Your weekly JUF update

During these uncertain times, it's more important than ever to stick together as a community. With this weekly email, we hope to provide you with resources, moral support and other ways to adjust to this temporary “new normal.”  

We’ve created a JUF Coronavirus Community Resource Page where you’ll find links to more resources, info on JUF initiatives and ways to help or donate. And be sure to check JUF's Facebook page for daily updates.

Express Your Gratitude

“Days of Gratitude” is an online project featuring a rotating menu of activities to help you and yours share gratitude. Endorsed by Sheryl Sandberg, Mayim Bialik, Happiness Professor Tal Ben-Shachar and others—each day from May 22 to 30 will focus on different things to be grateful for, culminating on the Festival of Shavuot.

Yiddish words to cope with all this mishegas

Got shpilkes? Use your sekhel! Here are “10 Yiddish words that’ll get you through Quarantine."

Tonight! Billy Crystal hosts Virtual L'Chaim

Billy Crystal and the Secure Community Network – the American Jewish community’s homeland security initiative – will host a “Virtual L’Chaim." They’ll toast all the “mahvelous” first responders on the front lines of the COVID-19 battle. BYOB.

Fun ways to fill your social calendar

Live music. Meditation. Yoga. Improv. Dance classes. Every day you’ll find tons of ways to virtually immerse yourself in arts & entertainment activities from around Chicago. It’s all part of the #DoStuffAtHome initiative from the folks at Do312.com.

Virtual book club

“One Museum, One Book,” the Illinois Holocaust Museum’s new virtual book club kicks off on June 11 with a discussion of The Choice: Embrace the Possible, by Holocaust survivor and psychologist Dr. Edith Eva Eger. Register now for this online moderated discussion.

A message of reflection from Rabbi Zvi Engel

Great miracles can hide in plain sight. Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler teaches that the natural order is actually a stream of repeating miracles.

This Friday, 28 Iyar, celebrates the return of the Jewish People to our holy sites in Yerushalayim. The prophet Zechariah envisions the greatest miracle of our return: So said the Lord of Hosts: “Old men and women shall yet sit in the streets of Yerushalayim… And the streets of the city shall be filled, with boys and girls playing in its streets.” (8:4-5)

Despite our challenges now, do we appreciate all the hidden miracles in our own lives?

Rabbi Zvi Engel, Congregation Or Torah