The TBE Blog is the space where Temple Beth El’s Leadership Team members reflect on relevant topics that are most meaningful to us. Here you will find musings on everything from prayer to politics, music to mysticism and history to current day life. From our iPads, smartphones, and laptops to yours, these are the things that inspire us, keep us up at night, and fuel our own Jewish journeys.
TriBEs are small groups of Temple Beth El Members that help make our big community feel small. They help every person be a part of something sacred. Through playing together, praying together, learning together, acting together, caring for one another, and being accountable to each other, a large Temple becomes a small community where […]
In August 2020, amidst a global pandemic and right before the High Holy Day season, I began my role as Director of Development and Member Services at Temple Beth El. My husband, Kevin, and I have been members since we moved to Charlotte in 2018, and the opportunity to work alongside TBE’s outstanding clergy and staff was tremendously exciting. More than six months […]
Over the past two weeks, we marked a year of living through the pandemic, coming together from afar to share a collective challah hug. It was heart-warming (and by all counts, delicious!) Thank you to all those who baked, whether you contributed one loaf or one hundred, whether you consider yourself an expert baker or […]
Temple Beth El is very excited to welcome Nicole Sidman to our staff team as Social Justice Outreach Coordinator. Nicole has been part of our Temple Beth El community since 2017 when her family moved to Charlotte from New York. Nicole graduated from the University of Michigan Law School with a Juris Doctorate and has […]
Crisis breeds creativity. While all of us sitting at our zoom seder tables last year hoped Passover 2021 would look different than Passover 2020, we will still gather over zoom for seder and services. However, a year of pandemic living has taught us all a couple of things, and we are excited to get even […]
PIVOT – The buzz word of 2020. Restaurants were hit hard by the pandemic, many closed either permanently or temporarily. However, many reinvented themselves. They converted their indoor areas into mini grocery stores, selling anything from the coveted toilet paper to cleaning products to farmers market items. They started packaging takeout as family meal deals, […]
It’s hard to consider that we have lived through over a year of COVID. Last year at Passover we said, Mah nishtanah halilah ha-zeh: Why is this night different from all other nights? But the difference wasn’t just in eating matzah. Our first pandemic Passover tasted like a bitter herb dipped twice into salt-water tears. […]