El-Al: A Love Story

A few days from now, Philissa and I will buy our plane tickets to Israel for our annual trip, a moment that invariably fills me with excitement and longing. So in honor of that–and in honor of Yom Ha’atzmaut–I want to tell you about El-Al, not really about El-Al in general–if you want to read all about Israel’s national carrier you can do it here–but about my feelings about El-Al. 

The first thing I’ll share is that in all the years I’ve been traveling to Israel–and I’ve been enough times that at this point that I’m no longer counting–I’ve flown on El-Al almost exclusively and we plan to fly El-Al again this summer. (As a matter of fact, if I’ve ever traveled to Israel on another airline–and I can’t swear that I haven’t–I really can’t remember it.) This, in my experience, makes me a somewhat rare bird among American Jews–a migratory species–who very often chase deals on other airlines or prefer a different kind of ten or twelve or fourteen hour experience. 

I find that a lot of Jews that I talk with are surprised when I tell them about my steadfast loyalty to a brand that sometimes gets less-than-stellar reviews from Americans and Israelis alike. Jews seem to have mixed feelings about the whole El-Al experience, which is understandable and probably justified in many cases. Like a lot of things in life, it’s complicated. But the reason I always fly is in fact very simple and that’s the second thing I’ll share: I actually don’t have mixed feelings about flying on El-Al. I love everything about flying on El-Al. Here’s a non-exhaustive list:

I love that flying on El-Al makes the trip shorter on the front end and longer on the back end because you don’t need to wait until you arrive to start hearing and speaking Hebrew and you don’t need to leave Hebrew behind the moment that you leave. 

I love the little white cups of hummus you get with pretty much every meal. Why should I want to eat hummus three times in ten hours? Well, I need to train for the main events when we arrive.

I love that as soon as I board I start to feel myself reacclimating to the brusque rhythms of Israeli culture. Again, I need to train.

I love watching the haredim fight with their hat boxes. 

I love that there is a minyan in the back of the plane (though, in all honesty, I don’t usually join them for davening). 

I love that (in my somewhat frumer days) I once asked a flight attendant to wake me for sunrise so that I could wrap tefillin at the correct time and love that the flight attendant knew why I was making the request. (That flight attendant did wake me, very gently, several hours later.)

I love that many people around me also lean mishnayot or recite tehillim when there is turbulence (like them, I am a somewhat nervous flyer). 

I love watching reruns of Shababnikim.

I love seeing the birthright kids make friends and fall in love.

I love that the security procedures before boarding at JFK involve things like asking me to recite the Shema or to name my bar mitzvah parashah. 

I love how safe I feel on El-Al, and this is for a few different reasons: The aforementioned security protocols before getting on the plane, the armed marshals who are undercover on every flight, the pilots who are almost all Israeli air force veterans, the fact that it is the only commercial carrier, as far as I know, equipped with missile defense systems. Also, this: El-Al is the only airline I’ve ever flown on which they don’t hock you a tschaynik about making sure that all of your items are safely stowed beneath the seat in front of you. I’ve never had an El-Al attendant come up to me before take off, tap me on the shoulder and say, “Excuse me sir, your bag needs to be pushed forward two inches.” It’s like they’re saying, by saying nothing, Look, we have more important safety concerns. I’m certainly no aeronautical engineer–and I try to be a relatively thoughtful and relatively cautious person–but I have long struggled to see how having my backpack fully under the seat as opposed to partially under my seat and partially against my knees could affect the aerodynamics of a 500,000 pound jet. And whenever a flight attendant tells me it’s for my own safety I get nervous because it makes me feel like they are focusing on the wrong things. 

So. Onward from that particular hobby horse. 

I love seeing the magen david on the tail and the Hebrew letters אל על near the front. I’m not sure whether inscribing one of God’s names on the fuselage helps keep the whole crazy thing in the air but it certainly can’t hurt. If it worked for the Golem of Prague why can’t it also work for a jumbo jet?

I love that there is almost always cheering (and sometimes singing) when you land at Ben Gurion. 

I love that a great many people on board feel like they are coming home, wherever they actually live. 

