J Blog

Happy Holidays,

On behalf of the J, I would like to extend the best wishes to you and your family for a happy and healthy 2018!

It was great to see many of you this past Sunday at the Jewish CultureFest at Evelyn’s Park in Bellaire. The weather cooperated so we could all enjoy the live music, great food and the many great activities. Special thanks to the City of Bellaire and Evelyn’s Park staff for assisting with the festival and to Rabbi Samantha Safran for coordinating the festival.  

On behalf of the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center Board of Trustees and staff, I would like to wish you and your family a Happy Thanksgiving. This holiday affords us the opportunity to spend time with family and friends and celebrate the wonderful Thanksgiving traditions. Daily we are starting to see increased levels of activity at the J. As a thank you for your continued patience and support, watch for an announcement regarding ...

Shabbat Shalom,

Thank you for your patience as we continue to move forward with building repairs and work to resume as many programs and activities as possible. I wanted to provide you with a number of important updates and announcements.

Thank you Jewish Federation of Greater Houston 
I was informed earlier this week that the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston made a grant of $1 million to the J to support the repair and renovations costs for all of our facilities. More than $17 million has been raised to support Hurricane Harvey and relief efforts, and we are grateful to the Jewish Federation for its partnership and to all of the donors that have contributed to the fund.

A New Beginning This Shabbat we read the Torah portion B'reishit that tells the story of the seven days of creation as well as the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This Torah portion is significant not just because it marks a new beginning in the Torah, but also because it has the ability to inspire new beginnings in our lives. As we approach a new beginning at the J, I am thrilled to share with you that we are planning to re-open ...

Thank you for your continued patience as we work through the necessary repairs to open our facilities on the Levit Family Campus. Please make note of the following important updates: Our goal is to open the Weingarten Building on Monday, October 16 and begin to resume business operations, daytime and evening classes and other programs. Further details on class programs and schedules will be announced next week. The Fitness Center flooring ...

Shana Tovah, I wanted to provide you with a number of facility and program updates as we continue to make progress on the required repairs and remediation of all of our facilities. The swimming pool at the Merfish Teen Center is now operational and is available to our members to swim laps beginning on Monday, September 25. Please click here for the schedule and additional information regarding the hours, parking, what to bring, etc. The ...

We have some good news to share in today's update. We have generators running and have AC and electricity in parts of the Weingarten Building. We are working area by area to check the mechanical systems. We've already had one air handler motor catch fire and burn out. We will have a much better idea in the next few days when we can re-open the Weingarten Building. We estimate it will be at least another 7+ days as we are waiting on ...

As we continue to recover from Hurricane Harvey, our staff has worked diligently to get programs back up and running, both in the short term with the limited facilities available, and for the future as we get buildings operational. Today we wanted to provide you with an update on the programs we are currently running and looking forward to in the near future. We hope that you'll come out to show your support for the J at one or several of these ...

Program Updates Our staff continues to find facilities to open their doors for our programs. Four different gymnastic gyms are providing space for our competitive gymnasts to train. Congregation Brith Shalom that hosted our concert this past Sunday is providing space for our children and teen theater productions to rehearse, and Shlenker Day School is hosting our KidZone program. Our staff is amazing. They have been working under very ...

Facilities Update As many schools prepare to open on Monday and businesses start to re-open, I wanted to provide you with updates on the Evelyn Rubenstein JCC facilities. We are working this week to set up temporary generators to get electricity to the Weingarten building and operate temporary chillers that will provide air conditioning. We will also bring in a temporary boiler to have hot water available in restrooms, showers and heat water ...