Shalom, Congregation Beth El Family!

It's been a little over a month since we had the honor of being elected your co-presidents and we wanted to give you a brief "State of the Synagogue" report.

First, we are delighted to announce that Erin Bersin, formerly our Finance Director but who does so much more behind the scenes than a mere Finance Director, is now the Executive Director of Congregation Beth El!  Erin is the person who is not only responsible for the financial side of things, such as all the billing and bookkeeping activities and financial reporting in collaboration with our Treasurer, but she also manages our directory, events, calendar and zoom and does the heavy lifting on a myriad of tiny little details that no one thinks about but that keep our little Shul on the Prairie running smoothly.  You don’t notice what she does – but you would if she didn’t do them.  We are incredibly fortunate to have her! 

The Board of Directors had a Board Retreat on May 18th where we concentrated on team building and setting realistic goals.  Everyone on the Board is committed to making CBE the best little shul around and we spent some of the time together brainstorming new and innovative programming and other ideas. 

If you attended the Annual Meeting last month, you heard that Congregation Beth El, like just about every house of worship in the country, is facing some financial challenges as well as dwindling membership. Additionally, we have an aging building complete with plumbing and electrical issues.  At the Annual Meeting we talked about the need to think outside the box to come up with ways to address these matters and we have decided to generate some revenue by renting some of the classrooms in our building to area professionals (counselors, tutors, etc). Our tenants would come exclusively from referrals – we will not actively advertise – and some areas of the building, like the kitchen and sanctuary, will be strictly off limits.  We have a comprehensive rental agreement and have addressed security concerns. We will be making some modest accommodations around the synagogue so that both our needs and the needs of our tenants are met.

And speaking of security, it will likely not surprise anyone that anti-Semitic events are on the rise worldwide.  According to the ADL, there have been dramatic rises in both the total number of anti-Semitic incidents and anti-Semitic incidents per capita in Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.  We’ve even seen it here in our own neighborhood! Accordingly, we are providing security at more synagogue events, and we need to increase the security fee from $100 to $125 per family for the next fiscal year.  We are incredibly blessed to have a dedicated police officer, Detective Michael Zimmer, as our Security Officer. For years now, Detective Zimmer has always made sure that we have security when we need it and you can probably find him (usually - or another officer that he provides if he can’t make it) at the synagogue during events. Even with the increase in the security fee, we’re still getting a ‘deal’ compared to what other synagogues pay for security.  Additionally, we have an outstanding relationship with the Missouri City Police Department, who have also been using our building from time to time, and they often make it a point to swing by and check that all is well at CBE.

We’d also like to mention that our new fiscal year starts June 1, and would like you to please consider increasing your financial commitment to Congregation Beth El, even if it's by just a little bit.  As we have stated in the past, if everyone increased their commitment by Chai ($18) a month, our deficit would essentially be erased.

Finally, we're not sure how many of you follow the synagogue on social media, but if you do, you've seen many wonderful pictures of the children in our fabulous Religious School!  Michelle Renfrow, our Religious School and Youth Programming Director, is a programming genius and always works very hard to make the time at Religious School fun as well as informative.  The children are often reluctant, some to the point of tears, to go home afterwards because they are having SO much fun (while learning about Judaism – who knew!?). Check out the celebration on the last day of Religious School here: Blog - Congregation Beth El

Thank you for taking the time to read this and find out what's going on at CBE.  We're interested in hearing from you – thoughts, ideas, suggestions – and hope you won't hesitate to contact either one of us if you'd like to share anything. You can find our information in the CBE Directory.

Have a great week-

Jodi Kessler and Deb Paras