Brotherhood

I would like to give you a quote from that Great Jewish Philosopher and Thinker Theodore Roosevelt. What follows is a snippet from a famous speech
he gave at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong
man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The
credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred
by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes
short again and again, because there is no effort without error and
shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great
enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who
at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the
worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place
shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor
defeat."

In our society we have succumbed to a virtual life. The 1939 NY Worlds Fair
showed us a marvelous invention called television. We all bought air
conditioning as we could afford and with the 1970's came the Walkman. We are
an insulated and critical people that watch a virtual world from the
sidelines, to the point that our morals as well as our actual physical
beings are suffering.

So many come to Temple with a "so what are you going to do for me?" mindset.
When Edward Koch took over as the new mayor of "Fun City" he said that the
city needed a new spirit and that he was looking for adventurers that wanted
to build a strong and financially fit city. The survival of our society as
well as our Temple is contingent on its citizens taking ownership and
responsibility for the future. We cannot sit on the sidelines anymore. We
all must jump into the "Arena" and get our hands dirty.  Age, finance,
inexperience, physical maladies may be against us but they must not stop us.
We have to work towards making Temple Bat Yam a strong and vital part of the
larger community. We have to be a place that is seen as an example of what
society is supposed to be. That is what it means to be a Nation of Priests.

We need your diligent efforts to bring new members. We need your smiling
faces in the trenches at Temple events as workers and participants. We need
your money to build up our endowment fund. These goals are critical to our
survival. The future does not belong to the critics, it belongs to the
workers.
     
The Disputation.  Brunch, a play and a discussion led by Rabbi Lew Littman April 19th in the social hall at 10:00 am.  Click here for the flyer and here for more info

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Union for
Reform Judaism