-2014 and Funds Vice President of the Sisterhood.

After moving to Tampa, she immediately assumed the position of Ritual Co-chair alongside her husband Sam. She organizes religious activities with grace and charm and is an asset to the Sisterhood and synagogue. Sandra and her husband have four children and six grandchildren.

Rabbi Daniel Swartz currently serves as the executive director of the Children’s Environmental Health Network (CEHN), a national organization devoted to protecting children from environmental health hazards through education, policy, and research initiatives. The Network, through active partnerships with groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, has played key roles in protecting children’s health and in the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Children’s Health Protection.

Swartz has published both peer-reviewed and popular science articles on issues ranging from plant ecology to global climate change. He has also published op-eds in national papers. Swarz also published studies of religious traditions and environmental values, including To Till and To Tend: A Guide for Jewish Environmental Study and Action; Jews, Jewish Texts, and Nature: A Brief History; and In This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment, edited by Roger Gottlieb. Swartz has also published a children’s book, Bim and Bom: A Shabbat Tale.

Before becoming the director of CEHN, Swartz served as the associate director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, coordinating policy among Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, and Jewish organizations. In addition to ordination and his MHL, Rabbi Swartz holds degrees from Brown University in geological sciences and in environmental policy. He has received numerous academic honors, including prizes, scholarships, and a scholastic excellence award from the Hebrew Union College, the Senior Prize in Environmental Studies from Brown, and election to both Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi.

Thank you for being a member of our Congregation

Thank you for your donation

Robin Kitzmiller is our special volunteer this month. She and her husband Dick came to Florida in 1985 from West Virginia and settled in Valrico for a short time before moving to Apollo Beach. She and Dick moved to Sun City Center about 10 years ago.

Robin was a special education teacher for 35 years and the technology guru for Hillsborough County Adult Education. It is in her nature to fix things whether it be people with special needs, computers, or the birds and other wildlife that she helped save in different rescue shelters and wildlife sanctuaries. In her spare time, she and Dick travel the country in their motor home with their dog and cat.

Robin joined Beth Israel to be with her dad, Lou Einhorn. She had promised her mother, who loved being at the temple, that she would take care of Lou and attend services. So, you can find Robin at Shabbat services every Friday night unless she and Dick are off on a motorhome trip. If Robin joins an organization, she needs to give back by doing something and several years after she joined Beth Israel, she was editing the Shalom News. Today, she continues to help out with the Shalom News by helping with the proof reading. But that is not all; she has worked diligently with Nina Malinak in creating our new website; she helps edit our calendar with Nina; and will make any kind of flyers we may need. Robin doesn’t like to attend meetings but that doesn’t stop her from being a special volunteer who knows the importance of giving back.

Thank you Robin for giving back to Beth Israel. Your gifts have made an impact on all of our lives.

Congratulations.  Special Volunteer Jonathan Gamson

Say hello to our special volunteer, Sharon Privitera. Sharon moved to Florida with Petrie, her 25-year-old Senegal parrot, from Columbia, Maryland in July 2011. She is the proud mother of three sons who still live up North. In her earlier life she worked for a mortgage company and filled her free time with volunteering for her local schools and church.

When attending a Singles dance in Apollo Beach she met Gil Daniels and they became life partners. She started attending services at Beth Israel with Gil and then met Rabbi Carla. Sharon fell in love with the teachings of the Torah and the warm welcome she received from the members of Beth Israel. She continues to study and learn about the Jewish Lifestyle and her love of God.

She decided to become a Jew and studied with Rabbi Carla for about a year followed by a wonderful conversion ceremony in July 2014 with many of the congregants attending.

In her spare time Sharon cares for her numerous pets and the people around her. She loves being helpful to others and volunteers as much as possible. Sharon can be found almost anywhere there is a need for extra help; sisterhood functions, rummage sale, emergency kitchen help for Shabbat onegs. She even cooks fabulous lasagna for the Men’s Club luncheons! Sharon is the kind of volunteer who says, “What can I do now to help”; she doesn’t wait to be asked. Sharon was very clear about her feelings about Beth Israel, “Temple is my home, my family”. Beth Israel is blessed to have Sharon as one of our special volunteers.

The purpose of this Congregation is to promote the fundamental and enduring principles of Judaism and to ensure the continuity of the Jewish people, to enable its members to develop a relationship with God through communal worship, study of Torah, and assembly; and to apply the principles of Judaism to the values and conduct of the individual, and the society in which we live.

