Who We Are
Our Mission and Dreams
PCS' Mission Statement:
Pleasantville Community Synagogue is a welcoming Jewish community connecting people of diverse traditions and backgrounds who want to share a joyous spiritual and cultural home.
PCS' Mission Statement:
Pleasantville Community Synagogue is a welcoming Jewish community connecting people of diverse traditions and backgrounds who want to share a joyous spiritual and cultural home.
- A spiritual home deeply rooted in Torah (study), avodah (prayer), and gemilut Chasidim (deeds of loving-kindness).
A community based on these three pillars upon which, our tradition teaches, the world rests, will challenge our ability to remain spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally open; and will test our resolve to resist falling back on old patterns of religious life and communal interaction. We are blessed to live in a generation of deep spiritual seeking. Our community must be one that can adequately respond to the spiritual depth which is today the quest of so many.
- We seek to facilitate lifelong spiritual growth by engaging each member wherever that member may be on life’s journey.
Some of us come from richly Jewish backgrounds Others have little or no Jewish background at all. We are seeking a deeply caring community which meets us where we are; which welcomes us unconditionally; which supports us as we question and wrestle with issues of ultimate meaning in the framework of Jewish experience. We are seeking a spontaneous, joyful, spiritually rich community where each person is loved and valued for the unique Torah (teaching) that only they can bring.
- Embracing all generations.
We are seeking a community that can bind up the generations; a place where different generations freely interact; a community that raises our children Jewishly and together; a place of intergenerational learning and involvement. We are seeking a community in which children are lovingly encouraged to surpass their parents in Jewish knowledge, engagement, and observance.
We are seeking to create a community that supports Judaism’s emphasis on continuous learning for everyone, and that strives to engage everyone, including teenagers and children, in ways they find meaningful for themselves
- We encourage Tikkun Middot (repair of the self)
We are seeking a community that supports and encourages us on our personal search for meaning, in our efforts to explore the inner dimensions of our lives; even those dimensions that lie beyond the realm of rational discourse.
- Tikkun Olam (repair of the world)
We are seeking to build a community of people dedicated to practices which sanctify the environment (eco-kashrut), and to working together for the repair of the world (tikkun olam).
- Through Jewish education for all ages,
Some of us want to provide a richer Jewish upbringing for our children than we ourselves had, and so are seeking a community in which children are lovingly encouraged to surpass their parents in Jewish knowledge, engagement, and observance.
But we also are striving to create a community full of opportunities to learn – each in our own way and at our own pace. We are seeking a safe place for Jewish women and men to explore, question, learn, and re-vision Judaism; a fully egalitarian community, for contemporary women and men who want a Judaism which recognizes that we were all at Sinai.
- Social action,
We understand our commitment to social action as the outer dimension of our spiritual life - and we are seeking a community where we no longer have to choose between a passionate, committed, observant, Jewish community; and a socially, environmentally, and globally conscious community.
- Ahavat Yisrael (love of Israel)
We are concerned about the waning appreciation for both Am Yisrael (the peoplehood of Israel) and Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel), and are seeking a Zionist community in which both Ahavat Yisrael (love of Israel) and Klal Yisrael (the good of the greater Jewish community) is ever present.
- And a commitment to the understanding and fulfillment of mitzvot.
In such a community, everyone will have something to offer, and everyone will have something to learn. In such a community all would understand that they ultimately have obligations (to study, to prayer, to the observance of Shabbat, to deeds of loving-kindness); which would be carried out willingly, and cheerfully - because they would be rooted in love. In such a community, each of us would be seeking to integrate Jewish spiritual practice into the course of our daily lives; knowing that we can only pass on to our children the values to which we ourselves subscribe; the practices and traditions to which we ourselves are personally committed.