,It's July! Have you renewed your Sisterhood membership or Friend of Sisterhood status yet? The basic membership rate went up to $50 on July 1. But the Sponsor ($72) and Patron ($118) rates remain the same as last year. At any level, belonging to the TAS Sisterhood is worth the investment.

You can renew your membership or be our Friend online - go to our website, tassisterhood.org, and click "Join Us!" on the menu. You can pay online or by sending a check to the Temple. Or print the attached membership form and drop it off with your check at the Temple.

And while you are spending money to support Sisterhood, how about participating in our Rosh Hashonah honey fundraiser?! You can send a jar of honey to friends and/or family within the US for just $12. Shipping is free until July 31 ($5 if ordered after that.) Each jar is delivered just before Rosh Hashonah with your personal wishes for a Sweet and Joyous New Year. 

You can also send the clergy or member of our professional staff good wishes for a sweet and happy New Year for just $5 a wish. One honey jar will be sent to each clergy or professional staff member and your name will be listed on a greeting as a contributor of good wishes for a Sweet and Joyous New Year. 

To send honey jars to friends or family or to send honey wishes to the clergy and staff, print out the attached honey order form and mail page 2 to the address on the form or drop it off at the Temple with your check or credit card information.

In honor of Sisterhood's honey program, today's story about an awesome woman is about Hinda Kohn, a college student in Florida with an unusual hobby for an Orthodox Jewish woman - she is a beekeeper. As a beekeeper, she has faced a battle to enjoy her hobby fully, starting with her parents, who had safety concerns. Her interest in beekeeping began when she was a child and she got her first hive when she was 16. Now she is up to three beehives.

Kohn takes her work with God’s creatures seriously. “Any way that I can help [the world] is good. Maybe this is part of it.” She also feels more in awe of God’s creativity, seeing how the bees understand each other. It also brings her closer to God, as that her most religious moments come when the bees are angry, “I’ll start saying kriyas Shema. I mean it!”

​The umbrella organization for Reform Sisterhoods (including ours) is the Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ). Here are some of the benefits from our Sisterhood's membership in WRJ.
 
WRJ Consultant Program: This program was created to provide WRJ-affiliated sisterhoods with access to WRJ leaders who are knowledgeable in topics that our affiliates often find challenging.

WRJ Events:  WRJ hosts a variety of events for affiliated members and women of Progressive Judaism from around the world, which are meant to educate, inform, inspire, connect and elevate women’s leadership and spirituality. Several of our members recently attended the WRJ Social Justice Conference. An upcoming event is the WRJ Women's Journey to Israel , Feb 20-28, 2020.

WRJ Speaker's Bureau:  This WRJ service aims to help develop leadership skills, provide education, and bring spirituality to sisterhoods across North America by sending experienced WRJ leaders to lead special events and workshops for local groups.

WRJ Programs: WRJ Programs to foster women’s Jewish growth include Chai Mitzvah (we have a Chai Mitzvah group in our Sisterhood) and Lilith Salons.
 
WRJ Support for other Programs: WRJ provides generous support for the PJ Library program, the North American Federation of Temple Youth (NFTY) and grants to Sisterhoods to help them develop "outside the box" programs. WRJ also partners with the Religious Action Center (the RAC) to promote social justice and civil rights, and to fight antisemitism.

To personally experience the kind of high-caliber programs that WRJ promotes and develops, we urge you to attend Area Day on July 14 at University Synagogue. Here's a link for more information about Area Day: https://www.wrjpacific.org/southern-california-area-day.html

Speaking of WRJ support for activism, social justice and the RAC, do you know the story of Anat Hoffman? 

Hoffman was born on a kibbutz near Jerusalem in 1954. As a youth, she was a champion swimmer and competed in the Maccabiah Games, winning titles in nine events. In 1974, after she completed her service in the Israel Defense Forces, she and her husband at the time, Michael, left for the United States to study. She graduated from UCLA in 1980 with a B.A. in Psychology. While at UCLA, she was exposed to Reform Judaism and realized for the first time that Judaism was not limited to Orthodoxy.

Returning to Israel, she became an activist for religious pluralism. In the late 1980s, she led a campaign for consumer rights with regard to Bezeq, the Israeli telecommunications company, and her efforts were successful. Anat Hoffman is chair of the Domari Society of Gypsies in Jerusalem. She was the chairwoman of Women in Black, an international women's anti-war movement with an estimated 10,000 activists around the world. She was a member of the group that started Women of the Wall in December 1988. She has been arrested multiple times for wearing a prayer shawl at the Wall. Since 2002 Hoffman has served as Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center, which was founded in 1987 as the public and legal advocacy arm of the movement for Progressive Judaism in Israel. It is dedicated to promoting equality, justice, religious freedom.

