Judaism is wonderful at celebrating life cycle events and marking the passage of time. By the time you are reading this column, the House will have finally been taken down and the area filled in and graded. Yes, this project ran into a few road-bumps but it is finally done. So, (drumroll) this officially ends the “One Campus” campaign!! First, a huge thank-you to all the individuals who worked so hard to make it happen. This was no small task: from thinkers to donors to doers, the entire community pulled together to make it happen. But now where do we go from here?
Why, back to construction again. No, not a building project (yet) but the reconstruction of who we want to be and where we want to be going. There is so much we offer to so many groups: school-age education, adult education, life-cycle celebrations, holy day celebrations, tikkun olam projects, and social events. Can we do it all? Can we afford to do it all? Do we need to add something new: day care, preschool, more family events, elder care, openness to the LGBT community, interfaith programming to name a few? We are going to talk about it over the next several months. Hopefully we will be doing some workshops on leadership (if we get chosen by the URJ to be in their pilot program) or at least talking about leadership. TE Board elections are coming up in June, and I would love to have some new faces involved in the joys of running their community.
This is where you come in. Please volunteer to work on a project, sit on a committee, be on the Board, or hold an Office. Let me or the Rabbi or Jodi or the Office or Lew Shaffer (head of the nominating committee) or any of the Committee Chairs know how you would like to be involved. I wish I could tap each of you on the shoulder and ask you personally, but I just can’t. Consider this your “tap on the shoulder.”