TAE Social Action
Making a Difference Together
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Highlights of this Month's Email - (Scroll for Details)
Coats for Casa- January 12th, - Collection at TAE though January 11
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Challah Bake - Raising "Dough" for Ronald McDonald House Charities
January 17
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Conejo Valley Homeless Count
January 22
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Learn to Save a Life - Stop the Bleed and Sidewalk CPR
January 31 6:45 pm
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- Winter Shelter Sign Ups Continue
- After School Tutors for Low Income Students Needed
- Reform Judaism influencing California Legislative Priorities
- Homeward L.A. - Stories from the Homeless
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Visit
www.AdatElohim.org/socialaction
to learn about TAE social action opportunities. The information changes regularly, so please check back often! We have great events planned - Join us!
Marcia & Harold Gordon - Social Action Co-Chairs
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Social Action Committee Meeting
The next Social Action Committee meeting will be
Tuesday, January 8
th
, 7 pm
Room 6
All members are invited to join us to learn more about TAE social action, bring new ideas, help plan upcoming events and get involved.
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January Projects & Opportunities
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The 2nd Great BIG TAE Challah Bake
Raising "Dough" for the Ronald McDonald House Charities
Thursday, January 17
th
, 7 pm
Social Hall - $36/person
Bring an apron and a dessert or bottle of wine to share!
Credit card payments and TAE account billing are available.
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Come learn two skills that can help save lives!
January 31st, 6:45pm - 9:00pm
Social Hall
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Los Robles Regional Medical Center and AMR Ambulance Co. will be offering a free Training Class open to the Community
Stop the Bleed
is a national awareness campaign and a call to action, intended to cultivate grassroots efforts that encourage bystanders to become trained, equipped, and empowered to help in a bleeding emergency before professional help arrives. No matter how rapid the arrival of professional emergency responders, bystanders will always be first on the scene. A person who is bleeding can die from blood loss within five minutes, so quick action to stop bleeding is critical.
Sidewalk CPR
empowers bystanders to save lives in the case of a heart emergency by performing compression only (no breathing) CPR until paramedics arrive.
Those nearest to someone with life threatening injuries are best positioned to provide immediate care if they are equipped with the appropriate training and resources.
The training is free, but
RSVP and tickets are required because space is limited
. Click/Tap here now for yours:
www.adatelohim.org/SaveALife
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Thousand Oaks Homeless Count 2019
Tuesday, January 22
nd
Every year, Many Mansions covers the Thousand Oaks portion of Ventura County’s Homeless Count. This day gives a rough estimate of how many homeless individuals there are. According to last year’s numbers, there were approximately, 1299 homeless individuals in Ventura County (an almost 13% increase from 2017). On Tuesday, January 22, volunteers will work with the President of Many Mansions to count the number of homeless in the area. There will be 2 training opportunities for community members. If you are interested in helping, contact Jessica Lawson at Many Mansions –
jessical@manymansions.org
.
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Coats for Casa Pacifica (Foster Youth)
Saturday, January 12th - 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.
(Note corrected date!)
Three Springs Park, Westlake Village
Do you have old coats or winter clothes in your closets? Winter is here. Reclaim some closet space and help a foster youth stay warm this winter by donating them.
The Coats for Casa event collects gently used winter clothes such as coats, jackets, sweaters, hoodies, mittens/gloves, winter hats and scarves to help foster youth at Casa Pacifica stay warm during the chilly months. Casa Pacifica is an organization that offers to foster youth services that include emergency shelter, medical assistance and other community-based interventions. Coats of all sizes are needed. TAE member Rick Winters of Winters Financial Group and Lydia Gable of Compass Real Estate have teamed up to host the 9th Annual Coats for Casa charity event on Saturday, January 12, 2018 from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. at Three Springs Park in Westlake Village.Come by and drop off gently used warm clothing items.
Items may also be dropped off at temple from now until January 11
th
. For a list of other drop off locations and more information, visit the event website:
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Many Mansions Homework Tutoring Club
Volunteers Needed
Do you love to work with children? Consider becoming a Many Mansions volunteer tutor. Many Mansions provides low-income housing in our community. In addition to housing, they provide many social/educational opportunities for their residents. One of those programs is a Homework tutoring club, held on Tuesday afternoons from 3pm-6pm. If you would like to volunteer, you must attend an orientation program on
January 8th from 5-6pm
.. For more information – contact Jessica Lawson at Many Mansions
jessical@manymansions.org
.
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Homeward L.A. - Stories from the Homeless
In April, TAE will host a performance of Homeward LA – a series of monologues based on stories from people who have experienced homelessness. We are currently looking for people who may be interested in reading one of the monologues in this performance. For more information, please contact Marcia Gordon at
socialaction@adatelohim.com
.
