Sister Joan Carusillo and Sister Lorraine Ryan of the Women's Circle at WXEL-TV's Boynton Beach studio.

From my latest InterFaith21 essay in The Coastal Star:

Our own Women’s Circle sisters are about to become TV celebrities…Sister Lorraine Ryan and Sister Joan Carusillo, co-founders of the Boynton Beach nonprofit that serves low-income women, are “starring” in a new documentary with imminent WXEL public-TV air dates.

In the meantime, it’s not too soon to mark your calendar for the annual Circle of Hope fundraising gala that supports all the good work of the Women’s Circle: Monday, February 20, 2012 at The Hamlet Country Club in Delray Beach with the Mardi Gras theme: “Carnivale of Caring.”

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Read the story here. Disclosure: I provide some paid and volunteer service for the Women’s Circle.

— C.B. Hanif

Members of the Israeli Scouts Friendship Caravan performed recently at Abbey Delray North.

—  from my latest InterFaith21 essay in The Coastal Star.

"Proud Papa" Shelly Weil, who for 38 years has been hosting the exemplary cultural program.

More scenes:

— C.B. Hanif

— from my latest InterFaith21 essay in The Coastal Star.

The Chabad of South Palm Beach’s new center in Manalapan’s Plaza Del Mar is just plain welcoming.

“We really did try to create that feel,” said Rabbi Leibel Stolik. “We wanted it to be an inviting, warm, welcoming atmosphere, so that people can feel welcome, walk by and feel that everybody and anybody can come in. And this includes Jews and non-Jews as well.”

That initial consonant in “chabad” sounds closer to a “k” to some. “If you say ‘habad,’ you’ll be forgiven,” Stolik quipped.

The chabad movement within Judaism is characterized by its emphasis, he said.

“Chabad stands for the three intellectual parts of your brain: knowledge, understanding and wisdom. Basically, it means to incorporate godliness and the appreciation of godliness not only in your heart, but in your mind as well.”

There is much more to this philosophy shared by hundreds of thousands of people at thousands of chabad locations. Each is independently operated, has its own budget, fundraising, services, programs and so forth.

Stolik cited 10 to 15 chabads in Palm Beach County, including three in Boca Raton, two in Boynton Beach and one in Delray Beach.

The philosophy “is the idea of helping and reaching out to and caring for other people,” he said.

That’s what he, his wife, Shaina, and others have been doing for more than two years in various rented space and, since September, in the renovated storefront at 242 S. Ocean Blvd. in the Plaza Del Mar, next to the Cashmere Shop.

Although a chabad is primarily a religious organization, “whenever possible we try to help out people in the community as well,” he said.

That could mean volunteering in hospitals, helping the elderly or any of the host of social programs offered by a chabad.

The Chabad of South Palm Beach’s Jan. 23 “Open Air Jazz Concert” at the Lantana Nature Preserve drew more than 100 people. There are women’s and men’s activities. A Passover seder will probably draw other people.

“For most synagogues,” Stolik said, “and perhaps churches as well as mosques, there’s a certain need that members pull together and create a house of worship, and they bring down a rabbi or leader or minister or imam to serve their purpose.”

In this case, “There wasn’t an established membership that felt that there was a need to establish a new synagogue. We felt that if we open up our doors, and if we reach out to people and create this environment, we felt that this was a need for the community, that we were doing good for the community.”

Although the various education, holiday and community programs are going on as before, he said, the regular prayers services are still at their beginning and picking up.

Inside the entrance, prayer books and Bibles adorn bookcase shelves. There are prayer shawls — in this case blue-and-white. One usually dons these when entering a synagogue to pray, also usually wearing a kipah, the traditional Jewish head covering, “symbolizing that there’s an authority above us, there’s always something on top of us,” the rabbi said.

“Pure inspiration,” is how Stolik described the traditional 9:30 a.m. Saturday service during which a chazzan leads the prayer and a portion of the Torah is read. A recent reading featured the portion pertaining to the 10 Commandments, “so it was a very special week.”

Still, how does a storefront center exude such warmth of atmosphere?

“There were some people in the community that helped us set up the space,” said Stolik, “so maybe it’s a tribute to their skill in the layout and the design.”

And, of course, where good people gather, there’s usually a good spiritual vibe.

More information: chabadofsouthpalmbeach.org or 561-889-3499.

