Kol Nidrei Address by Chairman of the Board Mark First
Mark First, Chairman of the Board
September 24, 2023 ~ 10 Tishrei 5784
Address to the 133rd Annual Meeting
Arthur Penn, Chairman of the Board
At the end of a family service the rabbi asked if the children had any questions. Little David quickly raised his hand.
“Yes, David, what question would you like to ask me?”
“Actually I have a bunch of questions to ask you, Rabbi. Is it true that the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea?”
“Yes, David.”
“And the children of Israel also received Torah at Mount Sinai?”
“Yes, David, that's also true.”
“And the children of Israel also defeated the Philistines and built the Temple?”
“Again you are correct, David.”
“So my last question, Rabbi, is this: what were the grown-ups doing all this time?”
As I near the end of my second year as Chairman, it gives me great pleasure to share with you an update about all the good work that even the grown-ups have been up to.
For starters, the other officers – Paul Corwin, Natalie Barth, Marc Becker, Andrea Baumann Lustig, Jeanie Rosensaft, Mel Schweitzer, and Heidi Silverstone – and I continue to feel blessed to serve such a vibrant, thriving and warm community. We are grateful to be partners with outstanding clergy and professionals, and we feel rewarded that Park Avenue Synagogue members are constantly deepening and broadening their engagement with Judaism and with the synagogue community.
In the past year, we focused our efforts on services and space. One of our goals has been to make our services even more engaging. Our lively musical Friday night services offer a meaningful way to break from the work week and welcome Shabbat. We will be continuing these inclusive, family-friendly services all through the summer and hope you will make Kabbalat Shabbat part of your summer routine.
In September we launched TGIS: Thank God It’s Shabbat! – a new spin on Shabbat morning. Once a month for an hour before services, the community participates in activities from yoga to Torah study to discussions of Israeli politics – all of which offer different gateways to experiencing Shabbat. The services that follow are somewhat shorter than on other weeks and offer opportunities for congregants to participate as Torah readers. TGIS will pick up again next fall after the holidays and will continue once a month.
We are pleased that the spirit of experimentation inspired by our TGIS services has resulted in innovations in music, Torah discussion and prayer. Many of those innovations have made their way into our regular Shabbat morning services and helped those services become even more engaging. We encourage you to join us for worship experiences every Shabbat morning.
Our High Holiday services last fall set records for attendance and engaged prayer at Park Avenue Synagogue. The addition of a third service, held on Fifth Avenue at 90th street, allowed us to offer all of our members a seat on the High Holidays for the first time in decades. Members who worshiped there found a beautiful, comfortable space where families could sit together. The Fifth Avenue space also boasts natural light and an Ark that faces east!
The response was overwhelmingly positive, so what was an experiment last year, this year becomes a tradition. We are thrilled to be able to offer all of our members a seat on the High Holidays again this fall. With three comfortable venues and an excellent, deep clergy team, we are sure that wherever members sit, they will enjoy a fulfilling and uplifting experience.
Whether you come to Park Avenue Synagogue to worship, to study, to socialize, or to bring your children to school – you’ve already heard how busy we like to keep the children – we are bursting at the seams. At Kol Nidrei last year I outlined the vision for a new lifelong learning center on 89th Street and a revitalized 87th Street building that together will create a center for prayer, learning, and community.
I am pleased to report that we have taken significant strides forward. In December, we closed on the purchase of the 89th Street building, currently the Trevor Lower School. We will take possession in September and expect to begin construction in the late fall. Together with the architectural firm Murphy Burnham & Buttrick and Judaica art consultant Amy Reichert, we are formulating detailed plans for the two buildings. To facilitate this exciting work, we have quietly continued our once-in-a-generation capital campaign, A Synagogue in Action: Building the Future. Gradually we are engaging all parts of our congregation, with people from every part of the community coming together to turn vision into reality.
Speaking of every part of the community, we once again raised a record amount in our annual Kol Nidrei Appeal. We ask our leaders, many of you in this room, to make Park Avenue Synagogue one of their most important philanthropies, and interestingly this year we had the broadest participation in our history. We raised $2.7 million from over 1000 families – 1,056 families to be exact. If done right, our Kol Nidrei appeal and capital campaign can help build community by bringing everyone together to focus on a common goal.
This year’s Gala theme was “a community for a lifetime.” And what a success March 11 was, as we came together to celebrate with warmth and fun the fact that Park Avenue Synagogue is one of the only institutions in our lives with which we can have a relationship that can last a lifetime, and if we're lucky, generations.
To honor members at different points in their relationship with our community we have started a new tradition called Milestone Membership Anniversaries. Just a couple weeks ago on May 8, we honored both new members and 5-year members at Friday night Kabbalat Shabbat. We'll be doing this every spring going forward. In the fall every year, we'll be honoring the 18, 36 and 54-year members. That Milestone Membership Anniversary celebration will take place on Friday evening, October 30.
We are nothing without the incredible people who make Park Avenue Synagogue the vital community that it is. We are so pleased that we’ve been able to deepen and expand our clergy and professional staff this year. Having three rabbis has allowed for growth in our programming for teens, as well as college and post-college young adults. We have been fortunate to bring in outstanding individuals to fill vacant positions in the educational team and the financial team, and we have added staff positions dedicated to development and communications. Our goal remains to attract exceptional staff and to provide them with a long-term, fulfilling career opportunity.
