Remembering our heroes
Thursday, Sept. 11 (29 Elul 5786) — This Shabbat is the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11 and the start of the new year, 5787. The Jewish community will balance the memorialization of lives lost with the celebration of Rosh Hashanah.
🫶🏻 Rabbi Ronald Kaplan, who held a spiritual service during the aftermath of chaos at Ground Zero, traced his cancer diagnosis to exposure to the rubble, something New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani addressed this week by releasing 170,000 pages of air quality records showing that city officials knew Ground Zero conditions were unsafe.
🥙 Also in NYC: The world-famous Carnegie Deli is reopening in Manhattan in the space of the former Stage Deli.
✈️ Applications are now open for the Atlanta Israel Gap Year Fellowship, which has helped more than 150 local teens experience transformative gap years in Israel since 2021.
🍯 Check out “This week at the Farmers Markets,” a regular feature in Rough Draft, that includes a recipe for Apple, Honey + Cheese Tartine.
🍎 Shana Tova!
Y’alla,
Logan
Jewish film trifecta
🔨 Building Bridges, a three-part series by the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, aims to connect diverse communities through film, dialogue, and community service.
🎥 Sept. 15: “All God’s Children” (2024) is screening at 7:15 p.m. at Tara Theatre. The documentary follows a five-year relationship between Congregation Beth Elohim and Antioch Baptist Church. Buy tickets here.
🍽️ Oct. 26: “Dinner with a Dialogue” will revisit moments from “All God’s Children” through film clips and small-group conversation from 6-9 p.m. in Downtown Atlanta. Sign up here.
🚜 Nov. 8: Building relationships doesn’t end with conversation. Turn reflection into action through a hands-on community service experience with Repair the World and Five Points Farm from 9:30 a.m.-12 p.m. at Five Points Farm. Register today.
Balance Your Wellness
SPONSORED BY BALANCED BODIES WELLNESS CLINICS
👨⚕️ Kent Cohen, MD, FACEP, is an Emory-trained emergency physician, Gulf War Air Force veteran, and Sandy Springs native passionate about wellness, fitness, and longevity.
As co-founder of Balanced Bodies Wellness Clinics with Tim Carrega, FNP, he has expanded to multiple Metro Atlanta locations, offering personalized peptide therapy, hormone replacement, medical weight loss, vitamin therapy, and other life-enhancing treatments. With nearly a decade of functional wellness experience,
👉 Dr. Cohen invites you to visit Sajani Patel, FNP, in Sandy Springs for a complimentary consultation.
Adamah seasonal series
🌎 Adamah’s four-part series starting Sept. 29 at The Dupree in Sandy Springs will connect to Judaism, the environment, and the seasons. Get back in the rhythms of the seasons and the Jews’ relationship to the land, while deepening a sense of individual and collective responsibility rooted in Jewish tradition.
🍂 Sept. 29: Celebrate Sukkot with “Responsibility from Above.”
🕎 Nov. 18: A Chanukah celebration asks, “Is It Ever Right to Waste?”
🥭 Feb. 3: During Tu B’Shvat, Adamah explores “Responsibility from Without.”
🎭 March 10: Explore “Under Your Own Mask: A Purim Journey Inward.”
➡️ Registration is required for each event.
Jewish artifacts on display at Emory
🎆 Marking 50 years of Jewish studies at Emory University, a new exhibition is featuring a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet, ancient scrolls, and a handmade 1804 prayer book from Charleston, S.C.
“From Tablet to Tablet: Exploring Emory’s Jewish Studies Collections” is open in the Schatten Gallery at Robert W. Woodruff Library through Feb. 14, 2027.
🕍 Don’t miss the letter from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Rabbi Jacob M. Rothschild, dated March 10, 1965, thanking him for spearheading an integrated public banquet in King’s honor to celebrate his Nobel Prize – and for Rothchild’s support of desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement.
This Jewish photographer captured the defining image of 9/11
📷 Robert Cumins stood on his ninth-floor balcony in Verona, N.J., camera in hand, as smoke billowed from the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Then he saw a plane heading toward Lower Manhattan. He snapped two quick frames and kept watching.
Then came the fireball.
He had no idea, in that instant, that he had already taken the photograph that would define his career — that he was, in fact, photographing the last seconds of the 65 people aboard United Airlines Flight 175, en route from Boston to Los Angeles. He wouldn’t even remember the plane was in the frame until he saw the developed film an hour later. For that hour, he believed he only photographed the explosion, not the moments before.
🗞️ Read the full story on the Forward.
What’s doin’ around town
SPONSORED BY CONGREGATION OR HADASH
🗺️ Sept. 18: Navigating Jewish divorce at Or Hadash. RSVP here.
🌊 Sept. 20: Adamah river clean up for reverse tashlich.
📖 Sept. 20: Rosh Hashanah stories for little ones.
🫶🏽 Sept. 20: Yizkor service at the Memorial to the Six Million.
✡️ The next Jewish holiday is Rosh Hashanah, which begins at sundown on Sept. 11.
🕯️ Light Shabbat candles this week at 7:31 p.m.
🗓️ Curious about Or Hadash? Come see what makes our community special during the High Holy Days: Rosh Hashanah 2 (Sept. 13), Family Kol Nidre (Sept. 20), or our beloved Jonah and Neilah closing services (Sept. 21). Come find your place.
Before you go
👏🏼 Mazel tov to Rabbi Peter S. Berg, Alli Medof, Raya Zalik, Rabbi Lauren Henderson, and Stacey Hydrick for their appointments to the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust board.
