Washington Hebrew Congregation

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Minds Matter
Share Your Expertise!

Minds Matter is a program for WHC members who want to Share Your Expertise. Participants work on short term projects that last approximately 4-6 months to help non profits achieve their missions more effectively.

Minds Matter is completing its second year of activity and is looking to you to broaden its volunteer base. The projects provide several avenues to Share Your Expertise. For example, one avenue is consulting with non-profit organizations in the Washington metropolitan region on one of the following service lines: board development, strategic planning, fundraising or restructuring of the non-profit organization. A team of 4-6 volunteers are usually involved in each project.

The time commitment for volunteers is about 3-5 hours per month. Individuals with business and/or non-profit background and experience would be ideal, but this is not required. No previous experience is necessary as training will be provided. Our current projects include board development for The ARC of NOVA, lawyers working with the Legal Clinic for the Homeless on a 6-month rotation and a data base project for WHC. Volunteers in our group report tremendous satisfaction, ease of participating and are grateful to be involved in building our community in a positive manner. Most volunteers state that meeting and making new friends among their fellow congregants has been particularly rewarding!

Please join us in this exciting, fulfilling and worthwhile endeavor. Your commitment may be for just one project or whatever fits your schedule. There is no long term obligation.

For more information,
please contact one of the Minds Matter coordinators,
Joan Greenbaum at 301-320-2435 or
jsgrnbm@verizon.net
or Bobby Lipnick at 202-223-1080 x105 or at
RNLipnick@aol.com.



MLK Shabbat Service

On September 23, 1957 Ernest Green and eight other teenagers walked into their high school. For most, this act would have been unremarkable --- just another part of a daily routine. But for these Black youth, who became known as the ‘‘Little Rock Nine,’’ entering Little Rock, Arkansas’ Central High School was an act of courage and a defining moment in our nation’s civil rights movement. On Friday, January 14, 2011 at the MLK Shabbat Service, Ernest Green addressed our congregation to discuss the historic year during which he attended Central High School and how those events have impacted his life.

Racial tensions were high in the 1950s South, and despite the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that declared segregation illegal, many schools remained closed to Black students. Although protected by the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army, these nine students endured harassment, threats and abuse throughout the school year. Against odds, Green graduated from Central High that following June, the first African-American to do so. He then went on to receive his BA and MA degrees from Michigan State University as well as honorary Doctorate degrees from Michigan State, Tougaloo College and Central State University.

At the age of 17, Green was the youngest recipient of the NAACP’s Spingard Medal; and in 1999 President Clinton presented Green, along with the rest of the Little Rock Nine, with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor that can be given to a civilian for their outstanding bravery during the integration of Central High in 1957.

Prior to the service, WHC members, local churches, and invited guests gathered for a festive dinner to honor Mr. Green and remember Martin Luther King, Jr.’s fight for civil rights.

For more information,
please contact Layne Weiss at
202-895-6307 or LWeiss@whctemple.org