Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Rosh Hashanah Morning 5779

SO I WILL PLANT FOR MY CHILDREN

ROSH HASHANAH 5779

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

The year was 1871. Ulysses S. Grant was president. The Civil War had ended just 5 years before. The great Chicago Fire killed 300 and left 100,000 homeless. The first major league baseball game was played on May 4th and the first home run was hit on May 8th. Across the pond, Queen Victoria ruled England. Lord Stanley located a missing explorer in Africa and greeted him with the words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume."

In Hoboken, a group of German Jews founded a congregation that they called Adas Emuno—the assembly of the faithful. Twelve years later, in 1883, they built a synagogue; a Gothic Revival building that still stands today and which the Hoboken Evening News called "a credit to the city". We have a yad, a Torah pointer, from that dedication that is kept right behind me in our Ark; and we still read from the Torah with the help of this 135-year-old yad. 

While most of our congregational records have been lost over the decades, the original minutes from our first years survive. They were hand written in German, in an old style few people can read today. But one person who can is our very own Kurt Roberg, whom many of you know. Kurt, a refugee from Nazi Germany, with a remarkable story that he has written a book about—and possibly our most senior member at age 94—has been reading and transcribing those minutes.

At the first Annual Meeting of the congregation on Sunday, Oct. 20, 1872, the president praised the generosity of the members in acquiring a Torah and other sacred objects, of raising some $1385 against total expenses of $1088 for a cash-on-hand balance of $297. Two weddings were held that year, and two b’nai mitzvah. Two funerals were also held that year, the latter writes the president "for my little son." The president concludes his address to the congregation at the first annual meeting by saying, "I have now given you an overview of everything that concerns our congregation, and even though there are some things that we still wish to accomplish, we may be proud of the advances we made in one year. Don’t hesitate to sacrifice whether time or money to complete the task we have begun."

By the 1890s the congregation had tripled to a hundred families. The flourishing community included a religious school, a choir, and a benevolent association to aid the poor called the Hebrew Ladies’ Aid Society. At the turn of the century a Hanukkah menorah was dedicated to the congregation on December 13, 1900. Our 118 year old menorah is right here and we still light it every year.

On May 27, 1917, a teen named Esther Cohn was confirmed at the Temple. She must have misplaced her Confirmation Certificate because I found it behind some books in our vestry room a few years ago. It was signed by the rabbi, Moses Eckstein. and by the president, Samuel Neuberger. Evidently, each student picked a "motto" for their certificate. Esther chose a verse from the 23rd Psalm, "I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me." A hundred years later we still have a Confirmation Class, and each year I ask my students to pick a verse for their Confirmation essay.

Records grow scant as the 20th century progressed. We do know that in 1919 dues were set at $30 a year. They rose to $45 by 1924. But High Holy Day seats were extra, and the ones closest to the bimah cost another $15. We no longer sell seats. On October 4th, 1951, Milton Neuman, who was chair of the Eightieth Anniversary Committee of the congregation, received a congratulatory letter from President Harry Truman. I have a copy of that letter here. It reads, "Dear Mr. Neuman…." Milton Neuman’s nephew, Michael Levy, is an active third generation member of the congregation. His parents and grandparents were members, and two of his grandchildren became b’nai mitzvah here.

Every time we enter this synagogue, which became our home only after a century in Hoboken, we are reminded of our origins. We pass the dedication plaque at our entrance to the left most often without noticing it. Then we enter the sanctuary and see the memorial plaques from our original building. The names of our predecessors and their loved ones are not forgotten.

We are now just three years away from what our past president, Lance Strate, reminds us is our sesquicentennial. We will soon need to think about what kind of birthday party we will throw for our 150th . But I am not a party planner; I’ll leave that to others. However, I do want to weigh in with a suggestion, a big one, for our coming milestone.

Let me introduce this suggestion with a treasured story from our tradition. The Talmud records the life of an unusual and remarkable sage in ancient Israel named Honi the Circle Maker. Nobody knows why he received that name, but he is said to have gone around the land of Israel planting carob trees, a Jewish Johnny Appleseed, if you will. When asked why he took upon himself such an adventure, Honi responded that one day when he was still a young man he saw an old man planting a carob tree. Honi said, "Old man, why are you planting that tree. Don’t you know that it takes a carob tree seventy years to bear fruit?" The man paused, looked up at him, and said, "Just as my ancestors planted for me, so I will plant for my children."

That piece of wisdom changed Honi’s life. And it just might change ours. If we embrace the realization that we are not here solely for ourselves; if we stand in gratitude for what those before us have done for us and decide to pay it forward to the next generation.

When the founders first established this congregation in Hoboken, they were thinking about the next generation of Jewish life beyond New York. They were thinking about their children who would grow up in the new world, and speak English. They were thinking about the next generation when they established a religious school and and a youth group.

When the leaders of Adas Emuno made the difficult decision to move to Leonia, they were thinking about the next generation as well. They were thinking about how Jewish life was now growing beyond the first tier suburbs to the promising frontier of Bergen County. They knew that Congregation Adas Emuno was never big or rich and might not survive the move. But they also knew that Adas Emuno was a dedicated and down-to-earth assembly of the faithful. I call us "the little engine that could." We keep chugging along, even as larger congregations have come and gone.

So what does it mean for us to now think about our next generation? Let’s be honest. Our numbers are diminishing. The demographic tide in our little corner of the world is turning against us. Leonia is a community in transition. The largest group of students in our school district is Asian American. Jewish Americans are now statistically negligible. In this regard we are following in the footsteps of our neighbor Palisades Park and other nearby communities. It has been almost a decade since the only other synagogue in our community, Congregation Sons of Israel, closed its doors. To keep our doors open we will need help.

We are certainly grateful for young families that have recently joined our ranks, primarily from Fort Lee and Weehawken. They have sought out a progressive, inclusive Reform Jewish community. They have sought out a congregation that welcomes interfaith households and blended families. They have sought out a congregation that is haimish and humble. That is who we are. We still have a place; we still serve a need; we still fulfill our mission. 

But with diminished numbers, beyond a vigorous outreach effort, we will need another kind of help as well. Declines in membership means we will be even more dependent on non-dues income to stay afloat. Our congregation has always done a relatively good job of living within our means; compared to other places our expenses are very low. Up until now we have largely avoided ruinous deficits without the benefit of appreciable reserves. Up until now.

Congregation Adas Emuno needs and deserves a Heritage Fund. Living on the frontier of sweeping changes to Jewish life, it is now time to think about how we will secure the next generation of Jewish life given the realities of our future.

With the approval and support of our Board of Trustees, I am calling upon our congregation to formally establish a $150,000 Campaign for our 150th anniversary. By synagogue standards that is a modest goal that befits a small congregation. We hope it is more than attainable. Over the coming year we will speak to you about two ways you can make a pledge to our 150th Anniversary Fund. The first is an outright contribution, over a maximum of three years. For some of our older individuals, required minimum distributions from IRA accounts might be the ideal way to do this. For others it might be a charitable trust, appreciated securities, or an old-fashioned check. The other way of pledging is through a bequest. How fitting to remember our synagogue in our estate planning.

Mark Rosenberg and I are co-chairing this campaign. As Harry Truman said, "the buck stops with us." Or you might say, "the buck starts with us." Mark and Michelle have pledged $10,000 to this campaign. Debby and I are doing the same. We hope that above and beyond your support of this synagogue through dues, above and beyond your support of this synagogue through our annual appeal and other fundraisers, you will consider a generous contribution or bequest to Adas Emuno’s 150th Anniversary Fund. It will not be used for our operating budget at all, but as I mentioned, for the building of our reserves to be tapped only by decision of the full board.