— C.B. Hanif

— My latest InterFaith21 spotlight in The Coastal Star.

Henrietta Smith reads the Litany of Commemoration at the 50th anniversary commemoration of the first communion of the Church of the Palms in Delray Beach on Nov. 14. Oher officers of the Women's Fellowship pictured are: Margot Beck (left), Marlene Hambleton, Polly Champ and Edie Kutz. (photo provided)

January 2011

It’s hard to imagine more welcoming folks than at the Church of the Palms, the North Swinton Avenue congregation celebrating its 50th year in Delray Beach.

“When we say everyone is welcome, we mean everyone,” said Henrietta Smith, a longtime church member and a past president of its Women’s Fellowship. “If you can come with no shoes on, come on in. If we can find some shoes, we’ll give them to you.”

The Church of the Palms was commissioned in January 1961 by the state conference that preceded the United Church of Christ.

Even then the fellowship was helping to lead the way. “These women were meeting together before that time,” Smith said.

In fact, the Women’s Fellowship hosted its first communion two months earlier, in November 1960.
“They were meeting in the Delray Beach Playhouse, quietly doing their missions from there from day one,” Smith said.

This November, the women again served communion. And then refreshments during the reception following the worship service. They also commemorated during their annual Christmas luncheon that first communion service.

But that barely hints at the local and international service work Smith recounted.

“The whole church is missionary oriented,” she said, “and the Women’s Fellowship does quite a bit in that area” — whether building a fresh water source for young people in Brazil, a church and school in Haiti or similar humanitarian projects in Kenya and elsewhere.

“Each place we have gone,” she said, “we have carried for the children a handmade Comfort Doll. We have given away more than 400 handmade dolls to comfort children who have little to play with that they can call their own.”

The acclaimed Comfort Dolls, representing every culture, also have warmed hearts at the Community Child Care Center and the pediatric ward of Bethesda Memorial Hospital. In yet another ministry, the women make and give prayer shawls to those in need of special support.

“If somebody is ill, somebody’s depressed, somebody’s on medical care, we give them so they can wrap themselves as if wrapped in God’s love,” she said. “These are not things that we sell. These are gifts that we give through God’s help.”

There’s also the gift of music, fine music and talented musical directors over the years, she said. “So it’s missions, music and, I guess, money, because we raise by doing some of these things.”

Smith — “one of the oldest members left around now” — said, “People came from New England and from Ohio and places like that and said we need a congregational church in this area. And that’s how it really got started.”

She arrived from New York in the 1950s with her husband, a retired judge and native Floridian who went to Brooklyn Law School, because as an African-American he was not allowed to go to Stetson University.

“When I came down to Florida, I spent quite a bit of time trying to find a home church that gave me what I had left” as a member of a Congregational church in New York, Smith said. “I was the first African-American member of the Church of the Palms. My children grew up in that church.”

The Rev. Elizabeth Hill, recently retired from a part-time ministry to older adults at the church, described its “rather dramatic transformation from a ‘country club’ church of primarily retired people, mostly Caucasian, almost no kids, to its present configuration an open, multicultural, diverse congregation open to all people of faith: ‘Wherever you are on the journey you are welcome here.’ We have lots of kids, people of varying cultural and nationality backgrounds, and a very different look and feel than 10 years ago,” the Rev. Hill said.

“The church has evolved to be a very strongly diverse congregation,” said the Rev. Roger Richardson, their pastor.

He recalled that a couple of years ago, “We had the call to worship, on Pentecost Sunday, in German, Creole, Spanish, Romanian and, of course, English. We have a Creole service on Sunday morning along with the English service, and on Saturday night we have a service that embraces Portuguese, Spanish, Creole and English.

“I believe over the years the Church of the Palms has not had as open and welcoming of a reputation as they have now forged,” Richardson said.

“It is extremely welcoming and open. They call it, ‘An extravagant and gracious welcoming to anyone, no matter where they are in life’s journey.’ So that’s kind of become the new motto for our church. We’re just happy to have folks who want to walk with us in faith.”

— C.B. Hanif

Last, over on HanifOnMedia.com, from Florida Weekly, I weigh in on the latest WikiLeaks release — with a little help from my friends.

Don’t hesitate to leave your comments and ideas. With appreciation.

