News Archive - Jewish Community Center Pittsburgh

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Starbucks teams up with WPXI to celebrate Kindness Week

Source: WPXI TV on July 11, 2022

PITTSBURGH — WPXI-TV and Channel 11 News will be celebrating kindness in the Pittsburgh area all this week on television and here on WPXI.com in partnership with the Center For Loving Kindness and more than a dozen Starbucks locations across the area. At each of the Starbucks locations, patrons will see a sticker on their cups and food bags celebrating kindness, while customers inside the stores can …

Pittsburgh’s Jewish Community Center collecting stuffed animals, books for children of Uvalde, Texas

Source: Pete DeLuca - WPXI on May 26, 2022

PITTSBURGH — When tragedy struck Uvalde, Texas, this week, leaders in Pittsburgh’s Jewish community jumped into action. “When we heard about what was going on in Uvalde, what happened, for all of us as human beings, it just hit a core, that this is just wrong,” said Rabbi Ron Symons, the founding director of the Jewish Community Center’s Center for Loving Kindness. The Center for Loving Kindness …

Camp Kindness Day makes us proud to be from Pittsburgh

Source: Ashley Bishop, WPXI.com on April 30, 2022

PITTSBURGH — This week around the country and in our area, children learned all about kindness during National Camp Kindness Day on July 20. The Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh teamed up with two other organizations to spread kindness to the next generation. One way they are doing that is by starting with our youngest generation, 3 and 4-year-old preschoolers who are making us proud …

The Sum of Us, Not Just Some of Us

On February 1, 2022

The arguments about citizenship questions and deadlines, enumerators and computer forms, congressional districts and federal funding — it seems like a lifetime ago because of COVID, and yet the results will guide us for the next 10 years … until we get to census 2030 as mandated by the Constitution. In this week’s Torah portion, Pinchas, we again turn our attention to a census of ancient …

Spirituality from the comfort of your own sofa

Source: By TOBY TABACHNICK,, Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle on May 20, 2020

Rabbi Ron Symons and Rev. Liddy Barlow host a new dialogue initiative to foster respect and understanding.

Mike Clark of WTAE Interviews Rabbi Symons

Source: WTAE - Mike Clark on April 8, 2020

April 8 at 4:47 PM · “THAT SENSE OF REDEMPTION, OF NEW BEGINNINGS, IS SHARED BETWEEN CHRISTIANS AND JEWS AND PEOPLE OF ALL FAITHS” As Passover begins for our Jewish friends, we want to share our conversation with Rabbi Ron Symons from the Center for Loving Kindness - JCC Pittsburgh as he and his family prepare for tonight’s Seder. Rabbi Ron offers his hopeful optimism at the center of …

Hanukkah celebration provides opportunity to observe similarities

Source: MARGARET SMYKLA on December 26, 2019

Religious celebrations don’t have to focus on what sets us apart. They can also celebrate what we have in common. That was the message at the kickoff of Hanukkah at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh in Squirrel Hill, as Jewish and Muslim members of the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom shared similarities in their customs, beliefs and language. The similarities, they noted, far outnumber the …

Do Jews in a synagogue have to arm themselves?

Source: Bas Blokker, US Correspondent, NRC Handelsblad | NRC Next on October 27, 2019

(translated from the original Dutch) In December 2015, Rabbi Ron Symons, director of the Jewish Community Center in Pittsburgh, called with representatives of various religious movements in the area. Whether they should not even get to know each other? "Because we are neighbors," Symons told them. "But also because I know for sure: there will come a time when we are all on a stage and we have to …

On Yom Kippur, a Tree of Life shooting survivor grapples with forgiveness

Source: Anya Sostek, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on October 10, 2019

Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in Judaism, centers on the idea of forgiveness. But what does forgiveness mean in the aftermath of a mass murder? On the first Yom Kippur after the Tree of Life synagogue shootings, what would a survivor say about forgiving the man who shot him and killed his friends? Hundreds of people -- overflowing the neat rows of chairs to sit …

A new year’s resolution for justice at Jewish Community Center

Source: Story by Peter Smith • Photos by Steve Mellon Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on October 1, 2019

With the long, drawn-out blasts from a shofar, or ram’s horn, more than 200 people ushered out the first day of Rosh Hashana on Monday, not with a traditional liturgy but with a practical guide to social justice at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh. The JCC’s Center for Loving Kindness hosted the event at the Squirrel Hill center through programming designed to appeal to …

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