Congregation Emanu-El of Westchester: Sermon Archives

ROSH HASHANAH COMMENTS

Reflections on the Present and Future of Congregation Emanu-El of Westchester expressed at the High Holy Days by Michael Granoff, President of the Board of Trustees.

My name is Michael Granoff and I am the President of our Congregation. On behalf of the Board of Trustees, I want to wish each and every one of you a healthy and happy new year.

While these days of awe are a solemn period of reflection in our lives, this evening and Kol Nidre evening serve another purpose as well. Some have called them the annual meeting of the Jewish people and there is truth to that.

So I would like to take a couple of minutes tonight and next week to give you a sense of the state of our congregation, a sense of the mission of the congregation and an idea of where we are headed. I would also like to lay out the challenge and opportunity for each of us to contribute to the building of our temple.

The relationship between us as individual Jews to our synagogue and to the broader Jewish community is the story of our survival over the past few thousand years. Each of us will determine our own set of links that fit our own sense of that relationship. And that relationship is not static but changes as we change and as the world changes.

After 9/11 and the sharp increase in anti-semitism around the world, for the first time in my life I felt directly threatened and endangered as a Jew. All of the history that I learned in Hebrew School as a child that seemed so far away began to become far more palpable and real. Newspaper reports from France in 2004 sound an awful lot like the ones from 1934. I felt a strong tug to become a more active contributor to a stronger Jewish community. The question was how to do that. While much of my life has been spent dealing with broad economic and foreign policy issues, I came to the conclusion that maybe my most powerful contribution could be at the most local level of the Jewish community-the synagogue. Synagogues are where the rubber meets the road, the meeting point of tradition, education, culture and spirituality. If Jewish life is to flourish in the future, synagogue life must flourish. It is as simple as that. So while it is not such a big deal and no one will ever write about it in the paper, I concluded that this was a small but concrete contribution I could make, so here I am.

Let me tell you what I have found out so far. Overall we have an active, vibrant congregation with a wonderful group of congregants. We are a modest sized group of about 450 families, which allows us to have the intimacy we value, and the scope to offer a full range of programs. Our members span the generations so we have a dynamic process of welcoming a group of new members each year while bidding an often sad goodbye to others.

As we all know, the foundation of a synagogue is not bricks and mortar but the core team of people who make the temple what it is. We are all extremely fortunate to have an unbelievably dedicated Rabbi, Cantor, Educator, Executive Director and now Assistant Rabbi. They are the reason most of us joined the temple. They are the glue that holds this place together. We are a synagogue with an identity. We are a welcoming community to anyone interested in living a Jewish life. We think our diversity is one of our greatest strengths. In this way, we may be making more of a direct contribution to the future of the Jewish community and the risk of assimilation than we think. We make Jewish worship accessible without losing our traditions. We value education for our children but also for ourselves. Our adult Bar and Bat Mitzvahs rival any 13 year old's for energy. We believe we have a commitment to assist our broader community through social action.

Organizations, like the individuals who make them up, are organic creations. While our foundation is strong and stable, we are also continually changing. And change is not always easy. It is not easy for our staff and it is not easy for us. But the reality is that our synagogue needs to continually change to meet the changing needs of our congregants.

Synagogues are in many ways service organizations. And we live in a choice driven society where people vote with their feet. We choose our synagogues and we choose carefully to meet our varied needs.

Temple life is also a two way street. We have an equal responsibility to contribute our individual talents to enrich our community. This community is nothing more or less than the sum of the thousands of interactions that take place under this roof every year between congregants, between congregants and God, between congregants and the Rabbis and staff and between congregants and the broader community.

The mission of the board of the temple and my mission is to foster a temple community that meets as many of the needs and interests of our congregants as possible. To build as many different touch points between the temple and each individual as possible. To provide as many opportunities for each of us to participate in synagogue life as is possible. And to create a legacy that will outlive all of us.

So as we begin these few days of contemplation of the meaning of our Jewishness, I ask you to think about this a little. Next week I will talk a bit about some of our plans to implement these ideas. Happy New Year.