Synagogue Updates

Happy Sunday! And to all whose kids are leaving for camp this weekend, deep breaths. Here is Rabbinic Intern, Jonathon Adler's sermon from yesterday's Pride Shabbat. Please listen, it was extremely well done and worth a few minutes of your time. Rabbi Cooper led a beautiful davening yesterday in his final Shabbat before retirement. Here is the link if you would like to watch it and I personally want to say thank you to Rabbi and Lori for their continued leadership and support of our community and personally of my family. 

While I am a very political person and a political junkie really, this email is not the place for me to discuss politics. It is the place to discuss values, messaging, and to stress the importance of community. When I started these emails, much of the focus was on helping others, and so I want to go back to that with a story from yesterday's Shabbat.

It was Pride Shabbat and so I was there early and greeting. A little after the start of services, I see two of our congregants walking up towards the door, one in a walker. But only one of them actually reached the door. "Oh that is nice," I thought to myself, "this person must have dropped him off." A little while later, I see two people coming from the Quadrangle, followed by this same man (who asked not to be recognized). In order to help others get to Shabbat, he spent about an hour driving that morning serving as a Jewber and picking people up. This is the community that I love. This is what I am focusing on right now in the midst of the various news items. Would you be willing to help drive people on Shabbat/holidays/events? Please let me know.  

These Sunday emails started pretty much at the start of COVID-19 over, over two years ago now. The needs of our community are very different now than then, and the topics that we need to focus on are very different. No longer am I writing about the needs to shop for people or the importance of staying indoors. Throughout these writings though, there has been important lessons that I and we have been taught repeatedly - the importance of personal connection, the importance of direct communications, the importance of being yourself (for good and for bad, these emails have rarely been edited).

As I mentioned in last week's email, our plan moving ahead is to combine the Friday and Sunday emails. One of our staff's goals for this year is to try to enhance the Shabbat experience - in and out of the synagogue walls, and we intend for the Friday email to be a part of that. We want to make sure you are hearing Rabbi Witkovsky's voice as well as other voices from our community and we want to make sure you have a quick thought on the Torah portion to lead into your weekend and connect it to your life. 

To all of those that have read these emails, to those that have sent me feedback, to those that have responded to a call for action, thank you. I have often been told that these emails have been a strong connection for people to our community, which is one of the reasons that I have kept writing them - even as I knew that the original purpose of the email had changed - but I have also gained so much from my own connection to the community through these emails. They have also been an important part of my week to find the good in the world around us. So sincerely, Thank You. And believe me when I say that you are still going to be hearing (reading) my voice moving ahead. 

Wishing you a great week! And now, time to take the girls to camp. 

Ken
513 503 9559