I need human help to enter verification code (office hours only)

Sign In Forgot Password
Home

Temple Beth El Blog

Shabbat Task Force Update

09/24/2025 09:34:59 AM

Sep24

Niles Berman and Jake Harris, Shabbat Task Force co-chairs

This article also appears in the October 2025 TBE Bulletin.

In our previous reports, we shared a summary of the points we’d heard most frequently from the task force’s meetings with congregants and from congregants’ written comments. Those common points included: 

  • Start Friday night services significantly earlier and be sensitive to their length. 
  • Have services where families with younger children truly feel welcome, including new Shabbat activity bags available as you enter the sanctuary. 
  • We value a message at each service that gives us something to think about spiritually and/or intellectually. 
  • Make food a larger part of the Friday-night-at-Temple experience. 
  • Recognize the key role of familiar music; utilize more instrumentalists. 
  • Make Torah a regular part of the Friday night service experience. 
  • Expand communications about what’s going to be in each week’s service. 
  • Make every person in the sanctuary genuinely feel part of the community. 

Our work is far from done, but we hope you’ve had a chance to attend Friday services over the summer (alongside growing numbers of other congregants) and that you agree that significant progress has been made in addressing a number of these suggestions. Specifically: 
    The uniform 6:00 pm start time and hour-or-so length seem to have been very well received—it is the plan to continue with those features. 
    If you were at a service this summer, whether outdoors or in the sanctuary, we hope you noticed the joyous atmosphere, welcoming to all ages, including (but not limited to) our youngest members—we certainly hope to build on that. 
    Enjoying food together has also been well received—“pre-neg” food before services has been enjoyed, as is the option to stay and connect with others at the oneg Shabbat after services. We will certainly look for ways to continue and even enhance these food offerings. 
    Rabbi Prosnit’s pre-service discussion sessions with us—particularly on the conflicted opinions and emotions many of us have about events in Israel and the territories—have been informative, heartfelt, even cathartic, and he plans to continue those discussion sessions as a way to share his thoughtful, inspirational words, outside the liturgy, that he threads through the services. 
    The task force will continue to evaluate the other suggestions that have been generated, successful innovations of other congregations, and our congregation’s response to any changes that are implemented. The experience of being in the sanctuary on Shabbat can bring peace and separation from the noise and cares of our daily lives. Finding ways to help every person in the sanctuary genuinely feel part of the community, and feel inspired by the experience, will remain our touchstone and will guide this continuing work in progress.
 

October 18, 2025 26 Tishrei 5786