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WHAT RABBIS, CONGREGATIONAL LEADERS, JEWISH COMMUNAL PROFESSIONALS,
AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS ARE SAYING ABOUT GATHER THE PEOPLE

I think your materials and your website are great! I want to add that your downloadable articles and drashim provide a wealth of fascinating, thought provoking and inspirational relevance . . . especially to those of us who are synagogue activists who are engaged in community (shul) building . . . lay and professional alike. Thanks and kol hakavod on an interesting and useful website!!!

David Rothenberg
Executive Director, Beth Israel Congregation

I think you have an excellent site. Any organizer working in Los Angeles should read some of the documents to continue with what I call the “Process of the Organizer’s Self Education.”

Roberto Bustillo

What a fantastic site! Thank you for making so many wonderful resources available to the public.

Jason Smartt
Director, Spokane Area Jewish Family Services

I found Gather the People very useful in explaining to my congregation just what we were trying to do in the congregation organizing process. Gather the People presents the oprganizing process in a way Jewish congregations can understand it, and put it in the context of Jewish tradition, something absolutely necessary for any Jewish congregation serious about Tikkun Olam or increasing its sense of community.

As an organizer, training young Jewish community organizers, it is the only source I know of that presents the elements of a congregation building drive within a Jewish context and within Jewish tradition. Gather the People is a useful tool for anyone serious about community organizing in Jewish congregations.

Michael J. Brown
Coordinator, Jewish Organizing Initiative

Your project is fascinating. I enjoyed the two melodies on your web site.

Sandy Steingart

Yishar Kokhakhem. . . . Great project!

Rabbi David Shneyer

I just want to let you know that I checked out your web site and it has a lot of interesting items that I might use in the future. B'hatzlachah with this project.

Rabbi David Steinberg
Plattsburgh, NY

This is an incredible website. Came upon it by accident. Very interesting organization. I am a board member of a synagogue in Essex County, NJ, and look forward to visiting your site often.

Nick Levitin

I wanted to tell you that I love your "Gather the People" website. I used the training on negotiation recently and it worked out great. Thanks for taking the time to put together such a wonderful resource.

James Mumm
Co-Director, Mothers on the Move South Bronx, NY

I thank you for a beautiful downloadable haggadah. I have been preparing my own family's haggadah, and I am using yours as one of my resources.

Elvi Dalgaard

Thanks for the good idea! Though I'm retired I passed it along to a few colleagues still “on the line.” I'd greatly appreciate it if you'd send me more information about GTP.

Rabbi Stephen A. Arnold
South Easton, MA

Thank you for the great link to the Gather the People site.

Rabbi Eitan J. Weiner-Kaplow

THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!! for giving breath to what I have been feeling for many a year! I will DEFINITELY bookmark your site for future visits. Thank you for being there and let me know if there is anything I can do for you!

Miriam Shoshanah

Just wanted to say thanks for an interesting site. I've done neighborhood organizing and am now with a non-profit doing the same thing. And I really enjoyed the site.

Mike Hodge

Thank you very much for you excellent advice. Our congregation is affiliated with. . . . However, we have been treated very badly by that organization. Once again, thank you for taking the time to write back to me and for the great wealth of advice.

D. Press

Your web site and writings are really interesting!

Rabbi Eric Lankin
United Jewish Communities

Thank you for sharing these wonderful, wonderful [drashot and iyun tefillot] resources. Todah raba.

Anne Lyons

I am a Community Development executive from London, England and would like to compliment you on the [GTP] website and its organization.

Janet Berenson-Perkins

The [GTP] web site is really wonderful."

Dr. Tamar Earnest
Rabbinical Student, AJR

Access to the Gather the People web site was "filtered" (blocked) to the Chinese people by the government of the Peoples Republic of China as of November 2002.

The Gather the People web site was listed as one of the “Web’s Best Sites” by the Encyclopedia Britannica.

