Shalom, everyone!

First, I want to take a moment to thank our outgoing board members – Marilyn Behrens, Bernie Feinberg, Ellen Heller, Barry Kirschner, Dan Michelson and Elaine Zeff. I have had the privilege of working with all of them over the past several years during my time on the board and am thankful to them for all they have done for our community.

Of course, their departure after many years of service has created an opportunity for additional members of our community to become even more deeply involved in our Garden. And that’s what I want to talk about today – our collective involvement in TGE.

The last year has been one of transition and not only because we moved to Shadow Rock from Mission Bell. We gradually have been moving from being a lay-led congregation to one where professional staff now is in place to handle a variety of duties. As we continue to grow, the need for additional professional help will become more acute.

For so many years our congregation hovered between 80 and 90 member families. Since the hiring of Rabbi Tzur, however, we have seen our membership swell to more than 140 member families. What we’re discovering as a board is what worked well for a smaller congregation – primarily the reliance on volunteers to handle the nuts and bolts of temple operations – does not work as well for a significantly larger congregation.

Yet in that growth is an opportunity, an opportunity to focus the energy of our many, many volunteers (both present and future) away from the nitty gritty and toward the larger challenges that lay ahead – the transition to mishkan t’filah, the possibility of a capital campaign, our need for a building to call our own.

What we’ve learned over time is this: the primary challenge we face in our volunteer ranks is the concept of burnout – too few being asked to do too much. We often hear that the volunteers are available, that they’re just waiting to be asked, and that’s true to a point. But the second challenge we have faced is finding volunteers for work that is necessary but isn’t always viewed as rewarding. It’s often easy to lose sight of the fact that the work we perform for TGE, no matter what the task, is sacred work.

So what’s the better solution, forcing everyone to see some of the more routine tasks as rewarding or finding better ways of getting those tasks done and using our volunteers in areas and on projects that will increase their bond with TGE, stimulate our growth and allow us to expand what we offer to the larger community?

My first goal when first elected last year was to move away from one- or two-person committees and toward a scenario where the committee chair delegates much of the work to his or her committee. Not only does this increase everyone’s connection to TGE but it also helps us in identifying our next generation of leadership.

After all, while you have honored me with a second term as president of the Board of Trustees, mine is a position with mandated time limits. A year from now, someone else will be thanking me (hopefully) and our other two-term officers for their dedication and welcoming that new generation into leadership to conquer challenges yet unseen.

Then it will be the turn of our new generation of leaders to continue the sacred work that their predecessors had performed over our first seven-plus years.

So flows the leadership mantle for our Garden, l’dor v’dor.

L’shalom

Jonathan