As the year comes to a close, I am filled with a sense of gratitude for the blessing of being able to serve as your senior rabbi.  Temple Beth Zion is a gem of a synagogue, with a long and proud history, a world class sanctuary and most importantly a large and diverse community of warm, intelligent and talented people.  It is truly and honor to serve G-d and to build Judaism with you at TBZ and I look forward to many wonderful years together.

We live in a challenging time for the organized Jewish world in the United States.  Synagogues around the country are facing declining membership and therefore also revenue, and in Western New York this trend has been amplified by the shrinking demographics of the Jewish population.  Yet in spite of these trends, here at Temple Beth Zion we remain strong, have much to celebrate and in the next few years will have a unique opportunity to shape not only the fabric of Jewish life in our local community but also contribute to a new national model.

I am currently fine tuning an ambitious seven-year plan that if successful will catapult us into the next era of meaningful Jewish life.  I look forward to sharing the complete strategic plan with you during the High Holy Days, but in the meantime would like to highlight just a few elements.  The most important part is that we need to shift our frame from seeing the synagogue as something that we are supposed to support to understanding that the synagogue exists in order to support our spiritual lives.  Of course, when that happens, we may find that we are more interested in contributing to the holy work of our community!  We will shift our attention to put a greater emphasis on personal relationships (both those between us, and those we have with G-d).  We will harness new technology to its fullest capacity not for its own sake, but to help connect us in a spiritual network and to provide easy to access and meaningful Jewish content.  We will streamline our committee structures to empower you and make it easier for you to get involved in any activity that supports our Temple mission.  We hope to increase our commitment to social justice through ongoing projects, including, possibly, building and running a food pantry for seniors near the Weinberg campus.  And because people are our greatest resource, I am going to seek out-of-budget funding for three part time mid-level positions to support these and other new initiatives.

It will not be easy to accomplish everything we need to do, especially because this year we have suffered many losses; among those who passed were many of the greatest pillars of our congregation.  We grieve with all of our mourning families and pray that the souls of their departed loved ones abide under G-d's eternal and protective presence.  We are diminished by their passing, and not just in numbers; it now falls to us to carry forward their legacy. 

Thankfully, and in many ways, our congregation is already doing just that.  Despite our decline in strength and numbers, we have witnessed significant growth in meaningful Jewish activity.  Worship services are filled with new spirit and energy and attendance has almost doubled.  Our commitment to tikkun olam and caring for each other has intensified dramatically through Social Action and Caring Community initiatives.  Our education programs have expanded and we have enthusiastic students at every age, both children and adult.  We are strengthening the bonds between us with our affinity groups and organizations like Kesher and Sisterhood.  Our understanding of the needs of our community is deepening because of the work of our Congregational Planning committee.  The list goes on and on.

Of course, we would not be able to accomplish any of this without the many people who give of their time, energy and talent.  I would especially like to acknowledge those who have taken leadership roles during the past year.  We have been truly blessed with a balanced board of trustees, who have been diligent in making sure that our synagogue remains fiscally healthy and spiritually focused: Deny Adelman (co-chair of Golf tournament, communications chair and technology "tzar"), Steven Binder (brotherhood president), Warren Clark (ritual committee chair and incoming senior vice president), Jack Karet (financial development co-chair), Sarah Mador (TBaZy president), Sharon Meer (Sisterhood co-president), Robyn Meyer (lifelong learning chair), Melissa Milch-Klein (Senior Rabbi welcome events co-chair), Randy Odza (personnel committee chair), Kenneth Polk (marketing task force chair and incoming secretary) and Amy Schaefer (membership chair and author of our congregational survey); Larry Rubin (immediate past president and financial planning), Cindy Gradl (treasurer, financial planning chair, congregational planning co-chair), Kenneth Friedman (Secretary), David Goldberg (vice-president, early childhood taskforce chair, golf tournament co-chair), Ken Rogers (incoming president, Kol Nidre campaign co-chair and leader of our congregational vision development) and Howard Rosenhoch (president).  As you can see, the board has been actively engaged in every aspect of our congregational life, and I could not ask for better partners on our senior leadership team.  I especially want to thank Jack Karet, Sarah Mador and Larry Rubin for their service as they rotate off of the board, and to welcome our newest board members Adina Garfinkel, miriam treger honig (social action co-chair and incoming vice president) and Steve Yonaty. 

