I am organizing a “Bikur Holim” (visit the sick) program at the Shul that will commence on Rosh Hashana. Volunteers will be “on call” on a rotation basis, to provide services to community members who are at home ill or at the hospital and need assistance (with grocery shopping, picking up prescriptions, meals, visiting to the doctor, etc.) or some company. Those in need, or if you know of someone in need, please contact me and I will contact the volunteer “on call”.
Our Shul is very open and friendly and allows for flexible participation in its services and events. At the same time, members of our community, whom we may think are just taking a break or are Shul “hopping”, may actually be at home ill or at the hospital and in need of our assistance.
While maintaining the Shul’s tradition of flexibility and openness to different levels of observance, it is important to strengthen our community and support its members in their times of need. The “Bikur Holim” initiative will offer the community a much needed resource and provide us with a wonderful opportunity for Mitzvahs.
As organizer of the program, I am now creating a list of volunteers. If you are interested in becoming a volunteer, please contact me via email.
Your contact information will remain confidential and will not be used for other purposes.
I wish you all a Shana Tova!
Sara Promislow
Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, Talmudist, Halachist, physician, philosopher and communal leader, known in the Jewish world by the acronym “Rambam” and to the world at large as “Maimonides,” is one of the most important figures in the history of Torah scholarship; on his gravestone were inscribed the words, “From Moses to Moses, none arose as Moses.”Maimonides was born in Cordova, Spain, on the 14th of Nissan of the year 4895 from creation (1135); his father, Rabbi Maimon, was the Dayan (chief rabbinic authority) of Cordova and a descendent of King David. In 1148, the fanatical Muslim Almohades came to power and the Jewish population became subject to severe persecution and forced conversion to Islam; the family of Rabbi Maimon fled Cordova and wandered for ten years throughout southern Spain and northern Africa, lived for five years in Fez, Morocco, finally making its way, by way of of Jerusalem and Hebron, to Fostat (old Cairo) in Egypt.When the drowning death of his younger brother David, a jewel merchant whose ship went down in the Indian Ocean along with all the family’s assets, forced Maimonides to become the family breadwinner, he took up the practice of medicine (which he had studied in his youth); in time, he became personal physician to Grand Visier Alfadhil and to Sultan Saladin and authored a number of medical tracts. He also served as the leader of Egyptian Jewry.Maimonides began the authorship of his first major work, a commentary on the Mishnah written in the Arabic vernacular (which includes his famed “