And we will not be launching another heritage campaign like this for at least fifty years, until our bicentennial, in 2071.

Permit me to conclude with an understandable question. It is natural to ask: Why should I contribute to this synagogue campaign if I myself may not be here? Why plant this tree if I may not eat of its fruits? Long ago a sage in ancient Israel heard an answer that changed his life. Long ago a group of German Jewish immigrants thought about the next generation in America, their new promised land.

“Just as my ancestors planted for me, so I will plant for my children.”

So may it be.

 From the pages of Kadima, the newsletter of Congregation Adas Emuno:

A Message From Our President

Dr. Lance Strate

Exclusively Inclusive

Adas Emuno is a small congregation, as we all know, and that means that membership in our shul is something of an exclusive club. Of course, the final word on exclusivity was uttered by Groucho Marx, who famously said, "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member." This harkens back to a time when many private clubs had a policy of deliberately excluding Jews and other minorities from membership.

Marx's mocking aside, over the past century and a half, our congregation has never aspired to be one of those big, impersonal temples with many hundreds or even thousands of members. We embraced the approach so well expressed by the British economist, E. F. Schumacher, small is beautiful. I hasten to add that we do have room to grow, and we wouldn't mind a few more members.

In keeping things on a human scale, we don't force congregants to fit into predetermined molds. We remain flexible, able to tailor our expressions of faith, learning, and action to the needs and desires of our members. Ours is a shul that is personal, custom-made for our members.

In this sense, we are also an inclusive congregation, open to all who want to join together with us in the practice of our Reform Jewish faith. We are open to all who seek to worship, learn, and work together to heal our world.

We are exclusively inclusive, or maybe it's inclusively exclusive? Either way, if you think there are any ways we can do better, that we can improve in being open and intimate, warm and welcoming, inclusive and exclusive, please let us know. Let's make sure this is a club that we all want to belong to, that we all are proud to be members of, that even Groucho would be happy to join.

Kurt Roberg's 80th Bar Mitzvah Anniversary

On Friday evening, May 12th, Kurt Roberg, our eldest member, celebrated the 80th anniversary of his bar mitzvah, which took place in Nazi Germany. Kurt was called up for the aliyah, there was a Torah readying from Kurt's portion, and Kurt delivered a special bar mitzvah speech to mark the occasion.

Kurt has been kind enough to share his address with us, for publication in our newsletter, Kadima, and here on our congregational blog. And we are pleased now to share his address with you:

80th Bar Mitzvah Anniversary Address

Kurt Roberg

I am so happy to welcome you all this evening, this certainly is a much bigger turnout than at my original Bar Mitzvah 80 years ago, when in our small congregation in Germany we struggled to assemble 10 men for a minyan.

It is funny how some events in our lives are permanently etched into our memory, and for me that Shabbat in May 1937 certainly is one of them.

I had prepared for my Torah portion for a year under the weekly tutoring of our Hebrew teacher and cantor, and as a result my Torah reading did turn out very well. Then our cantor addressed me, reminding me of my obligations as a Jewish adult; and there were cautions about the difficult times that could lie ahead for German Jews. As a token of my coming of age, I was presented with the traditional Bar Mitzvah gift: a copy of the Holy Scriptures.

After the service had concluded, our family went back to our apartment for a dinner celebration that my mother and Aunt Babette had prepared in advance. My aunt had come from Mother’s birth village near Heidelberg, and my god-parents, Aunt Hedwig and Uncle Robert, had arrived the day before from Paderborn. During those couple of days, we all lived at improvised close quarters in our apartment, because during those Nazi times Jews were no longer allowed in hotels. My brother Harry could not be at my Bar Mitzvah; he had already emigrated a year earlier to my mother’s brother in Holland, and my Uncle Wilhelm refused to travel to Nazi Germany.

Before dinner, everybody gathered in the living room, where another important part of the day's events took place: the presentation of my Bar Mitzvah gifts. Mother had carefully arranged every gift on a table⏤in those days gifts were not wrapped⏤everything was displayed in one overwhelming vision of bliss. There was a fountain pen with a fourteen carat gold tip from Aunt Babette, a Sterling silver pencil from Aunt Hedwig, and a pocketknife from the Salomon family. Uncle Wilhelm had sent twenty Dutch Guilders from Holland and Cousin Helma five Pounds from Palestine. There were some books and sweets and "practical" things like shirts and socks. I was overwhelmed with all those wonderful gifts, but especially the secretly hoped for fountain pen.

As some of you may know, Congregation Adas Emuno was founded in the year 1871 in Hoboken by German/Jewish immigrants. We still have some of the old congregational records, all hand-written in a German script, discontinued long ago. All congregational meetings were held in German and the religious services were performed in German and Hebrew, as were their weekly Religious School classes.

A custom we did not have in Germany, or in Hoboken in those days, but that has become a very laudable tradition in America, is a Bar Mitzvah project. So as my belated Bar Mitzvah project now, I have recently started to study some of those old congregational records. I have deciphered, translated and transcribed the first annual report of its president to the Board of directors, dated October 20, 1872, and an 1873 Report of the School Committee.

Since Tradition and Remembrance are an integral part of Jewish custom and survival, I think it may be of interest to some members of our congregation, as well as our next generation of Bar and Bat Mitzvah’s, to know something about the origin and background of our German/Jewish ancestor congregation. To celebrate my 80th Bar Mitzvah anniversary, in a reversal of procedures, I want to present to you a wonderfully informative book for our library, an illustrated History of the Jews in Germany since Roman times, including the origins of the Reform movement in early 19th century Germany.

In closing, let me thank our Congregation and the Ritual Committee for sponsoring the Oneg Shabbat, Rabbi Schwartz for his caring support and Cantor Horowitz for reading my Parshe today; hopefully I can do that on my 90th anniversary.

Thank you all for sharing this day with me,

Shabbat shalom!

Leonia, May 12, 2017 16 Iyar, 5577

To which we can only add, thank you Kurt, and mazel tov!

Bonds of Faith

Congregation Adas Emuno has certainly been in the news quite a lot recently, and while much of it has involved the controversial resolution to declare Leonia a sanctuary city, Bergen County's monthly 201 Magazine ran a feature about our shul's history in their March issue. Here's how it looked:

And let's take a closer look at those photos:

The color photo is of last year's spiel, and this came out just in time for Purim, which we just celebrated on Saturday evening and Sunday morning! 

We are most certainly the little shul that could!

The State of the Congregation

From the pages of Kadima, the newsletter of Congregation Adas Emuno:

A Message From Our President

Dr. Lance Strate

The State of the Congregation

President's Report Delivered at the 

Annual Congregational Meeting 

June 16, 2016

The State of the Congregation

Having reported on the state of the congregation to the membership three times already, I feel like something of a broken record in saying for a fourth time that the state of our congregation is strong. But this fourth time around, I have no reason to break with tradition, even if it is a tradition of my own making. So I am happy to report to you that as of June 2016, the state of our congregation remains strong.

At the same time, I cannot help but begin by noting that our strength is diminished by the loss of our former Trustee Fred Friedman less than a week ago. I know that if he were still alive, he would be here with us tonight, and would undoubtedly have something to say during this congregational meeting. He would have questions to ask, observations to share, advice to give, and criticisms to make us just a little bit uncomfortable, and keep us on our toes. Fred was more than a good congregant, more than a good board member, more than a good committee chair—Fred was a good citizen. We don't often talk about citizenship in the context of our shul. It's a concept that we associate with secular society. But a synagogue is not only a house of worship, and more than a house of study—it is also a house of gathering, a house of assembly, a beit knesset. And Adas Emuno, our assembly of the faithful, is not only a congregation, it is an organization and a community. And wouldn't we all think and act a bit differently if, instead of talking about membership, we talked about citizenship?

