Special Shabbat Service to Honor our Graduates – June 6th!

On Friday June 6^th, TSS will be honoring ALL its graduates at a special Shabbat service.

Let’s qvell a bit, and take special pleasure in the achievements of our congregants – young and older.

• Finishing up middle school to go to the BIG TIME?
• FINALLY completed your interminable senior year in high school?
• Proud of your graduation from insurance appraiser school or a medical assistant certification program, or even just passed your CPR renewal class?

This is the Shabbat for YOU!

Save the date, and plan on joining the congregation on June 6^th.

TSS Book Group – next selection

My Promised Land:  The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, by Ari Shavit

We’ll be meeting at the home of Margie and Jonathan Hertz:  1433 Bedford Ct., Allentown

Date – Thursday June 5th, 7:15 PM

This summary is from the Amazon web site:

“Ari Shavit is one of Israel’s leading columnists and writers, and the story he tells describes with great empathy the Palestinian tragedy and the century-long struggle between Jews and Arabs over the Holy Land.  While Shavit is being brutally honest regarding the Zionist enterprise, he is also insightful, sensitive, and attentive to the dramatic life-stories of his fascinating heroes and heroines.  The result is a unique nonfiction book that has the qualities of fine literature.  It brings to life epic history without being a conventional history book.  It deepens contemporary political understanding without being a one-sided political polemic.  It is painful and provocative, yet colorful, emotional, life-loving, and inspiring.  My Promised Land is the ultimate personal odyssey of a humanist exploring the startling biography of his tormented homeland, which is at the very center of global interest.” —Ehud Barak, former Prime Minister and Defense Minister of Israel

……………

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE ECONOMIST

 

WINNER OF THE NATAN BOOK AWARD • NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER: THE GERRARD AND ELLA BERMAN MEMORIAL AWARD IN HISTORY • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

 

An authoritative and deeply personal narrative history of the State of Israel, by one of the most influential journalists writing about the Middle East today

 

Not since Thomas L. Friedman’s groundbreaking From Beirut to Jerusalem has a book captured the essence and the beating heart of the Middle East as keenly and dynamically as My Promised Land. Facing unprecedented internal and external pressures, Israel today is at a moment of existential crisis. Ari Shavit draws on interviews, historical documents, private diaries, and letters, as well as his own family’s story, illuminating the pivotal moments of the Zionist century to tell a riveting narrative that is larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and national, both deeply human and of profound historical dimension.

 

We meet Shavit’s great-grandfather, a British Zionist who in 1897 visited the Holy Land on a Thomas Cook tour and understood that it was the way of the future for his people; the idealist young farmer who bought land from his Arab neighbor in the 1920s to grow the Jaffa oranges that would create Palestine’s booming economy; the visionary youth group leader who, in the 1940s, transformed Masada from the neglected ruins of an extremist sect into a powerful symbol for Zionism; the Palestinian who as a young man in 1948 was driven with his family from his home during the expulsion from Lydda; the immigrant orphans of Europe’s Holocaust, who took on menial work and focused on raising their children to become the leaders of the new state; the pragmatic engineer who was instrumental in developing Israel’s nuclear program in the 1960s, in the only interview he ever gave; the zealous religious Zionists who started the settler movement in the 1970s; the dot-com entrepreneurs and young men and women behind Tel-Aviv’s booming club scene; and today’s architects of Israel’s foreign policy with Iran, whose nuclear threat looms ominously over the tiny country.

 

As it examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, My Promised Land asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can Israel survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is currently facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. The result is a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape.

Join our TSS family on Friday night, May 2, at 6 pm to say, “Goodbye and Good Luck” to the Silverstein family. They will  be moving to the Boston area this summer. Carrie, Marc and Grace have been an intergal part of TSS. Marc has served on the TSS board and has also been our Bagel guy on Sunday mornings. The Silverstein’s hosted Sukkot in their home this year and other endeavors.. Grace has been attending religious school for 3 years. Carrie has been available whenever asked to do something. Their two older sons have attended our Chinese buffet on Christmas and services as well. They will certainly all be missed.

Please bring a dish to share for dinner at 6 pm  before our pre-neg (6:30). Salads, sandwiches, finger food, any dish that is quick and easy to share before services is welcome. Please contact Marlene Plotnick at mar4136@aol.com or call 610-398-0559 to let her know what you are bringing.

Looking forward to seeing many people, especially families, for this sad but fun evening. RSVP to mar4136@aol.com by April 29.