Congregation Beth Shalom Fully Reopens

Northbrook IL

12 July, 2021

1:08 PM

Description

Press release from Congregation Beth Shalom: July 12, 2021 On Sunday, July 11th, 2021 Congregation Beth Shalom fully opened its door to our 1100 households again after our building has been closed for close to 16 months. While we have been fully operational online and with limited drive-up programs throughout the pandemic, we are excited to be welcoming our members back home with an exciting array of programs, services and events! Beginning the week of July 11th, we will be holding at least one daily in-person religious service and all of our upcoming holiday services will be held in-person as well as live streamed. In August, we have our Welcome Home Under the Sky Services which are luau and movie themed and include games, prizes, and sweet treats prior to the service for all ages. For our youngest members we have a new outdoor Shabbat celebration including singing and dancing. On August 22, we will welcome back our entire congregation with our Yom Beth Shalom, Welcome Home event including lunch, treats and activities for the entire family. This will really be the first time that we expect a lot of our members to be back together face-to-face with our staff and each other. All of these activities our leading up to the High Holidays, the holiest days of the year, which begin Monday, September 6th. Congregation Beth Shalom will be holding in-person High Holiday services for our members, with multiple locations and sessions, limited capacity and continuing live streaming for those choose to pray from their homes again this year. One thing that the pandemic has taught us at Congregation Beth Shalom is that it's so important to stay connected to each other no matter what and we are so lucky that we have so many ways to do that with technology. We were able to pivot within a matter of days of the stay at home orders and continue to offer our religious services, classes and programs to our members online throughout the past 15 months. We also will continue to offer our services, classes and programs via live stream, Zoom and other online platforms for those members that are unable or uncomfortable coming in-person. Our members who are in their 70's and 80's were fully active in classes via Zoom during the past year and some of them also attended a self-defense class we offered in-person this week. This press release was produced by Congregation Beth Shalom. The views expressed here are the author's own.