This past month seems to have flown by. As I sit down again to write my next article to you, it seems as if it was just yesterday that I last wrote to you. I am not sure what I want to say this month; actually I’m never sure what I want to write about until I actually sit down with a pencil in my hand and the words just come.

A lot of activity has been going on. We have B’nai Mitzvahs almost every Saturday and have had two B’nai Mitzvahs on Saturday evenings. Now that is a good thing. It shows our commitment to Conservative Judaism by our children following in the footsteps of their elders and becoming of age in the eyes of our Torah.

Sometimes our programs are put together rather quickly. We had such an occasion for our recent Shabbat dinner. We were going to line up a speaker for the dinner on October 26th, but due to all the holiday activity it never happened. Chuck Berris with the help of Ruth Shayne put the whole dinner together in the short span of three weeks. We had over 75 participants with a great dinner catered by Mimi Markofsky (Elite Kosher Catering). We schmoozed a little and sang a little. Nobody really wanted to leave; we were having such a great time. It shows what can be done when you really want something to happen. We do need more of our congregants under the age of forty with their children to participate in these types of programming. We had all ages at the dinner, but most of the congregants were over fifty. Since I am one of those over fifty (a little older than that) I love having my contemporaries with me. I also know that our programming is for all ages -- especially a dinner.

What I would like to discuss with you now is our daily minyan. I know you have heard it all before: announcements on Shabbat, our Shabbat e-mail every week and in our monthly bulletin -- "MINYAN PEOPLE WANTED." For most of us, we hear it, see it and ignore it. I would be considered a regular minyan participant, since I was going once a week. Now that my mother has passed away recently, I go more frequently. I am not supposed to admit this since I am the president of your synagogue, but I do not consider myself a particularly religious person (please keep this information to yourself) and probably most recent B’nai Mitzvahs can read Hebrew better than I can. I was taught by my late father, who normally did not attend shul, that it is so important to be able to say kaddish at the minyan. All of us, during the cycle of life, some earlier and most later will have to face this. Will the minyan be there for you when you need it? This reminds me of a story told to me by our Rabbi. He was out with his family when a congregant approached him to complain that when he went to minyan to say kaddish for his father there was not enough congregants to have the minyan. He wanted to know how this could be -- we have over 400 families and we could not get 10 congregants to attend minyan. The Rabbi asked the man a simple question. “What day do you usually come for minyan on a regular basis?" The man replied that he did not come at all unless he a had a Yahrzeit. Question asked -- question answered. No more discussion needed. I hope my message is clear. Please come (male or female) once a month, twice a month, once a week. Make a personal commitment to yourself that you will be there for your fellow Jews so they will be there for you.

Our youth program under the leadership of Linda Kuppe is off to a wonderful start. Our 6th through 8th graders recently met with their cohorts from the other conservative synagogues for Kadima Idol. They did Karaoke, games, Mitzvah projects and won prizes. My secret spies Jenna Sperling and Shane Sperling said that they had a wonderful time.

We held our Fourth Annual Quiz Night on November 10th, under the steady hand and voice of Marc Betman. The questions were tough, but so were we. Marc tried to outsmart us with his questions, but he met his match when we gave him our answers. All kidding aside it was a great night.