Rabbis Cosgrove, Zuckerman, Witkovsky, Cantors Schwartz and Lissek, you are the clergy dream team. The return of the “three Rabbi model” has been a huge success with Rabbi Cosgrove's continuing inspirational vision, Rabbi Zuckerman’s highly successful return to the pulpit, and Rabbi Witkovsky’s elevation to the pulpit.
Cantor Schwartz, thank you for your continuing inspirational musical vision. We seem to reach new musical heights every Shabbat! Cantor Lissek, we remain blessed by your continued warm presence and beautiful voice. Rabbi Cosgrove and Cantor Schwartz, we know that managing budgets and teams of people may not have been taught at rabbinical or cantorial school. We appreciate all your efforts and will support your continuing efforts, to be admired leaders today and in the years to come. We thank all of our clergy for all that you do for our community.
In education, this was Rabbi Charlie Savenor’s and Pamela Schwartz’s rookie year at Park Avenue Synagogue. Thank you, Charlie and Pamela, for adapting so well and adding your many strengths to our community. We look forward to many years of partnership with you. It was also the first year for Eliana Light, in music education; thank you. For the upcoming year, we are so excited that Jen Stern Granowitz will be the new Director of the Congregational School. Jen joined us four years ago upon receiving a Masters in Jewish Education from JTS and has done a fantastic job leading the Upper Division of the Congregational School. We are also pleased that Sarah Brokman and Pamela Slifer will continue their excellent work helping to lead our Congregational School. As always, thanks to Aliza Cinamon and Marga Hirsch for your continuing leadership over many years and for the multiple ways you each add to education in our community.
We are excited that Malka Lowenstein will be joining us as the next Director of Young Family Education. Malka has extensive early childhood and Jewish education experience including at the Berlin Cosmopolitan School, where she has been Director of the Early Years programs, and the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue Preschool.
In the High School and in youth engagement, we are thrilled that Hallie Chandler will be our new fulltime Director of Youth Programming and Engagement. Hallie is currently Director of Youth Engagement at Temple Emunah in Lexington, Massachusetts. Hallie is full of ideas and enthusiasm on how to further build our teen and informal youth programming efforts.
We say goodbye and thank you to Rabbi Eve Rudin for her service to our community in building the Congregational School over the last four years. We also say good bye to Matt Check, the founder of our highly successful young family program. Matt's focus and innovations over the last five years have created a world affectionately known as the "World of Matt Check." We wish Matt all the best in the next stage of his career.
With all the growth in education, programming, and member engagement over the last few years, our organization had become imbalanced. The investment in the best rabbis, cantors, educators, and programming has resulted in 600 adult learners, a doubling of enrollment in the Congregational School, and a quadrupling in young family programs in the last five years. As a result, we've needed to invest in the administrative side of the team to handle this significantly increased member engagement with outstanding customer service and crisp execution. Additionally, similar to the way we have terrific depth and bench in our clergy and educational teams, the Officers and I believe our institution will be stronger – and it's prudent for us, as fiduciaries – for having depth and bench in the vital administrative and finance side of our synagogue.
As we focus on serving our members and making customer service a priority, we thank our administrative team and Beryl Chernov, our Executive Director. Beryl, this is your Bar Mitzvah year at Park Avenue Synagogue; you’ve been with us for 13 years. Mazal tov, Beryl!
In membership, Laura Yamner, and in facilities, John Davis, thank you for your continued support keeping things running smoothly. Our team was bolstered this year with Geet Engel coming in as Director of Finance, with Ira Krawitz in communications, and Katy Boyask in development.
We are thrilled to announce that Liz Offenbach will be our new Assistant Executive Director, as we continue to fill out our administrative team. Liz's excellent work running our programming area over the last four years puts her in a terrific position to help our administrative area reach new heights in execution and membership service. Congrats, Liz!
With regard to our lay leadership, what can I say? Our Officers, my partners, give up big pieces of their daily lives for our community. Paul, Natalie, Marc, Andrea, Jeanie, Mel and Heidi, you are the best. Take tomorrow off!
We encourage members to own their synagogue experience. Thank you to those who do: our Board, Advisory Council, Arms, those who staff Parent Associations, committees, task forces, and volunteer for other jobs. You are our lifeblood and we are thrilled to honor you tonight!
Speaking of honors, I’m pleased to announce our Simhat Torah honorees this year. These honors are given to longstanding members who have done much for our community over a long period of time. Our Kallat B’reishit will be Shereen Rutman and our Hatan Torah will be Mark First. Mazal tov to Mark and Shereen. Simhat Torah is on Tuesday, October 6.
In all that we do – and above all else – our focus remains on the Park Avenue Synagogue culture of one-on-one connection, caring, kindness and warmth that has been our hallmark for so long. We strive to provide a warm and welcoming entry to our community and to meet people where they are. You’ll be hearing more in the fall about an initiative around “relational Judaism,” as our lay leadership and staff redouble efforts towards building a community based on long-term relationships, social interaction, sharing experiences, and face-to-face connection. It is through these relationships that we continue to grow as individuals and as a community.
Young David expressed concern to his rabbi that all the heavy lifting was on the children, but the truth we know so well is that the relationship we have with our synagogue – with this community, with each other – is one that remains and grows with us as we move through all the many phases of life. It is a bond we must nurture and a relationship that I am proud to help support. The other officers and I look forward to continuing to serve as all of us––lay leaders, clergy, staff, and members together – strive to enhance Park Avenue Synagogue’s unique position in our lives as a kehillah kedoshah, a sacred community.