July 2008

Dear Friends,

Welcome to Temple Gan Elohim’s website. We are so pleased that you are considering joining our temple family. Our seven year old congregation is a work-in-progress lovingly built by the hands of its members, striving to offer a wide array of religious programming for families in the Northwest Valley.

These have been exciting times for the TGE community. Within the past few years, the synagogue hired a rabbi, two education directors and professional teachers to further develop the mission and purpose of our religious school, expanded the framework of our musical director’s position to allow for more exciting opportunities (specifically, a significant increase in our successful Friday Night Live programming), and increased our membership by approximately 50% in a single year.

In addition, we successfully created and implemented the first annual TGE Music Series, featuring musicians Sam Glaser, Rabbi Joe Black, and renown singer/songwriter Debbie Friedman. Our second music series promises to be just as exciting.

Though we are growing, we are still a small, caring community where we try to truly be present for each other. Our Care Committee continues to stay connected as much as possible with our entire membership, making sure that our members feel the strength of our temple family during challenging times as well as good ones. Our volunteer program strives to provide each and every member with the opportunity to give back to the synagogue through acts of Gemilut Chasidim (acts of loving kindness.)

There are many opportunities for becoming a part of our community, on a social level, through adult education, volunteering for one of our wonderful committees, etc… We need you to help us build our community for our generation and for generations yet to come!

Please, join us on this exciting venture as we build a vessel of compassion and respect, welcoming interfaith couples, single parents, or anyone simply seeking a connection with his faith or her heritage. We are a community that prides itself on fulfilling the commandment of welcoming the stranger, bringing those who seek Jewish life in the west valley together to form a synagogue family.

Welcome to our community. We look forward to getting to know you.

L’shalom,

Rabbi Lisa Tzur