Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Panim Hadashot, a new Seattle area Jewish education organization, receives the Levitan Innovation Award

Deb Frockt, Director of OperationsPanim Hadashot
press@panimhadashot.com

Friday, July 1, 2005, Seattle, WA - At the recent Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle Annual Meeting Panim Hadashot (www.panimhadashot.com), New Faces of Judaism, received the Levitan Innovation Award. The award seeks to stimulate and encourage organizations, synagogues, agencies and individuals to develop programming with new and different approaches aimed at fostering and/or increasing engagement in Jewish life in the greater Puget Sound Area.

Panim Hadsashot was granted the award for its innovative work on the “Shabbat Around Seattle” program. As winners of the award, Panim Hadashot will receive a $10,000 grant to directly support of the program. “We are greatly honored and excited by this recognition,” said Rabbi Dov Gartenberg, Panim Hadashot’s Rabbi and Founder. “We would like to thank Dan and Stacey Levitan for creating this award as well as the review committee for choosing our organization. We applaud the creation of this award that will spur creativity and innovation in our community.”

Panim Hadashot views Shabbat as Judaism’s great innovation and enduring contribution to the world. Shabbat Around Seattle is a Shabbat-centered Jewish learning and outreach project that models the Shabbat home experience in homes around Seattle, providing a rich menu of Shabbat activities that build fellowship and stimulate learning about Judaism. The program offers a mobile and portable Jewish program that moves to a different neighborhood each month, creating sacred Shabbat experiences through feasts, learning, conversation and song, with each program featuring Jewish learning and dialogue connected to a particular theme. Rabbi Gartenberg, resides with the hosts and serves as resident teacher, seder co-leader, and Shabbat co-host. Through Rabbi Gartenberg’s skillful and accessible presence, hosts and guests renew and deepen their Shabbat practices and gain the confidence to create beautiful and meaningful Shabbat celebrations in their own homes. Those interested in participating in the program as a host or as a guest, please contact Rabbi Gartenberg (rabbidov@panimhadashot.com) to make arrangements for when the program resumes in September after a summer hiatus.

About Panim Hadashot: Panim Hadashot (www.panimhadashot.com), New Faces of Judaism was founded in 2004 by Rabbi Dov Gartenberg and is a new Jewish endeavor of learning, celebration, and outreach. Panim Hadashot is not a synagogue. Rather it is a Beit Midrash - a house of learning. We offer a welcoming place for a wider circle of Jews and others who are seeking a passionate and open-minded Judaism. Panim Hadashot conveys a Judaism that is joyful and humane, spiritually and ethically rich, and encouraging of diverse forms of Jewish expression.

Panim Hadashot is the winner of the Levitan Innovation Award for our Shabbat Around Seattle program. Panim Hadashot is endorsed by the Union for Reform Judaism and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and is a registered 501(c)(3) organization.

1 comment:

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg said...

Consider:

The missing element in every human 'solution' is an accurate definition of the creature.

The way we define ‘human’ determines our view of self, others, relationships, institutions, life, and future.

Important?

Only the Creator who made us in His own image is qualified to define us accurately.

Choose wisely...there are results.
Many problems in human experience are the result of false and inaccurate definitions of humankind premised in man-made religions and humanistic philosophies.

Human is earth's Choicemaker. Psalm 25:12

He is by nature and nature's God a creature of Choice - and of Criteria. Psalm 119:30,173

His unique and definitive characteristic is, and of Right ought to be, the natural foundation of his environments, institutions, and respectful relations to his fellow-man. Thus, he is oriented to a Freedom whose roots are in the Order of the universe.

The arts and the sciences of man, as with his habits, customs, and traditions, are the creative harvest of his perceptive and selective powers. Creativity, the creative process, is a choice-making process. His articles, constructs, and commodities, however marvelous to behold, deserve neither awe nor idolatry, for man, not his contrivance, is earth's own highest expression of the creative process. Selah

- from The HUMAN PARADIGM

James Fletcher Baxter

1/19/06


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