Letter from the President
My Dear Shalom Bayit community WOW has it been a busy few months at
the Shul!
It is wonderful to have our Rabbi back in town. We had an enriching holiday
season and our services were well attended. I was exhausted by the end of
the high holidays and all the work preparing for them. Rabbi Jay has been
on the radio since his return to town with a very enlightening program about
the holidays. I encourage everybody to tune into KPOV radio 88.9 or
KPOV.org to listen to Jay’s shows, Alice will let you know when the next
one will be aired. We are hopeful that these shows will increase the
exposure of JCCO in our community. Has anybody seen Jay on Facebook?
No? That is because he isn’t on it yet, we need to encourage him to join us.
Lots going on to update the membership about.
After being an “idea” for 15 years we have actually created a new
community garden area. It is located on the South side of the property near
the playground. It is a large parcel of about 2,000 square feet, the plan is to
have about a quarter of it as a corn patch. The remaining area will be
available to our community to rent approximately 100 square foot individual
garden plots. The soil has been amended with compost and manure so it
will be in great shape to plant in the spring. Automatic irrigation is provided
by the Shul. This is a great opportunity for you to grow organic food close
to home, this benefits us all in so many ways. We will also have visiting
gardening instructors to assist us in learning how to garden in Central
Oregon. Please contact Ben if you would like a garden plot we have a
limited number of them so sign up soon.
We have completed a number of energy saving and maintenance projects
at the Shul including painting by Howard Huskey. We have had fantastic
help from many volunteers ranging in age from 8 to “senior citizens”. The
response from the community to the improved appearance and operation of
our facilities has been great. We now have a wonderful pre school
operating at the Shul as well, this is bringing in income that defrays our
operating expenses.
As part of our improvements we have reorganized the library. We realized
that we needed additional space and shelving in order to accommodate our
growing collection. Our GREAT Librarian Pat Givens has come up with a
plan that the board has approved. We will convert the larger classroom into
an adult library area. This will provide more space for the children’s book
area in the school section of the building. These improvements will require
the acquisition of 4 new bookcases. We are seeking donations of $230 for
each bookcase. So if you can BUY A BOOKCASE you may have a name of
your choice memorialized on it. We are grateful for the support that our
membership provides.
We have been challenged in fulfilling our plans for developing a youth
program. First our youth leader had to withdraw as a result of other
demands on his time, football. We then received a proposal from TBT to
join with them in a youth group that they were developing. Unfortunately the
TBT program experienced the same problem when they lost their leader.
Neither program has yet located a new leader, so we are back to square
one. We really need a leader for this program that can attract young people
from the entire Jewish community of Central Oregon, any ideas?
We are still in need of a photographer for our events. We would like to have
more music at our services so if anybody knows of musicians looking for a
special gig please let me know. We also need a person that would be
willing to organize special events and programs.
I look forward to seeing all of you soon.
With Love, Ben