Havurot & Special Interest Groups

Social Action Committee: Building a World of Kindness

During the 2022-23 year, our focus has been food insecurity. We organized a synagogue food collection for the San Antonio Food Bank during the period from Rosh Hashanah through Sukkot. Regular monthly volunteer activities at the San Antonio Food Bank done in partnership with San Antonio’s National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) are now occurring. We work in the warehouse packing items or in the culinary facility assisting with packing lunches for our San Antonio Pre-K programs and snacks for refugees.

Refugee and interfaith outreach has been an additional focus. In partnership with NCJW, we coordinated a coat drive during the fall of 2021 and a diaper drive in August of 2022. We worked with the Center for Refugee Services which has been trying to help the more than 4,000 Afghan refugees who have arrived in San Antonio during the last year. In November 2022, we packed 2,500 pairs of underwear for the “Undies for Kids” program with our NCJW and Agudas Achim Sisterhood partners. The underwear packages were donated to the Center for Refugee Services to be distributed to Afghan refugee children in San Antonio. Among the more than 40 volunteers for this event were members of the Muslim Children’s Education and Civic Center. Read more about it here!

Future plans for Spring 2023 include a Food Bank Distribution in our Agudas Achim parking lot with volunteers from the Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities.

Help us take action through volunteer work and donations to address challenges such as interfaith relations and food insecurity to build a more just society. For more information, please contact [email protected].

Past Initiatives

Congregation Agudas Achim’s Social Action Committee was reconstituted in the Fall of 2019 to focus on Recycling and Environmental Sustainability. In its new form, Agudas began to look at our own environmental footprint and began an active recycling program at the synagogue. The year’s other programs during 2019 and 2020 revolved around topics dealing with food insecurity, climate change, solar energy, alternative energy sources, and biodiversity. Most of the adult programs were done via Zoom during the pandemic. Concurrently, a curriculum specialist helped our Inda Posner Religious School and Heintz Preschool develop related programs each month that mirrored the adult programming. Rabbinic input added a Jewish perspective to these educational efforts for our children.

We spearheaded two programs related to the importance of water and the environment in 2021-22. One was a lecture to the Jewish community in January with Dr. Char Miller, Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College. He discussed his book West Side Rising, how San Antonio’s 1921 flood devastated the city but also sparked a Latino Environmental Justice movement. In the summer, a group of about 20 from our committee participated in a “Rain to Drain” bus tour of our San Antonio water system with SAWS educator Heather Ginsburg, a member of our synagogue. We visited an aquifer recharge site and the city’s desalination plant and wastewater treatment facilities. In addition, we learned about the function of our aquifers and measures our city has embraced to encourage water conservation. We also had an in-depth session on the bus about how Torah values are infused into any discussion of water.

Sisterhood

Agudas Achim Sisterhood is a member of the Southwest Branch of Women’s League for Conservative Judaism. The goal of Congregation Agudas Achim’s Sisterhood is to enhance your family life, your spiritual needs, and your congregational experience. Our Sisterhood provides a variety of programs and entertainment for its members and attempt to provide a connection to our beautiful Jewish traditions and values.

Our objectives are to:

Men’s Club

Congregation Agudas Achim Men’s Club is affiliated with the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs, an international organization representing hundreds of Men’s Clubs. Men’s Club exists to support Congregation Agudas Achim and to promote fellowship by organizing events through which its members provide services for our synagogue, assist its youth, and enjoy social camaraderie.

Our goals are: