President’s Message
February, 2012
“Cheers”
“You want to go where everybody knows your name,” the unforgettable lyric from TV’s “Cheers,” popped into my head as I started writing this column. Who wouldn’t want to be a “regular” in a place where “everybody knows your name,” where your absence is worrisome; where your mood – good or bad – elicits inquiries, delicate or otherwise?
The regulars are a corps of current or former committee and Board members, shul parents and volunteers in the kitchen, the office, the pre-school, the ushering crew for the Holidays. The regulars are the first in line to say, “I’ll be there, and I’ll bring a friend,” when I pushed reservations for last month’s Consuelo Luz Concert and Dinner. They are the first to tell me to my face when things are going right, and when I dropped the ball. We all owe them a huge debt of gratitude for staying on as members of Congregation B’nai Israel through the tough times, but the regulars now need to do a bit more: they need show another side of themselves – the nurturing side, especially when it comes to dealing with single men and women and young couples with or without children.
We can expect more young families to attend a Friday night service or two to get a “feel” for the congregation. They will decide to join or not, gauged by the number and quality of post-service conversations they have with the regulars. The more they are approached and listened to, the greater the chance they will return with membership forms in hand. By the same token, younger member families need to be present at services to show newcomers that their demographic is alive and well – and full of news to share with one another. Shul seekers are searching for their mirror image. If they do not find it here, they go elsewhere.
Some of the shul regulars are not “of a certain age,” but rather newly-minted pre-schoolers. They have become regulars (of a sort) in their own right because their parents make the supreme effort to wake, dress, feed, strap them into the car seat and haul them off to shul almost every Shabbos morning. Everyone “knows their name” and these kids love being in shul, especially when they carry their mini-Torahs, sing Adon Alom, and make a brucha over the wine and challah with the rest of the congregation; they feel they belong, and the seed we have planted in them will resolutely thrive and grow, turning them into proud Jews and “regulars” in the future.
While it is the responsibility of parents, the Rabbi and me to set the bar high for on-the-bimah-behavior, it is the ‘mitzvah’ of other regulars to make young parents feel welcomed into the congregational family by striking up a conversation with them at the Kiddush. A thriving shul community starts with good conversation over a bagel and lox.
As new members become accustomed to our shul and begin to be a part of its fabric, it now becomes their job to take on the jobs that past generations have performed. Simply being a “member in good standing” is not enough for a shul such as ours where “volunteer” is the byword. Volunteers have a way of becoming regulars. Ask me; I know.
Harvey Buchalter