You might say that the difference between members and citizens is that members are asked to pay dues. But citizens are asked to pay taxes, and before the modern idea of dues-paying members, ancient Jewish tradition required us to give a portion of our income (or agricultural produce) to the Temple in Jerusalem and the priesthood, and then to the synagogue and congregation. The practice was adopted by Christians and Moslems, and in English is known as tithing (meaning giving ten percent of your income). And I am not recommending we return to that system, but I am saying that, as citizens of Adas Emuno, we are obligated to support our shul, in part materially, through dues and donations, and also through participation and service, just as citizens of a nation are called upon to serve their country. It is very easy for us, given the kind of culture we inhabit, to think of ourselves as consumers, reducing Adas Emuno to the level of products and services that we purchase. But we ought to think of ourselves as citizens, with rights, and with responsibilities as well.

I like to think that Fred Friedman is looking down on us right now, and smiling and nodding. He understood, as much as any one of us, the value, , and necessity of service. He understood the importance of standing up for our congregation, helping to bear its weight on his shoulders, and helping to carry it forward into a future that he will not see, knowing that others had done the same for his own benefit. I am truly grateful that our congregation was able to honor Fred a little over a year ago, at Friday night Shabbat, because honor is the only coin in which service can truly be rewarded. And we can continue to honor Fred Friedman by thinking about our own, individual congregational membership as citizenship. And as Fred's service extended beyond our congregation, and Adas Emuno is a part of the larger Jewish community, I would like to propose a further honor in his memory, that we institute a Fred Friedman Award for Jewish Citizenship, to be presented annually for outstanding service to the Jewish community. I welcome your feedback during our congregational meeting, and will ask our trustees to approve the proposal at the board meeting to follow.

While I'm on the subject of our Board of Trustees, I want to acknowledge that one of the main reasons why the state of our congregation is strong is our board, our officers and trustees, whose dedication, hard work, and talent is truly extraordinary. As a small shul that has no support staff, no office manager, no executive director, no administrative assistant, our board is a working board, and our officers and trustees step up time and time again, and I want to say thank you to each and every one of them. As some of you know, over the course of the last four months of 2015, I spent most of my time down in Philadelphia as a visiting professor at Villanova University, and this meant that the board had to carry on to a large extent with an absentee president. I want to make it clear that I was under no illusions that I am in any way indispensible. I know, perhaps better than anyone, how much harder other members of the board work than I do. I'm often in the role of that guy who says, "I'll just supervise," or "you have my moral support." So I had no concern about the board functioning without me, but I do want to express my gratitude to each and every one of our officers and trustees: our past president Virginia Gitter, our Vice-President Elka Oliver, our Financial Secretary Mark Rosenberg, our Treasurer Michael Fishbein, our Recording Secretary Marilyn Katz, and our Trustees, Annette DeMarco, Susan Gray, Jody Pugach, Michael Raskin, Norman Rosen, Lauren Rowland, Doris White, Sandy Zornek, and our recent addition to the board, Ronald Waxman.

It has been a great honor for me to serve as president of Congregation Adas Emuno these past four years, and an even greater honor to be asked to serve another two-year term. I have accepted the nomination because I am told that I am still needed, and I believe I am still capable of serving in that capacity. To be honest, part of me would be happy to serve for much longer, because I love this congregation and want to do everything in my power to keep it strong. But for that reason, I also know that it would be much healthier for Adas Emuno to have new leadership, which is why I believe that this should be my last term in that office.

I want to express my appreciation to Elka Oliver for her contributions as Vice-President, and Mark Rosenberg for all that he does as Financial Secretary, and thank them both for being willing to continue on for another two-year term. I especially want to acknowledge Michael Fishbein for his double duty as Treasurer and chair of our Buildings and Grounds Committee. Michael is stepping down as Treasurer, so I want to thank him for his years of service in that capacity, and thank him as well for being willing to remain on the board as a Trustee. I also want to acknowledge Carol Bodian for volunteering to serve as a Trustee. Marilyn Katz is completing her two-year term as Recording Secretary, and is now ready to take on the office of Treasurer, so I want to thank her as well, and to thank Susan Grey, who is willing to take over the role of Recording Secretary.

In the case of small organizations such as ourselves, it becomes easy to rely on having the same individuals fulfill the same roles for year after year after year, and then react with panic when they are suddenly unable or unwilling to continue. So changing officers and committee chairs is good for our congregation, it is good preparation for moving up in the chain of command, and I believe that we have grown stronger over the past four years regarding the future of our congregational leadership. I also note that our new by-laws allow for 18 board members, we have been gradually increasing the size of the board, and our now just one shy of our goal of יח (chai). There is room for one more on the board, and room for many more on our committees. And let me express my gratitude to our committee chairs for their hard work, to Virginia Gitter for the Ritual Committee and the Publicity Committee, and in regrards to our publicity and overall public image, to Lauren Rowland for her graphic design work; to Annette DeMarco for the Social Action Committee; to Elka Oliver and Michael Raskin for the Religious School Committee; to Michael Raskin again for the Membership Committee; to Norman Rosen and Jody Pugach for the Adult Education Committee; to Norman Rosen and Judith Fisher for the Cemetery Committee; and to Michael Fishbein again for the Buildings and Grounds Committee, with an added thanks to Fred Cohen and Rabbi Schwartz for their continual work on our wonderful garden; and to Michael Rask for taking change of snow removal, and relations with Leonia's law enforcement and local government officials.

I also want to say thank you to Sandy Zornick for chairing the Internet Committee, and for finally getting us integrated with ShulCloud, both the membership database and the website, as well as the new email distribution system. This has taken a long time to implement, but now that it is finally in place, we can truly say that we are a 21st century shul.

We also have a fundraising committee, chaired by Susan Gray and Sandy Zornick, and last fall the Treats and Treasures fundraiser hosted by Modiani Kitchens in Englewood was an enormous success. Special thanks go to Richard Alicchio for taking the lead in proposing the fundraiser, and insuring that it was a success, as well as for all of his help the whole year round in securing donations from local merchants for our events. Thank you as well to the core committee that made Treats and Treasures a success, Virginia Gitter, Annette DeMarco, Jody Pugach, Sandy Zornek, Doris White, and Marilyn Katz. Finally, let me express my gratitude to Virginia Gitter one more time, for chairing the nominating committee in her capacity as the only past president active on the board, and thank you to the committee members, Annette DeMarco, Kim Merlino, Michael Raskin, and Beth Ziff.

The past three times I have reported on the state of the congregation, I have always begun with our clergy, and I hope that Rabbi Schwartz and Cantor Horowitz do not feel slighted that I decided to mix things up this year. My esteem for both of them knows no bounds. We are so very fortunate to have the spiritual, intellectual, musical, and educational guidance of these two gifted and godly individuals. I am not only so very grateful to serve as president of a congregation that boasts of this dream team, but I am particularly thankful that this past year was the first of my presidency in which I did not have to concern myself with either a search for a new cantor or religious school director, or a new contract for either of our clergy. The stability that we now enjoy has been elusive for many years, and this is another sign of our strength as a congregation.

I know we are all very grateful for our Rabbi, Barry Schwartz, for his extraordinary spiritual leadership, for the quality of education he provides for our children and our adults, for the high level of discourse he brings to every D'var Torah he delivers and every Torah study session he leads, for his deep dedication to social justice, for his devotion as a caretaker in a manner above and beyond the call of duty, for his compassion and concern as an advisor and counselor… And for his wife Debbie, who adds so much spirit and thoughtfulness to our congregation.

