I feel incredibly honored to be tapped as the new CBI temple President and very excited to lead a new group of leaders on the board to head us in a new direction. Honestly, it has taken me a while to agree to step up to the role of President and I resisted until I envisioned a new way forward. This is not going to be a solo act - it is going to be an orchestra. I feel very fortunate and grateful to have added a large group of new Board members and others in new leadership roles: Joe Rosenthal, Moshe Roznitsky and Jeremy Shapiro are Vice Presidents; Andrea Collier, Nancy Cohen and Andrea Wasserman as Trustees; and Emily Pearlman as Membership Co-Chair with Ben Baron. These are all awesome people, super talented in business, leadership and management. Together with a host of Board members continuing in their roles, they will lead us in a new direction.
Make no mistake, we will be orchestrating some significant changes in the way we find, attract, and select new members. We must do more with programming meaningful events to keep us involved in our temple, Israel and community. Engagement will flow into Hebrew School where we want to improve our connection for our children to our culture and our Jewish homeland. These will be our three pillars of focus - Membership, Engagement and Hebrew School. Over the summer we will be working hard as a group to organize this effort and will get back in touch with several new directives. During the last few months, the Tech Team has made great progress on social media, will be introducing our new website, and have created a new platform to facilitate communications and documentation. Change is difficult at times, and transformation might seem confusing, but we all know it’s essential for our beloved temple to move forward and attract new members of a new generation.
At the appropriate time, we will be asking you each to contribute your time and effort towards specific tasks that we hope align with your interests and motivations. The Board looks forward to working with Rabbi Orenstein and Cantor Mandel to align with our major points of focus, and over the summer begin our planning for the High Holidays. We are all grateful for the hard work and dedication of our past President Judy Schoenfeld and appreciate her continued efforts moving forward. Several people have stepped down from the Board - Barry Bluestein, Barry Satine, Peter Reiff and Ellen Michelson. They have all been significant contributors and leaders in the temple for many years and I am appreciative of their expressions of support and advice.
Looking forward to connecting with you soon.