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Religious Action Center
Influencing California Legislative Priorities
The Religious Action center of the URJ is organizing congregational groups to meet with state legislators at their home district offices between now and the end of January. This is a perfect opportunity to build a relationship with your state assembly member and senator, share information about our congregation and RAC-CA, and learn about the issues and bills legislators anticipate working on this year. These research meetings will help inform the RAC-CA legislative agenda and shape their work and the reform movement for 2019. If you are interested in joining with other TAE congregants to visit with our state legislators this month, please email
socialaction@adatelohim.com
as soon as possible.
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Winter Shelter - Dinners, Lunches and Overnight Stays for the Homeless
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A huge thanks to the Brotherhood, Sisterhood and other individual donors! Their donations now make it possible to have our weekly linens laundered by a professional company. This is such an incredible gift as it helps alleviate one of the shelter's biggest challenges. Thank you do our donors!
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The Winter Overnight Shelter began Sunday December 2
nd
and continues through March.
From December through March, TAE opens its doors to the neediest in our community by turning our Social Hall into a temporary overnight shelter on Sunday nights. We serve a hot meal to as many as 90 people and provide overnight accommodation to 25-45 people. This takes an army of volunteers, and we welcome all the help we can get!
Volunteer opportunities include:
- Preparing lunch bags to-go for each guest
- Preparing breakfast bags for the overnight guests
- Chaperoning (sleeping over) with others to keep an eye on our facility and to ensure the safety of all.
We are happy to explain any or all of these roles in more detail. If you are interested in participating in the winter shelter along with hundreds of other TAE congregants please send an email to
taeshelter@yahoo.com
with your contact information and one of our team members will call you back. This is a very serious commitment and we like to explain the whole process to our volunteers so that we are able to provide this valuable service to our community.
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Reaching Out Following the Borderline
Shooting and Fire
Our hearts were broken by the Borderline shooting and then again by the loss suffered by many in the recent fires. You can find resources and ways to donate to help families through their recovery on the TAE website at
this link
. You can contribute to a TAE disaster assistance fund and through the Tzedakkah box in the foyer. You can also bring gift cards for clothing, groceries, gas and household supplies to the temple office. As things change, updates will be available on the temple website.
If you are able to help others in need, or need assistance, please
click here
to let us know. Those in need can also email our special assistance email at:
fires@adatelohim.com
.
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Food Sorting at Jewish Family Service's Sova Food Pantry
Sunday, February 10
th
, 10am - 12pm
Save the date. More details to follow in next month's newsletter.
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Food Collection for Manna Food Pantry
On-going. Year Round.
The yellow bin in the sanctuary foyer is always available to receive your donations of food items. Make it a habit to bring something to donate each time you come to temple. Leave temple knowing that you made a difference in someone's life.
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Coats and Cold Weather Clothing for Foster Youth
See Coats for Casa Pacifica above for details.
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Caring Community of TAE needs your help!
Our Caring Community is dedicated to reaching out to those in our TAE community who are in need.
Do you have some time to make a few phone calls to people who are in need to let them know that their TAE family is thinking of them? Do you have time to visit people who are in need of some company while they are ill? If you can help, please contact Cantor David at
dshukiar@adatelohim.com
(805) 497-7101. Please also contact Cantor David if you know someone in need.
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Our Donations Made It To Syria
Watch the video!
Last April, TAE and the local interfaith community collected clothing and toys for Syrian Children. We took our dontaed items to Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills and then they were sent to Syria. Additionally, Providence Hospitals donated medical supplies. Save the Syrian Children has sent a video showing the supplies arriving in Syria.
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Habitat for Humanity
The homes we helped build are complete!
Last January, 17 TAE members helped to build houses in Oxnard with Habitat for Humanity. The houses are now done and the families have moved in. Watch this video of one of the families with whom we worked side by side to see the impact that we helped make.
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On December 6th we hosted Homemade with Love - Baking for Foster Youth. Under the leadership of Sandy Phillips and Bev Futterman, volunteers packed 1200 boxes of homemade treats which were given to foster youth in 9+ group homes.
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Community Holiday Dinner
Thank you to our wonderful community!
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Thank you for the gift that you gave to so many in our community on December 25th. Our guests appreciated all of the time and love that you put into your volunteer assignment. On their way out, a few of our guests handed us donations because they were so grateful for the time they spent with us. Based on the smiles on the faces of our guests and the conversations that were heard around the room, the efforts of each person who volunteered their time to make the dinner happen were very deeply appreciated.
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It is very difficult to properly thank the approximately 245 people who gave of their day off to provide a warm and wonderful dinner for our community.
