We were very proud of our club’s creativity these past two years in planning our Brotherhood Shabbat Weekend, officially known as the Temple Israel Brotherhood Shabbat and Annual Robert Zeitsiff Scholar in Residence Weekend. In January 2022, we welcomed as our Scholar in Residence Dr. Ephraim Isaac, Ethiopian Scholar of Ancient Semitic Languages for a Shabbat d’var Torah and as our Sunday morning speaker, and provided COVID-friendly “Gala Kiddush To-Go Boxed Lunches” and boxed Sunday brunches. We also held a “TV Sitcom Trivia Game Night” that Saturday evening. This year, in February 2023, we welcomed back as our Scholar in Residence Rabbi Menachem Creditor, the Pearl and Ira Meyer Scholar in Residence of the UJA Federation of New York, who served a Assistant Rabbi at our temple in the early 2000’s. At the last minute we had to scramble to reschedule the weekend from January when Rabbi Creditor came down with COVID. In addition, his wife, Neshama Carlebach, the award-winning singer/songwriter, performed a concert with her band that evening that was open to the greater community and brought in over 300 people.

Our Brotherhood Weekend, officially known as the Temple Israel Brotherhood Shabbat and Annual Robert Zeitsiff Scholar in Residence Weekend, is named in memory of our club’s original founder, Robert Zeitsiff, z”l. We typically hold Brotherhood Weekend in early January, and it is comprised of the following components:

1) Brotherhood-led Shabbat services – with Brotherhood members leading all aspects of the services;
2) A d’var Torah by our invited Scholar in Residence;
3) A President’s Message, by our club president;
4) A “Gala Shabbat Kiddush” that features our famous glazed Kosher salami;
5) A Saturday evening social program, typically for members and their spouses, though in 2023, as we held a concert, we opened it to the greater community. In past years we’ve had parties in members’ homes, dances at the temple, game nights, etc.
6) Sunday breakfast talk with our Scholar in Residence.

We host the Kiddush for the entire community, and invite sponsor and supporter donations for the weekend – with multiple sponsorship tiers, as can be seen in the program. We also charge a small fee for the Sunday morning breakfast.

Over the past few years, our temple Sisterhood’s members have helped with set up and serving food at our Brotherhood Kiddush, and we have reciprocated at Sisterhood’s annual Shabbat and Kiddush. The smooth functioning of our Brotherhood Weekend involves many of our members and their spouses.

We prepare flyers, advertisements and the program guide in Microsoft PowerPoint (attached) and PDF and use Google Forms and Google Sheets for volunteer sign-up sheets (Excel table attached). Our temple administrative office sets up a registration form with eCommerce on the temple’s ShulCloud-based web site.

Given the importance of this year’s concert, we advertised throughout the temple and local Jewish community, in social media, and placed advertisements in Boston-area Jewish publications. We also reached out to other local clubs and synagogues and sent copies of the flyer.