And I love that El-Al’s slogan is “It’s not just an airline, it’s Israel,” which, to me, feels like some real truth in advertising and not to be minimized in a world that is often rather dishonest.  

Yes. These are thy tents, O Jacob, in the depths.

“From here we begin the descent. Please remain seated

Till the signal lights up.” As on a flight

That will never end.

–Yehudah Amichai

(From “Songs of Zion the Beautiful" translated by Chana Bloch)

Ben

Do not defile yourselves in any of those ways, for it is by such that the nations that I am casting out before you defiled themselves. Thus the land became defiled; and I called it to account for its iniquity, and the land spewed out its inhabitants. But you must keep My laws and My rules, and you must not do any of those abhorrent things, neither the citizen nor the stranger who resides among you.

Leviticus 18:24-26

The three verses above are taken from the Torah portion called “Acharei Mot”, which we read on Shabbat May 4th. They talk about how the Israelites must keep G-d’s commandments once they come into the Land of Israel, otherwise, as the Torah says, the Land of Israel will “spew them out” like it “spewed out” its other inhabitants.

In the Jewish calendar, we are currently in the midst of the Omer counting, the 50 days between leaving slavery in Mitzrayim, Egypt and arriving at Sinai, when we received the Torah. We have recently commemorated Yom Hashoah, the Memorial Day for the victims of the Holocaust, when we remember the 6.5 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices, and the bravery of those who resisted persecution in any shape or form.

In the current Jewish month of Iyar, we celebrate/commemorate four dates that memorialize different times in Jewish history. These are holidays that recount how the Jewish people had to fight for their freedom and survive Jewish hatred. They start with Yom Hazikaron, the Memorial Day for fallen Israeli soldiers and victims of terrorism, commemorated on Monday, 5/13, followed by Yom Haatzmaut, the 76th anniversary of Israel’s Independence (1948), on 5/14, then Lag Baomer, the holiday that celebrates the Great Revolt against the Romans (66 CE), which will be celebrated on 5/26, and finally, Yom Yerushalayim, that celebrates the reunification of Jerusalem during the 6 Day War (1967), which will be celebrated on June 5th. These are the four holidays in the Jewish month of Iyar. 

In total, the Jewish calendar marks five different dates, from Yom Hashoah through Yom Yerushalayim, all connected to Jewish History, not to Torah times. However, all of them are based on the Torah’s teachings about the connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel: a total of 2507 times the noun “Israel” is mentioned in the Torah. These include several instances in which G-d admonishes the people to be worthy of the land through G-d’s commandments. These texts inform the later historical struggle of the People of Israel for their right to live freely in a homeland of their own. Hence, although the five historical events cited earlier took place many years after the Torah text was concluded and canonized, they were heavily inspired and directly guided by the teachings we glean from that same text.

A few days ago, I had a short conversation with one of our 6th grade students, who will become a Bar-Mitzvah student next year. I commended him for his progress, saying that this was the year when I saw the greatest growth in his Hebrew learning. He replied to me, “Well, until this year I didn’t see the point in learning Hebrew, so I did it without motivation. But at the beginning of this year, my parents sat with me and explained all about the Bar-Mitzvah and how important it is for them, and how I will have to read from the Torah in Hebrew for my Bar Mitzvah, so that changed everything for me.” 

This brief conversation encapsulated for me the most important piece in the big puzzle of Jewish continuity throughout the centuries and millennia: Jewish continuity is based on each individual’s connection and experience of the legacy of the Jewish people. And it all comes back to the Torah and the Hebrew language.

When the students returned from Passover break, I asked parents, “how was the seder?”, to which one mom replied, “It was amazing - since the kids know Hebrew now, they were able to read from the Haggadah!” (her kids are in 2nd grade!)

For the past seven months, we have scrambled to find ways in which we can make sense of the current reality both in Israel and all around the world; the blunt resurgence of antisemitism, and the threats to Israel’s existence, amplified in the highest academic establishments in the US, left us searching for guidance and inspiration. For guidance, we are privileged to have both our ancestral sources, the Torah, and the tales of Jewish survival throughout history. For inspiration, look no further than to our own children, our next generation. L’dor v'dor - from generation to generation we will honor G-d’s name and our traditions. We will study and pass them over, with our own family stories of survival and resilience. 

