Dear Families,

Hope you had a very good High Holy Days season. On the note of celebration, Tot Shabbat families extend a hearty mazal tov to Denise Harrison, Religious School teacher and CST administrative assistant, and her whole family on the occasion of her daughter's marriage this month. All of us thank Denise for her hard work and all she does for our program behind the scenes. We could not do it without you, Denise.

We look forward to seeing you at our upcoming workshop on Sunday, November 7th, led by Rabbi George from 10 am to noon on "Building a Jewish Home" for young children, ages 6 years old and under, together with parents. This promises to be an interesting and inviting experience with learning and fun for the whole family.

Blessings and Love,

Lauren Kalmenson

Hope you and yours had a joyful and meaningful High Holy Day season. Please God may the New Year bring good health, happiness, peace, employment to all and well being to the Earth and all of God's creatures. I hope that all of our children have made an enthusiastic and smooth transition into the new school year. It's definitely a shift for the tots and grown-ups as we transition ourselves to our lives out of our more relaxed summer schedules into the rigor and routines of the new school year. May it be sweet! Dates to Save: � Sunday, November 7th� Workshop on Building a Jewish Home with Rabbi George � Saturday, December 11th� Tot Shabbat Hanukkah Celebration Special thoughts and a wimple made by Lauren are sent from the Tot Shabbat family to Denise Harrison, on the upcoming marriage of her daughter. Blessings and Love, Lauren

Thank you for your fabulous support for our January Tu B�Shvat celebration. You make Tot Shabbat happen.

All of us at Tot Shabbat offer our heartfelt thanks and BRAVO to Danny Flores, our very talented and fabulously funny performer, who gave a special Purim Schpeil Show for our February Tot Shabbat. Danny, we love you. You are so generous to share your talent with us. Danny�s performances over the years leave us all with a special sprinkle of holiday magic and a tickle of joy in our souls.

Special thanks to Tricia Goldberg and Rabbi George for doing Tot Shabbat for me in February so that I could attend a Bar Mitzvah in Berkeley. I love you guys. Your support is appreciated. Heads up folks � Passover is around the corner. Please note that on Saturday, March 13, we will have our annual Tot Shabbat Passover Seder, 9:30 AM in Classroom Aleph. Looking forward to seeing you there.

Be�shalom. Let�s give thanks for the rain and send our prayers for healing and peace to Haiti and wherever it is needed.

Thank you for celebrating our new Torah with us. We are looking forward to seeing you on Sunday, December 13th from 10 am to noon for our upcoming Hanukkah Workshop. Enjoy the wonderful teachings of Rabbi George about Hanukkah. Learn from our community, each other, by sharing and listening about traditions. The workshop will help to deepen the Jewish connection between you and your child. Please help us to bring joy and light to others who are hungry by donating a non-perishable food item to Elisha�s Pantry. We are inviting you to share an easy-to-prepare vegetarian snack as part of our Hanukkah celebration. No nuts please. Please RSVP to Lauren at 707-542-6521.

We hope that all of you had a meaningful and enjoyable High Holyday experience. May the New Year herald peace, good health, and sweetness for our whole planet. On the note of sweetness, I wanted to share the sweet note that Tot Shabbat began on this new year. For our September gathering, we had some of our lovely regular families attend, some new families and some who are �old� tot families, who had babies that are now two�s. In this most appreciated mix, it was revealed through the social schmooze time that in this group of people there were these wonderful connections. Two parents from different families had not seen each other since high school and got to meet with their children. Others realized that they knew a person in common and they were related to whom they were speaking. Others uncovered connections through business ownership having shopped at that place, etc. It was so uncanny and delightful; an unexpected happy reunion and discovery of connections and relationships. We were thrilled that Tot Shabbat could be a place for reconnection and deepening of relationships

Rabbi George, Lauren, and Tricia Goldberg wish all of our families a very healthy, sweet, happy, and peaceful New Year and easy Fast. Stay tuned for up coming, exciting Tot Shabbat events. On that note, please mark your calendar now and save the date, on Sunday morning, December 13th, Rabbi George will be presenting a workshop on building a Jewish home and creating meaningful Jewish experiences with your child at Shomrei Torah. He will be interspersing adult education into our regular Tot Shabbat gatherings each month.

Something sweet to think about as the New Year approaches. A few families were selected to do a �pilot study� as an experiment. This involved 4 families whose children were older (4 � to 7 years of age) and who had been asking questions at home about God, Torah, and Jewish stories. The children were the rabbis who asked and answered their own questions. Adults were present but gave very little input. The children�s questions and answers were extremely thoughtful, deep, and inspiring. Thank you to our families for participating in this experiment. A detailed discussion followed with ideas of how to share this with the rest of the community. People expressed a lot of interest in doing this again, and ideas were discussed about how to replicate this experience on a larger scale. We will keep you posted in the future so that we can include all who are interested in participating. We�re looking forward to another great year of Tot Shabbat with your family.

