COMMUNITY

More than just a shul...

KSY is not just about catering to the needs of our own membership.  We take responsibility for events, needs and challenges in the greater community.

For example, there is a particular crisis affecting teenage children of English speaking immigrants, who feel that they are not “real” Israelis, yet cannot identify with their “foreigner” parents.  Many of these youth are at risk and fall into destructive behavioral and social problems.  Rabbi Haber is the posek and spiritual guide for Bnei Hashraah, a youth movement that was founded a couple of years ago by a South African immigrant, specifically to deal with this problem, and is making a huge impact on the Anglo youth of RBS.  Our building will be very much youth centered; in our current premises we simply do not have the facility for this.

Beit Shemesh has unfortunately made the news for several incidents involving religiously motivated violence and corruption.   During the height of the media frenzy about the infamous spitting incidents and other similar issues, Rabbi Haber called a “town hall” meeting for all concerned citizens to come up with a plan of action for how to increase Kiddush Hashem (and correspondingly decrease Chillul Hashem) in our city.  He had meetings with many of the Rabbanim in the neighborhoods where much of the violence was originating, and in fact stopped the cycle of violence.

Rabbi Haber started a committee of rabbis and school principals for regular review of cases of children who find themselves without a school.  During the recent war in Gaza, our members raised thousands of dollars to bring extra supplies to our soldiers.  In other words, the vision we have is not just a dream; we are already doing as much as we can do without the room and credibility of a building.