In 1936, David Ben Gurion spoke before the Peel Commission, formally known as the Palestine Royal Commission, a British Royal Commission of Inquiry, headed by Lord Peel, appointed in 1936 to investigate the causes of conflict in Mandatory Palestine, which was administered by the United Kingdom, following a six-month-long Arab general strike.

Ben Gurion said, “300 years ago, there came to the New World a boat, and its name was the Mayflower. The Mayflower’s landing on Plymouth Rock was one of the great historical events in the history of England and in the history of America. But I would like to ask any Englishman sitting here on the commission, what day did the Mayflower leave port? What date was it? I’d like to ask the Americans: do they know what date the Mayflower left port in England? How many people were on the boat? Who were their leaders? What kind of food did they eat on the boat?

More than 3300 years ago, long before the Mayflower, our people left Egypt, and every Jew in the world, wherever he is, knows what day they left. And he knows what food they ate. And we still eat that food every anniversary. And we know who our leader was. And we sit down and tell the story to our children and grandchildren in order to guarantee that it will never be forgotten. And we say our two slogans: ‘Now we may be enslaved, but next year, we’ll be a free people”

As we gather together in the month of Iyar to celebrate the next four Jewish holidays, and grief the loss of innocent lives, we find support in each other, in our communities, our children, and in our hearts. We celebrate the lives of those who came before us and those who showed unimaginable courage and determination as they faced the worst possible circumstances. We embrace our traditions and we thank G-d for giving us Torah, commandments, the utmost value of life and the power of learning. We celebrate our children and their motivation to grow and learn about what it means to be Jewish and how we can bring about change around us.

In the Leviticus Torah portion cited above, G-d commands the Israelites to keep G-d’s commandments when they come to the Land of Israel, otherwise the Land will spew them out. The world around us is like a big body. When something is wrong with our bodies, we develop a fever, we throw up, which is the way our body deals with things that are not good for it. Each one of us is a part of that big body. By following the precepts of Judaism, by helping each other, by performing acts of pure kindness and loving each other, we can help our world heal. This has been the way our ancestors have survived and this is how we will overcome this time as well.



As we count the days between the Exodus and Sinai, and we count the days our 132 brothers and sisters are still kept in captivity in the tunnels of Gaza, let’s strengthen our community and continue to be a light for the nations, bringing knowledge, science, wisdom and kindness to the world. Let’s continue to teach our children to walk in G-d’s ways, and let’s find inspiration and strength in the stories of our past, so we can together enjoy a better future not only for the Jewish people, but for the whole world.

Thank you so much for supporting the LC and for encouraging our students to continue to learn and pursue peace. Good will prevail over evil, and we are grateful for your continued dedication so we can ensure the next generation will be better than us and carry on the flame of Judaism

Am Israel Chai,

Ana

“It’s like watching a walrus trying to figure skate

it wasn't good, but you were impressed that you were seeing it ...”

• David Brooks, How to Know a Person

My plan for this month’s Hakol was to write about graduation. I am watching the news and feeling for kids who had high school graduation disrupted due to Covid and for these same kids who are having college graduation disrupted due to our current political climate. What are the odds? 

In an ode to the importance of celebrating life’s milestones, like graduation, I was going to include themes about “living presently”, “realizing potential”, “resilience”, “world at your fingertips”, etc., etc.. Dr. Suess’s book, Oh, The Places You’ll Go is one of my favorite gifts for grads and I was going to make reference to that. Steven Levitan, executive producer of Modern Family, spoke at UW- Madison graduation in 2017 and started his speech like this -- “Well, as commencement speaker, I’m supposed to impart wisdom. This is where I tell you a bunch of clichés like “Follow Your Dream” and “Be Yourself.” But I’m not going to do that because I don’t know your dream. Your dream may be stupid. Your dream may be to open a DVD store or to sell Jell-O art. Those are bad dreams, don’t do it.” I was going to reference that too.

Before I really got into the thick of drafting my article, I attended Shabbat services on May 11 and changed my tune. The service was lovely, as always. I am always so much happier for being at synagogue on Saturday mornings. What struck me this particular weekend, however, were all the people that were there. 

