Temple David

From the President…

(This month’s column consists of the President’s Address from the Annual Congregational Meeting Report)

Thank you all for attending today’s 2011 Annual Meeting.

As is usually done, I will provide you with a report that summarizes the events of the past year as well as my thoughts and plans for the upcoming year. While I believe that a review of the past year is important to outline our accomplishments as well as challenges, I continue to focus on looking forward in what could be a year of more change, a year of new commitments, and a year of accomplishments.

Allow me to discuss what we set out to accomplish over the past year and what we did achieve. For each area I have taken the liberty to give a grade of how successful we were. This grade is my assessment and being the president, I take full responsibility for the areas where we need improvement.

If you remember my remarks from last year, the first area we wanted to focus on was to increase the involvement of Temple membership in the areas of leadership roles as well as participation in various committees as well as community outreach. I believe our grade was a “C.” There were a number of committee chair positions as well as committees needing members that went vacant for part of the year. While I recognize we are all busy in our lives outside of Temple David, we can not accomplish our goals without a full team. Can the Steelers be a winning team without a full squad on the field? We did see some improvement throughout the year. Thanks to Bruce Antonoff who stepped up to be the Executive Vice President. His leadership and involvement were extremely helpful in completing some of the tasks that were overlooked or put on hold until he stepped in. Next I would like to thank Sharon Saltzman for taking over as chair of the ALLEC Committee and my thanks to Ann Cohen for stepping in to chair the Religious and Social Action Committee. Even though these individuals stepped up to take a leadership role, there was still one committee that is currently unfilled and there are several committees where we need several individuals to help so that those committees can accomplish their responsibilities and tasks. While we hear that it takes a village to raise a child, it is a fact that it takes many members of our village to run our Temple David.

The second area of focus during the year was membership and in particular, recruiting and retention. I would give us a “C” grade. We fell short in accomplishing some of our goals. This shortcoming was due to a shortage of committee members needed to complete all of the committee’s responsibilities and tasks. In fact, I would give Debbie Gerse an “A” for trying to do everything without any committee members for most of the year. I do want to thank Felice Rosenblum and Helene Sheffler for helping Debbie with some of the tasks. As I mentioned before, it is very difficult to accomplish goals without a full team on the field.

Membership is probably our most critical area of focus if we wish to grow and thrive. Yes, we did attract new members, but we need to do more to grow our family. Yes, we did lose members due to the normal attrition reasons…some moving out of the area, some leaving for personal reasons, and some due to death. But the attrition must be balanced with the attraction of new members or an adjustment to the imbalance.

The third area of focus was increasing our financial strength. I would give us a “B” grade in this area. Thanks to Steve Sheffler, we had several fundraising events where we raised more money than what was budgeted. This is always a good scenario. Yes, we did end up with a deficit before balancing it with some of our funds. Last year I made the statement that I will work toward a balanced budget by the 2012-2013 fiscal year. With our continued efforts, we can reach that goal.

The fourth area of focus is our religious school. I would give us a “B” grade. There were some big changes in our religious school. Unfortunately our principal Marci Barnes was in a terrible car accident which prevented her from performing her duties as principal through the end of the school year. Fortunately Rabbi Symons stepped in to assume the role of principal in addition to her normal rabbinic duties. While the timing may have been awkward, since January, the Executive Committee had been discussing the possibility of not renewing Marci’s contract in order to reduce our deficit. Other alternatives were considered and may be further researched in the future, but for the time being, Rabbi Symons will continue to assume the Religious School Principal role. An effort is underway to try to redistribute some of the rabbinic administrative tasks so it will hopefully be seamless to most congregational members. I would like to thank Sue Grossberger for her leadership and time put in to this important function of Temple David as well as all the members of the Religious School Commission. Of course the Religious School Commission and the Board will continue recruiting efforts of new students, teachers and evaluate alternatives for the future.

And lastly I want to thank the other committees who continue to perform their functions, some behind the scenes and others more in the open:

The Caring Committee under the leadership of Kay Liss
The House Committee led by Dave Salisbury and Len Young
The Ritual Committee led by Gail Schmitt/Julie Cohen under direction of Jay Goodman
Brotherhood under the leadership of Phil Sulkin
Sisterhood led by Lisa Chotiner
Our Financial team consisting of Jim Jones, Harvey Wolfe, and Jimmy Wagner
Our Financial Liaisons consisting of Roz Schwartz and Jerry Eisenberg
Our Recording Secretary Reena Goldberg
Community Relations coordinator Elaine Wolfe
Our Youth coordinator Judi Feinberg assisted by Ilene Levin (we had a wonderful party)
And finally, the leadership of Rabbi Symons for her, guidance, sincerity, willingness to be critiqued and change accordingly. Her ability to process from an organizational approach, continues to make Temple David the center of the East Suburban Jewish community

We truly are gifted as a Temple with so many caring hands and hearts. But we need to spread that wealth and attract others to join in our family of volunteers and committees. I am very excited about working with the new members of the Board:

Andy Schmitt as Executive VP
Steve Lippock as Recording Secretary
Alan Sloan as Treasurer
Joel Reiter as Fundraising Chair
Marcia Walsh as Worship and Ritual Co-Chairperson

Now let’s focus on the future that will continue with the theme of Temple David member engagement—participating in programs as well as volunteering on committees, Membership, strengthening the Religious School, and increasing our Temple financial strength.

From a financial view, yes, we do have some financial improvements to make and we have made some progress this year and will continue to adjust our financial picture with our organizational realities. An example is addressing our deficit in the religious school and net loss in membership revenue by not renewing Marci Barnes’ contract. While attending the Scheidt Seminar for new Presidents last month, I did learn that many Reform Synagogues across the U.S. are experiencing the same attrition as we are. The fact is that the younger generations who are becoming adults don’t choose to affiliate with their religious organizations. So we must adjust our organizations to operate within the realities that we are faced with.

I look forward to meeting with Joel Reiter to hear about his ideas and energy. And I also want to recognize Lee Sloan, Robin Sloan, Steve Lippock and their team who are planning a Monroeville area community fundraising event this coming August…more information to follow.

We have much to do in our Membership committee in which Sue Grossberger is co-chairing with Debra Gerse and looking for others to join the group. We must examine areas of Communications, both internal/external. Our website needs to be freshened up to address our external and internal audience.

We need to continue our work from last year’s Board retreat to confirm our Temple David mission and work on our strategic planning process to address our short-and-long term strengths and weaknesses. We are looking at a self-study process to engage all members of the Temple.

We will continue to evaluate our new religious school structure with Rabbi Symons as the principal and address any opportunities that we may come across. We will continue with our New York trip experience as well as the RAC Washington D.C. trip.

There are many ways for a Temple David congregant to engage themselves in a variety of programs and events. I look forward to the challenges and achievements that we will face in the next twelve months. Thank you again for being here today.

Robert Bell,
President
mailto:president@templedavid.org