Rabbi Michael B. Eisenstat comes to Shir Hadash
January 2011
 Shir Hadash looks forward to welcoming Rabbi Michael Eisenstat and his wife, Nancy, to Florence, to lead our congregation from Feb - June 2011. Rabbi Eisenstat attended the
University of Cincinnati where he majored in Literature. Upon
graduation he attended the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of
Religion in Cincinnati where he was ordained. Interrupting his
matriculation, Rabbi Eisenstat and his new bride took a year-long
leave-of-absence to study in Israel. Upon ordination, Rabbi
Eisenstat enlisted in the United States Air Force, serving as a
Chaplain for two years, based in Biloxi, Mississippi. He went on to
become Rabbi of Temple B'nai Sholom in Huntsville, Alabama for four
years and then moved to Coral Gables, Florida where he served for
twenty-three years. After moving to Longboat Key, Florida and serving
Temple Beth Israel, Rabbi Eisenstat retired and was named Rabbi
Emeritus.
Rabbi
Eisenstat has served as President of the Huntsville Ministers'
Association, the Greater Miami Rabbinical Association, and as Founding
President of the Sarasota-Manatee Rabbinic Aoociation. An ardent
Zionist, he has been honored for his work on behalf of Israel by Israel
Bonds and the Jewish National Fund, among others.Active
in interfaith work, Rabbi Eisenstat was active in establishing a
Holocaust program at a major Protestant Church in Coral
Gables. He also served as Chairman of the Interfaith Dialogue of
the National Association of Christians and Jews. He has served as
a police chaplain for the Miami Public Safety Department. Rabbi
Eisenstat has also served on the Rabbinic Board of Alumni Overseers of
the Hebrew Union College, the Board of the Central Conference of
American Rabbis, as a Board Member of the Greater Miami Jewish
Federation, and the Sarasota-Manatee Jewish Federation.Rabbi
Eisenstat is an avid golfer and sailor. Married to Nancy, the
Eisenstats have two married children and are the proud grandparents of six grandchildren. Adesso
Rabbi Eisenstat is studying Italian with the Rosetta Stone program!
Our New Rabbi
August 2010
 Shir Hadash is happy and excited to welcome Rabbi Fred N. Reiner to our congregation for 5771!
Rabbi
Reiner served as Senior Rabbi of Temple Sinai, Washington, DC, from
July 1985 to June 2010. During his tenure the congregation doubled in
size to nearly 1200 households, added a nursery school, expanded its
religious school, enlarged its building, and enriched its ritual,
educational, and programmatic offerings.
Rabbi Reiner has been
president of the Washington Board of Rabbis and president of the
Mid-Atlantic region of the Central Conference of American Rabbis
(CCAR). He continues to serve on the Board of Trustees of the
national CCAR and on the Washington Advisory Council of Avodah.
He has taught at Howard University Divinity School.
He
provided leadership nationally and in the Washington area on issues
such as reproductive rights, church-state separation, housing, D.C.
voting rights, and aging concerns. He has published articles in both
academic and popular journals.
A native of Chicago, Rabbi Reiner
received his B.A. degree from the University of California-Berkeley,
where he was a campus leader following Berkeley’s Free Speech
Movement. In 1973, he was ordained and received a M.A. in Hebrew
Letters degree from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of
Religion in Cincinnati (HUC-JIR) in 1973.
Since ordination, Rabbi
Reiner has served as Director of Admissions at Hebrew Union College and
in pulpits in Topeka, KS, and the Chicago area.
He is married to Dr. Sherry Levy-Reiner. They have a son, David, who was ordained as a rabbi in 2009.
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Rabbi Mark Loeb
October 2009
 It
was with great sadness that members of the congregation
learned of the
death of Rabbi Mark Loeb, who died Wednesday,
October 7 in Milano. He
was to have served as Rabbi for Shir Hadash and Beth Shalom until June
2010. When he led services for Rosh Hashanah, the
congregation was impressed by his warm manner and sense of humor.
"We regret not having been able to get to know him better,"
said Sarah Rubenstein, Ritual Chairperson.
Rabbi
Loeb had already postponed his collaboration with Shir
Hadash for a year when in 2008 he underwent emergency heart
surgery. Sources indicate that he died suddenly after dinner Wednesday
evening. He was 65.
Born in Boston, Rabbi Loeb studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary
of America, and was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute
of Religion. Before his retirement last year, he had served as senior
rabbi for Beth El Congregation in Pikesville, near Baltimore, Maryland
for 28 years.
Rabbi Loeb was very active in community affairs: he
was national president for MAZON, a Jewish Response to Hunger, served
on various gubernatorial commissions for the state of Maryland, chaired
the board of Baltimore Hebrew University, and was co-founder of the
Institute for Christian and Jewish studies, promoting interfaith
dialogue.
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Holocaust
Memorial Day
2009
January 2009
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January
29th the town council of Bagno a Ripoli (FI) presented a plaque in
memory of the political dissidents and Jews confined in Villa La Selva.
From 1940 to 1944 this neoclassical villa at the top of a hill on Via
del Carota was used as a concentration camp for civilian prisoners and
as a way-station for many destined for the extermination camps.