And I know we are all grateful to Cantor Horowitz for bringing so much joy and light to each and every service that she graces with her voice, and her presence. We are a musical congregation, with an ear for talent, and it is delight to have a sweet singer of Israel of such outstanding ability. And we are equally grateful for her caring, understanding, and acumen as our Religious School Director. Our children have never been in better hands. And I also should acknowledge our wonderful teachers, our ever-helpful madrachim, and our ever-present parent volunteers.

One minor initiative that I want to mention at this point is the need for a new sound system for our sanctuary. Our present system is old, does not work all that well, and is simply not adequate for our current needs. We need to replace it before the High Holy Days, and we have time to do so, since they do not begin until October this year.

I have been saying that the state of our congregation is strong, and I stand behind that assessment, but I also acknowledge that we face some serious challenges. They are the same challenges I outlined last year, challenges involving membership and finances. Our membership has been declining slightly, and given that Adas Emuno is its membership, its citizens, that is cause for concern. We have lost some of our senior citizens, and while they are being replaced, in large part due to the fact that some of us are inexorably moving into that category, we need to find ways to attract more members of all age groups. If we could increase our size by just 20 or so families, we would be just fine. Membership is closely related to religious school enrollments, and here too we need to get the word out about the wonderful religious education that we offer, and the warm and welcoming congregation that we are.

As for our finances, they are directly related to our membership. The good news is that we are in good shape for the immediate future. The concern is that our expenses exceed our income, meaning that we are eating into our reserves. We have time to address this problem, but it will require doing better in regard to both membership and fundraising. We have made good progress on fundraising this past year, and we need to build on that success to insure the sustainability of our congregation for the future. Clearly, we need everyone working together on all of these concerns, helping to find ways to attract and retain new members, getting the word out about all that our religious school and our synagogue has to offer, working together on fundraising activities and finding ways to increase our donations above and beyond the basic dues and tuition that we ask for. We need our membership to respond with citizenship, and help us to answer these challenges in the coming years.

Congregation Adas Emuno was founded on October 22, 1871, and our little shul on the hill has kept going and going, all the while maintaining our small, intimate, haymishe community. That is because, despite all odds, we are a strong congregation, one that is blessed by the spirit, the ruach, of its members past, present, and future, and by something greater than ourselves. We are now a little more than five years away from our sesquicentennial, our 150th anniversary. It is time for us to begin planning for the celebration—and we really want it to be a great one, don’t we? And while we prepare to celebrate our 150 years, let's also do what needs to be done, to insure that Congregation Adas Emuno will be still growing strong for 150 years more. May it be God's will that it be so.

Fred Friedman's Story

In our last post, Honoring Fred Friedman, we related how Adas Emuno set aside Friday evening, May 1st, as a special Shabbat to show our appreciation for Fred Friedman's service to the congregation and Jewish community, as well as the local community here in Bergen County. And that evening, in lieu of the rabbi's sermon, Fred was given the opportunity to come up to the pulpit and tell his story. 

Just a few weeks earlier, during the Shabbat evening service on April 17th, Fred's wife Maren shared her remarkable story of survival in conjunction with our observance of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Maren allowed us to publish her talk here on our congregational blog, which appeared in a post entitled Maren Friedman's Yom HaShoah Story.

How fortunate we are, then, that her husband has also provided us with his own address, which in its own right is absolutely noteworthy. And so, without further ado, here is Fred Friedman's Story:

First of all, I want to thank my friends on the Board and the Rabbi for this unexpected honor. I am delighted and proud. When I first heard of the plan for this evening I thought, “why me?” And that night as I was going to sleep I started to wonder, “How, as I approach my 84th year, did I get here? 

Well, the short answer would be “by boat”. But that’s not quite the story. By “get here” I mean how did I come to be a practicing Reform Jew, the President of my previous Congregation and a Board member of Adas Emuno. There was no Jewish experience in my first seven years, no Seders, no synagogue, no High Holy Days, nothing! My family going back at least 3 generations were totally assimilated German Jews.

I was born Fritz Bernard Friedmann in Wurzburg Germany in 1931. My father was a lawyer. My mother was a trained kindergarten teacher. When Hitler came to power one of his first acts was to forbid Jews to practice law. That took away my fathers profession, probably his self respect and made earning a living ultimately impossible as more such restrictions came about. It led to my father's suicide in January 1938. My mother and I moved in with my grandmother until July 1938, when mother and I left for England to join her brother and his family who had emigrated to the UK in the mid 1930s. Mom stayed in England for a week or so and left for America in order to find work and get established. I stayed behind and finally sailed alone to New York in October 1938. I was seven years old. I was a very happy kid. I was finally going to join my mother again!

Early on the morning of October 29th, I was woken up and taken on deck to see the Statue of Liberty and New York. The view was astounding. But it took second place to the thought of being together with my mother after our many months of separation.

I remember the passport and customs lines and formalities. Finally by noon I was ready, and waited for my mother to come. I waited and waited and waited some more, miserable and sobbing. By 5 PM I was the only passenger left, and the staff was about to turn me over to the police for safekeeping when my mother finally arrived. She had gotten the time wrong. That began some 4 1/2 years of disappointment and separation. Mother’s training enabled her to get a job as a sleep in baby nurse with a wealthy Park Avenue family There was no place for me. I was put in a foster home with the Oppenheimers, refugees like us who lived in Valley Stream, Long Island. I would be able to see my mother only on Sundays, her one day off. That was very far from the hopes and expectations of life with mother that I had when I boarded the ship “Deutschland” in Soutampton ten days earlier.

The Oppenheimers were kind, and in retrospect as good as foster parents could be. But a foster home was not what I wanted. I wanted a home with mother, like other kids. A four or five hour visit once a week was tough to deal with. I spent a lot of nights crying myself to sleep.

Money was scarce, of course. A birthday meant new socks or underwear. Everything else was hand me down. I had to earn my own spending money. I sold the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Home Journal door to door, and in Valley Stream State Park. The money I earned was small but gave me some spending money like my friends who got allowances. And you got points for selling magazines. They could be redeemed for toys. That’s how I got my crystal radio set that allowed me to listen to radio programs under the covers at night when I was supposed to be asleep. I learned to speak English properly listening to that little crystal set.

Tommy Hayes, the school principal's son, and I became friends and I was often invited to the Hayes's home after school. That was an all-American family in my eyes—right out of Norman Rockwell. It was my first experience of what an American home and family could be like. I liked it a lot and vowed that if I could, my adult life would be like the Hayes's life, and my kids would not have to repeat the life I was living.

I also got my first Jewish experience with the Oppenheimers. They were Conservative Jews who kept a kosher home, went to synagogue, and sent me to Sunday school. They celebrated the Jewish holidays, a new experience for me. In Germany the only way I found out that I was Jewish was the Juden Verboten (Jews Forbidden) signs at hotels and restaurants and shops. I wasn’t allowed in a German school when the time came. I had to go to a Jewish school. The irony was that I was a towheaded blond kid with blue-green eyes who looked German. So much so that at parades, policemen and soldiers would hoist me on their shoulders so that I could see over the crowd. It gave my mother much mirth to see her Jewish son taken for a real German boy by the Nazis.

When I was nearly twelve my mother started work as a kindergarten teacher in a small New York nursery school. And when the owner wanted to retire my mother was able to buy the school with the money she had been able to save over 5 years of hard work. I was able to leave the foster home and live with my mother in the nursery school apartment. She slept in the living room. I had a small bathroom sized room just big enough for a small bed, a desk and a chair.

