Dear Temple Etz Chaim community,
I hope this message finds everyone well and healthy as the year 2022 heads into its second month. Despite the challenges of these past several weeks, the new building committee and I are proud of the ways our Temple Etz Chaim community has remained strong and together as we face these difficult and often confusing times together. Through it, we have remained focused on the tasks and opportunities of building a new Temple home, and it is in that spirit that we hope to provide some inspiration and insight as we re-energize our community for the home stretch of our Temple Building Project’s initial stages.
While it has been some time since most Temple members have heard any updates, significant progress has been made. The video linked to this email and posted to our Temple website will also give you some exciting information as we move forward. Perhaps most significantly, plans involving the plot of land and the new building itself have moved forward with the town after several months of effort and collaboration with a number of town boards and committees. This will allow us to begin the next phases of design in earnest and ideally break ground in the next several months.
Over the next several weeks, we will be providing more information to the congregation as a whole, particularly as we seek to achieve our goal of 100% participation in the giving toward the new building. On March 9 we hosted a temple-wide Q&A, at which we enlisted some congregational feedback and provided a more specific update on the steps that have been taken during this more “silent” phase of the process. Additionally, any temple member who wishes to have an individual conversation may request one by filling out this quick form; a member of our Capital Giving Committee will get in touch with you for an individual meeting.
The realities of this process are two-fold: we are closer to realizing the goal of a new Temple building than this community has ever been, but we still need to close a giving gap. In that spirit, we hope you commit to at least one of the following:
- Watch the most recent Temple Building update video
- Contact the Building Committee to set up an individual conversation
- Log into your shulcloud account and consider adding a donation or ask us how
New York Yankee legend Yogi Berra (sorry, Red Sox fans) famously said that “the hardest thing is to get started, but the really hardest thing is to finish.” In that spirit, we look forward to taking these next steps together, closing this initial phase successfully, and helping this congregation realize a 30-year dream.
Sincerely yours,
