High Holiday Campaign

We began the process of repentance and inward reflection at the beginning of the month of Elul with the recitation of the 27th Psalm.  With each day that passed we drew closer to this moment.  We needed to review our deeds of the past year.  We needed to see where we had gone wrong.  We needed to seek forgiveness from those we had wronged.  Selichot pointed the way to Rosh Hashanah which came and went.  We tasted the sweetness of the New Year.  We cast our sins into the waters at Tashlich.   We fasted on the third day of Tishrei thinking about the lessons the Gedaliah story teaches us about our responsibility to the community.  Only a week was left.  Teshuvah and Tefillah were joined by Tzedakah as we performed the Kaparot ceremony this morning.  Just a few hours ago, we prepared our bodies and souls for what was ahead with our pre-fast meal. We arrived in Shul wearing no leather, dressed in white to reflect a desired state of purity. The Chazan chanted the Kol Nidrei, and there was not a dry eye in the sanctuary.  And finally, this moment arrived, the high holiday season had reached its climax – It was time for the Shul President’s Kol Nidrei night appeal for donations.  Yes, this is it!  Judaism’s version of an interruption in our regular program for a special announcement – the short version of which is:  we love our shul, we love our religion and its traditions, but it all costs money and we need your help.  Here’s the slightly longer version.

This year has been an extraordinary one for all of us in the Congregation of Har Tzeon-Agudath Achim.  A master plan for our survival, selling a parcel of land to replenish our endowment and renew our physical plant, finally moved from conceptual, legal and financial preparation to the execution of the sale and the physical change of our home.  I must thank all of you for your patience with the moment that we are in.  After Pesach, we had to move out of our building to allow for the renovation work to take place.  For one final moment, our 1956 building, the Brandriss Education Center with its Sarah Lechter Hall, housed us and allowed us to continue to operate, and then on the eve of Tisha B’Av we moved back into this beautifully renovated building as construction on our now-sold parcel picked up steam and the demolition of the Brandriss building took place.  You were all patient with the fluctuations in parking and access and with the noise and the dust.

The sale of our property generated about $4 million.  A little over 25 percent of that was needed to pay for the renovation of our “new” building which, as I pointed out the last time, I did a Kol Nidre appeal has been “new” since 1968.  Renovation was absolutely necessary.  Security, safety and life support systems needed updating.  Office and classroom space needed to be created to accommodate the move from the old building.   Accessibility requirements needed to be met, including installation of an elevator and ramps for the mobility impaired, and our sanctuary needed to be refreshed with new carpeting and a seating arrangement that was responsive to our size and demographics. 

The good news is that our exterior renovation, including the movement of the courtyard, the recreation of parking areas and landscaping, and even our handicapped ramp, are costs undertaken by Mission First, the developer of the housing on our former land.  

That leaves just under $3 million available for the replenishment of our endowment.  The replenishment arrived just in the nick of time.  For years our Shul has been operating with a significant deficit, this year amounting to $180,000.  Our membership has declined from over 500 families in the days when our new building was newer and our old building was not so old to 119 at this time, with the obvious loss of membership dues.  Our Bingo operation, which in its heyday was member-run infusing its full income into the HTAA operating budget, has more recently been run by an outside company, which leaves us with rental and food concessionary income only and during the current phase of construction and parking restriction, we have had to suspend it, so current Bingo income is zero.

So, if you were starting to think that you could take a year off from High Holiday giving, I’m here to tell you that we need it now more than ever.  We do not want to become dependent on drawing down our endowment to fund our operating expenses.  That approach brought our old endowment down to less than $400,000 and would have left us with zero within two years.  The proceeds from the sale of the land were a blessing, but they were a one-time blessing.  It would instead behoove us to reduce the size of our deficit (including through increased donations) and through careful management of our expenses, and view only the dividends of the endowment as fair game for operational costs.

Last year we raised about $24,000 during the High Holidays.  Historically we used to raise $40,000 from the appeal.  I’d like to challenge you tonight to get us back to $40,000 at least.  Look at what you pledged last year and double it.  Help us cut into that $180,000 deficit.

I also want to ask that you think about other ways of giving. Many of you are at the phase in life when you are planning your own legacy.  If this synagogue was an important part of your life, then I ask that you think even beyond the High Holidays and consider making HTAA a beneficiary of what you will leave behind when you go.

Most of you, I’m sure, are not in a hurry to go, but you can still consider us in your legacy planning or more immediately consider the opportunities offered by our renovation.  We have new offices, a new children’s classroom, and a new conference room, none of which have names and all of which could be named in your honor or in honor of a loved one by providing a sizable accompanying donation to the shul.

Of course, your pledges and donations are only part of the equation.  You can donate time by volunteering to help with shul projects and activities or even more basically, you can commit time to be at weekday minyanim and on Shabbat and on Holidays.  

As the Rabbi and I have discussed in Congregational meetings and elsewhere, our physical renovation must also be accompanied by an assessment of our goals for the future and how we intend to get there.  Our strategic planning committee has already set us in motion toward reviving education programs and attracting more families with children.  We need new families and we need children, along with a healthy and well managed endowment to ensure that when we are all gone, there will still be a Har Tzeon -Agudath Achim and a congregation to say Kaddish for those of us who are here today and to be grateful for the decisions we are making now, just as we are grateful to those who were here decades ago and purchased our properties and built our buildings and gave us the means to save our Shul at this moment -- and point it toward its future.

So now it’s time for me to return you to your regularly scheduled programming, so I’ll end where I began.  We’ve gone through 40 days of assessing our sins.  We know there could be a harsh decree in store for so.  but the solution is right there in the Machzor and we say it over and over again.  Uteshuvah, Utefillah, Utzedakah Maavirin et Roa Hagzera.  And repentance, prayer, and charity overtake the harsh decree.  I’ll leave the teshuvah and tefillah to the Rabbi and the Chaazan to run us through for the next 23 hours, but when you get to the Tzedakah, think about the Shul.  Think about the Shul President.  Think about what he said in the High Holiday appeal.