With Spring just around the corner, it's time to give those dormant faculties a shake, and see what WHAM has to offer. While other creatures have been hibernating, your dynamic, elf-like, committee, have been busily preparing to take us through 5757 and beyond. Ultimately, we cannot move forward without your support and creative ideas. So if you have a complaint or a brain-wave, or just want to share a celebration, please let us know.
Return to ![[Contents]](../images/toc.gif){kind=small}
Contents
WHAM people tend to feel at home at LIMMUD because it encapsulates values to which we aspire, and which are not commonly found in Anglo-Jewry. It's open and democratic without being inefficient and chaotic. It's progressive without being "touchy-feely". It's not academic but isn't anti-intellectual either.
It's child-friendly without being obsessed with the 'Pisher' Factor. It's inclusivist without getting on your nerves. And it is quite comfortable with the notion that one's Jewishness does not have to reduce to one's practice in relation to Saturday motoring.
WHAM therefore ran a session at LIMMUD, last December. It was billed as an examination of WHAM, its history, its purpose, its politics, its future and its conundrums. One member of WHAM said that as if it wasn't bad enough that we navel gaze every week amongst ourselves, we are now doing it on our holidays as well, and with complete strangers !
About 50 people attended. Some were WHAM regulars. Some had never heard of us. Some had come once but had gone away because they didn't like it. We had a wide-ranging and intense discussion about everything from how to attract more members to how better to support Rabbi Michael Harris (who did, in fact, attend the session).
It was good. WHAM regulars learned a lot, interestingly not all the same things. As for me, I took away one message. It has been said before and should be said again. It is obvious really, and I knew it all along, but it deserves repetition. It is this: you can't run a minyan in isolation from a community.
And the idea of "community" should be more than the sugar-coated-Guardian-2-abstract that has come to be associated with that word. It can mean welcoming people, making them all feel a part; designing and being involved in activities for people of all types, all ages, all orientations. From kids' parties to shmoozy, flirty, boozy dances, to tzedakah initiatives for the old and lonely. 'Community' is something for everyone, a place for everyone.
Even me.
And even you.
Jonathan SeitlerLIMMUD is an annual, week-long educational programme held over the Xmas holidays, and has been running for around ten years. It attracts Jews of all ages and from a wide spectrum of communities and religious observance. If you'd like to more about LIMMUD ring 0181-349 1154. (Mondays and Tuesdays).
Return to Contents
What they said:
"I was surprised at what a stimulating evening you can have in North West London. Food for the body and the soul." Bernard Levin
"Smashing grub, and people, for a fiver? Call me old-fashioned, but I haven't had as much fun since Punk!" Tony Parks
If you missed the Travelling Supper event last year, then don't do it again!
Call Geoff Zelin NOW!
Return to Contents
Some of our more attentive readers may recall, that this recipe, was first featured some years back. However I say good things are worth repeating, especially dishes as tasty as this. So here it is again- in slightly modified form. (A prize to anyone who can spot the difference.) Thanks to Miriam and Charles Daniels and Deborah Frieze.
675g Potatoes
3 Medium Onions
225g Brown Lentils
225g Chestnuts
1 Desert Spoon Yeast Extract
430ml of Warm Water
50g Margarine
Return to Contents
Two sites that come highly recommended:
Return to Contents
As the year's first ray of sunshine broke through winter's cloak of grey, 40 adults and children gathered at Fortune Green to plant a tree, in celebration of Tu-bishvat, (the festival of all things green and leafy).
Once the tree was safely in its new home, Courtesy of Camden Council, we merrily, skipped our way down West End Lane to the Sinclair's home for a well-earned brunch.
A big thanks to David and Annabel for all their hard work and organisation.
(If you'd like to water the sapling over these vital early months, it's in front of the railings, facing the children's play centre.)
Return to Contents
What do the final scene of the film Close Encounters and laining (reading from the Torah) have in common?
Answer: hand signals.
Richard Dreyfuss' communication with the Alien was a cheironomic translation of their 5-note calling sign. (Go-on, I bet you can hum it, even now). By using hand-signs in the air, many ancient peoples were able to pass on musical intonation to following generations, long before the modern system of writing music. The squiggerly lines above the Hebrew in the chumash are a graphical depiction of those tunes or negginot.
Return to Contents
Continuing our series on jumbled WHAM members' names, can anyone hazard a guess as to who may secretly be such a political heavyweight?
Who is the member of WHAM whose name is made from the same letters as:
VILE USELESS TORY
Return to Contents
| Wednesday 19th February |
Drama Group (& every
other week) 8.30 pm 166, Fordwych Road. Sarah Davis 0181-452-5137 |
| |
Kashrut Perspectives - A Slide Presentation Rabbi Jeremy Conway. 8.15 pm Eli Chinn Hall |
| Shabbat 22nd February |
Visiting Speaker: Rabbi
Rashi Simon |
| |
Mrs Ann Harris on 'Modern Orthodoxy and Women's
Issues'. A report on the recent conference in New York (after
the main service) |
| Sunday 23rd February |
Travelling Supper. Ring Geoff Zelin |
| Monday 24th February |
Is Brit Milah Wrong? Rabbi Michael Harris's Discussion Group 8.15 pm at Flat 19, Palace Court, 250 Finchley Road (Corner of Finchley Road and Frognal Lane) |
| Friday 7th March |
Oneg Shabbat 9 pm at Flat
4, 40 Mapesbury Road Contact: Clarissa Coleman |
| Shabbat 8th March |
Shabbat Mevarachim Breakfast
Kiddush |
| Monday 17th March |
The Destruction of Amelek -A Morally
Wrong Torah Commandment? (Details as Monday 24th February) Rabbi Michael Harris's Discussion Group |
| |
PURIM |
| Thursday 20th March |
Fast of Esther |
| Saturday 22nd March |
Megillah I, 7.30 pm, followed
by a party |
| Sunday 23rd March |
After shacharit, Megillah
II from 9.45 am Followed by a Brunch in Shul from 10 am |
| |
Purim tea party & children's
entertainer 2, Asmara Road 3.30-5.30 pm Contact: Jonathan Seitler |
| Shabbat 5th April |
Shabbat Mevarachim Breakfast
Kiddush |
| Monday 7th April |
The Changing face of
Holocaust Studies Professor David Cesarani. Eli Chinn Hall 8.15 pm |
| Monday (night) 21st April |
Pesach - First two days,
services held with main shul |
Validated by Hal's HTML Validator to
HTML Level 2.0 with Netscape Extensions on 23 March, 1996
[ ![[Top]](../images/top.gif){kind=small}
Top of page |
![[Home]](../images/homepage.gif){kind=small}
Home Page]