And so, my life as a more normal American kid began. And so did my Jewish life. Although my mother was not a practicing Jew nor a believer, she wanted me to have Jewish background, and I was Bar Mitzvah at a Reform congregation. That wasn’t important to me at age 13. But when I became an adult, met my wonderful wife Maren, and had a family, Jewishness became IMPORTANT (in capital letters)! We wanted our kids to be Jewish. And they are. And so are our six grandchildren who range from Shomer Shabbos to very Reform. 

In spite of my beginnings, Judaism triumphed, became a meaningful part of my life, and brings me great joy. Who would have thought it, 84 years ago? From Fritz to Fred. It’s been a hell of an interesting journey! I wouldn’t have missed it for all the world!

Honoring Fred Friedman

At our Shabbat service on Friday evening, May 1st, Congregation Adas Emuno honored Fred Friedman, who had stepped down as a member of our Board of Trustees this past winter. 

To show our gratitude for his many years of service, we asked fellow trustee Norman Rosen to draft a resolution in Fred's honor, which the board then unanimously approved. The resolution was then turned into a certificate by trustee Lauren Rowland, which we presented to Fred at our special service. And we are very pleased to share it here on our congregational blog, for all to see, and for perpetuity:

And because we at Congregation Adas Emuno were not the only ones who were grateful to Fred for his service to the community, not just the Jewish community but the local community as well, presentations were also made by local officials on behalf of the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey, and the Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders. Here are some snapshots taken of the two other certificates presented to Fred that evening:

Now, if you look closely at the wording of our resolution and that of these other certificates, you'll see that a certain resolution-gate scandal emerged from the proceedings. But it was all taken in good humor, and it was indeed an evening to remember, not the least because of the remarks Fred delivered, telling his own story. And we will share those remarks with you as well... in our next post! Stay tuned!

from the pages of Kadima, the newsletter of Congregation Adas Emuno:

From the desk of …                    

 Rabbi Barry Schwartz

    

What’s Your Motto?

This summer we cleaned out the small vestry room adjoining our sanctuary that houses our prayer books. In the process we discovered a Confirmation certificate. The name on the certificate: Esther Cohn. The date: May 27, 1917. The “minister” (as the rabbi was then called): Moses Eckstein. The president: Samuel Neuberger.

I was happy to find this artifact; we have so few from our long congregational history. The certificate itself was simple and unexceptional. But one line caught my eye. It read, “Motto” and then leaves a blank space to be filled in. In a different hand than the rest of the certificate, are the words, “I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” You may recognize the verse from the 23rd Psalm.

Intriguing... I haven’t seen something like this before. It got me to thinking: Did Esther herself choose this verse? Did she write it herself on the certificate? How and why did she make this choice? Did the rabbi give the Confirmation students a choice of sayings, and each student chose their favorite? Or were the students completely free to choose whatever they wanted?

I like this idea of a motto. I’m considering bringing it back to Confirmation class. Part of the challenge, I suppose, will be to design a teaching unit of great quotes to help our students make an educated choice. I’m also left wondering: why haven’t I heard of this being done before... and why didn’t I ever think of it?

My question to you: what is your motto? In Europe, aristocratic families used to have both a motto and coat of arms? Do you have a verse that is especially meaningful to you? Do you have a favorite quote that sums up your philosophy of life? (If you do, send it to me; I’d really like to know.)

When I was newly ordained (thirty years ago if you can believe it), a member of my first congregation wove me a beautiful tallit, that I still wear at every morning service. Roz asked me what I would like to be inscribed on the collar. I chose the famous words of the prophet Micah, “... to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” I guess you could call that my motto. Choosing a motto may not be so easy... but harder still is living up to it.

Susan Grey's Yom Kippur Appeal 5775

Good Morning. Thank you to the Rabbi and the Cantor for that beautiful service and to all the volunteers who put in so much of their time and energy to make the holidays flow so seamlessly. 

For those who do not know me, my name is Susan Grey and I have the privilege to deliver the annual Yom Kippur appeal. More on that later... First, a little about me. 

My family and I have been congregants at Adas Emuno for over a decade. We arrived in Leonia in 2003 after many years in Manhattan and a short stint in Riverdale. We settled on Wood Terrace with our two very young children and an English springer spaniel. The children went to pre-school, Scott and I got used to the commute and we settled in. I’m not sure who first told us about Adas Emuno. Maybe it was the Raskins, or the Schullers or Elka—I just know that it kept coming up in conversation. Hey, there’s a really cool young cantor they said, with young kids, a beautiful voice, and a non-Jewish husband. So, I checked out Tot Shabbat, a Sunday pre–k class, a Rosh Hashanah service, and I was hooked.

I had always had strong connection to my Jewish background (but did not attend synagogue). I have a non-Jewish spouse, albeit one who is happy to cook and celebrate the Jewish holidays with my family but insists on the Christmas tree of his youth. We had no real plan on what we were going to do about religious instruction for the children, if anything at all. But after spending some time at Adas Emuno, I began to have a strong sense that I had stumbled onto something unique and special. Adas Emuno was a place that Scott could feel comfortable coming if he chose to participate, and I felt that I had found a place for my children to learn about Jewish faith, culture and social commitment—certainly more than I could impart to them.

In 2007, our 3rd child Griffin was born and as soon as he was old enough he started attending religious class. His siblings were overjoyed that now, he too, had to get up early on Sunday mornings! Last January, our daughter Molly was called to the Torah as a bat mitzvah—the first woman in many generations of Jewish women in my family. Grey is currently in 6th grade and Griffin is now in 2nd. Molly sleeps in on Sunday!

The synagogue has been through a few transitions since we became members and I am happy to report that today we are stronger than ever, with a committed clergy, a dynamic new Educator and a dedicated board of trustees. We have a full calendar of programs and activities for all ages. With prayer, study, music, food, and social action projects there is always energy and buzz at Adas Emuno. We offer different avenues for people to start, or to continue to explore how Judaism can bring meaning to their lives.

Please consider making an investment in the future of our unique synagogue. By investment I do not mean only one that involves financial gain. I mean an investment in the community, both the global Jewish community and our immediate community. Spread the word, bring your friends and encourage people to explore what we have to offer. I cannot articulate with perfect clarity why we each of us are here at Adas Emuno. It is very personal. I can say however, that no matter what leads each of us to this place, we stay because of the comfort and strength we draw from our time here and from each other.

In the words of Winston Churchill, “we make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give”. Please consider giving generously this year to sustain the special life we have created here at Adas Emuno.

Thank you, and a sweet new year to all. 

Lance Strate's Yom Kippur Appeal 5774

In the Reform temple in Queens that my family belonged to when I was growing up, the Yom Kippur Appeal was always given by some old guy, so I don't know why they asked me to do it.

Another difference was that it wasn't called the Yom Kippur Appeal. It was the Kol Nidre Appeal. As you may have guessed, that's because it was delivered during the Yom Kippur evening service. And maybe they did it that way because of the Kol Nidre prayer that gives the evening service its name, because of that beautiful melody that cannot help but touch the Jewish heart, and stir the Jewish soul. Kol Nidre captures so very perfectly the spirit of repentance that is central to the High Holy Days, these Days of Awe. 

But also, that music, so familiar, so haunting, speaks to us of return, that you can come home again, that you are always welcome here, that you are never a stranger here among family, friends, community, congregation. This is your house of worship, this is your house of meeting, this is your house of learning—this is your house. But more than that, this is your home.

Welcome home.

Back when I was a kid, I remember them saying every year that the Kol Nidre Appeal is a silent appeal. That always puzzled me, because the person doing the appeal wasn't at all silent, but in fact would go on talking for a long, long time. Now, as a kid, I realized that adults often don't say what they mean, or don't say everything they mean to say. And eventually I came to understand that this silent business meant that no one would come out and ask for donations. That was what the little white envelopes were for. Even in the years when my old Temple in Queens was facing severe financial hardships, that wasn't considered something appropriate to talk about during the appeal. 