Kiddush this week was sponsored by a congregant celebrating a first yahrzeit. It was very important to her to have a minyan and to be surrounded by PJC friends. So she made it known to others that showing up would be very important to her. She made this known to the Rabbi who made it known to the Board. She made it known to our chesed coordinators who picked up the phone and made it known to other congregants. She made it known to friends. She asked -- she said this is important to me, can you please make an effort to come. 

My estimation is that there were approximately 50 people at services on this morning. Before finishing the kiddush blessings, this congregant spoke out and said thank you. She shared that the past year has been very difficult and being a Jew and particularly a PJC Jew has been how she has “walked through the valley of the shadow of death” and come through maybe stronger and definitely wiser. The sustenance of the community has kept her strong. 

It was touching and genuine and made me wonder why we don’t ask for what we need or want more often. I suppose we are afraid to be turned down, to be vulnerable, to be a burden, to look weak, to be disappointed, you name it. Yet we often forget that when we ask, those around us respond. It’s like the crazy figure skating walrus. You see it and think, that’s just wrong but at the same time, you've got to admit, it’s also pretty great. I am proud that our PJC community allows us to be ourselves, allows us to ask for what we need, and allows to (mostly) get the support we need in the end. 

Lisa

Dear Friends,

As we celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut 2024 (Israel's Independence Day), let's reflect on what Israel means to us. After 76 years, the existence of a Jewish state is still being questioned. Israel is still being threatened by its neighbors in the Middle East. Its legitimacy is being challenged on American college campuses.

It's time to take a stand. What can we do to support the Jewish state?

The PJC trip to Israel this winter is one way to express our gratitude for the Jewish Homeland. Adam Gerber or Rabbi Resnick can fill you in on the details.

Israelis want to know that we in the United States care about them. They need to know they are not fighting alone. Maintaining contact with our family and friends in Israel is crucial at this difficult time. Buying Israeli products is another way to show our support. Teaching our children about Israeli history, culture and diversity can help build their relationship with Israel. And, of course, learning the Hebrew language helps us identify with Israel.

Looking back at the founding of the state in 1948, we learn about Ben Gurion's vision from the Israeli Declaration of Independence:

"The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations."

This is the vision of Israel we can aspire to in 2024.

Chag Yom HaAtzmaut Sameach!

Barbara

Short War

by Lily Myer

Lily Meyer is a talented young writer with much to offer a Jewish readership. Her characters are well-developed and her willingness to tackle antisemitism and duplicity in Chilean-American history is admirable.

Sixteen year-old Gabriel Lazris' and Caro Ravest's relationship is touching and believable. Meyer writes simply and vividly:

"A girl was walking towards Gabriel Lazris. A girl in a green miniskirt. She was across the packed basement, between the makeshift dance floor and the card table laden with booze, but he knew, with inexplicable terrifying certainty, that she was coming for him."

Gabriel is 16, Jewish, American; he came to Santiago with his family as “a monolingual 8-year-old terrified to make eye contact with the school priests or anyone else” and is barely more confident now. His friend Nico gently calls him “our quiet American.” When Caro kisses Gabriel, he has a “soft, cracked-open feeling.” They clink beers in the kitchen, Gabriel reciting the Lazris family toast, an almost charmingly imperialistic relic of the Second World War. “Short war,” he says, and they drink. Gabriel's best friend Nico is aptly described, "He disliked nobody and radiated kindness the way a cartoon skunk radiated stink."

Short War is a deeply felt portrait of youth and longing, spanning continents and generations, exposing US foreign policy on the scale of an intimate human drama.

Meyer is unafraid to tackle religion and politics while keeping her characters alive and compelling. I hope we see more of Lily Meyer's writing.

Barbara

Why The Jewish People Need Israel

by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (edited)

I had been engaged in dialogue for two years with an Imam from the Middle East, a gentle and seemingly moderate man. One day, in the middle of our conversation, he turned to me and asked, “Why do you Jews need a land? After all, Judaism is a religion, not a country or a nation.”

