Our New Year is here and as a Congregation, we are bound together by our culture, our history, our traditions and our secular ties. During this past year, I have seen us come together for Simchas and for sorrows. We are a community, and as such, we have helped families who have lost loved ones and who have lost jobs. We have celebrated baby namings, B’nai mitzvahs and weddings. We have had spiritual times together such as our Ruach Shabbats. We have had wonderful programs - - comedy nights, book discussions, movies, Bridge, Theater groups, a Baseball outing, a golf outing, a boutique, to name just a few. We have learned together at Torah topics and at adult education sessions.

Your Temple Beth El community matters. We help each other in times of need and sadness. We celebrate with each other in times of joy. Without our TBE family, the times of sorrow would be sadder and the times of happiness would not be as fulfilling. Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor once wrote: "We don't accomplish anything in this world alone and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something." We are part of each other’s tapestries.

In the coming year, we have many opportunities in which to interact with each other – through Torah study, through programs brought to us by Adult Ed., through WRJ, through Men’s club, through our services. There are many events being planned this year as every year. At the same time, we must squarely face the fact that the tough economy poses challenges to our country and our Temple Beth El community. Our treasurer and the entire staff and board of trustees have worked very hard to stabilize our finances by cutting costs. We close the Temple 2 nights a week, we have cut salaries, and we have cut budgets and rearranged our educational staff. We have anonymous donors that help us help families to keep their children in the Religious school. Money is what we need to keep running this congregation and yet what we are about is much bigger and much more important than money. This year I believe we have all discovered that material wealth is something of an illusion. It can disappear in a very short time. What is important is our families, our health, our heritage and the values articulated by our religion.

Rabbi Harold Kushner talks about this in a wonderful story. "I was sitting on a beach one summer day, watching two children, a boy and a girl, playing in the sand. They were hard at work building an elaborate sandcastle by the water's edge, with gates and towers and moats and passageways. Just when they had nearly finished their project, a big wave came along and knocked it down, reducing it to a heap of wet sand. I expected the children to burst into tears, devastated by what had happened to all of their hard work. However, they surprised me. They ran up the shore away from the water, laughing and holding hands, and sat down to build another castle.

I realized that they had taught me an important lesson. All the things in our lives, all the complicated structures we spend so much time and energy creating, are built on sand. Only our relationships to other people endure. Eventually, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up. When that happens, only the person who has somebody's hand to hold will be able to laugh.". That wave that came along and hit us was the economy, and the children holding hands represent our community coming together in difficult times to help each other. This is a time for us to help our community. This is why the Yom Kippur appeal for the annual campaign is so important. Please pledge to the best of your ability. Thank you.

Shalom, Sue