By Sherri Rosenberg

The Temple has created Temple Tribes, with the goal of creating smaller communities within our Temple community, where everyone can feel more connected. Our Tribes help to build meaningful friendships while doing something of interest in a small, informal setting.

Sheri Rosenberg, Director of Membership and Inclusion shares, “We know that it is important to bring together members based on demographics, such as young adults, families with young children, and that works at times, but not always. We realized that we should be bringing people together based on shared interests and passion, creating Temple Tribes! Working together with our Membership Committee, we came up with our plan to engage members to lead and participate in passion driven small groups.”

The Temple Tribes initiative encourages our Temple family to form groups that have shared interests or experiences in order to SEEK, ENGAGE, and TRANSFORM caring and supportive relationships among themselves, with the Temple community.

At The Temple, members currently participate in “Hike and Havdalah,” and “Writer’s of the Lost Ark,” and are really enjoying coming together over a shared interest. Both groups were member driven, which is an idea we wanted to build on. Taking this idea to the next level; Temple Tribes were created. Temple’s Vice President Judy Lefkowitz states "We are excited to try new ways to connect our members especially as we move closer to a post pandemic normalcy. Temple Tribes is a fun and wonderful way to meet new people and build relationships. Both the Tribe leaders and participants share in the joy of learning and togetherness."

Leaders did not need to have any prior experience teaching, just a passion; any member who was interested in leading a Tribe was able to do so. After the congregation was given the names and descriptions of the Tribes, members were given the opportunity to sign up.  Currently this fall we have 12 Tribes that range from “Family Potlucks” to “Music, Movies, and Nosh” to a “Widow/ Widower’s Social Club”. Over 55 members have signed up for a Temple Tribe and 24 people have signed up for more than one.  The Tribes meet 3-4 times this semester. We are learning as we go and plan to have another Tribe semester starting in January.