The Jerusalem Post listed her fifth among its list of 50 Most Influential Jews, for forcefully and successfully bringing the issue of women's rights at the Kotel to the "forefront of the consciousness of world Jewry". 

2019-2020 dues for Sisterhood Members and Friends of Sisterhood will increase to $50 on July 1st. But if you renew on or before June 30, 2019 you can take advantage of last year's price.

Select one of the two easy options below to join or renew your membership today.
 
Option 1: Click here to view the Membership Form. Then print, complete and send it with your check payable to TAS Sisterhood, 18200 Rinaldi Pl., Northridge, CA 91326.
 
Option 2: Click on this link for easy on line registration: 
https://tassisterhood.org/join-us.html; complete the form and either hit “NEXT” to pay by credit card or Paypal; or send your membership dues to TAS Sisterhood and we will match your payment to your application. 

​The LOVE brunch Sunday was just "LOVE-er-ly"! The speaker was a lot of fun, Tracey, our Area Rep, did an awesome job installing the board, the waffles were VERY yummy, and the look on Carol Bizar-Morton's face when she found out she was this year's Woman of the Year was priceless!

Except for our MahJongg Tournament on June 23, our LOVE lunch was the last Sisterhood event for the 2018-2019 year. However, the 2019-2020 year is getting off to a fabulous start with the WRJ Pacific District event called Area Day on July 14. Area Day is a day of growth and development with workshops on leadership, spirituality and fun. The keynote speaker will be Ariella Loewenstein, Deputy Regional Director, ADL Los Angeles, who will be speaking on “Anti-semitism in our Contemporary Society” - what a timely topic! Workshops include an art project, a book discussion, martial arts, event planning, social justice, torah study, tech tools, and much, much more. Go to the Area Day website (https://www.wrjpacific.org/southern-california-area-day.html), click on the Individual Online Registration Form button, and see which workshops sound most interesting to you.

TAS Sisterhood knows that Area Day is an amazing day, and supports our members attending by reimbursing the registration fee. Contact Erika Barnathan for more information about Area Day.

Are you familiar with the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League? ADL is a leading anti-hate organization. Founded in 1913 in response to an escalating climate of anti-Semitism and bigotry, its timeless mission is to protect the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment for all. Today, ADL continues to fight all forms of hate with the same vigor and passion. ADL is a global leader in exposing extremism and delivering anti-bias education, and is a leading organization in training law enforcement. ADL is the first call when acts of anti-Semitism occur. ADL’s ultimate goal is a world in which no group or individual suffers from bias, discrimination or hate.

Not only does the ADL fight anti-semitism both here and abroad, they promote immigrant & refugee rights, LGBTQ rights, women's equity, race and racial justice, Israel, and much more. In 2008, the ADL helped prevent an assassination attempt on President-elect Barak Obama. Ariella Loewenstein's keynote speech and follow-up workshop at Area Day are sure to provide an enlightening look at the current state of anti-semitism in today's society. We hope you can be there!

It's been two weeks full of Sisterhood activities:

• our May general meeting was a Celebration of Israel with lots of delicious Israeli food and an informative program where we heard about Israel demographics, history and innovations. At the meeting we also elected the 2019-2020 Sisterhood Board
• then last Thursday our own Phyllis Bigelson and a guest speaker from the local Alzheimer's Association told us about the work of the organization and provided information about the disease, it's diagnosis, management and course. This spurred discussions of current research studies and experimental treatments. It was an informative and interesting evening.

Then, on the weekend between the two Sisterhood events, Cheryl Frumes, Mel Birken, Bobbi Ross and I attended the WRJ Social Justice Conference in Washington D.C. What an empowering experience that was! There were workshops on current social justice topics, building advocacy skills, and the history of WRJ's involvement and support of social justice causes. And then, there was a dynamite concert, "Together as One", on Saturday evening featuring Julie Silver, Stacy Beyer and Marci Geller performing songs of social justice. Note: if you're an Amazon Prime member the album, "Together as One", is included with Prime membership.

I'll leave you with a link to this song by Julie Silver I'll be a Light for Justice.

Upcoming Events
Thursday, May 16 - Sisterhood General Meeting A Celebration of Israel
Thursday, May 23 – Alzheimer’s Educational Program
Sunday, June 9 – Annual Sisterhood LOVE Luncheon

Wow! Sisterhood Shabbat was so wonderful! The bios were inspirational, the songs were great, and it was fun to see everyone decked out in purple. A big Todah Rabah to the Shabbat Shalom committee, to all the readers, to MoTAS and to the well over 100 people who showed up to celebrate Sisterhood (and Ashlan Gee, the Bat Mitzvah girl) that night. 

