Berman+Synagogue

 The Rabbi Jacob Berman Community Center (aka, the Berman Synagogue) is a modern-Orthodox synagogue, profoundly committed to Jewish tradition, with a membership well-educated in both secular and Jewish studies. Our synagogue initiated a series of community-based Shabbat and holiday celebrations, and educational programs, in cooperation with three other community-based groups: the Rehovot municipality, the local (secular) community center (Havayot Tzafon) and the Rehovot branch of the Israeli scouts (both secular and religious groups).

Although not formally affiliated to a synagogue, many non-observant Israeli families have intellectual, spiritual, and/or social interests in the Jewish tradition. Our Legacy project is to enrich their knowledge and practice of the Jewish tradition, on their own terms and within a family-education context, by expanding our community-wide innovative learning experiences and celebrations of Shabbat and the holidays. To do this, we are using a “co-designing”model, based on a “core group” named **Psifas** ("mosaic" in English). This group consists of about 40 individuals, made up of equal numbers of observant and non-observant Jews living in the Rehovot area. Together, we engage in Jewish learning workshops, celebrate Shabbat together and develop community programs which are both custom-made and multi-denominational, i.e., based on high-quality leaders from a broad spectrum of Jewish observance. Our part-time coordinator is Ilana Friedlander.

Just like the Israeli Knesset, our Legacy project started on Tu B'Shvat. The date was February 8, 2009. After hearing that we received the Legacy grant, a group of us organized and held a Community Tu B'Shvat Seder at the famous Rehovot Orange Grove Museum. Within two days of sending out the following announcement (as well as one in Hebrew), the event was sold out. Over 100 people attended the seder, from all ages and backgrounds.



From Tu-B'Shvat until the Fall of 2009, we held a number of community events, including a pre-Pesach Matzah-Baking activity (with the participation of the Rehovot scouts) and our traditional Yom Kippur Services and Sukkot activities (with the participation of the Havayot Community Center. Below are the flyers about these activities: 



By the time the 2009 Sukkot festivities were over, we had gathered a list of Rehovot residents -- secular and religious -- who were seriously interested in our project. We help several study sessions and organizational activites, to set up what we thought would be a core group of 5 religious and 5 secular people. But we ended up with 4 times that number: about 20 religious and 20 secular members.

So far (until April 2010) we've held 4 interal Psifas workshops (with Rabbi Areyeh Ben-David, founder of Ayeka; Yonadov Kaplan, Israeli poet and author; Rabbi Dov Berkowitz, Torah scholar; and Asaf Hershfeld, organizational consultant and co-founder of secular-religious community in Maskeret Batya.

We had a very successful Shabbaton, held in Achziv with about 60 people with about equal numbers of secular and religious participants. Below is our schedule.



So who are we? What do we want? How do we want Psifas to evolve in the future? Below is just the beginning of trying to find some answers: results of a focus group and a group questionnaire: