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Community Service
As a member of local community and religious groups whose goals and values we share, we volunteer where help is needed.
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Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur
The shofar is heard at CHJ Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Family Services.
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Social Justice
After Charlotttesville
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Tu B’Shvat
Celebrating nature at the Tu B’Shvat seder is a joyous event filled with music and good food.
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We’re a Cooperative!
Members all play a role in making the congregation work. Read about how CHJ is organized.
Purim
Before the pandemic, CHJ would hold an annual Purim party, with a Hamantaschen Bake-Off. Prizes were awarded for best taste, most attractive, and most creative hamantaschen. The holiday’s name, “Purim,” meaning “lots” or “dice,” is meant to remind us of how the evil character Haman drew lots to determine the fate of the Jews of… Read More
Mitzvah Mentoring Program
Mitzvah Mentoring Program For over six decades, the CHJ’s bar and bat mitzvah program has offered highly meaningful opportunities for secular Jewish families to celebrate a traditional milestone in their children’s lives while remaining faithful to their humanistic beliefs and values. Uniquely tailored to the interests of the student and family, the mitzvah program allows… Read More
Invitation to Join
Humanistic Judaism offers contemporary Jews an alternative to theistic-based branches of Judaism. At the Congregation for Humanistic Judaism (CHJ), our services and programs embrace Jewish historical and cultural traditions and its ethical values as applicable to our secular humanistic worldview. In our services, and especially on the High Holidays, we celebrate our Jewish identity while… Read More
Letter from the President
Thank you, all CHJ members, for giving me the opportunity to serve as your President. I promise to do my very best to meet your needs. Also, thank you, CHJ’ers, for enriching my life, and for your friendship in difficult times over the past >17 years. CHJ has given me the opportunity to celebrate being Jewish, to enjoy being Jewish, to share being Jewish, to learn more about being Jewish, and to support social/environmental goals. There are as many ways to do these things as there are members of CHJ.
Celebrate, Enjoy, Share, Learn, and Act!
Under the guidance of Steve Getz who is now Immediate Past President, the CHJ Board held special extra meetings over the last year to work on a project Steve called “Envisioning CHJ.” This initiative was successful in many ways. It reconfirmed our commitment to the goals in the bylaws. It achieved the financial review required by the bylaws. It enabled us to update our insurance contract. And it will be ongoing, because it generated a list of multiple ways in which we can act to make sure CHJ can thrive in the future. Among other ideas that have now been implemented is the renewed commitment to the B’nai Mitzvah program. We also had not one but two Havdalahs on the beach last summer. Friday evening programming and Sunday morning Jewish Journeys continue. I am convinced that the more that we enjoy what we do in CHJ, the stronger CHJ will be. Read More
Upcoming Events
Join Ruth Light to celebrate the joys of being Jewish on those Fridays when there is no official “program.” Ruth will be lighting candles at her home online in a Zoom room at 7 PM on those Fridays. “This is a new thing for me: even my grandmothers didn’t light candles for Shabbos”, says Ruth. We will take just a few minutes to schmooze, light candles if you like, perhaps share a little music or poetry or a short video, and touch base with our CHJ family.
A Zoom link will be sent closer to the date. Contact Ruth with questions.
Join Women’s Rap vis Zoom, to stay connected at a distance. All CHJ women members are welcome. It’s a great way to get to know each other.
The Zoom link will be sent just prior to the meeting date.If you plan to attend please RSVP Roberta Frank.
Mitzvah class with focus on Yom Hoshoa
Join Ruth Light to celebrate the joys of being Jewish on those Fridays when there is no official “program.” Ruth will be lighting candles at her home online in a Zoom room at 7 PM on those Fridays. “This is a new thing for me: even my grandmothers didn’t light candles for Shabbos”, says Ruth. We will take just a few minutes to schmooze, light candles if you like, perhaps share a little music or poetry or a short video, and touch base with our CHJ family.
A Zoom link will be sent closer to the date. Contact Ruth with questions.
Pot luck luncheon for new and new-ish members.
Please join Board members for this “meet-and-mingle’ event.
Our two-year mitzvah plan of study consists of live classes and activities facilitated by a mitzvah coordinator and our teacher, Taegun Moon. The ultimate goal of our program is to facilitate a journey for the mitzvah candidate that is meaningful, personal, and validating of their heritage, and to offer an opportunity for our congregation to recognize and appreciate the wealth of interests and experience of our young adults.
