Services

A preteen riffs on guitar. A six-year-old regales those assembled with the Story of the Mysterious Traveling Gum. And, we hear, a board member may give us his rendition of Honika Elektronika?

You never quite know what will happen at the Temple Or Olam Hanukkah Talent Show, but that shouldn’t stop you from proffering your own talent or coming just for the fun and games. (And to chow down on a buffet filled with latkes, of course….).

Join us for our Temple Or Olam Hanukah Party this December 5 at 5 pm at McGill Baptist Church. Is there a talent up your sleeve?

Anxiety makes us fearful. In our vulnerability, we call on God. It is in such moments that we are forced to admit that we need help, to confess – even to ourselves – that we don’t want to be left alone.

Fleeing from his enraged brother, Esau, Jacob dreams of the divine. God’s own angels traverse the way between heaven and earth before him. God, Jacob decides upon wakening, was “in this place.” He himself had no idea, no clue.

During this service, we will focus on our own questions about God’s presence in our lives. Who and what is God? Why does God seem absent, or uncaring? When does God seem to be involved with the actualities of human existence?

Join us for a lively Tot Shabbat at 10 a.m.; Shabbat Shacharit service follows at 10:30.

Why do we stand for the Amidah but sit during the Shema? How should we handle our Torah, wrap it and hold it?

Our next service is about the Way Things Work at a Jewish service. We’ll take the essential components and explore what we do and why through stories, legends, and even Jewish jokes.

Then we can turn to greet the Sabbath bride knowing why we turned in the first place. Then we can rise for the Barchu together with the wonderfully communal intention that that act deserves.

Join us for our next Shabbat service and learn together with us!

Judaism is a religion replete with ritual. Why do we touch the mezuzah before we leave or enter a home? Why do we have braided bread on Shabbat?

Our rituals tell us a great deal about who we are and what we are trying to do Jewishly. So why didn’t our own Sunday School teachers talk to us about the how’s and why’s of our Shabbat services?

Why do we stand for the Amidah but sit during the Shema? How should we handle our Torah, wrap it and hold it?

Our next service is about the Way Things Work at a Jewish service. We’ll take the essential components and explore what we do and why through stories, legends, and even Jewish jokes.

Then we can turn to greet the Sabbath bride knowing why we turned in the first place. Then we can rise for the Barchu together with the wonderfully communal intention that that act deserves.

Join us for our next Shabbat service and learn together with us!

Simchat Torah: Our last celebration until Hanukkah. But what a chag!

Simchat Torah falls this year on Shabbat, so we’ll sing and process with our Torah to lively Shabbat tunes and joyous niggunim. We’ll also hear the ending and the beginning of our Torah scroll chanted.

Our celebration will include a special gift: The names of four congregants will be selected at random. Those lucky four will choose a column in Genesis and Reb Barbara will find the verse that was meant for them in this New Year and interpret it – right on the spot.

Special request: To all that are coming, please bring your prayer shawls! Please join us for the fun – and prepare for joy!

High Holy Days offer Jews a special time for reflection. Most associate High Holy Days with heartfelt prayer, deep reflection, even mournful melodies. But how can we atone with joy and gratitude, not with anguish and pain? Rabbi Shmelke of Nikolsburg once reminded his congregation that the Day of Atonement is a day of joy. “God’s hand is open,” the rabbi said; “let the tears we shed on this day be tears of joy, for we have merited the approach and the attachment unto the Lord, we who are ‘alive everyone one of us this day.’”

At Temple Or Olam we will approach that task with joy. Please join us!

• September 8: Erev Rosh Hashanah Service, 7 p.m. Central United Methodist Church; Fellowship Hall
• September 9: Rosh Hashanah Morning Services, 10 a.m. – 12 a.m. followed by brunch and Tashlich: McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, Concord, NC
• September 17: Kol Nidre Service, 7 p.m.: McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, Concord, NC
• September 18: Yom Kippur Morning Service, 10 a.m. – 12 a.m.: McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, Concord, NC
• September 18: Neilah Service: 6:30 p.m., Havdalah, and break fast: McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, Concord, NC
Babysitting provided.
Suggested donations for non-members:
• Families: $180
• Individuals: $90
• Students: gratis
High Holy Day donations can be applied to membership dues if guests join within three months
Please visit www.or-olam.org for more information or call 704-720-7577.

Parsha Ki Tavo begins with the law of tithing, a law that is intended to help ensure a just society, a society that takes care of “the stranger, the orphan, the widow” so that they may be nourished and sustained.
How do we learn to give without regret? How can we make sure to understand that to give tzedakkah is not a simple act of charity, but an act of social justice, of tikkun olam, of healing?

Join us for our Fourth Friday service when we will explore these questions as a community, one which strives to care.

Parsha Shoftim includes explicit instructions for rulers. A king, the text says, may not have too many horses or amass gold and silver in excess. A worthy ruler must read and reread the Torah so that he can observe the laws in the Torah. Then – and only then – can the people be sure he will not act haughtily towards others or behave inappropriately.

At this Friday night service we will hear a tale of a certain king and ask ourselves: What, if anything, has this particular ruler been reading?

Join us for our family service on August 13. Come prepared for sweet song, joyful community and, as always, something to take home and think about!

In D’varim, the last book of the Torah, Moses recalls the scene at Sinai. He reminds the people – do not forget your experience of the wondrous, of the miraculous, of the gift of experiencing the Divine. These memories call us to our highest selves, our highest hopes.

Indeed, millennia later, we still find it a difficult task to hold on to our experiences of undiminished joy, our memories of transcendent moments. How can we balance our world of obligations and tasks with our need to know the peace prayer can grant us, the joy community can offer, the knowledge that our lives matter beyond their span in time?

In this Shabbat service we will ask these questions and more. Perhaps a fresh encounter with the ancient miracles of Torah can help us recall the memory of so many small miracles we ourselves have seen with our own eyes.

Join Temple Or Olam for a summer dance fundraiser for the congregation’s Sefer Torah – the handwritten scroll containing the Five Books of Moses in handwritten script.

On the docket for the evening? Dancing the traditional Jewish hora, learning a sweet bit of swing and salsa, dancing to tunes from the forties on, and taking the opportunity for an up-close-and-personal look at Temple Or Olam’s own Sefer Torah. Dr. Barbara Thiede, will be demonstrating features of the congregation’s century-old Torah scroll – one which features the work of master scribes from German, Russia, Moravia, and Macedonia.

Temple Or Olam’s Torah was pieced together after WWII from remnants from several European scrolls, leading New York sofer Neil Yerman to suggest it may have been created from sections of Torah scrolls that survived the Holocaust. Yerman has dated the Torah’s creation to the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.

Join us for an evening of music and dance and learn how scribes have preserved bible texts that date back over two centuries!

Our program will also include light snacks.

7 – 8:30 p.m. Salsa and Swing
8:30 – 9 p.m. Learning about Temple Or Olam’s Sefer Torah
9 p.m. Refreshments, Israeli dances, and yet more dancing to great tunes from the forties on!

Time: Program begins at 7 p.m.
Date: July 31st
Location: McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent, Concord, NC
Tickets available at the door and in advance; please call 704.720.7577 for more information:

$5 students
$10 individuals
$6 senior individuals
$12 senior couples
$25 families