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Greetings, everyone! It’s been a little while since I first wrote about our effort to take a look at our dues structure and see how it may be changed to better reflect the needs and interests of the congregation. Here is the post that began this conversation last year (for those interested in a refresher!)

We felt that it was time to look at remaking our financial relationship with our congregants. The two biggest negatives to our current model are its inflexibility and its effect of making belonging to our Temple community more of a commercial transaction rather than a generous donation.

Since that time the task force and board have had lots of conversations about this and now need your input. If you haven’t already, you will be receiving an invitation to a parlor meeting hosted by a congregant in the next few weeks. The purpose of the meetings is to provide context for why we feel that we need to change our financial structure and to ask for your input on a model for donations called Sustaining Membership Model. This is a model being tried by synagogues around the country and studied by Professor Dan Judson of Brandeis University (he has been advising us as well.) This idea isn’t unique to synagogues, public radio and other nonprofits have been using it for years.

Please come to a parlor meeting, either the one you get an invitation to or the meetings we will be having at temple on March 9th at 9 am and 11 am to hear more about the model and let us know what you think.

Our congregation is based on the power of generosity to uplift, educate, nurture and care for our congregants.   The Sustaining Membership Model is based on the same principles. We are hopeful that given choices, congregants will choose to be very generous to support our synagogue.

Thanks for your continued involvement in our synagogue’s ongoing journey.

I love our new sanctuary. I love sitting there watching the light come in or the sun set. I love looking at that beautiful wooden ark with all those lovely phrases on it. But here’s a confession. I don’t really know what it says. I mean, I know it’s the Ten Commandments, but literally, what does it say in Hebrew? I learned to read Hebrew only sorta, a long time ago, and once you take away my vowels, forget it. So there I am, struggling to figure out how it should sound; is it an “eh” sound or an “ah?” And aren’t the Ten Commandments more than two words? Also, while I am sure many people can whip off the actual 10, I find I am often missing one, which upsets me more than forgetting one of the Seven Dwarves (usually Sneezy.) I did a little digging and discovered that the two words per commandment are the first two words of each, and refer to the rest of the sentence. I got the transliteration and the definition of each with the help of Stuart Skolnick. So just in case I am not the only one who just doesn’t know, here’s a guide to your ark. Next time you look at it, you’ll know how it’s pronounced and what each one refers to. As to the sentence that goes across the whole top of the ark, that is a line from Psalms and means “worship God with joy.” This month we celebrate Shavuot, when God gave the Torah to us, so now you can know exactly what we got, and how to say it. Happy Shavuot to all.

Sharon DeLevie