Congregation for Humanistic Judaism

Board Meeting
2025-05-13 19:00, 2025-04-08 19:00, 2025-03-11 19:00, 2025-02-11 19:00 (America/New_York)
We will begin work on the year’s programs and any activities of specific interest.
Please send me subjects of interest you wish the Board to consider in order to prepare the agenda.
Open to all CHJ members. Request the Zoom link from Previn Patel.

Shabbat Candle Lighting
2025-05-09 19:00 - 19:20, 2025-04-18 19:00 - 19:20, 2025-04-04 19:00 - 19:20, 2025-03-28 19:00 - 19:20, 2025-03-14 19:00 - 19:20, 2025-03-07 19:00 - 19:20, 2025-02-28 19:00 - 19:20, 2025-02-21 19:00 - 19:20 and 1 more date
Zoom opens at 6:30pm just to kibbutz.
At 7pm we light candles with a short service. We listen to music and short lectures. Watch for the Zoom link on the listserv Friday afternoon.

Forum on Israel and Anti-Semitism
2025-05-04 13:30 - 15:00 | TBA
These groups are organized by Loretta Jay, Michelle Tomarkin and Jessica Wolf for CHJ members to have a safe place to talk about Israel, anti-Semitism and other related topics and how we are affected. George Rockmore
has volunteered to serve as a back-up facilitator.

See listserv for venue.

RSVP forum@humanistcjews.org.

Book Club - The Heaven and Earth Grocery Story by James McBride
2025-05-03 08:00 - 17:00 | Fairfield
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new housing development, the last thing they expected to uncover was a human skeleton. Who the skeleton was and how it got buried there were just two of the long-held secrets that had been kept for decades by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side, sharing ambitions and sorrows.
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood’s quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town’s first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill’s residents—roused by Chona’s kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.
As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.
New CHJ participants are always very welcome; All CHJ members are invited.
Let rhonarobbin@yahoo.com know if you are planning to attend, or if you want to be put onto the CHJ Book Club mailing list.

Celebrate Israel
2025-04-27 14:00 - 17:00 | JCC, 1035 Newfield Ave, Stamford
For more information and tickets click jewishfestivaloffairfieldcounty.com
Let’s join together to show our solidarity with the Jewish people and support of Israel. Am Yisrael Chai!

Shabbat Program - Members' Seder Memories
2025-04-25 19:30 | Zoom
After lighting of the sabbath candles, members will talk about their past seder memories.
Watch the listserv for the Zoom link.

Women's Rap
2025-04-20 10:30 - 12:30 | TBA
Due to conflicts on the CHJ calendar this meeting is on the next to last Sunday of the month.

Come join other CHJ women to talk about a topic to be chosen at the meeting. It’s a great way to get to know one another. We are looking for a host. If no host volunteers it will be on Zoom. Watch the listserv.
RSVP: womensrap@humanisticjews.org

Passover Seder - SAVE THE DATE!!
2025-04-15 17:30 - 19:30
Tuesday, April 15th, 5:30-7:30 PM
Fairfield, CT
Open to the Public
A catered four-course festive meal will be served. Tickets are ON SALE NOW!
Introducing David Sasso, Songleader
Your ticket price includes our four-course menu, catered by Ed’s Flavor Fusion of Norwalk

Garden salad with egg
Matzoh ball soup
Choice of entree: Chicken, Salmon, or Vegan
Roasted potatoes and spring vegetables
Coffee service and desserts

BYO Wine

Book Club - The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
2025-04-02 08:00 - 17:00 | Member’s Residence Fairfield
BOOK CLUB: APRIL
THE NETANYAHUS
by JOSHUA COHEN
Saturday, April 19th at 10:30 AM
Elsa Cantor, 75 French Street, Fairfield

