Gift your child a weekly Jewish experience that lasts a lifetime. Prepare your child for the Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Celebrate Jewish holidays. Enroll your child today!
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Refugee and Immigration Aid, social and humanitarian services: F.R.E.E. helps Eastern European immigrants and refugees with the myriad of arrangements necessary for a successful move.
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About
Friends of Refugees of Eastern Europe (FREE), Inc., has been in existence since 1973. Our mission is to promote Jewish pride, identity and continuity among New American families in the greater Chicagoland area, by providing educational, religious, cultural and social services in a caring non-judgmental environment.
FREE’s programming and services focuses on Jewish family life cycle events and holidays and festivals in the Jewish calendar year. The FREE Hebrew schools, Bar and Bas Mitzvah preparation classes and youth clubs are an integral part of our youth education program. Adult Judaic classes and counseling and Family Shabat Services helps New Americans become proud members of the Jewish community. Our popular Memorial Yizkor and Kaddish programs are important and meaningful avenues that link generations and bridge continents. The widely acclaimed Shalom Magazine, a Russian language publication of FREE, features quality journalism and enjoys avid global readership. All of our programs are provided in the framework of a caring family environment.
At the present time FREE’s primary location is the Bellows Educational and Cultural Center in Chicago with three additional satellites located throughout the Chicago area and in the suburbs.
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FREE’s programming and services focuses on Jewish family life cycle events and holidays and festivals in the Jewish calendar year. The FREE Hebrew schools, Bar and Bas Mitzvah preparation classes and youth clubs are an integral part of our youth education program. Adult Judaic classes and counseling and Family Shabat Services helps New Americans become proud members of the Jewish community. Our popular Memorial Yizkor and Kaddish programs are important and meaningful avenues that link generations and bridge continents. The widely acclaimed Shalom Magazine, a Russian language publication of FREE, features quality journalism and enjoys avid global readership. All of our programs are provided in the framework of a caring family environment.
At the present time FREE’s primary location is the Bellows Educational and Cultural Center in Chicago with three additional satellites located throughout the Chicago area and in the suburbs.
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Daily Thought
On such a holy, beautiful day, why do we recite a list of sins again and again?
Because one day of the year is not enough. We wish our souls to be united with her Beloved every day of the year.
So we read out loud through this list, and one by one, through G-d’s great kindness and love for us, the stains on the clothing of our souls fade away.
Then we rise higher, into a yet more intense light in which the stains can still be detected. And so we repeat the list again.
Until, by the end of Yom Kippur, we enter the new year in...