Beth Tikvah Trivia Night and Silent Auction

Our winning teams and players having fun.  More pictures at our Facebook page

This past Saturday night was our annual Trivia Night and Silent Auction.  While three teams out of the nine took home trophies, we were all winners;  we all had so much fun!  However, the big winner that night was Beth Tikvah; we raised over $2,220. This was significantly more than last year and may have been our most successful trivia night to date. Thank you Wendy Gonsenhauser for everything you did to put this awesome event together.  She gathered a fantastic selection of silent auction and raffle items.  This event would not happen, and would certainly not be nearly as successful, without her yeoman efforts.  

Thank you to everyone who donated items and bid on other items.  Also thank you to everyone who brought food that evening.  If there is one thing we really like to do at Beth Tikvah, it is eat. Thank you Benita for helping at the front door and Bill, Cindy, Maddie, and Sarah for setting up and everyone who pitched in to clean up at the end. Congrats to all of our winners.  In third place, "Kvechers", Second place, "BT Swamprats", and in first place, "Decision Makers" (I'm hoping I remembered that name correctly, please let me know if I got it wrong).  The best part of the evening for me was seeing people I haven't seen in years!  It was so wonderful to see Gene and Jessie and Rabbi Fred with his wife, Alison.  I also loved seeing so many in our kehillah bringing their friends and neighbors to come play with us.  This is one of the highlights of my year, and I look forward to it every year.  What was your favorite part of the evening?  What do you look forward to next year?   

Purim Celebration at Beth Tikvah and the Boroughs JCC

What a great time this past Sunday morning at our Purim celebration! It was so great to see so many people and so many new faces. We actually ran out of groggers! Our first hamentashen bake-off was a great success. Eleven people entered the competition, almost 400 hamentashen were eaten.  All our entrants were amazing, a great variety of flavors, traditional, and non-traditional. These delicious recipes will be in our Beth Tikvah Jewish Holiday cookbook which will be available next year.  Thank you to all  of our entrants, the second/third graders, fifth graders, Abbe, Miri, Benita, Wendy, Jared, Lisa, Jody, Bob, and I entered too.  Congrats to our winners; second place - Miri, first place - Abbe, and most original - Jared. The contest was really just good fun and more importantly, raised $110 for our Wendy Steinberg Scholarship fund!