From The President

Good evening, fellow congregants and members of the Temple Sinai family. I am honored to be installed as your President, and humbled by trust the congregation has placed in me. You have my promise that I will do my very best to ensure that your trust is not misplaced.

My wife Brenda and I have been members of this Temple virtually our entire time in Massachusetts, and we have deep and meaningful connections to the synagogue. We have worshipped and socialized here. Most of our best local friendships began here. Our daughter celebrated her Bat Mitzvah here. And, as some of you may know, it was Rabbi Goldberg’s childhood rabbi from Philadelphia who, some years later, officiated both at my Bar Mitzvah and at our wedding. So the Silverman connection here is, in some sense, a connection to the most significant Jewish milestones in our own personal history.

Over the years of involvement with Temple Sinai, then, I’ve personally experienced a religious bond, a social bond, a bond rooted in the lifelong continuity of my Jewish observances, and a deep affection for the synagogue and its congregation. But only within the past year have I experienced a reaction that I came to recognize as a new, positive, and admittedly unexpected feeling about Temple Sinai: a renewed optimism. Let me explain.

The turning point for me came during what many would think would have been one of our darkest days as a congregation: the discussions surrounding the decision not to renew the contract of our relatively new rabbi. Not having been part of the lengthy and difficult process that led up to that juncture, I attended the special membership meeting called to discuss the situation fairly naïve, but filled with trepidation. I feared the meeting would implode in a whirlwind of negative energy, factionalism, and bitterness.

But what I saw instead was remarkable, inspirational, and, yes, optimism-inducing. What transpired that night was a highly sensitive, thoughtful, and insightful conversation amongst a very dedicated group of people. The level of discourse was extraordinary, and it showed me a facet of our congregation I had not truly appreciated before. And what touched me profoundly – even more than the sense of dedication, of commitment, of loyalty to the synagogue – was a powerful but unspoken message, a message which underlay every comment made by every individual that evening: the message that we, as a congregation, can and will band together to confront and overcome shared adversity. That sense was palpable, and I came away from the meeting with a new lens through which to view the future of Temple Sinai – the lens of optimism grounded in our collective, collaborative, and consistently constructive approach to overcoming what was probably our most serious challenge in recent memory.

I was fortunate enough to get a timely reminder of this same spirit of optimism at our Board of Directors’ meeting 2 weeks ago, the first I’d attended in several years. Your Board had before it 2 complex, interrelated, terribly difficult, and enormously important issues. There were widely differing points of view, diametrically opposed positions, fundamentally incompatible solutions on the table, and the makings of an irresolvable impasse. It was a long, tough, evening. Yet no one left, no one walked out, no one quit. Everyone stayed until 11PM, logging what must be close to 100 person-hours for this one meeting alone. And again, although the central message was never spoken, it was crystal clear to me: everyone, and I mean everyone, was staying in that room because a definitive resolution of these issues was vital to the future of Temple Sinai. There is, again, a remarkable will to confront and overcome whatever adversity we as a congregation may share. This is the underlying premise that I will bring into my presidency. I can’t think of a better reason to be optimistic about our collective future.

To be sure, the future we share presents both great opportunities and great challenges. Our opportunities encompass a new rabbi, a governance structure that has been gaining energy and momentum, new possibilities for engaging the membership at all levels, and the potential to project a fresh and dynamic face to the community. Our challenges include, unsurprisingly, the perennial and closely linked issues of finances and membership. You will be hearing much more from me about both our opportunities and our challenges in the weeks and months to come. Certainly, my executive group, the Board of Directors, and I will need the assistance of the entire Temple membership to maximize our opportunities as well as to surmount our challenges. We value, and look forward to, your active participation. We are doing it for you, but cannot do it without you.

Thank you very much.

Michael Silverman, President

Tempe Sinai