And I am going to follow in that tradition by not mentioning how much our little shul on the hill depends on your donations, simply to break even from year to year. I'm not going to appeal for your financial support, because I know you understand that we have to pay our bills, that we cannot keep this congregation going on prayer alone, and that we will never, ever exclude anyone from membership in this synagogue due to financial hardship. I'm not going to talk about these things, because I know you understand.

Back when I was a kid, the Kol Nidre appeal often made some reference to the Holocaust. Almost all of the adults present had lived through the Second World War, had had personal experience with anti-Semitism, and felt the threat of the Nazis even from afar. Many of those present had escaped from Europe just before the war, and a number of congregants were Holocaust survivors, my parents among them. That was the milieu I grew up in, where all of the adults spoke Yiddish, and many spoke English with accents from a dozen or more European countries, from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Russia. Where everyone had family members who were victims of the Nazi genocide, and we all knew individuals who had numbers tattooed on their arms, survivors of the Auschwitz death camp. 

My mother, who is in her nineties now, has a locket on a necklace that she used to wear, and inside is a picture of a baby boy, her nephew, who was lost during the Holocaust, along with her sister and her sister's husband—the baby would be in his seventies now. And my mother, who was in her early 20s at the time, also witnessed her own mother die under terrible circumstances.

Living with the recent memory of such monstrous evil that had been directed specifically at our people, it was easy to summon up a sense of obligation, to agree that we must not let the light of living Judaism go out, that supporting our congregation is another way to fight back, another way to say, never again. And we were reminded that it didn't matter if you were a member of a congregation or not, if you practiced or not, if you believed or not, even if you converted to Christianity, it didn't matter. To the Nazis, a Jew was a Jew was a Jew, there was no escaping who you are, no escaping your identity, no free pass out of the concentration camps and firing squads. What alternative is there, then, but to embrace who we are, and join together for mutual protection and support?

But the generation of survivors is dwindling, and with them the living memory of the Holocaust. Time passes, new generations are born, wounds that may never heal can still grow less raw, less painful. Memory, which may not fade entirely, grows less vivid, more distant. We still live in a world marked by anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, and threats to our very existence, but here in the United States we have grown very comfortable and secure, doors that once were closed to us are wide open now. Where we once huddled close together for mutual protection, we now walk confidently alone in search of the American dream.

When I was growing up, the horror of the Holocaust was eased by the enormous pride, and reverence, we all felt regarding the State of Israel. The Six-Day War of 1967 seemed nothing short of miraculous, but then came the Yom Kippur War in 1973. This Yom Kippur marks the fortieth anniversary of an attack that caught Israel by surprise, the beginning of a war that, in the early stages, Israel was in danger of losing. It was a war in which support from the United States was crucial. We knew that Israel was surrounded by enemies vowing to drive our people into the sea, and that most of the rest of the world was indifferent to their fate, if not overtly hostile to the Zionist cause. And our congregations became the focal points for rallying support for the Jewish state. We knew we had an important role to play as American Jews, in guaranteeing the future of the Jewish people, both here and abroad.

Today, we tend to be less idealistic, certainly less worshipful, about the State of Israel. And despite the fact that Iran is on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons, we tend to be less concerned about the existential threats to the Jewish state. And at the same time, we seem less aware of the extent to which the future of our people, our faith and our tradition, rests with us here, as well as with the Promised Land. 

Whether or not you believe that we have become too contented and complacent, it is clear that we don't feel the same sense of urgency that we felt back a few decades ago. That sense of urgency was always a part of the Kol Nidre Appeals of my youth. It was much easier to rally the troops when we felt threatened.

The challenge in making a Yom Kippur Appeal today is not only that we have it too good. It's that we're working too hard, many of us working hard to make ends meet in a difficult economic climate, working longer hours under difficult circumstances. And even when we're not working, we're too busy, with schedules to keep, especially for our children, whose lives are so much more structured than the generations that came before. And when we're not working or caring for others, we have a seemingly endless supply of amusements and entertainments to fill our every waking moment. Between all of our demands and all of our distractions, it's hard to make the time for something else, something outside of the everyday world of work and play, obligations and diversions. 

But I think that deep down we all know that there is something vital that's missing from all the sturm und drang, the storm and stress of everyday life. There's something important that we won't find in the workplace, no matter how many late hours we put in at the office, no matter how high up on the career ladder that we climb. There's something essential that you can't get on cable, no matter how many channels you zap through. You can't find it on a website, and Google doesn't have an algorithm to help you search for it. And there are no apps that you can download for your iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, or whatever smartphone you're using, it doesn't matter. There's something you can only find here, in your congregation, that you can only find here, in your house, in your home.

Where else do we turn for the single most important events of our lives? Where else do we turn when we want to celebrate a birth, to consecrate a new life? Where else do we turn to mark the coming of age of our children, their first great step into adulthood through their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and Confirmation ceremonies? Where else do we turn to bless and sanctify a marriage, to rejoice in a joining together to form a family, based on love and commitment? And where else do we turn after the loss of a loved one, to grieve and mourn, and to find comfort and consolation? We find all these things, and so much more, we find the things that really matter, here, in our house, in our home.

It's here that we find education for our children, a kind of education they won't get anywhere else, an education in our traditions, our history, our culture, our literature, our art and our music, and especially, our ethics and our spirituality. And it's here that we find education for adults as well, as well as wonderful musical programs, movie screenings, and many other interesting events. And it's here that we join together for social action, to help others who are in need, to take part in tikkun olam, the repair and healing of the world. It all begins here, in our spiritual home.

And it's easy to take your home for granted, and assume it will always be there waiting for you, no matter what. But the truth is, it won't be, not unless we make it happen. Adas Emuno is us, all of us. It's not a building, it's a congregation, a community, an assembly of the faithful. If we join together in support of Adas Emuno, it will continue. And if we don't, it will disappear. Those are the facts of life.

We just entered the year 5,774 on the Jewish calendar, and while we no longer believe that it dates back to the creation of the world, we do know that it dates back to the dawn of civilization, the beginnings of city life along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia. And we trace the history of our people back some 4,000 years. Ours is an amazing story of survival against all odds, and a story of a tradition that gave the world so very much, including monotheism, a sense of history and progress, a system of ethics and law, and with it the idea of equality, equality before the law, and also the letters of our aleph-bet, and with them literacy and learning, and so much more. 

Ours is a tradition that is not frozen in time, not fixed in the past, but one that is able to grow and adjust to changing circumstances, and that flexibility informs the Reform movement that we are a part of. We live in the modern world, but remain connected to our origins in antiquity, remain faithful to our tradition as one that is living and evolving. 

And our own little congregation will be 142 years old next month, and will turn 150 in just eight short years. But will Adas Emuno still be here to celebrate its sesquicentennial anniversary? I think so. I hope so. But there are no guarantees. Our congregation will still be here only if we continue to support it, only if we keep it going, only if we keep the faith, with the future, and with ourselves.

You know, you can't be Jewish all by yourself. Not fully, it just doesn't work that way. We may pray as individuals, but we pray to Adonai Elohaynu, the Lord our God. We confess the sins that we have committed, and ask God to forgive us, to pardon us, and grant us atonement. We are not a crowd of isolated individuals competing with one another. We are a community, members of the tribe as we sometimes say. We are responsible for our own actions, but we are also responsible for each other. We take pride in each other's achievements. And we feel shame when one of our own goes astray. We are a family, and this, this is our home.

