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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: October 3, 2006 |
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A suburban Detroit synagogue is using the annual fast day of Yom Kippur to launch a program to help the Israeli city of Karmiel, located in part of the Galilee where 200 missiles fell in Israel's war with Hezbollah.
"We're talking about getting more involved in the lives of individuals who we can help," said Rabbi Daniel Nevins of Adat Shalom Synagogue, affiliated with the Conservative Jewish movement.
Yom Kippur is a day of atonement during which religious Jews fast and pray for forgiveness of their sins. It was to begin at sunset Sunday and end after sunset Monday.
Yom Kippur and the preceding Jewish New Year's Day, Rosh Hashanah are the days of greatest attendance at synagogues, days when rabbis can reach the largest audiences.
"Yom Kippur is not only about praying for our own forgiveness from God," Nevins told the Detroit Free Press. "It's also about building better relationships with other people.
"And we're not talking about that on some big, idealistic, macro level. We're talking about getting more involved in the lives of individuals who we can help."
Nevins traveled to Israel for a week in July during the war with Lebanon.
"I decided I would simply help wherever I could. So I worked in a soup kitchen. I donated blood. I visited people in communities where bombs were falling," he said.
Nevins said he planned to tell about 4,000 congregants about a new Conservative congregation they are adopting in Karmiel, a town of 50,000 in the central Galilee. Most Israeli synagogues are Orthodox.
"They have about 100 families and call themselves Kehilat HaKerem, which means the Congregation of the Orchard," he said. "This is the area where more than 200 missiles fell during the war this summer. Although no members of the synagogue were hit, it was terrifying."
Nevins said people from his congregation were drawn to the ethnic diversity of the Karmiel Jewish center, where some people are native Israelis while others are immigrants from the United States, Great Britain, Africa, South America and the former Soviet Union.
Nevins' congregation will start by raising money to hire a youth worker for Kehilat HaKerem. Members also plan to send money to help replenish emergency stocks of food and other vital supplies.
"But we want this to be a people-to-people relationship," Nevins said. "So we're planning to encourage e-mail exchanges between our people to start building friendships.
"Then, in December, their rabbi, Tsvi Landau, will visit us here, and we'll introduce him to our congregation," nevins said. "We plan to send some of our people there as well." |
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