by President Emily Jennewein
L’Shana tova. I’m Emily Jennewein. I feel privileged to be serving as president of Beth Israel – especially as we embark on the 151st year of our great synagogue.
What a year our 150th anniversary of Beth Israel has been! I’ve heard from so many members who have loved the wealth of opportunities we’ve all had to celebrate our most momentous milestone. And that’s what the year of celebration has been all about – creating large, inclusive events, and small, intimate, focused programs – many opportunities for our members to engage and re-engage in positive, constructive, pleasurable and meaningful ways, with other members of our congregation and with Beth Israel itself.
Our 150th anniversary could not have taken place without the extraordinary leadership of Mary Ann Scher, and the countless volunteers and dedicated staff who partnered with Mary Ann to bring the entire year to life.
Our spectacular Opening Event was a happy day. We opened the Union-Tribune that very morning and discovered Beth Israel’s anniversary, our history, and our influence on the city documented in a lengthy, front-page article.
A thousand Beth Israel members and community members attended that joyous day when we were toasted by the Mayor of San Diego and many other dignitaries.
In honor of the 150th anniversary, we were very pleased to be able to bring Yom Kippur afternoon worship back to our synagogue home last year. After 47 years of worshiping at the Civic Theatre, I can tell you that this was a significant logistical feat. Last year, we heard only praise, and not one complaint, about the experience of worshiping at Beth Israel. We listened to how much our members want to be able to worship at our own synagogue. So we will repeat Yom Kippur afternoon worship at Beth Israel next week – this time on a weekday when our parking challenges and solutions will be directly tested.
Our Torah Project tied the anniversary year together in a most profound way. Hundreds of Beth Israel members scribed the 150th Anniversary Torah this year. I hope you and your family will help us welcome our new Torah to Beth Israel on Friday October 5. On that night, in addition to our new Torah, we will welcome the new President of the Union for Reform Judaism – the head of the Reform Movement – Rabbi Rick Jacobs. Our evening begins with a picnic in our lovely Sukkah in the Price Family Courtyard. Following dinner we will take the Torah on a procession around the temple and bring it to its new home in the holy ark of our Glickman-Galinson Sanctuary.
Two days later, on Simchat Torah, Sunday, October 7th, we will officially dedicate and begin reading and studying our new Torah. It will be a wondrous celebration, with joyful prayer, song, and dancing to live music in celebration of our new Torah.
The finale of our 150th year will be a spectacular Closing Gala this fall, headlined by Broadway and international film star Mandy Patinkin. We look forward to an elegant dinner and concert, and a dazzling dessert reception on Saturday, November 17.
The 150th anniversary year has been a very special time to remember and a time to dream. As we embark on the next 150 years, our congregation truly stands on the shoulders of giants – those who had the vision and the courage to establish a small Jewish outpost in 1861. Those pioneers could not have imagined how their fledgling religious community would grow and prosper over these many years. Every member of our 1,200-family community has his or her own special Beth Israel story to tell. Our walls and our history are full of these wonderful, heart-warming stories.
Introducing Our History Book
Over the last four years, many dedicated Beth Israel historians, volunteers and staff have worked to chronicle the endeavors of those who built a thriving Jewish community in San Diego. Our resulting magnificent history book records the challenges, accomplishments and revelries of multiple generations of San Diego Jews.
The nearly 150-page book is a beautifully designed and carefully researched and edited volume. This comprehensive historical account celebrates as many as possible of the stories of 150 years of our congregation. The book is intended to advance our children and grandchildren’s sense of Jewish identity and the continuity of Judaism itself – responsibilities we take very seriously.
So, today, I am proud to announce that Beth Israel officially publishes and releases the book,
Congregation Beth Israel: The First 150 Years.
During the High Holy Days, at your convenience, each member family may pick up their own copy of
Congregation Beth Israel: The First 150 Years. The book is our gift to you, and it will be available for pickup at the conclusion of this service and again throughout the High Holy Days wherever we are worshiping, here and at Beth Israel. It will be available again at Sukkot and Simchat Torah as well as at the temple office for you to pick up your copy.
We are pleased to be able to give one copy to each member family. I hope that our book will endure for many future generations, and will help Beth Israel continue to serve and lead San Diego’s Reform Jewish community.
Commending Our Clergy and Staff
Working on Beth Israel’s history book was an endeavor I enjoyed as much as anything I got to participate in this year. It made me think about my own family and what my ancestors were engaged in in the early years of our synagogue.
I take great pride in knowing that one of my great grandfathers came to New England in 1905 from Lithuania. He came to serve the Jewish people as a rabbi, hazzan, mohel and shochet. As a boy, my great-grandfather, Samuel Wiernikoff, was sent to Odessa for religious training. When he came to the United States he first was Rabbi and Cantor of a congregation in Albany, New York, and then served a congregation in Middletown, Conn., for 25 years, before moving finally to a temple in Peabody, Mass. I’m also proud that Samuel’s wife Anna, my great grandmother, herself descended from a long line of Russian rabbis.