But only if we remember. And only if we want it to be. And only if we do something about it, only if we act to support our congregation, to give of ourselves in whatever manner is possible, to give back for all that we have been given, and to pay it forward for the generations growing up now, and the generations to come. So that someday in the future, it may be one of the young people sitting in this sanctuary today, who will be giving a Yom Kippur Appeal, and reminding that congregation-to-come that they would not be there if not for us here today, for our willingness to support our spiritual community, to maintain continuity with our ancient tradition in the modern world, to keep faith alive in times of darkness and in times of light, to make sure that there will always be a place that we can come back to, a house that we can call home.

The State of the Congregation

From the pages of Kadima, the newsletter of Congregation Adas Emuno:

A Message From Our President

Dr. Lance Strate

The State of the Congregation 

President's Report Delivered at the 

Annual Congregational Meeting 

June 27, 2013

Every time I can remember watching the President of the United States deliver the annual State of the Union address to Congress, it seems that the opening line is always, "the state of our union is strong." A year ago, I did not expect to be in a position to make that sort of statement at the next annual Congregational Meeting, so I am especially pleased to be able to say to you now:

The state of our congregation is strong.

In Jewish tradition, we say that the most important thing is that you have your health, and for any organization, health is connected to finances. And to be honest, I had some significant concerns about our finances a year ago. While we gained a little breathing room with donations the year before from the unfortunate dissolution of Sons of Israel in Leonia and Temple Beth Am in Teaneck, we have had a history of running at a deficit year after year. Obviously, such a practice cannot be sustainable unless, like the government, you can print your own money, so it was important for us to be budget conscious, and place greater emphasis on fundraising than we had in the last year or two.

I am therefore pleased to report to you, as we near the end of our fiscal year on the 30th of this month, that it looks like we are breaking even this year, and maybe even coming out a little ahead. I think this represents significant progress, for which I take no credit, but rather thank the entire board for their careful and conscientious oversight of our expenses. And I especially want to credit our Treasurer and Buildings and Grounds Chair, Michael Fishbein, our Financial Secretary Mark Rosenberg, and our Finance Committee member Doris White, for their work in this area.

As I mentioned, fundraising is essential, and along with many individual donations and events that made a modest profit for our shul, our congregational Talent Show held this past April 20th not only contributed to our bottom line, but was an enormous success as well. For that, I would like to thank Virginia Gitter and Elka Oliver, and the many religious school parents who volunteered their time and efforts. I am also pleased to note that we continued our tradition of an annual Chamber Music Concert, now known as the Edward M. Cramer Memorial Chamber Music Concert Fundraiser, hosted by Robin Cramer, and we are very grateful to Robin for continuing to open her home in support of our synagogue. I would also note that we are renting our social hall for a children's reading program our of Rutgers University on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays; it started last Sunday and will continue through July. Aside from providing a little extra revenue, this is an experiment for us to see what is involved in this kind of arrangement, as it is an important option for us to help make ends meet. We have also added portals on our website and blog for Amazon.com and a Judaica store. So far, our returns have been quite modest, but every little bit helps, and I want to remind everyone that if you are buying anything from Amazon, make your purchase through our portal and you'll be supporting Adas Emuno, as we'll get a little cut; we even get a small amount if you just look at items through our portal. And please take a look at our Judaica store, they really have a wide selection of attractive items for sale.

I also want to take special notice of a fundraising effort on the part of Ollie Racciatti and Julian Pecht, which began as a joint mitzvah project for their bar mitzvahs. It was an ambitious project to hire a sofer, a Torah scribe, to restore one of our damaged Torahs. And we are all so very proud to note that they have met their fundraising goal this spring, and the restoration process is now underway. I also want to take this opportunity to note that we do need to purchase more prayer books, because we don't have enough for many of our b'nai mitzvah ceremonies. About thirty more are needed, so please donate to the prayer book fund. I also want to kick off our Sesquicentennial Fundraiser this fall; I had hoped to do it last year, but we still have a little time before it's the year 2021. And in conjunction with that, while I am not at liberty to reveal the specifics yet, I do want to inform you that we have recently received a very generous donation to the religious school and congregation that makes our financial outlook all the more positive.

Our By-Laws mandate that we present a budget to the congregation for approval, but this requirement has not been practiced here for many years. But this year we will be doing the right thing, and present you with a budget, one that we all can work from in the coming year. This is a first step, and we should get better at in subsequent years. We are also sending out bills a little earlier this year, and as I have noted in a Kadima column, our billing is almost a year behind schedule. Most synagogues require payment for the coming year before releasing High Holy Day tickets, whereas we look for members to be paid up for the previous year, and then bill everyone after the holidays. We have taken a small step to move the timetable up, and I would like us to continue to do so gradually over the next few years to get up back in sync. Doing it all at once would amount to asking for two years worth of dues for many members, which would present a hardship for many, so a gradual shift makes the most sense.

Financial health is important, but it is pointless unless we are spiritually healthy. And as a congregation, this has much to do with our spiritual leadership, and I think we all know how lucky we are to have Rabbi Barry Schwartz leading our congregation. Attendance at our Friday night Shabbat services has been exemplary, and the number of people who show up for the Saturday morning Torah study that he leads puts many larger temples to shame. He continues to make important contributions to our religious school, this year launching a family learning component, working with the b'nai mitzvah and confirmation students, and contributing in so many ways, from presenting thoughtful and inspiring sermons, to offering individual instruction and counseling, to participating in community events, to helping to keep the place tidy when need be (which is not part of his job description, I just admire the fact that he is not a prima donna). I am therefore pleased to inform you that Rabbi Schwartz has renewed his contract for the next two years, and hopefully he will remain with us for many more years to come.

This past year, Rabbi Schwartz was joined by student cantor, Alison Lopatin. For the coming year, we were unable to obtain a student cantor from Hebrew Union College, and will be utilizing a Cantorial Soloist instead, along with a separate b’nei mitzvah tutor . I will let our Ritual Chair, Virginia Gitter, tell you more about them, and thank you Virginia for chairing the Ritual Committee and leading the cantorial search. I would just note now that, whether this particular individual works out or not, it is good to know that there are alternatives to hiring a different student cantor every year, and there are alternatives that might provide us with more stability in the long run. Although this model will cost us significantly more than it would with a student cantor, this has been taken into consideration in preparing the budget proposal for the coming year, and we will be mindful of the cost as we look ahead to the year after.

Our Religious School is the jewel of Adas Emuno, and we began the past year with a new Religious School Director, Annice Benamy. Annice has worked hard to help generate more publicity for our school, for example by holding an ice cream open house last summer. And in response to concerns that our students were not being adequately prepared for their b'nai mitzvah, she worked hard to make our curriculum more rigorous and structured. I should also note that she has been kind enough over the past year to fill in as a cantorial soloist at numerous services. She has shown great energy and enthusiasm in carrying out her responsibilities. I will also acknowledge that the transition has had its challenges, and the board is aware of that, and will work to continue to improve our school over the coming year. I cannot help but note with great sadness the recent passing of David Benamy, husband of Annice, who contributed so much to our synagogue in the short time that he was with us, from making balloon animals at our children's events, to helping out with our computers and technology, to blowing the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, to starting up a Youth Group for us, and serving as Youth Advisor. We all join together in mourning his passing. And I hope we can join together to see that his efforts on our behalf were not in vain.

