Midstate Jewish congregation set out to write a new torah
'I was the President when we were creating the new building,' said Carl Shuman.
It has been more than a decade later since then.
Now, 'We are commissioning a new torah scroll, which is the book, the scroll that we read from on the Sabbath and on holidays,' he added.
Writing a new torah is an extremely rare opportunity.
'Well, for one thing, it's an expensive undertaking,' Shuman said. 'So, it's very hard for synagogues to replace their torah scrolls when it becomes necessary.'
Torahs are written and made to last a long time.
'We currently have six torahs in the congregation, but only two of them are good enough to be used for ritual use. And those two are very old,' said Maggie Grotzinger. 'So, we wanted to write a new torah written.'
Grotzinger is a volunteer with the Pillars of Strength initiative — which helps with the funding.
'It's a once in a lifetime opportunity,' she said. 'So, we just really want them to be inspired, to be able to participate and, as I said, perform this one mitzvah that we're asked to do as Jews.'
The Gordon family — who provided a generous gift in order to launch the initiative — wrote the first letter in the new torah.
'It's just a lovely day. It's lovely always to get together,' Shuman shared. 'We really are a wonderful family in this congregation. It's lovely to see fellow members and especially to be celebrating something. We don't always get to do that.'
Download the abc27 News+ app on your Roku, Amazon Fire TV Stick, and Apple TV devices
Writing the torah is a six-month process, click here for more information on how to get involved or donate.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
22 minutes ago
- Forbes
Millions Of Managers Are Becoming Obsolete—By Solving The Wrong Problem
Psychological safety, problems at work, mistake, fatigue, dismissal, stress and overwork. Two months ago, Harvard Business School professor Amy C. Edmondson and associate professor Michaela J. Kerrissey wrote an eloquent article in the May-June issue of Harvard Business Review., 'What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety.' A Massive Effort To Enhance Psychological Safety With Little Effect 'Psychological safety' was once an obscure term in psychology and management research. Professor Edmondson changed all that with her best-selling book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (2017) HBRP. According to her recent article, 'Today the concept is downright popular. Countless managers, consultants, and training companies have worked hard to create psychologically safe workplaces, and thousands of articles have been devoted to the topic.' In 2017, the need for the effort was obvious: 'A 2017 Gallup poll found that only 3 in 10 employees strongly agree with the statement that their opinions count at work.' Yet today, 8 years later, those Gallup numbers have hardly budged. What went wrong? According to the 2025 article, 'As the popularity of psychological safety has grown, so too have misconceptions about it.' The authors identify six common misperceptions: 'Psychological safety means being nice; it means getting your way; it means job security; it requires a trade-off with performance; it's a policy; and it requires a top-down approach.' They explain why each misperception gets in the way and give advice on how to counter it. The Key Problem: What Is The Problem? What is the problem that this massive effort is trying to solve? One useful insight sometimes (unreliably) attributed to Albert Einstein is to rethink fundamentals. 'If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend the first 55 minutes defining the problem and the last five minutes solving it." The effort on psychological safety may be doing the opposite. Thus, a closer look at the lack of progress on enhancing psychological safety points to another possible cause: a focus of the effort on the team level of the firm. As Professor Edmondson's 2017 book stated, 'My field-based research has primarily focused on groups and teams, because that's how most work gets done.' So too, the 2025 article focuses almost exclusively on leaders trying to enhance psychological safety at the team level. The team level may be where most of the work gets done, but not necessarily where most of the problems are caused. The Real Problem Behind Lack Of Psychological Safety Guess what? In many other aspects of management, the principal problem today is not at the team level, and rather in the way the whole organization is run. For the last half-century, the central problem addressed by management was how to cut costs so as to maximize shareholder value and enhance bonuses for the executives. That was the official position of the U.S. Business Roundtable for several decades. Business schools still teach it. Most of the processes, systems, and mindsets that support it are still in place in many big firms. So that is the problem that managers are required to address, whether they agree with it or not. Is it any wonder that there is a lack of psychological safety in such settings? The Shift From Cutting Costs To Creating Value For Customers The good news is that in a smaller group of public firms—perhaps 20% of public companies-- the primary dynamic of a business has shifted from cutting costs and extracting value to creating more value for customers. Value-creating enterprises emerged from the combination of two elements: first, entrepreneurs began using digital technology and AI to deliver exponentially more value than traditionally-managed firms; and second, digital technology gave customers the power to demand more value from businesses. The killer insight: value-creating enterprises not only satisfy customers: they make much more money than firms focused on making money. Workplaces devoted to creating value for customers are also likely to be more congenial as workplaces than those focused on extracting value from customers and boosting executive bonuses. Meanwhile, profit-seeking firms that still focus primarily on improving efficiency and cost-cutting are generating below-average value and are having difficulty in surviving. Two-thirds of the famous blue-chip firms in the Dow Jones Industrial Average are now performing below average (See the table below). The performance problems that these firms are facing of course aggravates even further the problem of workplace psychological safety, as workers in those firms are likely to be blamed for shortfalls in performance. Thus, many of the managers in struggling efforts to enhance psychological safety may be trying to solve the wrong problem. If they shifted the focus of their efforts to updating the goal of their firms and creating more value for their customers, their workplaces could transition from the dispiriting goal of extracting value from customers to the potentially inspiring purpose of creating value for them. And read also Why Millions Of Managers Are Becoming Obsolete—It's Not Rocket Science—Or AI Millions Of Managers Are Becoming Obsolete: Master Value Creation Now 5-Year Total Returns of firms in the Dow Jones Industrial Average as of July 2025
CBS News
an hour ago
- CBS News
Search continues for Monterey County plane crash victim; 2 found unresponsive
The United States Coast Guard said three people were inside a plane that crashed in Monterey County Saturday evening. Crews found two people unresponsive, and a search for the third is ongoing, the Coast Guard said. Just before 11 p.m., the Coast Guard Station in Monterey was alerted to a twin-engine Beechcraft that had crashed between 200-300 yards off Point Pinos. The Coast Guard said three people were on board. A boat and helicopter crew responded to the scene and located the Beechcraft. Two people were found unresponsive and a third remains missing. According to the Coast Guard, the plane took off from the San Carlos airport. Pacific Grove Police said they received calls about the plane crash just after 10 p.m. and were told it crashed near the coastline of Asilomar State Beach. One Pacific Grove resident said they heard a plane circling his neighborhood and then a loud thump about 30 seconds later. Pacific Grove Police, the Monterey Fire Department, Monterey County Sheriff's Office and San Mateo County Sheriff's Office, Cal Fire and the Coast Guard were all at the scene. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
3 bodies recovered from small plane crash in California: Reports
Three bodies have been recovered following a July 26 small plane crash in Pacific Grove, California, according to local reports. Television stations KION and KSBW reported that the U.S. Coast Guard recovered the bodies July 27. USA TODAY has reached out to the USCG Pacific Area and the Monterey County Sherriff's Office for confirmation. The Federal Aviation Administration said in a preliminary statement to USA TODAY that three people were on the Beechcraft BE55 it alerted as missing off the coast of the town July 26. Flight tracking data published by FlightAware shows flight N8796R leaving from San Carlos Airport at 10:11 p.m. PT heading toward the Monterey Regional Airport. The tracker indicates that the plane turned around over the seaside town and was last seen around 10:37 p.m. PT. Cal Fire told KSBW that witnesses reported hearing an aircraft engine revving, followed by a splash in the ocean. The NTSB will lead the investigation, the FAA said in its statement. This is a developing story. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 3 bodies recovered from California small plane crash: Reports Solve the daily Crossword