WHAT CONGREGATIONAL LEADERS AND OTHER STUDENTS ARE SAYING
ABOUT LEARNING WITH RABBI MOSHE BEN ASHER
AND MAGIDAH KHULDA BAT SARAH

Thanks to the Temple Ner Shalom Rabbi Team, I have derived a deep and abiding understanding of Torah such as I have never acquired before. Better still, they have given me the tools so that I can continue to study Torah on my own. That also goes for their examination of Judaism.  
  
They are the kinds of teachers that never simply lecture and expect you to absorb and accept their views at face value, but rather gently push you to question and think deeply of what those concepts mean to you, how they fit into your life. I’m often amazed at the questions they formulate and put to us.
   
We have been blessed with some wonderful Rabbis in the past, each one of whom has left his mark on our lives. But this Rabbi Team has helped us search our souls for a wider, deeper and different understanding of the role that Torah can play in bettering our existence—our relationship with G-d, our family and friends and above all to the "strangers" in our midst. Each of us is on a journey and the Rabbi Team has helped us along our paths, different as each one is to every other. There’s no one cookie-cutter.
   
For example, they have gently forced me to reexamine my belief systems and to state them openly, something I’ve been too embarassed to do in the past. (This has  happened to other attendees.) They have gently pushed me to redirect the goals of my life. All to the better. For this, I’m eternally grateful.
   
Every once in a while I stop and marvel at the time, thought and energy that obviously goes into the preparation of every class they conduct. They eschew the trivial and the ordinary; they conduct every session with joy and originality. It is truly a mitzvah that they bestow on us and a mitzvah for us to be the recipients.
 
Those who have not experienced a class with the Rabbi Team have deprived themselves of a valuable and precious part of our Synagogue life. I urge you to attend their classes the next time they are here. You owe it to yourself.
 
Doris Bolef
Temple Ner Shalom
San Luis Obispo

Working with Magidah Khulda bat Sarah is a supportive and pleasant experience. Her approach is a far cry of the unpleasant taskmasters that I instinctually associate with bad bar mitzvah memories. Her approach to my learning is gentle, progressive and encouraging. Magidah Khulda's always-encouraging feedback and emphasis on my individual pace of learning aided me in overcoming the personal learning hurdles that cropped up regularly.

The techniques that Magidah Khulda used to help me master Torah reading are especially helpful. Magidah Khulda taught me a Torah reading technique that doesn't focus on memorization, but on a systematic approach that uses the reappearing patterns of trope, which aids and simplifies my learning a Torah portion. Magidah Khulda's technique of visioning ahead the next grouping of trope from the one that is currently chanted is a great aid in my calm and confidence when I chant Torah in front of a congregation.

I've learnt that I can gently unlearn bad habits and techniques that evolved in my attempt to restart chanting a long while after my initial bar mitzvah experience. The inefficiency, fear and anxiety that came from relying primarily on memorization of recorded portions have been replaced by the ability to sight read trope and learn portions with far less effort and the ability to retain it longer.

What I like about working with Magidah Khulda is that I can do it from my home at hours that are convenient to me. The phone is a great aid—all I have to do to get ready for a lesson is sit down at my trope sheet, put on my phone headset and dial, and when Magidah Khulda answers the telephone it's only a few seconds until I feel that we are sitting next to each other. The phone seems to facilitate a true sense of one-to-one instruction. I have no worries about phone bills as I have a $5 per month unlimited long distance plan on my home phone. I prefer to have my lessons at 6 a.m. my time because of child care, carpool and work responsibilities, and Magidah Khulda accommodates my schedule. I like that I am able to choose the physical environment that I feel comfortable learning in. I choose to call from my garden where I watch the hummingbirds, blue jays and other birds going about their morning routine as I go through my trope singing exercises with Magidah Khulda. My five year old when asked by his mom where daddy is, said, "He's in the garden singing." I have a feeling that my studying is imparting something to my son, especially since I sometimes sing trope when I drive him and he likes to try to sing along.

What I like best about working with Magidah Khulda is that she is calm, warm and supportive, and has a lot of patience.

Pini Herman
Movable Minyan
Los Angeles

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