Weekly Message from the Board President

The Yiddish Festival is going to be very different this year.  The Festival has always drawn hundreds of people to the Synagogue. (One year we had 800 show up!).  Dozens of volunteers are on hand, serving a wide variety of food.  There’s Israeli and Jewish folk dancing, a Klezmer band, and tours of the Synagogue.  In the past, the Rabbi held “Ask the Rabbi” sessions.

The Yiddish Food Festival was canceled last year due to Covid-19.  It will take place this year, but it will be very different because of the pandemic. 

First, we moved the date back to Sunday, June 20.  The pandemic is loosening its grip, but we’re not out of the woods yet.  Sliding the date back gives us a little more time for recovery.

Then we eliminated a lot of things.  There won’t be a Klezmer band, dancing, or tours of the Synagogue.  So what’s left?  The food.  And there will be less of it.

Instead of selling about 30 different items, the menu has been cut to just seven, plus water or soda.  The seven items are Matzo Ball Soup, Cabbage Rolls, Kugel, Challah, Rugelah, Coconut Macaroons, and Apple Strudel.

Another change – people will have to order online at least 10 days ahead of the Festival.  No walkups will be able to buy food.

This sounds like doom and gloom, but its not.  Here’s the way it will work.  People will place their orders online or through the Synagogue office.  The orders will be available for pick up on Sunday, June 20.  We’re still not sure if people will come into the Synagogue and get their orders at the kitchen window, or if they will go to the back yard, and pick up their orders out there.

We’ve asked Noam Mantaka to bring his food truck, Noam’s Table, to the event.  That means people will be able to get food to eat immediately without pre-ordering, from Noam’s truck.  We may also set out some tables in the back yard so that people can have a place to sit while eating.  And if we use the back yard, we’ll play recorded music on a boom box.

So this is a very scaled back event.  It’s unfortunate, but we are still being extremely careful about Covid.  The Yiddish Food Festival is our biggest fundraiser of the year, and also a way for us to reach out to the larger Cheyenne and Wyoming community.  This is obviously a much smaller event, but we didn’t feel it was a good idea to do our normal Festival.  Hopefully things will be a lot closer to normal next year.

We’ll have an order form up and running on our website later this week.

In other news, our Rabbi Search is continuing, with new advertising placed with the Rabbinical Assembly and a website called JewishJobs.com.  We don’t have as many applicants as the last time around in November, but that’s due to our ads running “out of season.”  There is apparently a season for Rabbis looking for work… generally in the late fall and winter.  But we do have some applicants and the Search Committee has a few folks to review.

It’s a new month, and a new person to honor with a plaque on a chair in the large sanctuary.  This is a fundraiser for the Endowment Fund.  The money raised is kept in the Fund and never spent.  Only a portion (18%) of the interest is used by the Synagogue.  The rest of the interest (82%) goes to grow the Fund.

For the month of May, we would like to honor Roz Baker.  Roz is a former treasurer of the Synagogue and helped create the Endowment Fund.  She was also one of the leaders in the Synagogue’s Centennial celebration in 2010.

We need to raise $500 to pay for the chair, but an anonymous donor is offering to cover half that amount under certain conditions.  If you would like to donate, please use our website or contact the Synagogue office.

Here’s another one of Denise Bendori’s fun Yiddish words:

Kashe-Bulbe (KAH-sheh BOOL-beh): Want to expand your culinary Yiddish beyond kreplach and kugel ? Kashe-Bulbe means mashed potatoes, and is more fun to say than its English equivalent.
“My mom must put a pound of butter in her kashe-bulbe, but it’s so good I don’t care!”

Here’s our Yiddish Phrase of the Week:

A ganef fun a ganef iz potter.
It’s no crime to steal from a thief.

Shalom,

Dave Lerner
President
Mt. Sinai Board of Directors

Community Partner with Family Promise of Cheyenne

May Birthdays

5              Zoey Brown

                Micah Young

12          Michael Ehrlich

19           Abby Rowswell

15           Doreen Glotzer

21           Stuart Wolf