Tikkun Olam

The Tikkun Olam Council (TOC) is the social action committee of Temple Shalom. Our mission “… is to assist in, enhance and advance opportunities for members of all ages of Temple Shalom to participate in and fulfill their obligations of Tikkun Olam and of promoting SocialAction and Social Justice.”

This past year has been one of some accomplishment as we have striven to encourage members of Temple Shalom to become more involved in social action and social justice. In particular, we organized the first of what we hope will be a series of forums dealing with important issues that affect us here in Southwest Florida, as well as across the country. Our goal is to examine these issues from a Jewish perspective.

The Health Care Access Forum was held in January and our panel was moderated by Dr. Jaclyn Faffer, President and CEO of JFCS of Southwest Florida. We were pleased to have a distinguished panel of experts including Dr. Allen Weiss, President and CEO of NCH Health Care System, William Ertag MD and Ms. Leslie Lachied, CEO of the Neighborhood Health Clinic in Naples.

The TOC worked closely with Rabbi Miller regarding the recent rise in anti-Semitism around the country. We asked a simple question…What can we do?

Here is what we did…we sent a suggested additional reading to all Temple Shalom members to include at our Passover Seders. Focusing on the roasted egg, it teaches us that the longer one roasts the egg, the stronger it becomes, much like the response of the Jewish people needs to be to acts of anti-Semitism. Our goal was to encourage all of us to talk about current events as well as specific ideas that we can implement to address the concerns of anti-Semitism in our community.

We have worked hard to encourage our members to volunteer at organizations here in Southwest Florida. Some of our members are volunteering at organizations such as JFCS, Harry Chapin Food Bank and the Guadalupe Center in Immokalee, but the needs are great and much more help is needed.

As we look ahead to the coming year we need members’ suggestions and ideas, and, most importantly, greater active participation. So far, participation has not been as robust as we hoped it would be. Our goal for this new year is to encourage more members to join the TOC, to contribute their ideas and time and to expand participation in our social action and social justice pursuits. Please contact Ken Goldstein at kengoldstein@ mac.com or Marshall Sutker at marshall@sutker.com with your thoughts, comments and questions