Yom Kippur 5781~2020

Register for Yom Kippur Services:

Kol Nidrei Service (September 27)
Yom Kippur Day Services (September 28)
Yom Kippur Family Service (September 28, 2 p.m.)

Yizkor Memorial Service

We join congregations around the world in this meaningful ritual of reciting names; this year with optional photos. 

“So long as we live, they too shall live, for they are now a part of us, as we remember them.” – Rabbi Sylvan Kamens and Rabbi Jack Reimer.

Submit Names Here

Yom Kippur Food Drive

“Is this the fast I have chosen for you?! … Is it not intended for you to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house?  When you see the naked to clothe them?  And to not hide yourselves from your kin?”  

Yom Kippur haftarah, Isaiah 58:7-8

This year our food drive is for the Springfield-based “New Americans Program”, run by Jewish Family Services (JFS) of Western Mass, which serves refugees who arrived before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.  While Beit Ahavah usually collects for the Northampton Survival Center’s emergency food pantry, the Center is not taking food at this time due to COVID-19.  JFS believes that our food donations will urgently help feed its refugee families, enabling those families to put their limited financial resources toward paying rent.

We will be collecting food bags through the end of Sukkot (Oct. 9, 2020).

Two Ways You Can Help:

1) Fill a bag with non-perishable food items.  You can drop your bags off with no contact, on any Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri 2-6 pm at Beit Ahavah (130 Pine St, Florence, MA 01062), now through Sukkot. 

2) Donate funds to either of these organizations so that they can use the money to purchase food that they will distribute to families in need:

Why Jewish Family Services?  

We want to continue Beit Ahavah’s connection with JFS, through the work of our Tzedek Tzedek Committee, to provide for the needs of refugee families who were able to come into our country during the diminished quotas set by the current government.  

  • In September of 2019, days before Rosh Hashanah, our Beit Ahavah community members furnished and set up the apartment for an incoming Eritrean refugee family (two parents and four young children) who arrived from Israel where the family had lived for 10 years while seeking asylum.  Rabbi Riqi has maintained connections with this wonderful family, who speak fluent Hebrew after their years in Tel Aviv.  
  • In March of 2019, Beit Ahavah community members furnished and set up an apartment for a family of four from South Sudan (two parents, uncle and young son), and for a Congolese family (a mother and three children) who were finally joining their grandmother in Springfield.  
  • These are just some of the many families that will be helped by our food drive.  

Thank you for your generosity!