— C.B. Hanif

Deborah Lee Prescott is a Christian, who teaches at Palm Beach Atlantic University, a Christian college, but whose passion is to study the memoirs and autobiographies of
Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Deborah Lee Prescott with her new book, "Imagery from Genesis in Holocaust Memoirs."

From The Diary of Anne Frank to Elie Wiesel’s Night, many people are familiar with such books.

But Prescott, in her new book, Imagery from Genesis in Holocaust Memoirs, surveys more than 50 different autobiographical accounts, from different parts of Europe, written by Jews who observed various degrees of religious practice — devout, orthodox, or with
nominal or no connection to their Jewish heritage — all of whom were persecuted for being Jews.

Prescott said she noted a fascinating pattern of biblical images among the writers’ experiences in the context of the modern day Jewish Holocaust and Nazi persecution.

She’ll be talking about it all during a Nov. 13 reception at the Cenacle Sisters Retreat, 1400 S. Dixie Highway in Lantana.

For example, she said “Paradise Lost, Innocence Lost,” her first chapter, “contextualizes people being taken away from their homes, people being forced to leave their communities, even forced to leave their nations, through an allusion to Adam and Eve, the Fall, being kicked out of the garden of Eden.

“It also deals with images of nakedness: People talked about losing their clothes when they come into the concentration camp system. So that’s all tied up with images of some of the very first stories in Genesis.”

Another chapter, titled “God’s Ark and Hitler’s Cattle Car,” draws on a reference from an autobiographer “who talked about being in a cattle car, being transported to the concentration camp.” It illustrates one of the paradoxical inversions she found, in this case an inverted Noah’s ark: “People on the ark were being preserved, they were being saved, while the Nazis gathered people to kill them.”

Regarding her “The Babel of Extermination” chapter, Prescott said the Tower of Babel image “is the most common image I’ve seen in Holocaust autobiographies.” She described “the confusion, with every language under the sun being contained within these concentration camps, and the stress that it causes, the division.” There I heard echoes of the African Holocaust — in which language divisions were used to separate human beings in captivity before and during a brutal trans-Atlantic passage, and to further divide them in chattel slavery.

A chapter on “The Perversity of Silence” examines the image of Abraham asked to sacrifice his son. In a context drawn primarily from Elie Wiesel, she talks of “how fathers had to leave their sons to the concentration camps, and metaphorically, also mothers had to leave their daughters.”

“Fratricide,” the last chapter, considers several autobiographers, “mainly a Dutch man who is looking at the Cain and Abel story,” she said. “And the Holocaust shows us that even though it’s Nazis killing Jews — among many other people that they persecuted, but single-mindedly the Jews — ultimately this is brother killing brother.”

Prescott recently toured major concentration camps in Poland with a group from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. “I look at the Holocaust and I see what hate can do,” she said. “So I think the only way we can trample out this hate is to communicate and talk to one another.”

I agree with her that folks might be surprised by how much the insights in these autobiographies can teach us. For me, a “graduate” of Tom O’Brien’s Hebrew Books and New Testament classes over at Bethesda by the Sea, Prescott’s scholarship is another great contribution.

***

Deborah Lee Prescott will discuss her new book, Imagery from Genesis in Holocaust Memoirs, during a Nov. 13 reception, 7 to 9 p.m.
at the Cenacle, 1400 S. Dixie Highway.

No admission is charged, space is limited. Call the Cenacle Sisters, 561-249-1621, or e-mail srplane@juno.com.

— C.B. Hanif

My latest InterFaith21 essay in The Coastal Star:

“For those of us who experienced 9/11 in America, our hearts were heavy in two respects. One, because of the senseless loss of innocent life. But then there was a double blow to us, because in the process, the religion of Al-Islam was blemished, by the conduct of people who called themselves doing something in the name of Islam.”

— David Shaheed, Superior Court Judge

September is a very busy month in the Jewish faith, and one can learn a lot about the coming holidays from Rabbis Robert A. Silvers and Randall J. Konigsburg.

This month’s Coastal Star, First Presbyterian Church of Delray Beach’s Rev. Aaron Janklow and the popular TnT — or Twenties ’n’ Thirties — young professionals group he leads:

Young minister succeeding on his mission

And this month’s Look Inside our Places of Worship, the amazing story of the congregation whose serene, picturesque sanctuary once was a Boca Raton Air Force Base chapel:

First Church of Christ, Scientist