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Temple Beth El Blog

The Good You Do: Your Sisterhood Membership

09/02/2025 01:26:24 PM

Sep2

By Jane Taves, WRJ Executive Committee

It’s fall! The air is crisp, the apples are ripe, and we are anticipating the grandeur and awe of the High Holy Days. This is the time of year when we ask you to renew your annual commitment to Temple Beth El Sisterhood, or even to join us for the first time. 

By paying dues at a membership level of your choice, you become a member of Temple Beth El Sisterhood. What you may not know is how important and far-reaching your contribution becomes, locally, across North America, and around the globe. I want to share with you just a few ways in which your gift makes an impact.

At Temple Beth El:

  • Sisterhood provides scholarships to youth to help them attend Jewish summer camps. We have also helped support TBE teens to spend a high school semester in Israel.
  • Sisterhood provides refreshments at Oneg Shabbat receptions throughout the year.
  • Sisterhood has been able to fund numerous special projects at TBE that benefit the whole community. Some recent examples include funding the upgrade of our kitchen, paying for the new carpet during the sanctuary remodel, and funding the purchase of new furniture for Rabbi Prosnit’s office, to help him make the space his own.

Around North America:

  • You may not know that $18 of your Sisterhood dues goes to Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ), our parent organization in North America. WRJ has a remarkable reach, funded in part by dues from women’s groups like ours.
  • As a philanthropic funder, WRJ supports many organizations and individuals. These include scholarships to rabbinic students, making it possible for many people to become rabbis who might otherwise not have that opportunity. We have funded girls and nonbinary youth to attend STEM summer camp, helping to close the disparity in numbers of campers between boys and girls. And we gave Innovation Grants to 12 exciting newer organizations that are committed to creating welcoming places for our diverse Jewish community in North America. 
  • WRJ is also front and center in social justice, being a prominent Jewish voice on a wide variety of issues. We subsidize one of the legislative assistants at the Religious Action Center in Washington DC. She is our eyes and ears on the Hill, helping us and the entire Reform movement react to issues as they occur.

Globally

  • WRJ has strong ties to organizations in Israel and around the world. Your dues help support many initiatives that help our global Jewish community.
  • We give funding to the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, to support female rabbis in Israel.
  • We support the World Union for Progressive Judaism to create their Shlichei Tzibur Prayer Leadership Program for Women.
  • We support a bat mitzvah program at the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa, as well as an adult Bat mitzvah program in Latin America.
  • We make a gift to the Israel Religious Action Center to help in their work to advance gender equality and fight discrimination in Israel.
  • We regularly respond to emergency requests for funding, whether in Ukraine, Israel, or other locations around the globe.

Your membership in TBE Sisterhood creates ripples well beyond our own community. See this article on the WRJ blog for more details about this year’s WRJ grants of over $300,000. 

I hope that you will renew or join us for the first time today. Click here for more information and to join online.
 

September 3, 2025 10 Elul 5785