2007: Organizing event
Chanukah candle lighting
Dec. 9th at the Mason's hall
"The idea for this event is to have a nosh, talk about what we want the Jewish Community of Arlington to be, find out who might like to serve on the steering committee and light the menorah's we hope everyone will bring."
This message was posted on 11/25/07 by Annie LaCourt on the Arlington Jewish email list, proposing our first meeting and explaining why:
Hi All,
I apologize for not having a chance to follow up on my posting about the event that the Jewish community of Arlington is planning for Dec. 9th. I have been away for the holiday. I want to give you all some more back ground on where this effort is coming from and what its future direction might be.
Last spring and over the summer in response to a number of events, a small group of folks who are involved in a number of local community organizations began to talk about the need for a central Jewish organization in Arlington. For myself there were two moments that lead me to believe that such a group was needed.
Fuel assistance fund The first was two years ago when I was fairly new on the board of selectmen and an issue came up with our fuel assistance fund. Basically, it ran out of money in December which, as you can imagine, is not a good thing. A small group of folks got together and raised some money thru local churches and presented the fuel assistance fund with a check for 5 or 10 thousand dollars as a meeting. I thought that was a great idea and I knew that the local Jewish community would love to give generously as well - but there was no local institution to turn to suggest the project. Of course, I could go to my synagogue and I am sure that my Rabbi would have been happy to make a donation from his discretionary fund. But my synagogue is not an Arlington institution, it has members from many communities that probably also have fuel assistance funds and it can't tap the generosity of the whole Arlington Jewish Community.
Hate mail The second was last spring when several local politicians received hate mail. Of course the Human Rights Commission responded to those incidents and did it admirably, but at least one of those letters was directly anti-semitic. I talked to many of my Jewish friends and many members of my synagogue about the issue and I understood how all of them felt. But there was no organization that could represent what these events meant to the Jewish community in Arlington to the larger community. In talking to friends I discovered I wasn't the only one who was thinking along these lines.
Organizing event In talking further about this idea, we realized a couple of things. The first was that we all had ideas about what kind of organization was needed and what it might undertake but those ideas were varied. The other was that the Jewish community in Arlington is varied and we want this organization to be representative of the whole community - religious and not, affiliated and not, regardless of age and family configuration. So we decided to start with an organizing event - hence a Hannukah Candle lighting on Dec. 9th at 4 pm at the Mason's hall on Academy St. in Arlington.
The idea for this event is to have a nosh, talk about what we want the Jewish Community of Arlington to be, find out who might like to serve on the steering committee and light the menorah's we hope everyone will bring!
So if you can come on Dec. 9th that would be great! But if you can't and you are interested in getting involved, please send an email to or call:
And we'll keep you in the loop.
Thanks,
Annie LaCourt
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