Synagogue Updates

Friends, 

Happy Sunday, happy end of Passover, and happy beautiful day!

Quick RSVP Reminder before the heart of the email: Sisterhood's Overnight Camp Experience, Yom HaShoah Commemoration, Yom Haatzma'ut Celebration, and Lag B'Omer BBQ.

It is hard to do everything. As adults, we often have to determine how we can balance the variety of responsibilities and interests that we have. For parents of children in the house and for those taking care of elderly parents, this can be particularly complicated. It is one of the reasons that we will see a form of zoom/live streaming stay with us in the future. Sometimes joining a service, program or class online is the best way to allow us to find our balance.

The makeup of our society has changed and as a community, we need to adapt. Studies show that a significantly higher percentage of our families have two parents working full time and that students are more scheduled than ever before. For kids who are involved in after school activities and for parents who work, balancing activities, jobs and Religious School can be particularly challenging. As parents, we want to be able to tell our kids that their Judaism and their interests do not need to be at odds. We want to be able to take off from work and other responsibilities to get the kids where they need to go. We don’t want to sacrifice their Jewish education nor do we want them to miss out on their interests. For years, some parents have solved this challenge by utilizing a number of strategies: trying to do everything, often times with poor attendance at either school or the activity; opting against their child attending religious school in favor of their activity or because of a lack of rides; telling their child they can't do an activity.  Religious Schools have tried to solve this by reducing their requirements, lowering the number of days/hours they are in session or simply trying to maintain the status quo.

I am proud that over the past year our Sylvia Lodish Religious School, under Lisa Richman's leadership, has been piloting a program that we are offering on a larger scale next year. Students will have two tracks that they can choose from. The traditional Religious School track will continue to take place two days a week, Sundays (with Shabbat School once a month) and Wednesdays. There will be a new track that is designed to create flexibility while maintaining our high standards. Students will still come to school during the weekend class. Fostering a sense of community is a large part of our work and to do that well requires being in person with one another. During the week, the students will have scheduled one on one or small group time online with one of our highly qualified teachers.  There will naturally be some degree of socialization and electives missed, but this tutoring will focus on the core topics that are in our curriculum, while allowing for some specialization based on the interests of the students. Families will have the option to choose either track for their students, with the tutoring one having a slightly higher fee structure. We expect that the vast majority of our current students will choose the traditional track. However, we hope that the new track will be appealing to those that would not have historically chosen Religious School or that would have dropped out when their activities became too much. For both tracks, we are working to on new ways to engage the whole family around programming and rituals.

As a community, we need to prioritize ensuring that our religious school is both accessible and maintains its high standards.  We need to utilize this same energy across the spectrum of our programming. The synagogue has a role to play in ensuring that people can age in place and maintain their community. The past few years have been really challenging, but there are some innovations coming out of it that will remain with us and hopefully allow us to better serve our community.

If you have questions about the new model or have ideas about how we can adapt, please let me (and Lisa) know. With Rabbi Witkovsky starting this summer, we are expecting to begin a strategic planning process and to have many conversations about how we can best meet the needs of our community. 

Wishing you a great week filled with delicious food. 

Ken
513 503 9559