I decided at that point to discontinue the dialogue. There are 56 Islamic states and more than 100 nations in which Christians form the majority of the population. There is only one Jewish state, 1/25th the size of France, roughly the same size as the Kruger National Park in South Africa. With those who believe that Jews, alone among the nations of the world, are not entitled to their own land, it is hard to hold a conversation.



Yet the question of the need for a land of our own is worth exploring. There is no doubt, as D.J. Clines explains in his book, The Theme of the Pentateuch, that the central narrative of the Torah is the promise of and journey to the land of Israel. Yet why is this so? Why did the people of the covenant need their own land? Why was Judaism not, on the one hand, a religion that can be practiced by individuals wherever they happen to be, or on the other, a religion like Christianity or Islam whose ultimate purpose is to convert the world so that everyone can practice the one true faith?

The best way of approaching an answer is through an important comment of the Ramban (Nahmanides, Rabbi Moses ben Nachman Girondi, born Gerona, 1194, died in Israel, 1270) In the parsha Acharei Mot. Chapter 18 contains a list of forbidden sexual practices. It ends with this solemn warning:

Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. The land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you must keep My decrees and My laws . . . If you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.

Lev. 18:24-28

Nahmanides asks the obvious question. Reward and punishment in the Torah are based on the principle of middah kenegged middah, measure for measure. The punishment must fit the sin or crime. It makes sense to say that if the Israelites neglected or broke mitzvot hateluyot ba’aretz, the commands relating to the land of Israel, the punishment would be exile from the land of Israel. So the Torah says in the curses in Bechukotai:

All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it.

Lev. 26:35

Its meaning is clear: this will be the punishment for not observing the laws of shemittah, the sabbatical year. Shemittah is a command relating to the land. Therefore the punishment for its non-observance is exile from the land.

But sexual offenses have nothing to do with the land. They are mitzvot hateluyot baguf, commands relating to person, not place. Ramban answers by stating that all the commands are intrinsically related to the land of Israel. It is simply not the same to put on tefillin or keep kashrut or observe Shabbat in the Diaspora as in Israel. In support of his position he quotes the Talmud (Ketubot 110b) which says:

“Whoever lives outside the land is as if he had no God” and the Sifre that states, “Living in the land of Israel is of equal importance to all the commandments of the Torah.”

Ketubot 110b

The Torah is the constitution of a holy people in the holy land.

Ramban explains this mystically but we can understand it non-mystically by reflecting on the opening chapters of the Torah and the story they tell about the human condition and about God’s disappointment with the only species – us – He created in His image. God sought a humanity that would freely choose to do the will of its Creator. Humanity chose otherwise. Adam and Eve sinned. Cain murdered his brother Abel. Within a short time “the earth was filled with violence” and God “regretted that He had made human beings on earth.” He brought a flood and began again, this time with the righteous Noah, but again humans disappointed Him by building a city with a tower on which they sought to reach heaven, and God chose another way of bringing humanity to recognize him – this time not by universal rules (though these remained, namely the covenant with all humanity through Noah), but by a living example: Abraham, Sarah and their children.

In Genesis 18 the Torah makes clear what God sought from Abraham: that he would teach his children and his household after him “to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just.” Homo sapiens is, as both Aristotle and Maimonides said, a social animal, and righteousness and justice are features of a good society. We know from the story of Noah and the Ark that a righteous individual can save themselves but not the society in which they live, unless they transform the society in which they live.

Taken collectively, the commands of the Torah are a prescription for the construction of a society with the consciousness of God at its center. God asks the Jewish people to become a role model for humanity by the shape and texture of the society they build, a society characterized by justice and the rule of law, welfare and concern for the poor, the marginal, the vulnerable and the weak, a society in which all would have equal dignity under the sovereignty of God. Such a society would win the admiration, and eventually the emulation, of others:

See, I have taught you decrees and laws . . . so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will be your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people” . . . What other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?

Deut. 4:5-8

A society needs a land, a home, a location in space, where a nation can shape its own destiny in accord with its deepest aspirations and ideals. Jews have been around for a long time, almost four thousand years since Abraham began his journey. During that period they have lived in every country on the face of the earth, under good conditions and bad, freedom and persecution. Yet in all that time there was only one place where they formed a majority and exercised sovereignty, the land of Israel, a tiny country of difficult terrain and all too little rainfall, surrounded by enemies and empires.