Corbin College, not-quite-upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian – but not an historian of the Jews – is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host, to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies.
Mixing fiction with non-fiction, the campus novel with the lecture, THE NETANYAHUS is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics – ‘An Account of A Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Incident in the History of a Very Famous Family’ that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.
People have asked if the book is about Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel. The character in the book is Benjamin Netanyahu’s father, Benzion Netanyahu. It is a highly fictionalized account of the very true time in the late 1950s when Benzion Netanyahu arrived in the United States seeking an academic position.
WINNER OF THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
2021 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021
A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2021
A KIRKUS BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2021
New CHJ participants are always very welcome; All CHJ members are invited.
Let bookgroup@humanisticjews.org know if you are planning to attend, or if you want to be put onto the CHJ Book Club mailing list.

Women's Rap
2025-03-30 10:30 - 12:30 | TBA
Come join other CHJ women to talk about a topic to be chosen at the meeting. It’s a great way to get to know one another. We are looking for a host. If no host volunteers it will be on Zoom. Watch the listserv.
RSVP: womensrap@humanisticjews.org

Countering Active Threat Training
2025-03-25 19:00
The Federation is holding an important Countering Active Threat security training for all Jewish community members, free of charge next week. You are encouraged to register and learn how to react in an emergency situation.

To register click here: https://shalomct.salsalabs.org/CounteringActiveThreatTraining/index.html

Forum on Israel and Anti-Semitism CANCELLED
2025-03-23 13:30 - 15:00 | TBA
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED

These groups are organized by Loretta Jay, Michelle Tomarkin and Jessica Wolf for CHJ members to have a safe place to talk about Israel, anti-Semitism and other related topics and how we are affected. George Rockmore
has volunteered to serve as a back-up facilitator.

See listserv for venue.

RSVP forum@humanistcjews.org.

Shabbat Program –Dr. Ruth Light Lecturer
2025-03-21 19:30 - 21:00
For this Shabbat program, Dr. Ruth Light will talk about cancer research.
Watch for the Zoom link. Nonmembers please RSVP: programming@humanisticjews.org to get link.

Jewish Journeys - Jewish Resistance to the Nazis --SAVE THE DATE!
2025-03-16 13:30 - 15:30 | Brooks Place,Westport Library, Westport, CT

Book Club -Shanghai by Joseph Kanon
2025-03-08 10:30 | Trumbull
In this dazzling thriller, New York Times bestselling author Joseph Kanon gives us his richest setting pre-World War II Shanghai, where glamour and squalor exist side by side and murder is just a cost of doing business. A love affair against all odds, a city dancing on the rim of a volcano—Shanghai is the story of a political haven that becomes a minefield of conflicting loyalties.
Join us to discuss this novel.We will meet at a member’s home. Watch the listserv for the address.RSVP:
bookgroup@humanisticjews.org. if you plan to attend or if you want to be put on the mailing list.

Women's Rap
2025-02-23 10:30 - 12:30 | TBA
Come join other CHJ women to talk about a topic to be chosen at the meeting. It’s a great way to get to know one another. We are looking for a host. If no host volunteers it will be on Zoom. Watch the listserv.

Jewish Journeys - Author Rebecca Clarren
2025-02-16 13:30 - 15:00 | Brooks Place,Westport Library, Westport, CT

Book Club - All Other Nights by Dara Horn
2025-02-15 10:30 | TBA
Based on real personalities such as Judah Benjamin, the Confederacy’s Jewish secretary of state and spymaster, and on historical facts and events ranging from an African American spy network to the dramatic self-destruction of the city of Richmond, All Other Nights is a gripping and suspenseful story of men and women driven to the extreme limits of loyalty and betrayal. It is also a brilliant parable of the rift in America that lingers a century and a half later: between those who value family and tradition first, and those dedicated, at any cost, to social and racial justice for all.
In this eagerly awaited third novel, award-winning author Dara Horn brings us page-turning storytelling at its best. Layered with meaning, All Other Nights reinvents the most American of subjects with originality and insight.

Come join the discussion at a member’s residence or Zoom. Watch the listserv..
