It worked great, so let’s do it again!  Last Friday, Noam Mantaka parked his food truck, The Taste of Tel Aviv, outside the Mt. Sinai Synagogue from 11 AM to 1 PM.  A crowd gathered to buy lunch, and then came inside the Synagogue to eat and learn about the Torah from Rabbi Delcau.

As you may remember, we have moved our weekly Torah teachings to Fridays.  Last week, we combined that with a visit from Noam’s food truck.  The food and the class were great, and it was a wonderful combination.

Noam is going to bring his food truck back to the Synagogue this Friday, August 7^th, and again on Friday, August 14^th. 

You can bring your own lunch to the Torah teaching, or just come for the class (which is free).  But we’ve come up with a new alliteration when Noam’s truck is there – we’re calling it Falafel Friday.

We have a correction to make.  In last week’s newsletter, we gave the right day but the wrong date for the next Shalom Dinner.  The next Shalom Dinner will be at the Good Friends Chinese Restaurant on East Lincolnway.  It will take place on Wednesday, August 12^th, at 6:30 PM.  So join us for dinner and to hang out with each other.

And while we’re on the topic of food, we also want to remind you of the Ice Cream Social/Meet the Rabbi event at the Synagogue.  It’s coming up on Sunday, August 16^th, from 1 PM to 3 PM.  It’s an opportunity to meet the Rabbi and learn about him.  You’ll also be able to chat with him about anything (well, almost anything.  He went to Colorado State University and we’re still working on him about which team to cheer for during the annual Border War).

We’ve talked about the need to replace the roof on the Synagogue since last fall.  Work is scheduled to take place this week.  The roof is made up of a rubber membrane covered with about two feet of small rocks.  It’s great protection from hail, but all that rock has to be moved off of the roof before a new membrane can be installed.  And then the rock will be put back. 

A plumber will also be involved to make sure that water doesn’t collect on the roof and makes its way to downspouts and away from the building. 

It’s a lot of work and will cost more than $250,000.  The good news is that the Synagogue’s “life savings” will pay for it.  The bad news is that our “life savings” will be drained by a very large amount.

The “life savings” are from the Mt. Sinai Endowment and the Mt. Sinai Trust.  They are two long-term funds carefully invested.  We’ve been using a portion of the interest from the two funds to help pay for Synagogue expenses.  The larger those funds grow, the more money is available from the interest.  So the roof expense will be a setback, but hopefully a temporary one and the funds will grow that money back through investments.  It will take several years to do that, though.

Here’s our Yiddish Phrase of the Week:

Ikh vel fun im makhn kreplfleysh!    
I’ll make mincemeat out of him!       

Shalom,