More than 50 stalls showcased the activities and Together Groups which make life special at Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue on Sunday 20th October.  Its aim was to showcase, for our own members and for visitors, the Synagogue as a thriving community centre as well as a place of learning and worship.

On the same morning, which was during the Festival of Sukkot, EHRS celebrated the opening of their new courtyard.   Six months of building began with a project to create a children’s playground on the Synagogue campus, pioneered by Sarah Koster, EHRS’s Head of Young Family Development.  Sarah, her children Sammy and Joey and husband Rob, cut the ribbon to open the playground.   Soon after Shirley Lever, member of the Synagogue for many decades and Convenor of the Coffee and Chat Together Group, cut the ribbon to open the Synagogue courtyard.

We are delighted that we have been able to help be part of re-emerging Jewish life in Vilnius. At the end of August, Rabbi Tanya led a delegation of members to Poland, taking with them one of our Torah scrolls which has been presented to a young and growing Jewish community in Lithuania’s capital city, where Jewish life was almost destroyed after the Holocaust. Following a request for help from the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ), our Council offered the long-term loan, forging a bond between our two communities which we hope will only strengthen and grow in the years to come. Before the war Vilnius was one of the most important centres of Jewish life and learning in Europe.
Please click here for the coverage in the Jewish Chronicle, and click here for the article from The Movement of Reform Judaism.