High Holidays at SZ
Please join Congregation Shaare Zedek as we mark the beginning of 5772. Worshiping together, our members and friends, old and new, will once again create an inspiring and meaningful experience for the entire community. Click on the link above to find information regarding High Holiday tickets and synagogue membership.
As we approach the season of renewal and beginnings for the Jewish people, we encourage you to consider becoming official members of our community. The increased financial and spiritual commitments of our members will enable us to provide all that a thriving Conservative synagogue in the heart of New York City should offer.
Shaare Zedek serves a vital need in our community. We offer year-round traditional egalitarian Conservative services to residents of the Upper West Side and beyond. Our membership reflects the tremendous diversity of New York Jewish life—graduate students and young professionals, singles and couples, families with children, “empty nesters,” seniors, and everyone in between. In the coming year we will continue to offer a rich program of classes, special talks and lectures, children’s education, including our special Beit Midrash for children, and Shabbat and holiday dinners, and more…
Your support and involvement can make it all happen. Your decision to become a member will help ensure that Shaare Zedek will not only be able to offer High Holiday services next year, but will also provide a rich, stimulating, and meaningful array of programming and services between now and then. We hope that you will join us as a member, and we look forward to becoming your Jewish communal home.
A Message From Rabbi Plevan
1 Elul 5771
Dear Friends,
In this week's Haftarah, the prophet Isaiah offers words of encouragement to the people of Israel, who have suffered the degradation of exile:
Awake, Awake,
Clothe yourself in splendor;
Put on your robes of majesty…
These lines of poetry inspire part of a verse of the medieval poem, L’cha Dodi, which we sing every Friday night as part of Kabbalat Shabbat. They are also reminiscent of two important features of the High Holiday season, which begins today with the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul. Throughout this month and on Rosh Hashana, we sound the shofar to awaken us to the seasonal call to get our life in order and return to an honest and righteous path. The High Holidays themselves are also marked by the seasonal white robes that many of us wear and that we place on our Torah scrolls. These white robes are an outward expression of our goal of attaining holiness. As Israel, our splendor and majesty is to live a life of holiness, but to make this vision real it must be realized in our deeds, the robes we show the world. As we begin this season, let us awaken to this task and put on the robes that befit it by committing ourselves to ma'asim tovim, the good deeds the world needs. I look forward to seeing you soon!
Shana Tova,
Rabbi Bill Plevan