Greensboro Faith Leaders Council

02/10/2025

From Rabbi Andy Koren, Temple Emanuel Greensboro:

  1943-2025 With profound sadness, we announce the passing of Rev. Dr. Nelson N. Johnson of Greensboro, North Carolina. Rev. Johnson was the founding ...

11/09/2022

From Rabbi Andy Koren - Temple Emanuel Greensboro

- tonight (November 9) is Kristallnacht, leave your home and congregational lights on & share widely!

I encourage you to take the simple symbolic action detailed below; it would mean a great deal to your Jewish neighbors, friends, and me. If you would share this widely with other faith leaders, I would be most grateful!

For the past two years, Temple Emanuel has asked “all people of all faith and religious traditions” to “let there be light,” leaving on their residential and congregational exterior lights on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938.

Kristallnacht took place eight-four years ago today. The N***s conducted a wave of coordinated violence against German Jews, destroying Jewish businesses and killing 91 Jews. The word Kristallnacht means The Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht, but it was so much more devastating than just windows being broken. Historians see this act of coordinated violence as “the beginning of the end” for European Jewry. Not long afterwards, the N***s and their collaborators put the “final solution” into action, seeking to rid the world of Jewish people. In all, 6 million Jewish people would be systematically murdered in what we now refer to as the Holocaust.

Over the past few years, antisemitism has been on the rise nationally and worldwide. Closer to home, antisemitic leaflets blaming Jewish people for the pandemic were thrown onto driveways in the Greensboro area in late 2022. Such incidents, whether emanating from the political left or the political right, from the extremes or closer to the center, have leaders and faith communities - people like you, me, and all that we serve - concerned.

For this reason, I am requesting all of us light up the night to blot out hatred, which is rising around the world and here in America.

Both Greensboro campuses of Temple Emanuel will be fully illuminated on Wednesday, November 9.

I am asking for homes, houses of worship and other buildings to leave their lights on through the night. Please take pictures of this and then post them to social media using the familiar hashtag .

If you have any questions, please email me at [email protected].

For more background on Kristallnacht, see this brief one-and-a-half-minute film from that time period.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDw370XIvVA

Let's continue our work as a source of hope as we counter bias, bigotry, and hatred.

On the night of 9 November 1938, it became open. The destruction of European Jewry had begun with Kristallnacht, Night of the Broken Glass, the nation-wide p...

10/21/2022

Dr. Whitney Oakley, the new Superintendent of Guilford County Schools, is convening a meeting of local Faith Leaders next Tuesday, October 25, 2022; it is scheduled to run from 7:30 to 8:30 am.

The meeting will be held at the Blue Heron Event Venue, 4130 Mendenhall Oaks Pkwy in High Point.
See the attached photo for registration info.

Our participation as Faith Leaders is of great assistance to local public school efforts. Looking forward to seeing you at this important gathering!

07/24/2022

Rabbi Fred Guttman to receive Lifetime Award for work in Civil Rights

[posted by Rabbi Andy Koren]

This coming Monday night, July 25, 2022, my predecessor and our congregation’s Rabbi Emeritus, Fred Guttman, will be honored by the International Civil Rights Center & Museum [ICRCM] in Greensboro with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in Civil Rights. This year’s other honorees include: Rev. James M. Lawson, Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney Ben Crump, and Bakari Sellers.
The ICRCM is affiliated with the Smithsonian. It opened in 2010 as a comprehensive museum of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.
Located on the site which formerly housed Greensboro’s Woolworth’s, it commemorates the Feb. 1, 1960 beginning of the sit-in at the whites-only lunch counter there by “the N.C. A&T Four” college students, reflecting careful planning carried out with peers at Bennett College. Their non-violent direct action challenged the American People to make good on promises of personal equality and civic inclusion enunciated in the Constitution. The fast-spreading Sit-In Movement ignited by the Greensboro protests served as a historical inflection point, renewing the Civil Rights Movement as a whole.
This is a very significant award for Fred and our congregation and community is quite proud of him. Yashar Koach [Hebrew for "way to go!"] to Fred!

07/20/2022

We express our greatest sympathy to the family of Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman.

Dr. Spearman leaves behind a great legacy of love for his family and friends.

We give thanks for his leadership and work in Greensboro, across North Carolina, and far beyond. Dr. Spearman was a dedicated warrior for justice, a beloved public servant, and a man of abiding faith. He stood up against bullying, bias, bigotry, and racism. To us, he was so much more than a colleague and supportive presence on the Greensboro Faith Leaders' Council; he was also a dear friend.

Let all the people give thanks for his life.

[Dr. Spearman, 2nd from the right, standing in Northern Israel with the Sea of Galilee in the background. This picture is from the 2019 Clergy Trip to Israel.]