Join us for this after-hours version of Coffee Hour with Rabbi Dan on the second Thursday of the month at Modestman Brewing on Main Street in Keene. Casually hang out to shmooze with Jews over brews!

Food and non-alcoholic drinks are available for purchase.

No registration required. Just show up!

Celebrate Shabbat and relax after a long week as we welcome Shabbat at Friday night services in our beautiful sanctuary with music and prayer.

Stick around after the service to visit with community members and friends at the oneg.

ALL are welcome, including families with young children and people who want to learn more about Jewish practice.

CLICK HERE to attend the service online.

CLICK HERE for a pdf of our siddur.

FILM EVENT: Lost Boundaries, 75th Anniversary
at Colonial Theater in Keene
Tickets and Information at https://thecolonial.org/event/lost-boundaries/

Presented by Colonial Theater in partnership with The Historical Society of Cheshire County, with a special introduction by Professor Emeritus in Film Larry Benaquist.SPECIAL FEATURE: Nick Mitchell’s six-minute piece, “Thyra’s Take,” will be screened before the film.  Thyra Johnston was the wife of Dr. Johnston and is Nick’s great-grandmother.  The family found Thyra’s personal photos and movies and created this sampling of the world through her eyes.

Produced by Louis de Rochemont, this film is a shocking story based on real events in Keene, NH. Dr. Albert Johnston and his family, a black family, passed for white in order to work while living in Keene, NH, in the 1930s and 1940s.

This film won the 1949 Cannes Film Festival award for Best Screenplay. There will be a display of related Mason Library de Rochemont Special Collection materials in the lobby.

Synopsis: Scott Carter (Mel Ferrer) is an African-American doctor who is eager to serve his community by working at a black hospital. However, he encounters unexpected opposition when his light skin color results in him being mistaken for a white man. At the urging of his in-laws, Carter and his similarly pale wife, Marcia (Beatrice Pearson), begin to masquerade as white to more easily find their place (and to find work) in a fiercely segregated society. This shocking story is based on real events that happened in Keene NH.

CAA Religious School
Sunday, January 12th at 9:30am
 

Our Religious School meets most Sundays during the school year. Our current students are in grades 2 through 7. If you are interested in enrolling a child for the current school year or would like to explore religious school for the 2025-2026 school year, please contact Rabbi Dan at rabbida@keenesynagogue.org or (603) 352-6747.

Please note- there is no Religious School on January 19th. Following that, classes will resume on January 26th.

Parents, please look out for occasional emails from Rabbi Dan and Daniella with particular information throughout the year. 

Grab a cup of Joe or a Chai Latte and pull up a seat. Rabbi Dan looks forward to chatting about… whatever!

Coffee Hour with Rabbi Dan takes place monthly on the 2nd Wednesday and 4th Tuesday of the month or by appointment at a more convenient time. To set up a meeting with Rabbi Dan, visit  www.calendly.com/rabbida

A message from Gary Shapiro…

CAA’s next scheduled evening meal duties at TCK are Thursday Jan 16, and Thursday Jan 30.  We also participate in the weekly Pantry Program on Wednesdays and Thursdays @ TCK.  If you have time and interest in participating in these worthy community programs, please contact Malcolm Katz or me.

Gary Shapiro
gm_shapiro@yahoo.com
603-352-0440

The CAA Book Club will next meet on Sunday, Sunday, February 23rd. We’ll be discussing : “The Wind Knows My Name” by Isabel Allende.  The book is available at the Keene Public Library.  It can also be purchased used on Amazon.

This powerful and moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea weaves together past and present, tracing the ripple effects of war and immigration on one child in Europe in 1938 and another in the United States in 2019.

Join us to talk about this intriguing book!  We meet at the synagogue at 10:15am for coffee and begin our discussion at 10:30am.

Hope to see you there!

Pull up a chair and nosh on some popcorn as we screen the Yiddish film “Tevye” here at CAA.

