Exciting things on the horizon at Merrick Jewish Centre

On the heels of the High Holy Days at the Merrick Jewish Centre, the congregation and its leaders are looking forward to more innovative and informative programming that attracts people of all ages.

Throughout Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, which was celebrated on Sept. 16 and 17, there were not only traditional services, but fun programs, in which Hebrew school students were invited to engage with professional storytellers, and to “meet” matriarchs and patriarchs that are part of the Jewish religion, like Abraham, Sarah, Rebecca and Jacob.

Heléna Eilenberg, the MJC’s education director at the Hebrew school, said that to get students and families immersed in Yom Kippur — the holiest day of the year in Judaism — the Bible Players, a comedy group that tells biblical stories in a fun way, visited the synagogue to teach meaningful lessons about the celebration.

And most important, Eilenberg said, the MJC welcomed unique visitors — two goats from the Cornell Cooperative Extension Farm in East Meadow.

“The reason we (had) goats is that on Yom Kippur, we have a reading from the Torah, where the Jewish people choose two goats to represent the Jewish people,” she explained. “One of the goats extends out into the wilderness as a sign of all the sins that the Jewish people have done — they’re going out into the desert, so they’re leaving us. And one of the goats is given to God — I don’t need to say exactly what that means, but it’s pretty simple. So it was a very experiential holiday.”

Rabbi Josh Dorsch, who leads the Jewish Centre, said that the High Holy Days are the two most intense holidays for the Jewish people.

“On a typical Shabbat morning, you’ll have 100, 150 people here,” he said. “On the high holidays, you’ll have well over 1,000 people.”

And the holidays, Dorsch added, don’t end on Yom Kippur. “Just a week later is one of my most favorite holidays,” he said, “because you go from a period of intensity — an incredibly intense period of time, with deep personal reflection, introspection, where you answer some of life’s most difficult and challenging and theologically pressing questions, to a holiday that serves the historical foundation for Thanksgiving. Sukkot is essentially a Thanksgiving for the Jewish people right after this very intense period of time.”

During Sukkot, which begins at sundown on Sept. 29 and ends on Oct. 6, it is tradition to build temporary dwellings called sukkahs.

“Our permanent homes become temporary, our temporary homes become our permanent dwelling,” Dorsch said. “We’re just supposed to sit outside, look up at the stars, surrounded by family, and just be grateful for what is the bounty and blessings in our lives.”

Dorsch said that a sukkah was being built at his home, and that throughout the course of the eight-day-long holiday, he and his wife expect to host 1,000 people.

“The Sukkot holiday is much busier and crazier than Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, because we are finding ways to celebrate and express that gratitude in ways that are really meaningful in a whole different way,” he said. “The themes are far less intense, but just as important and just as meaningful.”

After Sukkot come the celebrations of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah — but after that, Dorsch said, there’s an entire month when there are no holidays until Hanukkah begins in December.

But even then, Dorsch said, there are always things going on at the center, and he told the Herald about an upcoming program geared toward teenagers, called the Leadership Training Institute.

“It’s a social justice-themed seminar, where we’re going to tackle really pressing social justice issues,” he said. “We’re going to bring in seminars, we’re going to bring speakers. We’re calling it leadership training, because we’re going to learn about advocacy.”

Details are still being finalized, Dorsch said, but the program will be open to teenagers who will be required to apply for it, and it will culminate in a trip somewhere.

“We’re looking at doing racial, social, justice work in Tennessee for three or four days,” he said, “bringing our group of teens down there and really div(ing) deep into some of the racial history, tensions and relations, and to see where we can do some good work.”

The MJC is also looking into a trip to Washington, D.C., which would involve lessons in advocacy and learning how to lobby, among other things.

Dorsch he expected to get more applications than there are spots in the program, and that it would be the type of program that “you could put on a college application.”

“It’s leadership training,” he said. “We believe that it’s something that’s greatly missing in this upcoming generation of children. We’re gearing it toward ninth-, 10th- and 11th-graders — it’s something that could really give them tools as they move on to the next step.”

For more on the center’s holiday celebrations and programs for teens and all students in both the congregation’s Hebrew school and Hebrew high school, visit MerrickJC.org.