Jews never relinquished the dream of return. Wherever they were, they prayed about Israel and facing Israel. The Jewish people has always been the circumference of a circle at whose center was the holy land and Jerusalem the holy city. During those long centuries of exile they lived suspended between memory and hope, sustained by the promise that one day God would bring them back.

Only in Israel is the fulfilment of the commands a society-building exercise, shaping the contours of a culture as a whole. Only in Israel can we fulfil the commands in a land, a landscape and a language saturated with Jewish memories and hopes. Only in Israel does the calendar track the rhythms of the Jewish year. In Israel Judaism is part of the public square, not just the private, sequestered space of synagogue, school and home.

Jews need a land because they are a nation charged with bringing the Divine Presence down to earth in the shared spaces of our collective life, not least – as the last chapter of Acharei Mot makes clear – by the way we conduct our most intimate relationships, a society in which marriage is sacrosanct and sexual fidelity the norm.

This message, that Jews need a land to create their society and follow the Divine plan, contains a message for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. To Christians and Muslims it says: if you believe in the God of Abraham, grant that the children of Abraham have a right to the Land that the God in whom you believe promised them, and to which He promised them that after exile they would return.

To Jews it says: that very right comes hand-in-hand with a duty to live individually and collectively by the standards of justice and compassion, fidelity and generosity, love of neighbor and of stranger, that alone constitute our mission and destiny: a holy people in the holy land.

It’s the alone-ness of death that makes community necessary. When you stand for Kaddish and turn and see another person standing too, you are not alone. 

Not even a spouse can be a part of it because they aren’t blood. 

Everyone forgets that they will one day be a mourner. 

Please - consider it your Jew-ry duty

Come to the PJC even for an hour if you work from home (10:30-11:30 makes a huge difference) to ensure there is a minyan, a minimum of 10 people for a holiday or a Friday evening. This will enable someone to say the Mourner's Kaddish. Or you can go to someone’s house for shiva. 

Marjut Herzog

LC kids want to learn from you! Send us your favorite Bubby's recipe!

Come teach our students about your Bubby's (or your own) best recipe, and why do you love it so much!

Below are the dates on Thursdays when we will be having "Bubby's Kitchen" classes.

Pick up a date, mark your calendar, and we will take care of ingredients and any utensils you need in order to make this the best learning experience for you and our kids!

Classes take place on Thursdays, between 4:00-5:30 PM.

You will be helped in the kitchen by our very experienced madrich who's been doing this for a while with our past Bubby's Kitchen instructors. You will meet 3 groups of maximum 8 children, each group for 30 minutes. We will take care of all ingredients and utensils, as well as help you set up and clean afterwards. 

Thank you so much for agreeing to come to share your Bubby's recipe with us - and don't forget to mark your own calendar!

Ana Turkienicz

Here's the LINK to the enrollment form (to link to the attached flyer):

Ana Turkienicz

"Share a Simcha" allows congregants to share their news with our PJC community. Please submit news about family members -- engagements, births, job updates, kid achievements, community acknowledgements and any other milestones -- to the HaKol Editor, Barbara Saunders-Adams.

. Mazal Tov to Neco Turkienicz in honor of his May birthday

Share a Simcha is a regular HaKol feature, so keep your news and updates coming!

Donations to the PJC



Donations to the Rabbi's Discretionary Fund

David and Deborah Miner

Billing statements are emailed monthly. 

Checks made out to the Pelham Jewish Center can be mailed to Pelham Jewish Center, P.O. Box 418, Montvale, NJ 07645. Credit card payment instructions are on your monthly emailed billing statement, or go to https://thepjc.shulcloud.com/payment.php. 

If you are interested in paying via appreciated securities or IRA distributions, please email Mitch Cepler.

It is the policy of the Pelham Jewish Center to make every effort to assist members experiencing financial challenges. Financial challenges should never be a barrier to being an active member of the PJC community. You can reach out to President, Lisa Neubardt, Treasurer, Mitchell Cepler or Rabbi Benjamin Resnick to speak confidentially concerning your ability to pay PJC dues and Learning Center tuition.