2018 marks the thirty year anniversary of  Beth Israel the Jewish Congregation of Sun City Center’s building at 1115 Del Webb Blvd E.  Numerous events have been scheduled throughout the year to commemorate this event as we remain the beacon for Jewish life in Sun City Center.

Unveiling the new Arc Curtain Shavuot May 20, 2018

Sunday, August 19th 4:00 PM Unveiling of the Legacy Board

Beth Israel’s legacy started 30 years ago when our building was completed and we became the beacon for Jewish life in Sun City Center.

Pictured in front of painting by Harvey Berman (L-R) Paul Spiegal, Marlene Spiegal, Barry Friedman, Barbara Nova, Dick Marshall, Marsha Marshall, Joy Rosen, Sandy Zians, Shirley Bergman (Temple founding member), Jeff Beller, Martin Hurwitz (Temple founding member, Sandra Hurwitz (Temple founding member), Rochelle Lafer, Nina Malinak, Sam Sudman, Joanne Sudman

Wealth lasts a lifetime, legacy lasts forever

Friday, September 7, 2018 Unveiling of the new Ner Tamid

Our 30^th Anniversary celebration continued with the dedication of a new Ner Tamid on Friday, September 7^th.  The Ner Tamid was designed by our own Sid Goldstein and donated by Barbara Grossman and her family in memory of her husband Dick.  Technical expertise was contributed by Bob Cobe, Jon Gamson, and Bernie Katz

The Jewish people were commanded by God to have an eternal flame, Ner Tamid, constantly burning on the altar of the Mishkan and that was continued when the temple was built in Jerusalem.

This permanent flame is a symbol of God’s eternal presence amongst Israel. But the flame symbolizes more than that.  It is the symbol of the light of the Torah. It teaches the lesson of eternity – of the long view of life and events, and of the unquenchable love between God and our people and of the Jewish people and our Torah.

30th Anniversary Celebration October 26, 2018 4:00 PM

Dr. Michael A. Meyer PhD

HUC/JRC, Cincinnati

            Michael A. Meyer was born in Berlin, Germany and grew up in Los Angeles, where he received his B.A. (with highest honors) from UCLA.  His doctorate is from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.

From 1964 to 1967, he taught at the Los Angeles campus of HUC.  Since 1967 he has been on the faculty of HUC, Cincinnati, where he is currently the Adolph S. Ochs Professor of Jewish History Emeritus. From 2000 to 2008, he also taught every fourth semester at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Jerusalem campus of HUC

Professor Meyer’s books have won three Jewish Book Awards.  They include The Origins of the Modern Jew:  Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749-1824 (1967;  Response to Modernity:  A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (1988);  Jewish Identity in the Modern World (1990); and a collection of essays entitled Judaism Within Modernity (2001).  Among books he has edited are Ideas of Jewish History (1974); the four-volume German-Jewish History in Modern Times (1996-1998); Volume six of the collected writings of Leo Baeck (2003); and Joachim Prinz, Rebellious Rabbi: An Autobiography–the German and Early American Years (2007). He has published more than two hundred articles and longer reviews.

From 1978 to 1980 Professor Meyer was president of the Association for Jewish Studies (the American professional society of Judaica scholars) and from 2003 to 2006 chaired the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish History in New York.  From 1991 until 2013 he served as international president of the Leo Baeck Institute, a scholarly organization devoted to the historical study of German Jewry that has branches in Jerusalem, New York and London.  He is a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and has been a fellow of the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1996 Professor Meyer won the National Foundation for Jewish Culture’s Scholarship Award in Historical Studies for major influence on colleagues and students in his field.  In 1997 he was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in the summer of 2000 a guest professor at the Aby Warburg House in Hamburg, and in 2001 received an honorary Doctor of Hebrew Letters degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.  In 2008 Jewish historians from the United States, Israel, and Europe honored him with a jubilee volume entitled Mediating Modernity:  Challenges and Trends in the Jewish Encounter with the Modern World.  In 2015 The Leo Baeck Institute presented him with its Moses Mendelssohn Award for lifelong dedication to teaching and publishing about German-Jewish history and culture. In 2014, he was a fellow at the Katz Center in Philadelphia.

Though himself proudly a layperson, his wife, Margaret J. Meyer is a Reform rabbi (now retired), as is his oldest son (in Israel), and his son-in-law (in the Boston area).