You are warmly invite you to a special evening with blessings, light, and song, as we celebrate Barbara Penzner’s 28 years as our beloved Rabbi at Temple Hillel B’nai Torah. On Saturday, June 3 we will honor her legacy as she leaves the HBT pulpit and becomes our Rabbi Emerita.

To ensure the continued impact of Rabbi Barbara’s tremendous leadership at Temple HBT and in the broader community, I ask you to please consider a gift to the Samekh (Support) Fund. This is a beautiful way to honor the Rabbi and support Temple HBT. You can make your gift at the link below. 

When Rabbi Barbara arrived in 1995, HBT was a mix of seniors who had grown up in Boston’s urban Jewish neighborhoods and a newer generation of young families moving into West Roxbury and surrounding areas. After her interview for the job, a long-standing macher at HBT, dead set against hiring a woman rabbi, pronounced: “Now that’s a rabbi!” The rest is history.

In her almost three decades as spiritual leader of HBT, our rabbi has fostered Jewish teaching and learning, spurred the building and growth of a truly diverse and caring synagogue community and school, and reached out far beyond our walls, guiding us to “pray with our feet.”

Serving as both our rabbi and cantor, a healer and consoler, organizer and activist, Rabbi Barbara has also been a beacon of the Jewish values of justice, dignity, and anti-racism in greater Boston and beyond. Her rabbinic voice has been heard from rural Maine to Washington D.C. and from Jerusalem to Guatemala. She has led both by example and by promoting and mentoring our lay leadership, teaching us to ground our decisions in traditional and contemporary Jewish texts.

Rabbi Barbara has also brought us her special voice and love of music. So, we are celebrating this bittersweet time of transition with a big musical Havdalah -- a concert of choruses, bands, and special blessings. We hope to bring together our entire extended community and many friends and supporters for this truly special occasion.

Please join us on June 3 and also consider a generous gift in Rabbi Barbara’s honor to help us carry on her extraordinary legacy. Thank you very much for your support and see you soon.

B' shalom

Raquel Rosenblatt

Raquel Rosenblatt

President