January 8, 2010

Rabbi Ken Katz will be here this weekend for his first visit of 2010. I am looking forward to services tonight.

We got some great news this week: both Rabbi Katz and Cantor Steven Greene accepted our offers to co-lead our High Holiday services for 2010. It will be excellent, perhaps our best in over a decade.

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January 5, 2010

We had another good Board Meeting tonight.  The meetings are productive and I enjoy them.  We have a great group!  We made some key decisions regarding High Holidays which I will implement right away.  We have some great programs coming, like Tu B'Shevat and the trip to Milwaukee to see the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit next month.  Jared does a nice job running the meetings.  He employs just the right balance of letting people talk and keeping us on task.  We got through an ambitious agenda and finished two minutes early.

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January 3, 2010

We had a nice service on Friday night but we just missed a minyan.  Since it was New Year's Day and quite cold, I think a few people did not come who might have otherwise attended.  We did get a minyan on Saturday.

We learned that there was an anti-Semitic incident in Oshkosh on Christmas Eve.  Pretty ironic timing.  Congregation B'Nai Israel and the Methodist Church nearby were vandalized by what appears to have been a single individual. Two swastikas and a "J" on the Synagogue and Swastikas on the church.  A short article appeared in the Post-Crescent and a few days later in USA Today.  The Oshkosh congregation is divided on the right response.  Some feel that a lot of publicity could invite more headaches.

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January 1, 2010

With Stu Dolnick's help I gave some thought to what the purpose of this blog is and how it should be used.  I see the main purpose as recording and preserving our history, the history of Moses Montefiore Congregation and the Fox Cities Jewish Community.  Obviously there are other sources, such as Board Meeting Minutes and Bulletin articles.  This is a supplement to these other sources.  Here we have an opportunity to give a different perspective and also to capture some things that did not get recorded anywhere else.

We had a very nice New Year's Eve party last night.  It was organized by the MMC Social Committee and hosted by Simon and Melanie R. at their home.  Turnout was a little lighter than we had expected – but it was a lot of fun and I'm very glad that we had it.  I've always enjoyed doing something for New Year's Eve.  We watched the ball come down in Times Square at 11:00 pm but we saved the champagne for midnight central time.