Whew! It’s done!

Fran Ostendorf, EditorThere’s a hefty insert in today’s paper. We’re welcoming 5776 at The Voice with our popular Guide to Jewish Living. When you picked up your paper, you probably noticed the annual guide to all things Jewish in Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts, tucked in the middle of the paper.

This is the guide that readers tell us they keep and use throughout the year. It’s given to new community members who contact the membership folks at the Dwares JCC, and you often see it when the Alliance has a table at area fairs and festivals.

Give us a call and we’ll get you one if you didn’t receive yours, or if you inadvertently threw it away.

Soon, you’ll be able to access it online, too!

We think it’s a great reference tool. There’s plenty of information about our community’s Jewish institutions. Our advertising team, Tricia and Karen, and our summer intern, Israel, worked throughout the summer to bring you the latest contact information and phone numbers of more than 100 businesses and institutions that are connected to our Jewish community. Of course, there will be mistakes, and omissions, and I hope you’ll let us know about them. But we do our best to give you the very latest information that we can find.

It’s also a showcase for the 93 advertisers who support our community newspaper. Please, please, please take a look at the ads and contact those advertisers when they have what you’re looking for. I can’t emphasize enough how important advertisers are to helping bring you a newspaper that covers what’s happening in the Jewish community like no other publication can or will. And when an advertiser knows that The Voice readers are seeing their ads that will make them want to advertise next time! When you patronize one of our advertisers, make sure you tell them that you saw their ad in The Voice’s Guide to Jewish Living or in The Voice itself.

As I mentioned at the beginning of August, we are always working on new features for the paper. We started with Ten Questions, which will return soon. Today, you’ll see a new, half-page feature aimed at children: “Fun and Facts for Kids.” Take a look at the bottom of page 6 for a little history of Sukkot and an activity from the folks at the Rhode Island Jewish Historical Association. We hope to bring this feature to you once each month. And we hope you will use it to enjoy some educational fun with your kids or grandchildren.

You may also have noticed that the website for the Alliance, jewishallianceri.org, has a new, interactive community calendar. That calendar will soon appear on our website as well. Between The Jewish Voice, the Alliance, partner agencies and the community, we hope it grows into a much more complete calendar of everything Jewish in the area. Already, you can see community activities listed as well as a complete calendar of Jewish holidays and another calendar of candle lighting times. It’s easy to use and you can choose from a half-dozen ways to view the calendar, including daily, weekly, monthly and a “wall” view that displays like Pinterest. You can also sort the calendar by topic or by interest group. And there is more to come.

It should help add to a happy, more well-informed and successful New Year!