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Braised Beef Brisket OR

Roasted Chicken OR

Roasted Norwegian Salmon

Mashed Yukon Gold Potatoes

Oven-roasted Spring Vegetables

Matzo Ball Soup

Charoset

Gefilte Fish with Horseradish

Matzo Crack

Flourless Chocolate Torte ... $28 (serves 12)

Caesar Salad with Matzah Croutons ... $12 (serves 4)

Seder Plate and Matzah ... $20

Birmingham Temple Humanistic Haggadah ... $4 / each

SEND ALL ORDERS TO info@birminghamtemple.org

Order now by email: info@birminghamtemple.org

Join us on Sunday, April 11 at 2pm when Prof. Fran Shor will lead us in a discussion of this fascinating true story by Paul Glaser, who was an adult when he learned the truth about his Jewish heritage. Raised in a devout Roman Catholic home in the Netherlands, he had never known his father was Jewish and that their family had suffered great losses during the World War II. When Paul inquired, his father refused to provide details about the war, the camps, and especially Rosie, Paul’s estranged aunt ... a dancer who survived Auschwitz.

You can purchase your copy at Amazon HERE.

THIS SAT., MARCH 6, 11:15AM

at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/759671597

📣THANKYOU to all the generous volunteers who made this year's Winter Mitzvah another BIG success. We did not let that annoying pandemic keep us from our annual effort. We know tikkun olam is needed more than ever.

Sandwich donors: Julie of Cafe Clare made 400 sandwiches charging only for ingredients --her labor was donated: What a star: WOW!!! Sheila Glass added 20 more sandwiches; yum! These people donated dessert portions: Carolyn Arking, Dorit Ben-Gal, Elaine Fieldman, Edna Freier, Carol Goldsmith, Erin Hendriks, Ruth Kadish, Sandie Landau, Arthur Liebhaber, Mark and Susan Lipson, Barbara Logan, Harriet Maza, Marcia Mumbrue, Rachel Raimi, Ron Saja. We had lots and lots of dessert portions--estimate: between 600 and 700, all of which will be enjoyed by N.O.A.H patrons. These people were the drivers on-call: Rene Lichtman, George Lowe, Marcia Mumbrue, Rachel Raimi. Amanda Rosman. As it turned out, thanks to cars with lots of space, we needed just Rene, Marcia and Amanda, but VERY MUCH appreciate the willingness of all 5. Suzie Friedman helped in a myriad of ways, and Ann-Marie, as usual, provided many hours of efficient, skilled, patient effort. Financial donations from: Sandy Altman, Kate Ben-Ami, Karen and Frank Burk, and Ned & Elisa Greenberg were added to the money raised by our Souper Supper to fund our project.

Along with the sandwiches and desserts, the SJC donated to N.O.A.H. toiletry packets, condiments, clear face shields, hats, coats AND a $500 Kroger's gift card and $500 check!

ALSO: canned tuna & chicken * proteins / grains * canned fruits & vegetables * soups / sauces / condiments * breakfast items * snacks

Contact Audrey (audreypleasant@gmail.com) for more details.

Join HIAS for an afternoon conversation with HIAS experts about how global Jewish organizations are working in collaboration with Jewish communities in Europe, Canada, Latin America, and the United States in support of and in solidarity with displaced people, and explore how the emergent global Jewish movement for refugees is evolving.

There are a number of actions planned all around the world - including right here in Michigan - on Friday, March 19.

As the world gets hotter and hotter by the year, we must treat the climate and ecological emergency like an emergency — which means immediate action and #NoMoreEmptyPromises from our world leaders.

This is an urgent campaign affecting our children's and grandchildren's futures! We must create a safer world for them. To learn more and get involved, contact Rene Lichtman, renelichtman@gmail.com.

Sign up for the Social Justice Committee email list for information about what's happening at BT and beyond. Meeting agenda and copy of the monthly report to the board is emailed to all list members. Send your request to audreypleasant@gmail.com.

Last year at just about this time I was preparing a Friday night presentation (postponed by our closing) about one of my heroes, Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. For many years and in many schools March 2, the good “doctor’s” birthday, was celebrated as “Read Across America Day.” Over the last few years, against the background of the growing American self-examination of our racist past, educators have increasingly focused on celebrating a diverse array of children’s authors. Many have also promoted a more critical look at Geisel’s body of work.

This is all to the good, unless you happen to be on a political crusade against “cancel culture.” In that particular holy war there is little room for subtlety. This is why upon hearing that one school district was attempting to contextualize Dr. Seuss, some have gone out of their way to misconstrue what these schools are doing as “cancellation.”

In fact, knowing something about Geisel, I think he would have approved of this movement. Though he was a committed progressive, he was also born in 1904 and was a man of his time. Some of his early work contains egregious examples of racism. I specifically recall one book in my collection from 1929 that contains an illustration of an odious out-of-date expression, “a n***** in the woodpile.” Not his finest moment.

Over the years, Geisel’s political cartoons in progressive journals like PM took on fascism at a time when it was not in vogue to do so. Like the Jewish cartoonists who shocked America’s isolationist sentiments by depicting Captain America punching Hitler, Geisel created as many enemies as friends with his relentless attacks on fascism and antisemitism. He was ruthless dealing with Charles Lindbergh, Father Coughlin, and their ilk. Yet when war did break out he fell into using the same anti-Japanese caricatures that virtually every other American was using. It wasn’t right or defensible and it was definitely not even close to as bad as what we see in the works of his contemporaries, but it was still racist and something he came to regret.

In fact, in the post-war era, Geisel renounced all bigotry, something that became a hallmark of his children’s literature. As a young child in a racist environment, it was Dr. Seuss who taught me the lessons of equality in his story of the Sneetches. My own synagogue used the book when we learned about the Holocaust. Whoever that 25-year-old man was that illustrated that reprehensible 1929 idiom, he was long gone by 1961. And do we not measure the contributions of a person by the totality of who they were, including their growth, especially someone who did as much good for so many as Theodor Geisel?

Both Judaism and Humanism teach us that humans are terribly fallible, given to both great shortcomings and heroic behavior. In Jewish parlance we call the ability to address this by the term teshuva, the process by which we recognize when we’ve missed the mark and work to reverse course. If anyone demonstrated this value the (non-Jewish) Theodor Geisel did. He was absolutely aware of how he betrayed his later commitments with some of his early work. He spoke about it and openly regretted it. He was, as are we all, a person of his times. But as a committed progressive he also pushed himself to be better, to do better. That is the lesson of Dr Seuss's life and work. Critical re-assessment and contextualization are not cancelation. They are realistic appreciation.

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For those interested in learning more about him, I highly recommend "Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination" by Brian Jay Jones.

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Best Wishes for a Speedy Recovery to:

This new work was composed entirely by Mark and performed by an incredible ensemble including Mark himself on percussion. You can listen to one of the tracks and pre-order his album now!

Enjoy great music and support one of our very own members!