The last month was another busy and productive one in the life of our congregation:

The Needs Assessment Task Force members met several times during the last 4 weeks and continue to work diligently on developing a survey for our Congregation. I participated in one of their meetings and was very impressed with how deliberate they were in developing questions and phrasing their wording. I could not have imagined that survey design would be such a complex and time consuming project. The Task Force members are getting close to completing the questionnaire design which will be followed by testing and finally, distribution to the members of the Congregation. I want to express my deepest gratitude to the members of the Needs Assessment Task Force (Leah Elenzweig - chair, Amanda Ferguson, Van Gates, Jack Grundfest, Bill Jacobson, Doris and Mark Krain, Eugene Krupitsky) for their truly incredible contribution to the future of our Temple.

I hope that every member of this Congregation will participate in the survey. It is exceedingly important, as we will use the results of the survey to identify the needs of our congregants. Following the analysis of the survey results, the Board will develop a series of short and long term strategic plans.

On November 24th, our Congregation hosted members from six congregations (Christ the King Catholic, St. James United Methodist, Second Presbyterian, Unitarian Universalist, Westover Hills Presbyterian and the Islamic Center of Little Rock) for an Interfaith Thanksgiving Service. It was a wonderful service, led by seven clergy members and followed by a great reception in our Social Hall. We rekindled our friendship with members of the greater Little Rock community and were able to showcase our beautiful building. I would like to thank Rabbi Levy for organizing this event.

For those of you who may have not noticed, our website is getting a makeover. I expect that many of you are familiar with the new calendar feature, but now you can also register and pay for many events on line using credit cards in addition to regular payment methods. I would like to thank members of the website development (Dan Berleant, Mike Gealt, Rebecca Glover, Doris Krain, Andy Marx and Sheri Simon) for their creativity and hard work in making our website look and function as some of the best ones around. I would encourage all of you to visit the redesigned website at www.bnai-israel.us.

For the last several months, a new program at the Temple has become a very popular feature of our Temple life: Schmoozerama, a potluck dinner and movie evening. The credit for the development of this series goes to Amos Lassen, who not only created this popular program, but also donated a collection of films to the Temple.

The first night of Chanukah started with a “Big Bang” event - a wonderfully uplifting All Music Shabbat which demonstrated again how talented and dedicated our musicians are (BIG thank you to David and Steve Bauman, Hannah and Rachel Blackburn-Parish, Mattie Bogoslavsky, Jana Cohen, James Moses, Russ Parish). It made me think of how incredibly lucky we are for having such a talented and committed group of volunteers who spend an extraordinary amount of time in preparation for such events!

Two nights later we had our annual Chanukah party – a truly amazing event, attended by almost 200 congregants and their families. It was joyful and fun filled, great for children and adults alike, and reconnected many of our members. It was great to see so many congregants gathered in our Social Hall and Tenenbaum Center. This wonderful party was organized by many volunteers: Circy Gastman, Dina Ifrah, Amos Lassen, Natalie Moon, Jennifer Ronnel, Tracie Spivey, Sherry Weinberg, & Stephanie Wheeler. Food preparation was organized by Rita Fagan with the help of Jan Alman, Lexi Elenzweig, Jacob & Scot Goldsholl, Jack & Kathy Grundfest, Jim Pfeifer, Dan Revere and Jack Miller. They all deserve a big THANK YOU for spending countless hours preparing for this event.

Finally, I would like to highlight the activity of the Chesed Community Committee, which organized our Annual Chanukah Luncheon for our seniors. I would like to thank the Vogel Caring & Sharing Fund for sponsoring this wonderful event. It was well attended and uniformly praised by all attendees. It was organized by Bonnie Jacobson and Janet Korenblat.

As the number of congregants needing special services grows, we have secured the services of a transportation company run by John Sommers. It is great to watch John take care of our seniors with a lot of care and sympathy. John also became a regular in assisting at other various functions at the Temple. Thank you, John, for all that you do!

As you can see, a great deal of effort is being expended by Temple volunteers. It feels that there is new energy and commitment taking place and I hope you will find it as fulfilling as I do and would want to become a part of this process!