All the best and Shana Tova,

� Lauren

A heartfelt thanks to everyone for the knockout attendance at our Tot Shabbat Friday Night Shabbat event in July, 72 people strong! Thank you for sharing your delicious food, and special thanks to Tricia Goldberg, our Tot Shabbat liaison, and her sister Portia, who were integral players in setting up and cleaning up at the event. Hearty applause and thanks to all our parents who attended to the needs of our children and helped our event move along. We couldn�t do it without you.

At our September Tot Shabbat, Rabbi George will be providing adult education about Rosh Hashanah and the High Holy Days, along with his usual delightful storytelling for our children.

Hope to see you there. Please don�t hesitate to share your ideas and feedback with us. Feel free always to talk to me, Tricia, and Rabbi George. Summer always inspires us with its bountiful variety of produce and flowers. I like to ask children to offer a blessing over a hand-picked/ bought fruit or veggie by closing their eyes before picking a strawberry, for example, and saying what they love about it. That becomes their blessing. I love to see the smiles it brings! I hope that this encourages you to also think about what you and your family are thankful for and to have your children use their thoughts or imagination to make new blessings.

Dear Families,

Thank you all for your terrific support and participation in our Tot Shabbat Purim Party in March. Special thanks and loud applause for our Purim Schpiel performers:

� Narrator: Rina Cohen

� King Ahashverosh: Kristofor Graber

� Queen Vashti: Tina Geffner

� Queen Esther: Barbra Schneider

� Mordechai: Eric Schweid

� Haman: Norman Eisley

Your comedic rendition and costume get-ups really made the Purim story come alive for our kids and created the festive spirit for our celebration. Special well wishes and love from all of us to Tricia Goldberg, our liaison, who injured herself recently. Tricia is recuperating after a bad fall and broken knee cap. Special healing wishes and love to Gary Bagley, our beloved maintenance man, who recently had emergency surgery.

Enjoy the beautiful blossoms.

It was with gratitude and joy that we entered into the month of Adar when Purim is celebrated. It is said �mishe�nichnas Adar marbim be�simcha� translated �whomever enters Adar will increase their joy.� We are so thankful to God for the RAIN, for the Earth and all her creatures so that we may live. We have grand cause for merrymaking. Thank you to our Purim schpiel performers who made the story of Purim come alive for our children. You all did such a terrific performance at our March Tot Shabbat.

Special thanks to all of you for your tremendous support and participation in our February Tot Shabbat Torah letter writing event and our monthly gathering. You make Tot Shabbat happen.

Please save the date � Saturday April 11th � we will be having our annual Tot Shabbat Seder. Hope to see you there! I�ll be calling soon with details! STAY TUNED

Special love and blessing to Rabbi George and Leira Satlof for inviting me to tell a story at the Friday night February 6th Shabbat service. Bountiful thanks to Leira for her support in so many ways. I couldn�t have done it without her. Also, I wish to express my genuine and heartfelt thanks to everyone in the community for all of your love, warmth, and support on this night. I am deeply moved by your kindness.

Enjoy the blossoms.

Thanks to all of you for investing yourselves in the writing of our new Torah. I especially would like to thank Rabbi George for the �spiritual pause� families take before writing their letter. Special thanks to Laurie Peretz and Tricia Goldberg for coordinating activities while children were waiting for their turn with the scribe. A BIG THANK YOU to Jay Peretz for taking photographs on this happy occasion (see them here). Many thanks to Gesher Calmensen, Paul Munson, Billie Blumenthal, and Denise Harrison for their help with this special day, and to our wonderful custodian Gary for his diligent set up. Thank you to all of you for helping your child(ren) at our activity stations. We had about 16 families who participated in our event.

Rabbi George and I wish to express our appreciation for your tremendous support and participation in our Tot Shabbat Hanukkah workshop and Community in Conversation. Thank you for the delectable food items to eat and for your generous food donations for Elisha�s Pantry. For me, the Hanukkah event was an example of the magic of community. Special thanks to our Community in Conversation facilitators Jan Gilman and Suzanne Abrams for their investment in our community. A huge thanks to Laurie Peretz who, since her support of our Tot Shabbat Pathways grant programs, has continued her enthusiastic support of Tot Shabbat. Special thank you to Levi and Sophie Gittleman for their spectacular support on the day of our program, and to Rabbi George and his furry child Sarah whom we adore and was a highlight at the end of the great Hanukkah story Rabbi George told. Last, but not least, thank you to Denise Harrison and Gary Bagley, our custodian, who work behind the scenes to make everything happen. Our love to Scott Posner, photographer extraordinaire, whose pictures are now on www.shomreitorah.org. Love also to the Rebb Family who made a gingerbread synagogue for our event.

This is the stuff that dreams are made of� the magic of community. We are so lucky to have a Rabbi who is so committed to our young children! Special thanks to all of our parents who helped our children with the art activities and �gelt� treasure hunt � we couldn�t have done it without you.