Rabbi Arthur Weiner

  I was surprised, to say the least, by all the publicity and attention that was focused on basketball superstar LeBron James this week after he confirmed he received the COVID-19 vaccine.   But perhaps I shouldn’t be.   All week long, there has been a great deal of attention directed to the NBA’s greatest stars and their thoughts about the vaccine.    Why is the opinion of our talented athletes important?   After all, are they qualified to render judgment on such issues? Perhaps they are a distraction from the grim reality that COVID -19 remains a real and potent threat to millions of Americans?   So, allow me to take a few minutes this week and talk about where we stand right now.  When I last devoted my weekly Shabbat message to the congregation to a discussion of the pandemic in March 2021, the US had just passed 530,000 COVID related deaths. Today we reached 700,000. Yes, that is another 170,000 dead over the past 7 months despite the easy ...

  I want to offer a special tribute and Mazal Tov to one of the JCCP/CBT’s original charter and founding members, Lola and Henry Weber, on the celebration of their 75 th wedding anniversary, observed yesterday, September 22, 2021. I had had the good fortune to offer a tribute to Henry and Lola at the conclusion of our synagogue services yesterday, as they came to celebrate Sukkot in the synagogue that has been such a big part of their lives. Indeed, there is no telling the history of our synagogue without acknowledging their leadership, activism, and influence at every step along the way.   Today, newcomers to our community see a large and active synagogue, a place to pray, to educate themselves and their children, to socialize, to work on behalf of the State of Israel, all the many functions we have enjoyed for almost 7 decades.   So, it is worth remembering that when many Jews began to leave the cities as part of the shift to the suburbs that followed World War ll...

  It is always a great honor and pleasure to spend the High Holidays with our synagogue family. Especially with the challenges to communal Jewish life posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which sadly is still  part of our lives as we begin the new year pf 5782, I was so happy to see so many of our synagogue family at our High Holidays services.   I am also gratified by the great response we have received to the livestream of the services as well. The High Holidays are the best attended religious services of the year. But the real test of our High Holidays commitments will come this Shabbat. Will we make the changes that will bring greater appreciation of Jewish observance and greater connection with the larger Jewish community? Will we make the effort to attend and strengthen our knowledge and appreciation of our Jewish heritage?  High Holidays serve an important need. But tonight we will observe Shabbat. Will you be with us? This is th...