So it’s with particular pleasure and perhaps an enriched understanding that I’d like to commend our Senior Rabbi, Rabbi Michael Berk, for his warm, inspiring leadership. For five years, Rabbi Berk has dedicated his rabbinate at Beth Israel to stability and peace in our house. Rabbi Berk is committed to teamwork. He makes it eminently clear that he is all about partnering with lay leaders and senior staff to bring about change in a gradual, evolutionary manner. This has been a very effective approach and he has gained our trust and the utmost respect of our congregation.
It’s been more than a year since Cantor Arlene Bernstein was ordained as a rabbi, a year in which Rabbi Bernstein continued to infuse our worship with beautiful music and offer her singular personal touch to pastoral care and to teaching our many b’nai mitzvah students and adults. She continues to develop her music program by coaching our young, talented musicians, so as to cultivate the heartfelt music that is a part of all our services at Beth Israel.
We recently honored Cantor Sheldon Merel for his 60 years of serving the Jewish people as a cantor – yes Cantor Merel has been a Cantor for 60 years! Cantor Merel was a student in the second class to graduate from Hebrew Union College’s School of Sacred Music. The American Conference of Cantors this year recognized Cantor Merel – and just one other cantor – for 60 years of service. And, as well, he and Marcy this year celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.
Also this year, with great pleasure, we’ve promoted Rabbi Michael Satz to Associate Rabbi and renewed our relationship for three more years. Rabbi Satz works closely with families in our Preschool and Religious School and co-leads Beth Israel’s Think Tank for Family and Youth Engagement.
We are exceptionally fortunate to have a talented and skilled senior staff team including Bonnie Graff, Tammy Vener, Ava Kurnow, and Executive Director Lesley Mills, and a highly professional and dedicated support staff who work behind the scenes with a great deal of heart and soul to make our synagogue run smoothly through routine endeavors, and rise well to the new challenges we place before them regularly.
One of those new challenges is the new Beth Israel Quarterly, a brand-new and very exciting magazine concept that has just arrived in your mailboxes at home. The Quarterly publishes articles and features that help our members connect with one another, that add value and interest to our members’ lives, and that make us all proud to be engaged with Beth Israel.
At the same time as we’re introducing the Quarterly, we’ve redesigned, renamed and re-launched e-Tidings, our weekly e-newsletter, to make it easier to read with much more visual appeal. We encourage you to subscribe online or fill out a card in the lobby today to join our list.
Not only do these initiatives keep us on the cutting edge of communications, but they save money too.
Of all the work accomplished in the past year, you should know I am extremely proud of the balanced budget the Board was able to approve for this current fiscal year.
A great deal of hard work went into finding ways to achieve a balanced budget without jeopardizing synagogue services. This was no small task, and required collaboration and careful balancing of priorities to find ways to increase income and control our expenses in order to live within our means.
Balancing our budget even in challenging economic times echoes the resourcefulness and dedication that the founders of Beth Israel drew upon. In the early days, they built our congregation with the resources they had at hand. Balancing our budget and building our endowment campaign are the ways that this generation will secure our future.
The Campaign for Beth Israel
Meanwhile, quietly, clergy, staff and our leadership have been hard at work on our endowment campaign, The Campaign for Beth Israel. Three esteemed Past Presidents chair our campaign – Jeff Silberman, Amy Corton and Ron Simon.
With careful research and planning, we’ve established a 20 million dollar goal for the Campaign for Beth Israel. 20 million dollars will secure Beth Israel’s financial future by building a milestone endowment fund that will allow us to continue to serve San Diego’s Reform Jewish community.
And we could not be advancing this campaign without the active involvement of Rabbi Michael Berk and Rabbi Arlene Bernstein. When we talk with those who will – and who already are – financially defining this campaign, we hear that it is our congregants’ strong connections with our clergy that solidifies our members’ commitment to Beth Israel. We are very grateful for our Rabbis’ active participation in the campaign and do not take it for granted in the least!
To date, we have commitments for more than 6 million dollars, or 30 percent of our campaign goal. We are enormously grateful to the 14 families who have made leadership gifts of 100,000 dollars and more. I am very proud to be able to tell you that our Board made early, personal commitments to the Campaign – 100 percent of our board committed pledges. We are off to a great start but there’s much more work to do. And I hope that when we come to you, to explain the Campaign in greater detail, you will listen carefully, and participate, too, to the best of your ability.
Going forward, Beth Israel will benefit from strong lay leadership, continuity and stability. I look forward to working throughout the coming year with Meg Mandel, who is president-elect and will become our president next May. Meg serves on our Board and Executive Committee, she chairs our Development Committee, and you will recall she was one of the chairs of our Opening Event last year.
So, on that note of strength and optimism, stability, and peace in our house, let us now start building the next 150 years together. Future generations of San Diego Jews are depending on us.
I wish each of you a sweet and good new year.
