GET INVOLVED WITH A GOOD CAUSE
SOCIAL ACTION COMMITTEE
This committee helps to serve the outside community, enabling the congregation to engage with those in need. For more information and to revive this committee, please contact the main office at (310) 392-3029 ext 4.
SOCIAL ACTION OPPORTUNITIES
As one of the first actions of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’s Inside Safe initiative, a longstanding homeless encampment was moved from Hampton Drive this week. Its residents rehoused in a motel near the 105 Freeway. Read about it in this article from the L.A. Times.
Volunteer for the Greater Los Angeles and Santa Monica Homeless Count Efforts
The annual Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, takes place Jan. 24- 26. You can participate near Mishkon or in your home zip code. Here are the links and details.
Los Angeles
Jan. 24, 25, or 26, 8 p.m.-12 a.m.
Santa Monica
Jan. 25, 11 p.m.- 3 a.m.
Click here for more details
TIKKUN OLAM
ACTIVITIES:
Annual Blood Drive
Each year, we arrange for Cedar Sinai’s “bloodmobile” to come to Mishkon. It is a mitzvah to help save a life. Anyone in the community is welcome to stop by and give blood. The blood drive usually takes place during our lively Purim Festival.
Mishkon Family Mitzvah Day
This is a joyous opportunity for the entire family to come together and give back to our community. In the past, we engaged in the following activities:
-
Toiletries for a women’s shelter. Please bring new and unopened items that we will package for women living in a shelter.
-
Operation Gratitude. Bring your leftover Halloween candy. We will make cards and create care packages for the troops.
-
BookEnds. Please donate children’s books of excellent quality to create libraries in schools and youth organizations in underserved areas. www.bookends.org.
-
Tzedakah boxes. We will decorate boxes that the children will then bring home and use to collect their tzedakah.
HAZAK
Hazak is Mishkon’s dynamic group for people 60 and older. The name stands for “wisdom, age and forward,” a perfect description of Mishkon’s Hazak members. Members pay special attention to the needs of seniors in the congregation. The group hosts a variety of interesting activities, including outings to local sites and events. Members also enjoy pot-luck lunches and holiday celebrations and sometimes host events with the congregation. Hazak also sponsors a yearly Shabbat morning service with creative presentations about the Torah portion. The service is followed by a delicious kiddush lunch. Yearly dues are $18 for a single and $25 for a couple. Hazak is looking for a new chair. The group would love to have you attend the next event.
To download a Hazak Membership Dues Form, please click here http://mishkon.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Hazak-Dues-Form.pdf
For information, contact the main office at (310) 392-3029 ext 4.
HESED
At Mishkon, we believe that being part of a community means being there for one another – in good times and bad. Unfortunately, we don’t always know what’s happening in the life of community members. So we turn to you and ask that you keep us informed about any community members who could use a little support. By providing us with this information, you are doing a great Mitzvah, as you are enabling us to fulfill the Mitzvot of Bikur Cholim (visiting the sick), Nichum Aveilim (comforting mourners), and Kiddush HaShem (sanctifying God’s name).
THE L’CHAIM FUND FOR MISHKON MEMBERS
The L’Chaim Fund was started by revered members Louis and Dorothy Gold, who became parents relatively late in Louis’s life and decided that they wanted to encourage Mishkon members to multiply, be fruitful, and be raised in the Jewish faith and traditions.
Mr. Gold immigrated to New York City from Odessa, then a part of Russia, in the first decade of the 20th Century. He was 16 and traveled alone; his family followed two months later. Apprenticed to a barber in Odessa, he quickly established himself as a barber in New York. After learning to speak Italian, he rose to the presidency of the Barber’s Union and proprietorship of an exclusive 5th Avenue hair salon. After a war-time turn as a tool-and-die maker in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, he patented his seminal invention: a device that allowed a skilled operator to quickly create waves in women’s hair that did not wash out. Mr. Gold is the father of the “permanent wave.”
After moving to California in 1937, Mr. Gold started a bank, invested in real estate, and rode horses with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Posse, a highly coveted and prestigious appointment.
Before Louis passed away late in his tenth decade, he and his wife, Dorothy, created the L’Chaim Fund by earmarking a six-figure donated investment for the purpose of encouraging parenthood among the synagogue's members. Following Dorothy's death, their children have continued to be involved. Every year on Rosh Hashanah, every family that has been Mishkon members for at least a year and has had a new baby or adopted one, receives an equal share of the investment’s annual yield. Depending on how the investment performed and how many new babies have arrived at Mishkon, this has ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. While the money given to each family may be used for any purpose, Dorothy and Louis Gold hoped that families would use it to further their child’s education.
Since its establishment in the late 1980s, the L'Chaim Fund has contributed to the Jewish education of more than three dozen children. Although many Mishkon families have left the area as their children grew up, at least seven of those L’Chaim Fund babies have remained in our community long enough to celebrate their b’nai mitzvot.
L’chaim!
