Congregation Shir Hadash formed a Re-employment group in February of 2009 to provide skill building programs and mutual support for the local South Bay Jewish community and is welcoming the wider community to participate.  Meetings are every other Wednesday from 10:30 to 11:30am.  Dave Slesnick, an HR professional and congregant, is coordinating the group.

For more information, please contact Rabbi Melanie Aron at 358-1751 x 4 or RabbiAron@ShirHadash.org. On Linked In? Log in, search for the group "Congregation Shir Hadash Re-Employment Group" and request to join it.  If you have job leads to share, please write to jobs@ShirHadash.org.

Congratulations to Congregation Shir Hadash! In April, the congregation was awarded the "Irving J. Fain Award Winner" for Outstanding Synagogue Social Action Programming by the Union for Reform Judaism because of its fantastic social justice work and the exemplary amount of participation by the congregation in this work. Specifically, the award was in response to a health fair done in 2006 to assist uninsured or underinsured population with some basic medical testing. Elizabeth and David Karpf, MD, co-chairs of the Healthy Living Fair in 2006, received the award on behalf of Shir Hadash in April.

This year, the health fair was done in East San Jose together and co-hosted with Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church and in partnership with the Muslim Community Association and the Vietnamese Physicians Association and supported 20 other PACT members (People Acting in the Community Together) - houses of worship or faith communities of many religions - in April and was a tremendous success.

Each Thanksgiving, the faith communities in Los Gatos share an ecumenical Thanksgiving prayer service. It is great to also know that these same people are rolling up their sleeves and assisting the less fortunate in a concrete and badly needed way. This is great work, and Shir Hadash is to be congratulated for its leadership in this area.