By Farshad Rafii, Men’s Club President
For me, “the community” has always been one of the most valuable dimensions of life at Sinai Temple. With the quarantine keeping us away from each other, my immediate concern was how we preserve the sense of camaraderie that we all value so much and how we prevent irreversible damage to this beautiful community that has taken decades of time and immeasurable effort to build.
We at the Men’s Club were inspired by how the temple clergy, staff, and school rose to meet the challenge. From the very beginning of the emergency, they started working even harder than before . An extensive new virtual communication system was created from scratch, followed by virtual prayer services, vast personal outreach to members who may be in need of assistance, varied and engaging programs, and much more.
We realized that as an integral part of this community’s life, the Men’s Club also needed to do what it can to create the sense of “business as usual.” We launched our Men’s Club Book Club in April under the rubric of “Reaching Across the Divide” (emphasizing again the importance of staying together), restarted our monthly programming in May, lined up fascinating guest speakers for future months, and launched a Job Matching service to help those harmed by the economic fallout of the pandemic. Doing all this has been very rewarding for all of us!