Community
St Andrews University link-up is Yomtov boost to Scottish congregation
Tayside congregation 'very excited' about festival programme
September 7, 2018 14:32
Tayside congregation 'very excited' about festival programme
September 7, 2018 14:32The tiny Dundee-based Tayside and Fife Jewish Community will be organising Rosh Hashanah services on both days for the first time in more than 15 years thanks to a link-up with St Andrews University chaplaincy.
Community chair Paul Spicker said there were less than 10 congregants at last year’s festival services and the small numbers made it “difficult to do services even monthly.
“But St Andrews has a healthy population of Jewish students who have limited facilities to practise Judaism.”
Mr Spicker has devised a programme that will see services split between the two buildings, which are 12 miles apart.
The first night will be in Dundee, the first day in St Andrews and the second day in Dundee. Yom Kippur services will be held at both venues.
“I am very excited about the interfaith discussion focusing on antisemitism that we will be holding at Dundee shul just before the erev Rosh Hashanah service,” Mr Spicker added.
He has invited non-Jewish friends of the Dundee community and hopes they will stay on for the service. “There is a duty to explain, especially in this current climate of antisemitism.”
The Jewish community in the area is “very transient” but he hopes the link-up with St Andrews will better serve those who remain.
“We have had to keep ourselves afloat with ceiling wax for the past 15 years,” he reported. Attendances “at best” had barely topped two dozen.
But as “more and more Jews are living in relatively isolated communities, we need to be more inclusive and realise that many Jews do not live near enough a shul to celebrate the High Holy-Days. We must start to think of ways like this to help those people.”
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