With your indulgence, I also want to thank David Desmon and Wendee Lorbeer for chairing the senior rabbi search committee and along with the rest of the committee I want to thank them for choosing me!  (I really am grateful to be back home among you).  Wendee also co-chaired our remarkable series of 19 senior rabbi welcome events over the past summer.  Meanwhile, David continues to serve as chair of my rabbinic transition committee and also, along with Susan Adelman and Orrin Tobbe, organized my installation ceremony in November in which we hosted Rabbis Larry Hoffman and Sue Levi Elwell.  As if that weren't enough, David and Orrin also co-chaired our legacy society event, which we will celebrate next week.  Ellen Goldstein served as co-chair of our Social Action committee which has successfully taken on one of the most ambitious social action agendas I have seen.  I also want to highlight Sharon Winer for helping to organize our involvement with Family Promise and our Mitzvah Day co-chairs, Michele Lash and Sue Goldberg.  Adult education was "through the roof" this year with an incredibly wide range of well-attended offerings thanks to the leadership of Laurie Criden and Karen Wiseman.  Elyse Brown and Rachel Reiner looked after our early childhood education needs, Lisa Blair and Melissa Milch-Klein led our religious school efforts, and Steve Heffter and Lynn Moyer co-chaired our youth sub-committee.  Our cultural affairs department expanded under Suzie Solender and Fred Silver, and our Centerland service for Rosh HaShanah exceeded all expectations due to the hard work of Elaine Higgins, Jen Rosen and Betsy Doyle Levy.  Leslie Garfinkel looked after the needs of our members as chair of the Caring Community while Stu Lehrman looked after our future as co-chair of the congregational planning committee.  David Brock ably led our governance committee and our financial well-being was sustained by Alan & Barbara Mollot, and Kathy Rogers who co-chaired our incredibly successful Kol Nidre campaign and Ann Cohen who handled our financial audit process. 

If not for each and every one of these amazing people, along with everyone who has volunteered their skill and time and/or offered their financial support, our synagogue would not be as strong and as vibrant as it is today.  We are all in your debt and this is most especially true when we consider Howard Rosenhoch, who completes his term of office as President of TBZ today.  Howard has been an outstanding partner for me, has demonstrated unflagging support for our wonderful congregation, a quiet even-tempered leadership style, a willingness to take risk when merited and caution when not, and combined this all with a prodigious intellect and a yearning to learn and grow.  I am deeply grateful to Howard for this past year and confident that he has laid the groundwork for a collective future of continued success.  I am also excited to welcome Ken Rogers to his new office as TBZ President.  Ken is a visionary and gifted leader and the perfect person to assume the mantle of our leadership.  Thank you in advance for everything that you are about to achieve Ken!

I have reserved our professional team for last, because these are the people with whom I work most closely.  If you ever wondered, here are the most important people on our payroll: Julie and Ed Feldman (executive assistant and accountant – respectively), Ann Marie Randall (office assistant), Anna Steinberg (education assistant & receptionist), Ellen Weintraub (receptionist), and especially for me, the incomparable Tina Taylor (clergy assistant).  Make no mistake, they are our true dream team and nothing would ever happen at TBZ but for them along with our dedicated maintenance team: R.J. Dehmia (Delaware supervisor), Nick Gill (Broder supervisor) David Maldonado and Jeff DiNicola.

Amy Dizomba served as our youth advisor for the first part of the year, and she was followed by Hannah Donner.  Both of these young dynamos went beyond the call of duty to support our youth community which has clearly grown in strength over the past year. 

