Wishing Everyone a Great Chanukah and a Great Start to 2020!

I hope everybody had a great Chanukah!

We were treated to a phenomenal Chanukah Family Night earlier this month. Thanks to all the volunteers who put together this fun evening for the everybody.

It is pretty incredible what we are able to put together with dedicated volunteers.It was also pretty incredible hearing the Rabbi this past Friday night do Lekhah Dodi to the tune Maoz Tsur!!! Never know what Rabbi will come up with!!! Gotta love it. This was followed with the trifecta of 3 Torahs at the Saturday morning service with Hillel Kaplan reading the Haftorah which he did 76 years ago as a Bar Mitzvah boy! Now that’s a pretty amazing goal for all of us to work to-wards!!

As we move into January, we are a month away from our Super Bowl Fundraiser. No matter what teams are playing, this is sure to be a fun party so go ahead and reserve your tickets now.

Also coming in February is the start of our Book Club. This is one of the many ideas that the Adult Ed Committee has come up with to help engage our members. Thanks to Jan for getting this started.

Speaking of ideas, we are constantly trying to evaluate opportunities to meet the needs of our Congregation. Rabbi and I have been discussing some ideas to develop programming to take advantage of our wonderful courtyard once the weather warms up.

Leading a kehillah has its challenges. Our demographics are changing. The demands on our congre-gants’ time are different than they were 30 years ago. It is not easy to balance our commitment to Conservative Judaism while providing engaging programming for members of diverse backgrounds, ages and interests. Add to that the challenges of trying to educate the next generation while they face a barrage of information like no generation before them has experienced. So if we propose pro-gramming that isn’t your cup of tea, we hope you will keep in mind that it might meet someone else’s need. Our board, committees and rabbi work very hard to keep our shul, our building and all our members happy, engaged and spiritually fulfilled.

Please email me or any member of the Board if you hear of unique programming which could be beneficial to our congregation. Some of our best ideas come from things you may have heard from family members at other congregations.

I hope everybody has a great start to 2020!!