Happy second edition of The Shofar! I will always be grateful to Cathy and the rest of the crew for not just agreeing to get this going but really making it a substantial newsletter full of content, creativity, and the many voices from our community. I hope you’ve been enjoying it, and (it wouldn’t be a message from the President without this part) we’re always happy to hear from you if you want to contribute in any way.
The Board has remained busy. In the next edition I will update you on the amazing work being done by the Committee on Committees, who have been reaching out to committee leaders to ensure that we’re doing what we can to support each and every one of the groups that helps to make this place thrive. For today, though, I want to tell you a bit about our strategic planning board retreat with our consultants (Angel and Miriam) from Tiny Windows.
On Sunday, May 3, the Board, Rabbi Chai, and Ken gathered for four hours with Angel and Miriam for an intensive kick-off to the strategic planning process. While four hours in a conference room on a Sunday might not sound thrilling, trust me when I say it was. We talked about what a strategic plan, which is a roadmap for our future, should cover; the many ideas that came up that were not appropriate for a strategic plan were not discarded but were put in a “parking lot,” which in Berkeley is called a bike lot. The Board will try separately to tackle those issues as appropriate. We did some creative thinking, trying to transport ourselves to 2031, to think about what we want the shul to look like at that point, and then we worked through what we should stop, start, and continue in order to get there. We ended the day feeling inspired for the rest of the work.
The rest of the work will include many of you. Angel and Miriam are going to be interviewing some of you and doing some focus groups as well. And then of course I will be sharing our progress along the way, whether in this column, at Kiddush (as you can see I love this topic), or more formally when we gather for the annual meeting in November.
I’m looking forward to seeing many of you in the woods at the retreat, and as always, feel free to reach out to me with, as my kids say, whatever.