Last but not least, our senior professional team continues to work long hours in support of every aspect of our congregation's well-being – and with great success!  Susan Schwartz, our director of life-long learning is one of the most talented educators anywhere.  A national educational leader of the Reform Movement, Susan consistently demonstrates the highest caliber of professionalism, pedagogic insight, organizational expertise and passion for Judaism.  Put simply, Susan is absolutely incredible and we are so fortunate that she is part of our senior team.  Cantorial Intern Penny Myers brings extraordinary people skills, a warm, inviting and deeply spiritual bimah presence and a sense of dedication to both our B'nei Mitzvah training program and our cultural events programs.  As things look now, Penny is on track to complete her training program and become a fully invested cantor sometime in the next year.  I can't wait to celebrate this wonderful accomplishment with our entire TBZ community!  Rabbi Laurie Green has shared her excellent teaching skills with us throughout the year, along with her seemingly endless reservoir of compassion.  She has had an especially powerful impact in the areas of Social Action and Caring Community, and has helped many individual congregants through some of the most trying experiences of their lives.  All three of these wonderful women have been better partners than I could have hoped for and I am grateful to them for their talent, their sense of commitment, their skill, their knowledge, their sense of humor and their friendship. 

As for Mark Criden, he is the person who makes sure we can do what we do.  I think it quite probable that Mark is the single most talented synagogue executive director in the country.  He is passionately in love with our TBZ community and with our Jewish tradition, and every day of every week he gives and he gives of himself to ensure our success.  Mark is our temple sommelier, our financial guru, our organizational wizard and the watchman who looks after us in the night. 

I offer my heartfelt gratitude to every single one of you and to everyone who has chosen to make TBZ your spiritual home in Western New York.  You are the reason why we are so blessed and so fortunate.  While it is true that we may face greater challenges in the next few years than we have seen before, I am confident that together we will have the strength and the will to turn them into opportunities and to build a bright future for Reform Judaism in America.  So with a grateful and humble heart, I offer this wonderful blessing that I once learned from my Senior Rabbi, Harry Rosenfeld: "May this year to come be the best year we have ever had, and the very worst of all of those still yet to come."

As Rabbi Pokras reminds us each week, Shabbat is our holiest day of the year, and the miracle of it is that we get to experience Shabbat every week.  Erev Shabbat, October 28, took on an extra special aura.  On this occasion, we celebrated Rabbi Pokras's formal installation as our new Senior Rabbi.  Rabbis Larry Hoffman and Sue Levi Elwell were guests on the pulpit and gave stirring sermons, and Rabbi Pokras and the entire TBZ congregation committed to each other to partner in the work of making TBZ the best congregation it can possibly be.  Orrin Tobbe, Cindy Komm and Susan Adelman co-chaired the installation festivities.  Thanks to the three of you for doing such an outstanding job.

Social Action is so much part of the fabric of TBZ life, and Tikkun Olam, repairing the world, is at the heart of TBZ Social Action.  This year TBZ partnered with Family Promise, an organization that provides temporary shelter for families who, for a variety of reasons, find themselves homeless.  TBZ congregants volunteer to provide support services, such as cooking, serving, childcare and companionship, to families who are temporarily housed at Crossroads Lutheran Church on Main Street in Snyder.  Sharon Winer, with the support of Rabbi Laurie Green and Social Action Committee Co-Chairs miriam treger honig and Ellen Goldstein, have lead this effort.  This is a mitzvah that is ongoing, and there will be many more opportunities to volunteer in this worthwhile effort.

This has been a busy and productive year for your Board of Trustees.  The Board embarked in the fall on an in depth study of the information developed during the preceding year by the Congregational Planning Committee under the leadership of Past President Stu Lehrman and Board Treasurer Cindy Gradl.  Using that congregational feedback, the Board, under the stewardship of First Vice President Ken Rogers, worked over the course of several months to develop a new Statement of TBZ's Vision, Mission and Core Values.  In a few minutes, Ken will tell you about the process that has lead us to this point, and ask the Congregation to vote to adopt this new mission statement.

