Vintage

On Sunday March 7th at 9:00 am we will be conducting a Vision to Action Workshop, the last major milestone of the Strategic Planning Committee’s work with the congregation.  Bob Leventhal, our expert consultant from The Alban Institute, provided to us through a grant from UJA, will be facilitating the workshop and has provided guidance throughout the strategic planning process.  I have attended many of his workshops in the past few years and I expect you will find him engaging and full of helpful ideas.   After this meeting a narrative will be composed describing our plan to enrich Jewish living at the Jewish Community Center of Harrison.   For those of you who attend the workshop, which I hope will be all of you, expect to roll up your sleeves and get to work brainstorming on six different task forces – worship, leadership development, family engagement, mentoring, warm and welcoming, and communications.  The goal is to share your ideas, further develop some of them and create a plan and budget to implement those that fulfill the vision.  

Based on the survey and parlor meetings, the strategic planning committee developed a check list for deciding which ideas to implement.  Here’s what we call our guiding principles:

• The religious preference for the JCCH is Conservative
• We need to be warm and welcoming
• Services need to be accessible and/or familiar
• Congregants expect to connect with Rabbi
• Children are the gateway to parents and grandparents
• Life cycle events should be used as opportunities to create greater connections
• We need to continue to provide a quality Jewish religious education
• We need to direct our resources to those who want to be involved
• The Conservative Jewish tenets of greatest interest are ethics for living in the modern world and the importance of modern Israel. 

At the conclusion of this workshop, task forces may meet again, as they decide is necessary.  The narrative will be developed by Florence Kraut and Jonathan Goldstick, co-chairs of the strategic planning committee.  The narrative will describe our game plan for the coming years and we expect it to tell a compelling story.  No doubt, significant funds will be needed to support this plan and a fundraising campaign will be initiated over the summer.  The last time we launched a full congregational campaign was ten years ago when we built a new school wing and small sanctuary.  This time our campaign will be about enriching our synagogue life.  Last time it was about bricks and mortar; this time it will be about ideas and programming.  Please join us.