Olympics Inspiring You to Get Fit?

Join us TODAY for our Downtown Bike Ride 

a Summer Shul event

Bring your bike, or rent one at our starting point, and join us  

as we bike down to Battery Park and back!  

We'll stop at the marina for a drink and a snack along the way.  

Meet at Hudson River Park
@ Christopher Street & the West Side Highway 

Today - Tuesday, July 31
7:00pm

FREE & Open to ALL

Rain Date: Wednesday, August 1

Challah-Balloo!

It was another hot, sticky summer afternoon in the city.  The temperature was in the 90s and the humidity was oppressive.  It was the perfect weather for . . . learning to bake challah?!  That’s exactly what a group of New Shul members did. Ten of us gathered in the apartment of host Beth Weiner, turned on the oven and listened intently as master baker Laurie Wessely instructed us in the art of making challah. To start, Laurie tossed each of us a blob of dough she had prepared in advance and encouraged us to channel our inner-preschooler, using our bare hands to flatten the dough into a pancake or roll it into long snakes (like play dough!), depending on whether we wished to make a braided or loaf bread.   

As we worked, Laurie told us she began baking challah two years ago and had been perfecting her recipe ever since.  And perfect it she has, as anyone who tasted her home-baked challah at her daughter Aja’s Bat Mitzvah or the New Shul’s B’Mitzvah can attest.  Over the next several hours, Laurie and her assistants, Jullian and Alex (two of her three children) guided us through each step of the process – mixing, rising, pounding, rising, shaping, egg washing, rising, egg washing again, and baking -- until each of us cradled in our arms our own beautiful, delicious-smelling, fresh-from-the-oven challahs. 
 

Before we left, we sampled the challahs that Jullian and Alex had made.  As the taste and texture of the fresh-baked bread reached our lips, the room filled with a chorus of “oohs,”  “aahs” and “mmms”.  Then, one voice was heard above the others as Sasha Malamud recited: Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, HaMotzi Lechem Min HaAretz.  Blessed are You, Adonai, Our Lord, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the Earth.  We all joined in.  I had uttered those words so many times before by rote, but that afternoon my heart and soul were in it.  Thanks to Laurie, Beth and all of the participants for turning a hot, sticky summer afternoon into a socially, gastronomically and spiritually enriching one!

P.S.  Laurie is in the process of launching her own challah-baking business -- “MamaBakes” -- that she hopes to have up and running by the fall. Check out her website at www.mamabakes.net. If anyone knows of an industrial kitchen that might rent Laurie space, please let her know.  Best of luck, Laurie!

-Susan Levy

Jewish Phish Food for the Soul

One of the great music super-groups of our time is the band Phish, who just completed a series of shows in New York (on Long Island and up in Saratoga Springs) over the July 4th holiday. Among the 24+ hours of tunes the band played over the course of several days, they performed an age-old favorite: Avinu Malkeinu. But Phish is a religious experience for many, not (just) because they are often known to play this ancient Jewish prayer in concert, but because of the reciprocal devotion between the band and its fans. A group that channels their musical forebears, The Grateful Dead, with a huge jam-rock sound, they have an almost cult-like following. "Phish-heads" rearrange their lives and even go into debt in order to get their fix, counting shows like notches on a bedpost. Every performance is bestowed upon fans as an experiential gift: from the choice of venue, to the length of sets, to the art on their tickets, to the inside jokes band-members share with their devotees. Our very own Rabbi Darby has waxed philosophical on the deep and often spiritual relationship many fans have with the group, pondering whether or not this religious following indeed lends itself to some kind of true enlightenment.

 

Rabbi Darby muses, "It is clear to me that a concert can absolutely function as a spiritual/religious experience. The real question is, how do the concert attendees live the next day? From a Jewish perspective, there is an inherent risk and danger in transcendent experiences, which is one reason why the rabbis eschewed the Nazirite (a Biblical solitary spiritual seeker) and Jewish Mysticism. The danger is that the experience will become the end in itself rather than information that positively informs one’s life choices. The danger is that the spiritual (or physical) high of the Phish concert will become the goal of the attendees, rather than a tool to help them live more righteously in the days, weeks, months and years following the concert/transcendent experience." So do Phish-heads manage to use their concert experiences as a tool? To read more, click HERE.

Don't Miss Our Member Film Festival Next Week!

MEMBER FILM FESTIVAL 

a Summer Shul event 

 

Join us for a screening of films by three of our esteemed members: Karen Loew, Gordon Grinberg, and Adam Zucker. From documentary to short comedy these filmmakers bring you a variety of interesting and fun subjects.
 

  In Karen Loew's film, INTERSECTION: BABEL, we are brought to the busy intersection of 14th Street and First Avenue in New York City. The film considers this seemingly unremarkable crossing, and shows that it is at once a destination and a point of departure. Exploring this dichotomy through the art of dance, this short documentary hearkens to Genesis 11, which chronicles Babel as the birthplace of alienation.

Gordon Grinberg brings us THE TAILOR, a short comedy. Described as the meeting of culture and confusion on a Brooklyn street, this film is the hilariously charming tale of finding similarities amid diversity.

THE RETURN is Adam Zucker's current work-in-progress, and explores the unique reality of being young and Jewish in Poland today. The film follows the intertwined lives of four young women who are representative of a generation of hidden Jews-- having been raised Catholic, only to discover they were Jewish in their teens. He will also show a section of CAROL CHANNING: LARGER THAN LIFE, a documentary about the American singer, actress, and comedienne.

Tuesday, July 17th, 2012

6:00 pm

55 Bethune Street @ Washington Street 

Westbeth Community Room

$10 cover 

(includes pizza, beer, and popcorn)