Dear Friends,

The COVID-19 Crisis is evolving rapidly, and as a community, we must take critical and decisive action:

a) to prevent individual infection and community spread;
b) to protect our vulnerable populations;
c) to do what we can to lessen the impact on an already overwhelmed health-care system.

To that end, we are suspending all shul-gatherings from Friday, March 13, at noon. That means:

1. There will be no Shabbat services.
2. There will be no daily minyans.
3. There will be no gatherings, such as classes or meetings.

In this unprecedented and urgent situation, we simply do not know when the resumption of normal activity will take place.

We will continue to communicate with the congregation through phone messaging, emails, and also through video platforms. We plan to provide learning and worship experiences on these platforms as well.

We will do our best to provide meaningful guidelines for home observance, and we will begin the process of discovering new ways to be a caring community in light of the hardships that this situation is now imposing on us.
While we knew that this was coming, we are still stunned at how breathtakingly fast these developments have been. Judaism teaches us to see life as consisting of different "zones". There is no other way of stating this: we have crossed the boundary into a new unprecedented "zone".

We pray that this will be a temporary condition and that we will be able to resume or normal lives soon.

Please reach out to each other.
Please take care of each other the extent possible under the circumstances.
Please make sure your own personal support systems are intact.

We understand how difficult this will be, on so many levels, and that this will impact our lives in ways that we cannot yet fathom. But we will all get through this together.

Please join Rabbi Malomet for a pre-Shabbat video message on our Facebook page at:

https://www.facebook.com/hpctcae/
Friday, March 13, at 5 p.m.

In prayer that God will shield us and give us strength.

Rabbi Malomet
Stuart Feinblatt, President
Linda Tondow, Executive Director