Watch the listserv for venue information.
Join our CHJ Family for 2nd Seder of Passover: “Dayenu at the Diner“.
CHJ families and their guests are invited to our annual traditional seder, where we read from our secular humanistic Passover Haggadah including the legendary tale of the exodus from Egypt, updated to include modern exodus stories. Passover is also a celebration of human dignity and of the freedom that makes dignity possible, themes so relevant to our society today.
We’ll gather as we do each year, with all the symbols of the seder plate, the Four Questions and Ten Plagues, and songs led by our song-leader Emily. Who can forget “Let My People Go,” the highlight from last year?
Join us at the private room at the Circle Diner as we share a sit-down dinner and wine (all included). Our four-course meal will include matzah ball soup, hard-boiled egg and salad, choice of main dish (turkey, brisket, salmon) and flourless chocolate cake.
Vegetarian options or children’s meals are available to order at an additional a la carte price from the regular menu.
We seek volunteers to prepare and bring your home made Charoset for our “Around the world charoset” tasting.We chose Circle Diner for its convenient Fairfield location, ample parking and ability for us to offer a reduced ticket price — 25% below last year — just $30 per adult, children $15 (under 10).
Everything is included…You need only to show up ready to meet friends and sing, “Dayenu!”
This event has capacity of 44 people, and, is “first come first served.”
Please register as soon as possible with this Eventbrite link. Any questions? Please email events@humanisticjews.org.
For those members who prefer virtual we will be in touch with details about the zoom option when we get closer to the date
The diner has limited capacity and is
only open to CHJ families and their guests by reservation.
Join Ruth Light to celebrate the joys of being Jewish on those Fridays when there is no official “program.” Ruth will be lighting candles at her home online in a Zoom room at 7 PM on those Fridays. “This is a new thing for me: even my grandmothers didn’t light candles for Shabbos”, says Ruth. We will take just a few minutes to schmooze, light candles if you like, perhaps share a little music or poetry or a short video, and touch base with our CHJ family.
A Zoom link will be sent closer to the date. Contact Ruth with questions.
It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a
president, and in a small New England town an aging Classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to
retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk
would astonish even his most virulent accuser.
Coleman Silk has a secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four children, his
colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk’s secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life came unraveled. And to understand also how Silk’s astonishing private history is, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, “magnificently” interwoven with “the larger public history of modern America”. (361 pp)
Fiction
All CHJ members are invited to attend. Please RSVP Ruth Light to request Zoom link.
Join Ruth Light to celebrate the joys of being Jewish on those Fridays when there is no official “program.” Ruth will be lighting candles at her home online in a Zoom room at 7 PM on those Fridays. “This is a new thing for me: even my grandmothers didn’t light candles for Shabbos”, says Ruth. We will take just a few minutes to schmooze, light candles if you like, perhaps share a little music or poetry or a short video, and touch base with our CHJ family.
A Zoom link will be sent closer to the date. Contact Ruth with questions.
Levy, a young Talmudic scholar, leaves the big city to search for truth in the countryside of the Russian Empire Pale of Settlement (possibly Ukraine). A farm family is impressed with Levy’s intellect and takes him
in. Their jealous neighbor uses his daughter as bait to compete for Levy’s allegiance.
Open to All
Zoom link sent a day or two before the program.
More info: jewishjourneys@humanisticjews.org
Our two-year mitzvah plan of study consists of live classes and activities facilitated by a mitzvah coordinator and our teacher, Taegun Moon. The ultimate goal of our program is to facilitate a journey for the mitzvah candidate that is meaningful, personal, and validating of their heritage, and to offer an opportunity for our congregation to recognize and appreciate the wealth of interests and experience of our young adults.
Watch the listserv for venue information.
There will be a brief service followed by a short program.
Open to the Public.
There will be a lunch and a 2nd generation Holocaust survivor will speak.
Facebook Activity
Save the date!!! CHJ Passover Seder----Dayenu at the Diner!
April 6th!
Details to follow!
Awesome‼️
As we joyfully remember Rabbi Sherwin Wine on his birthday, today would be a great day to check out SherwinWine.com and learn more about the founding rabbi of Humanistic Judaism and the milestones of our movement!
