President's Message

Dear Friends,

Temple Emanuel is a place of connections, a community with so much to offer each and every one of us. It is where we seek comfort and where we celebrate, where we seek sanctuary and where we seek connection to others. It is where we come to live out much of our Jewish lives, where we share the good times and mourn the difficult.  It is where we learn and do, share and grow. It is a place to give back to our community in ways big and small.

Our community touches our people and is strengthened by them every day:

• We offer comfort in the form of soothing words of a friend or rabbi, a friendly phone call, or just a warm welcome to someone new to our community.  We make a difference in people's lives, simply by being there for them, with them, to help them through a difficult time.
• We offer our support of Israel by educating our community, sending our children there, and visiting ourselves.
• Volunteers regularly drive elders in our community to services and programs they could not otherwise attend, or act as a friendly visitor to the homebound.  Others volunteer in the library and in the school, or turn on the coffee pot for the daily morning minyan.
• We gather as friends to study, to pray, share a Shabbat meal, a cup of coffee or a story, and to offer words of support.

This is what a sacred community is all about. This is Temple Emanuel. 

As we enter a new synagogue year, I welcome each of you to reconnect with Temple Emanuel in ways that will enrich your lives and those of others in our community.  I am pleased that we have come to be known as a warm and welcoming place, where our size allows us to offer much to our membership but does not get in the way of our ability to make intimate connections and friendships across a diverse group of members.  We continue to welcome people to connect to each other and our community, through any of our vibrant Seven Gates. We are a community that cares about our people and always seeks to grow in strength and quality, to be better tomorrow than we are today.

We have much to be proud of, celebrate and enjoy, from ongoing services and weekly programs to special events and learning opportunities, concerts and happenings not to be missed!  If you've not come around for awhile, please don't hesitate to do so now, and reinvent your connection to our wonderful synagogue community. Perhaps you have a skill or talent to share as a volunteer or on a committee.  Join us at services and stay around afterward to come together at the community oneg or kiddush. You will meet someone new and make a connection you might not have expected. We need your help to keep our community strong, and welcome your participation in ways new and old.  Please let me know how we can help you connect to our community.

As I enter my final year as your president, it is with profound thanks, love and appreciation to all who have made my job such a pleasure. I hope in the coming year we will continue to reach more people, more deeply and thereby strengthen the wonderful sacred community that is Temple Emanuel. 

Amy B. Klein, President