“Tevya” is a 1939 American Yiddish film, based on author Sholem Aleichem’s stock character Tevye the Dairyman, also the subject of the 1964 musical “Fiddler on the Roof”. It was the first non-English language picture selected for preservation by the National Film Registry.

The production was filmed at Biograph Studios in New York City and on a farm in Jericho, New York. Midway through the shooting of the film, Hitler seized Danzig on August 23, 1939, and a Nazi invasion of Poland was imminent. These and other events in Europe affected the actors, many of whom had family in Poland. The filming, however, was completed.

The story focuses primarily on Sholem Aleichem’s stories “Chava” and “Lekh-Lekho (Get Thee Out)” but provides a definite ending rather than Sholom Aleichem’s ambiguous ending. In this version of “Tevya”, as the Jews are expelled from their shtetl, Chava who previously converted to Christianity to marry, leaves her husband, returns to her family and to Judaism. It is felt that the antisemitism of the time influenced Schwartz to provide this ending.

This is the first of a series of Yiddish films we will screen here at CAA.

Shabbat Morning Torah Service 
Saturday, January 11th at 9:30 AM
 

On Saturday, January 11th, we invite you to our monthly Shabbat Morning Service, onsite and online. Help us make a minyan as we celebrate Shabbat with Torah and tradition. Having a minyan makes it possible for people in mourning or observing a yahrzeit to say Kaddish.

We ALWAYS need Torah readers! Please sign up to read throughout the year at https://keenesynagogue.org/weekly-torah-portion/.

On Thursday, January 16th, Mark Atlee, Regional Security Advisor for Boston’s Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) Communal Security Initiative (CSI), will be offering a training for all CAA members and our partners in the Monadnock Interfaith Project.Mark will present both “De-Escalation” and “Be Aware” sessions. The training will take place in the CAA Social Hall.

CJP’s CSI supports a thriving Jewish community by providing professional security advice, trainings, and support to 250 Jewish organizations in the Greater Boston area. In these times of rising antisemitism, CSI now offers many services to the over 100 partners in the Expanded Services Area of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, as well.

You can register for one or both training sessions. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Schedule:

11:00am: De-Escalation Training:
This session improves situational awareness and provides the foundation for other security trainings.

12:00pm: Lunch Break
(light lunch provided)

12:30pm: Be Aware Training:
In this introductory session, you will learn basic strategies to identify aggressive behaviors and avoid physical harm.

The City of Keene’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Event Committee invites students grades K through 12 in public, charter,  private, and home schools to submit creative writings, essays, poetry, visual art, music and dance routines that reflect on the theme “Creating a More Beloved Community.” Pieces selected by the event committee will be displayed in the Atrium of the Keene Public Library and/or performed at the City of Keene Dr. Martin Luther King event on January 20, 2025 at Heberton Hall in the Keene Public Library.

Submissions are encouraged (but do not required) to reflect on the event’s theme, which is inspired by Dr. King’s 1956 speech entitled “Facing the Challenge of a New Age.” Dr. King delivered this speech at the First Annual Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 3rd, 1956. To read the full speech, CLICK HERE.

In creating pieces for submission, students are encouraged to think about: What does Martin Luther King’s vision of the  ‘beloved community’ look like to you? What can you and the rest of us do to make our community more beloved.

Submissions must be submitted no later than Monday, January 13th. CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE or contact event chair, Rabbi Dan, at rabbida@keenesynagogue.org.

Shabbat Morning Torah Study with Rabbi Dan
Saturday, January 18th and 25th at 9:30 AM

We invite you to our (almost) weekly Shabbat Morning Torah Study, led by Rabbi Dan, and sometimes guests. We read a third of each week’s Torah reading in English and mine it for meaning for our lives today.

Newcomers and people of all abilities are always welcome!

Where? Covenant Living of Keene, 95 Wyman Road, Keene, NH 03431When? 11 AM-Noon, January 24th

Who? An interfaith group of residents at Covenant Living, including a number of CAA members.

All members of CAA are welcome to attend.

Blue ribbons in solidarity with the hostages and their families in Israel are
available at CAA.