I want to thank Amy Chartoff for her work as chair of the Religious School Committee, and note that for the coming year we intend to have significantly more board involvement in the committee, and will be looking for significantly more involvement on the part of the parents as well. This is an area in which we need to improve, and will improve, in the coming year. I also want to acknowledge Rebecca Kind-Slater for her work on events and activities for families with young children, and her efforts regarding preschoolers. In particular, I think we are all very proud of the fact that Rebecca and Annice successfully applied for the Union for Reform Judaism's Communities of Practice program on Successfully Engaging Young Families. Annice attended the first meeting in Chicago, and she and Rebecca continue to be involved in this effort, and welcome others to participate as well. Events like Super Sukkot Sunday, the Apple Picking Outing, and the Purim Carnival are great fun for everyone involved, and very much a sign of health for our congregation.

On the topic of education, our adult education program has been booming, thanks in no small part to our Adult Education Committee chairs, Norm Rosen and Fred Friedman. We have had a lecture on the Israeli legal system, movie screenings and discussions involving a documentary on Jewish boxers as well as the celebrated film Connected last summer, musical presentations on the Jews of India and the Yiddish theater, and classes in beginning Hebrew taught by Annice Benamy, and Yoga taught by Mia Howard. We have also continued to be blessed by outstanding musical performances, including the return of the Heritage Ensemble last December (and look for them to make it a threepeat this coming November 16), and the wonderful visit from the Yale a cappella group Magevet in January (and we are working on bring them back for an encore early next year), not to mention the music played by Rachel Musleah as part of her presentation on the Jews of India, the wonderful musical talent displayed at our talent show, the ever lovely sounds of our chamber music concert, and Diane Cypkin's performance of Molly Picon's Yiddish theater music. I want to acknowledge Robin Cramer again, and the Edward M. Cramer Music Fund, for supporting so many of our programs, and thank you as well to the Cramer Music Fund Committee.

Our adult education and religious school events are important not only in service to our members and the community, but also as ways to provide us with more publicity and increased visibility. A year ago, a refrain that we were hearing over and over again was that no one knows we're here. And while I can't claim to have completely overcome that problem, I believe we have made great strides over the past year. Our events have been reported on in Leonia Life, the Jewish Standard, and the North Jersey Record, as well as being posted in various places on the internet. I want to than Virginia Gitter, chair of our publicity committee, for her public relations work on behalf of Adas Emumo, as well as editing our newsletter, Kadimah, overseeing our mailings, chairing the ritual committee as well, and serving as recording secretary. I also want to acknowledge Rebecca Kind-Slater's contributions regard online publicity. On our own website and database, thanks go to Howard Goldstein and Kim Merlino for the work that they've done. I must concede, however, that I had hoped to be much farther along in bringing our internet services up to date, than we are now, and this has been one of the goals that we have fallen short on this past year. Our database software is less than adequate and lacking in most basic features (we can't even format our email blasts in any way, let alone add a flyer as an attachment). And our website needs a complete overhaul. This has to be a priority in the coming year, and we need volunteers who can help with the work. Even our congregational blog, which has largely been a one-man show for me, is not all that it could be because no one else is working on it. We also need to look to the internet as a cheaper and more ecologically sound alternative to mailings and printing a newsletter on paper, at least as an option that members can choose.

Our temple's image is important in making people aware that we exist, and in communicating a sense of the kind of congregation we are. To that end, one of the great lifts of this past year has been the design of a new logo for Adas Emuno by Lauren Rowland. This lovely and original image gets across the strong sense of community, participation, and the hamishe spirit that distinguishes our shul. It immediately has added great life to our letters and documents, and to our website and blog. We also have been long aware of the need for better signage, and Hurricane Sandy did us a favor by destroying our ugly, old, barely visible sign. Thanks to Lauren Rowland and Amy Chartoff, we have a beautiful new sign, one that features our distinctive logo, and we have added the lettering on the portico to make us easier to spot and identify as folks drive by. There are more improvements to come. We need to make them to improve our image, and to show to others and to ourselves that we care about our temple, that we're not a congregation in decline, but one that is vital and evolving. Of course, as we move forward in this way, we also need to remain fiscally responsible.

Buildings and grounds are an important part of our image, and again I want to thank Michael Fishbein and his committee for their hard work. I think we are all very pleased by the addition of the cabinets in the social hall, which provide for better utilization of space, give us more storage room, and allow us to place the garbage can out of the line of sight and people's paths. The addition of air conditioning to the social hall was also much needed, given the reality of global warming, and the increased use of the space during the summer. Thank you to Michael Raskin for his help on that front. I also want to note the continued improvements to our little garden area outside, really a wonderful feature of our grounds.

If we are not for ourselves, who are we? But if we are only for ourselves, what are we? One of the true highlights of this past year has been the revival of our Social Action Committee, led by Annette DeMarco. From Shelter Our Sisters to Bonim Builders to clothing drives, to opening our shul for those in need in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, to food drives and taking a turn at the food kitchen in Hackensack, to making lunch for Americorps volunteers, to collecting eyeglasses, pet food, and hosting a blood drive, Adas Emuno has been present and counted for in regard to tikkun olam, and I think this is one of the great success stories of the past year. So thank you again to Annette, to everyone on the Social Action Committee, and to all of our volunteers of Adas Emuno.

Perhaps the most important measure of our health is our membership, because Adas Emuno is the assembly of the faithful. And it may surprise you to hear me say that Adas Emuno does not have any members, but don't worry, I say that because Adas Emuno is its members. And at a time when all of organized religion is in decline, it is rather remarkable that we have held steady in our membership numbers. Of course, it would be nice to get a little bit bigger, but under the circumstances, it is no small feat to hold your ground when everyone around you is losing theirs. I want to thank our membership committee chair, Michael Raskin, who also serves as Vice-President, and takes care of relations with the Leonia community. Michael has also served as chair of the nominating committee this year, so we are all grateful for that service as well. And I want to appeal, once more, to you for your help. We need our members to be active and engaged, to serve on committees, perhaps even to serve on the board. If you're interested, don't be shy, let us know. If you have something to offer, don't be shy, let us know. And if you want to volunteer yourself or someone else, don't be shy, let us know. We need to give Virginia a break.

In regard to our organization, it has been many, many years since the by-laws of our congregation have been reviewed, and amended. This was another of my goals for this year, and I want to thank Fred Friedman and Norm Rosen for leading our by-laws committee, and working to bring them into alignment with current practices. I had hoped that we would have the proposed revisions ready in advance of our annual meeting, so that they could be put to a vote here, but unfortunately we fell short of that mark. But the work is nearly done, and we will have to hold a special congregational meeting in the fall, to discuss and vote on the proposed changes, and to further consider the role and rights of non-Jewish members of the congregation, a subject that requires consideration and deliberation on the part of our membership.

There are two additional goals that I set out last year that I do not feel have been adequately dealt with. One is planning for the future, and along with setting up a Sesquicentennial Fund, I will be establishing a Sesquicentennial Committee, charged with taking up the question of the future of our congregation. Where do we want to be in 2021? What are our long term goals, aside from simply surviving? It is essential that we think about the future, and our 150th birthday provides the perfect focal point for doing so. The other goal is listening. By that, I mean that we, the leadership of the synagogue, need to actively listen to the membership. It's not that we're deaf, I hasten to add, we certainly have been listening as much as possible, that's part of the job of being a trustee or an officer. But we need to be more proactive about it. I think having a congregational meeting about the by-laws will be helpful, and so will meeting with small groups of members to hear their concerns.

In conclusion, then, our congregation is strong, and I believe that we are moving forward, that we are better off today than we were a year ago, that we are getting stronger, and can get stronger still. In the end, our greatest strength is ourselves, what we each can individually offer in service to our shul, and what we all can accomplish by working together. So let's roll up our sleeves, all pitch in, and make this the best possible congregation that it can be. And may God bless you all, and God bless Adas Emuno.