Welcome

  Congregation Emanuel is located in Statesville, nestled in the heart of the North Carolina Piedmont. The Congregation was established in 1883. We are affiliated with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, through Temple Israel in Charlotte, NC. We have a small but active congregation that welcomes all visitors with Jewish hospitality and a warm Southern flair.

Mission Statement

Congregation Emanuel is a warm synagogue family devoted to lifelong learning, meaningful prayer, and acts of loving kindness. As an egalitarian and inclusive Conservative Jewish congregation, we help each person connect with the beauty of our tradition as it evolves. Inspired by the diversity of our paths, we stand with one another in times of joy and sadness as we build a sacred comunity of caring.

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 Aaron Weininger is a Legacy Heritage Fund Rabbinic Fellow. “Support for the Legacy Heritage Fund Rabbinic Fellows Program has been generously provided by Legacy Heritage Fund Limited.”  Please join us in welcoming Aaron to Statesville and our Congregation!  

 Aaron Weininger is in his final year of rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Concentrating in pastoral care, he spent two summers as a chaplain intern at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York and most recently served as the rabbi of a naturally occurring retirement community and a Kosher soup kitchen for isolated and homeless older adults on the Lower East Side. He received the Schusterman Rabbinical Fellowship, which provided three years of formal study on key issues in American and Israeli Jewry and communal leadership. He was selected for the Rabbis Without Borders Fellowship of Clal, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and served on the national advisory board of Evaded Issues in Jewish Education, a groundbreaking project started by the JTS Davidson School of Jewish Education. Having been a member of a Jewish a cappella group, Aaron has brought his love for Jewish music, singing, and learning to student pulpits in Portland, Maine, Sag Harbor, New York, and Hamilton, New York and trained in congregation-based community organizing for clergy. He currently serves as the Legacy Heritage Rabbinic Fellow at Congregation Emanuel in Statesville, North Carolina. After serving as rabbinic intern at Park Slope Jewish Center in Brooklyn, he returned for a second year in a newly-created position there as rabbinic fellow. Aaron is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, where he studied Anthropology and Jewish Near Eastern Studies. He addressed the opening plenary of the 2011 General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America on pastoral care in the rabbinate and last summer spoke on LGBT inclusion as part of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable at the White House.

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"It is a tree of life for those who grasp it, and all who hold onto it are blessed. Its ways are pleasant ways, and all its paths are peace. Turn us toward you, Adonai, and we will return to You; make our days seem fresh, as they once were."

              --The Torah Service, based on Proverbs 3:17-18

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I am passionate about being part of a community that celebrates Judaism as a tree of life. Rooted in the wisdom of our inherited tradition, it grows through faith and doubt, new truths, and the lived experiences of an ever-widening circle of people. I believe in the power of a diverse, fully egalitarian community that offers multiple paths for a living, evolving Judaism to inspire a sense of belonging, meaning, and connection. Through one-to-one relationships, shared meals, prayer, learning, and acts of kindness, caring, and social responsibility in our local and global communities, we can strive to renew our lives. I look forward to our being together during the year.

L'Shalom,

Rabbi Aaron S. Weininger

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