24 March 2020/28 Adar 5780

Dear Shir Tikvah:

Our sense of time has both telescoped and compressed in the last two weeks. Developments around coronavirus/COVID19 have come fast and furious. Healthy or wishing to return to health, whatever may ail you, we hold all of you in our prayers. This email announces a few new developments as they relate to your beloved Shir Tikvah.

Whatever your experience of time, our tradition grounds us. For hundreds of years, and still today for some, a Jew’s day begins with the prayer Modeh ani (“I give thanks”). We begin the same way here. We are grateful to doctors and nurses and lab technicians and delivery drivers and stockroom workers and grocery store employees and epidemiologists and utility workers and manufacturers and social workers and therapists and pharmacy techs. Thank you to the teachers who are learning to teach online, to the custodians and to the caregivers in daycare centers, to the truckers and to the first responders, to those delivering food and medicine, to all those who continue to do their vital work to keep us and hold us and care for us. 

Perhaps you have seen the social media posts of medical professionals holding signs that read “I stayed at work for you, you stay at home for us.” This is one critical way that we help those who are helping us. We need to understand this statement as a Jewish obligation, part of our continued commitment to people’s health and safety. Follow the CDC’s precautions and observe radical social distancing, including staying home if you can, and at least six feet apart if you must to leave the home. Your ongoing dramatic reduction of your in-person interactions is how we help slow the spread of the disease, support our medical infrastructure, put love thy neighbor into action and show our love for the world.

Although we will welcome any public health reasons to change this later, at present we are anticipating that our building will remain closed through May 15. 

  • Worship: We will hold Friday night Shabbat services online. (There will be no in-person Shabbat morning services through at least May 11.) Our first Zoom Shabbat was a thing of beauty, a tulip bulb pushing up through the snow, a shehecheyanu in a bleak week. We are also continuing to hold virtual Thursday morning minyan. Contact Sara if you’re not receiving the emails that have the Zoom links to these events.

  • Religious School and Hebrew School were previously shuttered through April 12 (the closure plus Spring Break). However, we will roll out new ways to deliver Jewish content and experience to the kids in our schools. If you are a school parent, watch your emails in the next few weeks for updates from Forrest. Adults, children, parents, and pets are all invited to join and share far and wide our ongoing story and sh’ma video calls at 7 p.m. most nights. Thank you to Forrest for arranging these!

  • B’nei Mitzvah tutoring: Forrest will continue to schedule B’nei Mitzvah tutoring. Your tutor or rabbi will be in touch. 

  • Adult classes: You should have heard, or you will hear shortly, from Rabbi Rappaport about how your adult classes are continuing. 

  • Pastoral care: All pastoral care will be done via phone or an alternative technology—and that includes hospital or nursing home care. Still, our team of rabbis is always available for you. For pastoral care, please contact Nikolina and she will set up an appointment with a rabbi. 

  • Funerals, shivah, and other life cycle events: During regular business hours, please reach out to Sara. After hours or on evenings and weekends, please contact our emergency line and one of the rabbis will be in touch as quickly as possible: (612) 787-7447.

  • The annual congregational meeting, currently set for May 3, is being delayed. We will be moving the annual meeting to Sunday, June 14, which is one day before the last date required in the by-laws, June 15. The Board will begin exploring alternative meeting methods if we can’t meet in-person, ones which meet our reporting obligations to the congregation and for the election of trustees and approval of the officers.


An inspiration and a prayer to close this email: we have been in touch with those who have scheduled life cycle events in this period to make arrangements and we want to share with you that every one of those families has been kind, concerned, and considerate as they experience this personal disruption. For uplifting Shir Tikvah’s values, an additional todah rabah to Dave and Kristi Snyder whose eldest Spencer’s bar mitzvah was called off the day after our initial closure; they kept their catering contract with a small Hmong business and donated the food. May we have the strength to model the commitments and kindness of all of these families to the vulnerable and to the vital. 

In hope,
Michael Adam Latz, Lead Rabbi
Bruce Manning, Board President
Alison Olig, Executive Director