Sunday, Dec. 5

·    5:00-8:00 pm - Family Chanukah Party. Sponsored by TI Youth & Family Programming and the Hebrew Day Institute. (See box above)
·    8:00 am-8:00 pm - USY's Chanukah Bash at Great Wolf Lodge's Indoor Water Park. For 8th-12th graders. Join over 200 USYers from Conservative Synagogues across Maryland, Virginia, DC and North Carolina for a day of fun at Virginia's largest indoor water park at Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg. The park boasts 8 huge slides, 5 pools, a giant water fort, a lazy river and more! More information can be found below and attached to this email. $75 per person; fee includes transportation, snacks, dinner and park admission.

Saturday, January 8

7:45 - 10 pm - Sixth Annual Israeli Film Festival, A Matter of Size (In Hebrew: Sipur Gadol)  the first of two nights celebrating Israeli films.

Four overweight friends from the Israeli city of Ramle are fed up of dieting and the dieting club they belong to. When Herzl (341 lbs.), the main protagonist, loses his job as a cook and starts working as a dishwasher in a Japanese restaurant in Ramle he discovers the world of Sumo where large people such as himself are honoured and appreciated. Through the restaurant owner Kitano (132 lbs.), a former Sumo coach in Japan, he falls in love with a sport involving "two fatsos in diapers and girly hairdos." Herzl wants Kitano to be their coach but Kitano is reluctant-they first have to earn their spurs.

A Matter of Size is a comedy about a 'coming out' of a different kind-overweight people learning to accept themselves.

Winner of 3 Israeli Academy Awards!
Winner of 8 Film Festival Audience Awards!

The program includes light refreshments and moderated discussion following the film. Admission, payable at the door, is $10 for TI members and $12 for nonmembers. RSVP to adulted@tikvatisrael.org.

Saturday, January 22

7:45 - 10:00 pm - Sixth Annual Israeli Film Festival, Dear Mr. Waldman (In Hebrew: Michtavim L'America), the second of two nights celebrating Israeli films.

In Tel Aviv in the 1960s 10-year-old Hilik knows his goal in life-to make his parents happy and compensate for the grief they both suffered in the Holocaust. The fragile equilibrium of Rivka and Moishe's new, post-war life begins to waver when Moishe convinces himself that Yankele, his son from his first marriage, didn't actually die in Auschwitz, but rather survived to become President Kennedy's assistant, the "Jack Waldman" he sees pictured in a newspaper. When a deluded Moishe writes a letter to Waldman, Hilik takes matters into his own hands.

Dear Mr. Waldman, a coming-of-age story written and directed by the son of survivors, beautifully captures the milieu of mid-century Israel and the peculiarities of growing up amid the emotional wreckage of the Holocaust.

This film is Rated R. The program includes light refreshments and moderated discussion following the film. Admission, payable at the door, is $10 for TI members and $12 for nonmembers. RSVP to adulted@tikvatisrael.org.