-
Community Service
As a member of local community and religious groups whose goals and values we share, we volunteer where help is needed.
-
Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur
The shofar is heard at CHJ Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Family Services.
-
Social Justice
After Charlotttesville
-
Tu B’Shvat
Celebrating nature at the Tu B’Shvat seder is a joyous event filled with music and good food.
-
We’re a Cooperative!
Members all play a role in making the congregation work. Read about how CHJ is organized.
Shavuot
Shavuot is a minor, ancient pilgrimage festival that marked the harvest of barley. Shavuot literally means “weeks,” so named because the festival is exactly seven weeks (plus one day) from the second night of Passover. For Humanistic Jews, Shavuot is a wonderful day for picnics with fresh loaves of challa. Shavuot is a significant Jewish holiday with… 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.
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.
A Jewish landlord (Gene Troobnick) brings a scholar (Avi Hoffman) from Poland to marry his daughter (Greta Cowan) in circa-1900 Boston. Director: Pamela C. Berger
Tech spec and influencer Dave Shafer, and discussion facilitator and Yiddishist Manny Ratafia will coordinate the film reveal. Post-Passover popcorn recommended.
Zoom link will be sent April 14.
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 lunch and a 2nd generation Holocaust survivor will speak.
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.
There will be a class trip to the Tenement Museum and to Katz’s Deli in the lower east side of New York City.
World War II and Hollywood’s Jewish Question
with Laurence Lerman and Irv Slifkin
We’ll learn how Jewish Hollywood moguls reacted – and failed to react – to what was happening in Europe in the 1930’s, and their subsequent actions
during and following World War II, including movies produced as a result.
Laurence Lerman has worked with major and independent studios. He’s been writing about film and video for more than 30 years for entertainment magazines and media. Irv Slifkin teaches film and journalism at Temple University and Rowan College in Philadelphia. He’s the author of two books on movies and writes for newspapers and entertainment media as well as lecturing on film and popular culture.
Laurence and Irv created www.FilmShul.com to enhance film fans’ pandemic survival and lifelong learning.
Zoom link will be sent May 5 th . For more info: jewishjourneys@humanisticjews.org
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out
that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the
lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind.
True chemistry results.
But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six.
Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.
Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting
characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist. (400 pp) Fiction
Festival of Shavuoth
There will be a brief service followed by a short program. Zoom link will be sent out prior to the date.
Open to the Public.
Please join us at the Westport Woman’s Club,
as Dr. Deborah Varat, Professor of Art History, Southern New Hampshire University, presents “Arthur Szyk’s The New Order (1941): How the Cartoons of a Polish Jew Helped Prepare the U.S. for War.”
This is the first in-person event CHJ’s Jewish Journeys Committee has held since the pandemic began in March 2020, and we’re delighted to be co-sponsoring it with the Westport Woman’s Club.
Also, CHJ and Dr. Varat have a sentimental connection with the Westport Woman’s Club, as Dr. Varat is the daughter of long-time members Ellie and Dave Shafer. The family celebrated Deborah’s Bat Mitzvah (some years ago!) at the Westport Woman’s Club.
Registration and light breakfast at 9:30 am; program begins promptly at 10 am.
Ample parking on site.
Livestream also available.
Deborah Varat’s talk:
Livestream LINK HERE; Meeting ID: 863 7946 4870; Passcode: 581845
Arthur Szyk’s Freedom from Fear,1942 
Join Women to Women via 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.
Facebook Activity
On May 21st, CHJ held a special art program at the Westport Woman's Club. Dr. Deborah Varat, Professor of Art History, Southern New Hampshire University, presented "Arthur Szyk's The New Order (1941): How the Cartoons of a Polish Jew Helped Prepare the U.S. for War." A very interesting and well-attended program that was organized by Jessica Wolf and the CHJ Jewish Journeys committee. The Westport Woman's Club were co-sponsors and CHJ is grateful for their partnership on this wonderful event.
CHJ in the news... (read til end)