- Thank you to those who worked on the planning committee – arranging all the details – food, parking, entertainment, advertising, external publicity, flyer delivery throughout the city, decorating, food pickup, volunteer coordination and administrative detail implementation.
- Thank you to those who came on 12/24 to set up. You set up tables and chairs and staged all of the donated toys, decorations and dinner supplies for the volunteers who followed you.
- Thank you to the awesome decorating shift (87 people strong!) who transformed the social hall into a warm, festive and beautiful dining room that included a very inviting toy store, reading nook, photo booth and craft table.
- Thank you to those who helped in the kitchen, with desserts and drinks, photography, toys, crafts and story time.
- Thank you to those who spent the entire day in the parking lot, ensuring that our guests arrived and left safely.
- Thank you to those who greeted our guests, were table hosts and bussers.
- Thank you to the fabulous musicians and performers who turned the social hall into a festive home.
- Thank you to those who stayed (or came specifically) to lend their hands to take down the decorations, clean up, and deliver leftovers to Many Mansions.
- Thank you to IDeal Meats, BSC Catering, Costco Westlake Village, Top Tier Treats, Imperial Toy Company and the Conejo PTAs for donating all that we were able to provide to our guests.
- Thank you to the Westlake Village Junior Women’s Club of for their generous financial contribution that helped defray the many costs associated with hosting the dinner.
- Thank you to the staff of TAE who supported us every step of the way – especially Angel Ramirez who spent his Christmas Day working with and guiding us to ensure that everything went smoothly.
- Thank you to each of you for waiting to eat until we made sure that we had enough food for all of our guests. We served 270 meals. 145 of those meals were served in the first 45 minutes. If guests had continued arriving at that pace, we would have run out of food. In the end, we had very few leftovers (no stuffing, cranberry sauce or salad) to deliver to Many Mansions. We are grateful for your understanding and patience.
As we walked around and observed thought the day, what touched us most was watching and listening to volunteers warmly and sincerely engaging with our guests. We wish we could thank each of you personally. We will be posting photos to the Temple Adat Elohim website. Please send any photos that you took during the day to
taeholidaydinner@gmail.com
.
Our 2018 planning committee will be meeting in a few days to review the event and consider any recommended changes for next year. We would love your feedback. If you have any suggestions, please send them to
taeholidaydinner@gmail.com
by January 4
th
.
After the 2017 dinner, Suzanne Gallant, one of our volunteers wrote the poem below to share her feelings. We hope that you too, left your time at temple feeling uplifted by the knowledge that you helped bring so much joy to others. We look forward to volunteering with you again in 2019.
Marcia and Harold Gordon, Social Action and Community Holiday Dinner Co-Chairs
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Christmas Day
By Suzanne Gallant
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I cry easily these days,
Not in sadness
What makes me tear up
Is beauty.
The beauty of the soul
In Hebrew, nefesh.
The acts of charity
Are just plain beautiful.
Christmas Day is special
For those with families
And those who don’t
Our gift is beauty.
Our synagogue serves
Christmas Dinner and Dessert
Our volunteers serve, clean
And sign the beauty.
I walked into my shift,
To a roomful of diners
And volunteers and more
The music made it beautiful.
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And I began to cry
My tears of pride, of the joy,
That we, my community
Created this beauty.
Each person there,
Whether dining or serving
Or meeting and greeting
Demonstrated the beauty of soul.
And after all had eaten,
And received the bounty of our donors,
Volunteers began, without direction
To remove the outer beauty.
There is nothing any of us,
Not one action or word,
That could erase in our memories
The incredible beauty of this Christmas.
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On December 15th, we helped assemble care packages, teddy bears, paracord bracelets and reviewed letters a at Operation Gratitude for our troops and first responders.
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Thank you to everyone who donated toys and books for our Holiday Dinner guests. The children loved getting them.
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Social Action Opportunities for Families & Adult
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TAE has two Social Action Groups that are always looking for new members.
Click/tap the following links for details.
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On-Going Projects & Opportunities
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Tzedakah Box
November - December donations to the Tzedakah Box donated to the TAE disaster fund. Our Tzedakah box is located in the foyer right outside the door to the sanctuary. Please help us help others.
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This monthly Social Action e-newsletter is sent from the Social Action committee at the beginning of each month. It includes upcoming social action opportunities that are available to the TAE community. We invite all TAE members to find your place in TAE Social Action. We hope that you will find a project (or many!) that touches your heart. We encourage you to participate and bring your temple friends with you! There is something for everyone.
If you have charities or projects that you support, please share them with us at
socialaction@adatelohim.com
. We might be able to involve others in a project that is important to you!
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