As I sit down to write this article in October which will appear in November, I wanted to say something that would appear relevant a month after I wrote it.

Some of things that I want you to know has to go back to this past September. I had the privilege of seeing behind the scene of what goes into the preparations for the High Holidays and all of the holidays that follow. During the holidays we watch the Cantor and Rabbi going through the rituals and it just seems that everything is normal and flows smoothly. I have found that Rabbi Pachter spends many hours going through the service to make sure everything is correct and happens in the time frame selected. Even through Cantor Berris was not able to attend most of the holidays, he was working behind the scenes making sure things happened flawlessly. Through the leadership of our Cantor throughout the year, the choir was able to do the job and the people that substituted for the Cantor were able to do their jobs.

It takes many people besides our clergy to make our holiday services a success. There are too many to acknowledge in this letter, but I just wanted to say thank you for a job well done.

Many of you wonder what goes on behind the scene to make a synagogue operate. Even though we exist as a religious community, there are many things that we have to do that are similar to a profit corporation. Operating a synagogue in itself is a business. We have a President, Executive Committee with a Board of Directors, Office Staff, Professional Staff (Rabbi, Cantor, Executive Director, Educational Director and a Director of Building and Grounds), and many others who make our operations run. I am sure some of you have experienced a furnace breakdown and had to get it fixed immediately. We experienced the same thing recently. One of the air conditioner units broke down in the social hall late one Saturday. I received a call from our Director of Building and Grounds, Robert Riley, telling me about it and that he had to call someone early Sunday morning to get it fixed. We had a wedding that Sunday morning and the temperature was going to be in the 90's.

Things around the synagogue just do not happen by themselves, People make them happen. If you have not been in our building on a recent Sunday morning, you would be surprised by the activity. Temple Kol Ami has been leasing our school wing and other areas this year. They are there on the days including Sundays when the L.LF.E. students are not. We have a Sunday morning minyan and a minyan breakfast going on and we have our congregants attending meetings. This takes a lot of planning and coordination between our Executive Director, Charles Berris, and Robert Riley. Different groups have to be in different areas at different times.

At our last Board meeting we heard a report from the L.LF.E. committee regarding our fifth and sixth graders who are partnering with a Golan School in Nazareth Elite. They have already sent holiday cards. Also the sixth grader will again benefit from the Artist in Schools program and will be weaving tallitot.

I recently attended a meeting where effective leadership was discussed. I would like to share with you some of the points that were brought out. They talked about looking at problems and issues from a different perspective. Too often we look at things the same way and guess what, we are surprised when we arrive at the same results we had before. Process matters, how you do something has a big effect on what happens. For example making meeting more reflective and participatory (though not longer) can make a big difference. We must think differently in these difficult economic times, so we end up wit different results instead of the same old solutions.