This Reform synagogue started by women is shaking up Jewish life in Spain

MADRID (JTA) — At the conclusion of a recent Friday night service at the Reform Jewish Community of Madrid, the space quickly transforms from a meeting hall into a dining room. Several people assemble a long table. They adorn it with a white tablecloth, place chairs on both sides and set two challahs topped by a cover in the center.

Men and women lay out plates of knishes and bourekas, shakshuka and kugel, a Spanish tortilla and an almodrote, a Sephardi eggplant dish. When the table is set, everyone gathers around for the Kiddush prayer. A monthly communal Shabbat dinner begins.

While such a scene may be typical at Jewish communities across the U.S., in Spain it is something of a rarity. The existence and evolution of a progressive congregation, as Reform congregations are typically known outside the U.S., is a departure from the city’s traditionally Orthodox-dominated Jewish life. For the people gathered around the Sabbath table it’s a welcome development, one the Spanish capital needed for some time.

The Reform Jewish Community of Madrid — the only Madrid congregation affiliated with the European Union for Progressive Judaism — was founded three years ago by four women: Yael Cobano, Ruth Timon, Keren Herrero and Leidy Andrade. They’re the “núcleo duro,” the hard core, as Timon, the synagogue’s treasurer, calls them. Since 2014, the congregation has grown from a gathering of a some 20 regulars to a viable community of 26 families, complete with a rabbi, a Torah and a host of cultural and educational events, from Hebrew classes to book clubs.

http://www.jta.org/2017/06/06/life-religion/madrids-reform-congregation

They should start a fundraising campaign on one of the sites on the web, they could get a sefer torah of their own in no time.