Thursday's general meeting (May 16) is going to be a lot of fun too. What are you making for the Israeli food competition? Hummus? Falafel? Shakshouka? Labneh? Couscous? Israeli salad? Schniztzle? The possibilities are endless. Come check out the celebration and see who wins the competition!

The Alzheimer's presentation the following Thursday May 23) will be a bit more somber, but still definitely worth the trip to the Temple. We hope to see you there!
And last, but definitely not least, put Sunday June 9 on your calendar for the annual Sisterhood LOVE luncheon, celebrating our
"Leaders, Organizers, Volunteers, and Empowerers". The entertainment will be fabulous and lunch will be a waffle bar - YUM!

For flyers/more information, go to our Sisterhood website - TASSisterhood.org.
In honor of Israeli Independence Day, we bring you the story of Ada E. Yonath, an Israeli crystallographer best known for her pioneering work on the structure of the ribosome. In 2009, she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz) for her studies on the structure and function of the ribosome. She is the first Israeli woman to win the Nobel Prize (there have been ten Israeli Nobel laureates,) the first woman from the Middle East to win a Nobel prize in the sciences, and the first woman in 45 years to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Ribosomes translate RNA into protein and, because they have slightly different structures in microbes, when compared to eukaryotes, such as human cells, they are often a target for antibiotics. Yonath did pioneering work determining the structure of ribosomes, elucidated the modes of action of over twenty different antibiotics targeting the ribosome, illuminated mechanisms of drug resistance and synergism, deciphered the structural basis for antibiotic selectivity and showed how it plays a key role in clinical usefulness and therapeutic effectiveness. She also introduced a novel technique, cryo bio-crystallography, which became routine in structural biology and allowed intricate projects otherwise considered formidable. A most amazing woman!​

Please read to the end of this email to hear about a very special opportunity!

May is just around the corner and it has lots of fun opportunities to celebrate and socialize and learn interesting things.

NEW!  Sisterhood is bringing in a speaker on Alzheimer's on Thursday, May 23, 7pm, to talk about this devastating disease. If you are dealing with a loved one with Alzheimer's now, or are concerned that you might be in the future, this presentation is a must see! The $5 fee is waived for Sisterhood members and Friends of Sisterhood. Contact Phyllis Bigelson (Phyllis@bigelsoncpa.com) for more information.

Friday, May 10 (7:30pm), is our annual Sisterhood Shabbat. Come get spiritual with us as we celebrate Women of Valor at this special service. Many of us will be wearing purple in honor of Sisterhood.

And on Thursday, May 16 (7pm) we will celebrate Israeli Independence Day. Put your chef's hat on because we are having an Israeli food contest! Bring a homemade Israeli dish - we will sample all the entries and vote on the best one. There will also be presentations about Israel, and, of course, lots of time to schmooze with friends.
Flyers are available on the Sisterhood website (https://www.tassisterhood.org/) from the scrolling box and on the Upcoming Events page.

Speaking of Women of Valor, the theme of this year's Sisterhood Shabbat (on May 10), no list of Women of Valor could be complete without the name Carrie O. Simon. Carrie Simon was the first President of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (NFTS), the organization that was renamed the Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ) in 1993, and is our Sisterhood's parent organization.
 
Simon founded NFTS in 1913. Two years later, it had become the largest Jewish women's religious organization in the United States.  As president of the federation (from 1913 to 1919), Simon established the National Committee on Religion, which organized religious schools, increased synagogue attendance, and collected and displayed Jewish ceremonial objects. The Committee on Hebrew Union College Scholarships enabled young men of limited economic means to attend rabbinical school and raised funds for religious educational work by UAHC laypeople. Simon also used her position to encourage the UAHC to include more women on synagogue boards and to welcome intermarried couples into the temple and its sisterhood.

During her lifetime, Simon watched as the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods grew from five thousand women in forty-nine American chapters to a hundred thousand women in 585 chapters throughout nine countries. Nice Job, Carrie!

From Carol Stern
You are invited to join your TAS family at the Hollywood Bowl on Wednesday Night, July 3rd. We have reserved a limited amount of tickets and reserved picnic area for the Firework Spectacular with Nile Rodgers & CHIC.

The seats are in Section M-1 and our picnic area is next to the main parking area (and bus drop-off). Tickets (including service charges, picnic area, individual seat cushions and service charges) will be $37 each per person.
As always, it's first come-first serve so please send your checks made payable to Carol Stern by May 9th to hold your seats.
Feel fee to invite your family and friends to join us. Call or email if you have any questions.