Our Congregational Planning efforts continue.  Late last month a survey was circulated to all of our members by direct e-mail, and invitations to fill out the survey have appeared in our weekly e-mail newsletters.  Later this month, we will be sending a regular mailing with instructions on how to access the survey.  Thanks to Board member and Membership Committee Chair, Amy Schaefer, who took the lead in preparing the survey, and will help us analyze the results.  This is a good opportunity for each of us to comment on and evaluate all aspects TBZ's operations.  Your feedback will be invaluable going forward.  We've already had a better than expected response from our congregants.  If you haven't filled out and submitted the survey yet, please do so.

Speaking of going forward, we have much on our plate in the coming weeks, months and year.  Next week is our Legacy Shabbat, when we pause to celebrate and thank those congregants who have joined the Rabbi Joseph and Janice Fink Legacy Society by making a future financial commitment to TBZ in their will or otherwise.  Past Presidents David Desmon and Orrin Tobbe chair the Legacy Society and we thank them for their efforts.

Last year's Golf Tournament and Wine Tour was the best ever.  This year, with Vice President David Goldberg and Board Member Deny Adelman once again chairing the festivities, we will gather at the Niagara Falls Country Club in Lewiston on Monday August 13 for a round of golf or a flight of wine, as your tastes and preferences dictate.  And don't forget the delicious hors d'oeuvres, cocktails and dinner to follow.  We are off to a great start with sponsorships already besting last year's terrific numbers.  Please join us for a fun filled day benefiting TBZ's education programs.

TBZ's website is the portal to letting folks know who we are, what's going on here and what our values are.  While chock of information, our web site is sorely in need of updating, from aesthetic as well as navigability standpoints.  That is why we are so lucky to have Deny Adelman chairing a task force to update our website.  Under Deny's leadership, requests for proposals have been sent out to qualified vendors and we are in the process of evaluating them to make sure we get the best bang for the buck.  Thanks, Deny, for your leadership in this most important undertaking.

Another initiative that has just been launched is "Radical Hospitality".  When my family and I joined TBZ back in the 1990's, we were so impressed by the way in which we were welcomed by clergy, congregants and staff alike.  I think we still do a good job of welcoming our congregants and our visitors, but we can do better.  Laurie Criden and Linda Snitzer are leading the effort to train a corps of volunteers whose mission it is to make sure all those who enter our synagogue feel warmly embraced.   Thanks Laurie and Linda, and all of your volunteers.  These are efforts that are sure to bear fruit in the future.

Friends, TBZ is not without its financial challenges, which our Treasurer, Cindy Gradl, will detail for you in a moment.  These are challenges, however, that can be overcome, especially with an infusion of new members.  In the next few weeks, and under the leadership of Trustees Ken Polk who chairs our Marketing Committee and Amy Schaefer who chairs Membership, we are launching a campaign to attract new members.  We are inviting unaffiliated former members, and unaffiliated folks who receive Yahrtzeit reminders from us, to come try us out.  We are also asking you, our current members, to tell us of your unaffiliated friends who may be interested in our unique offerings.  As an incentive, we are offering you $100 off your dues this year for every new paid membership you refer.  Watch your mailboxes as we roll out this membership campaign.  Most importantly, tell your friends.  We feel confident that, with the new energy and spirit permeating TBZ, and your help, TBZ will once again be on the road to growth.

Let's start with the largest challenge - our census.  We believe that the spiritual leadership provided by our new Senior Rabbi will lead to a renaissance at Temple Beth Zion, and, in many ways, this has already begun.  But as we embark on this voyage with Rabbi Pokras, we sail into two strong headwinds, namely dwindling membership numbers nationally and Western New York's Jewish demographics. In the past dozen years, we've gone from 1200 members to 900. 

Our second great challenge is our dwindling preschool enrollment.  Despite a yeoman's effort from our Director of Lifelong Learning, Susan Schwartz, PALS faces competition from many sources, including the growth of Universal Pre-K.  A task force addressing our early childhood program's difficulties is under way.

These challenges, and others, make it increasingly difficult to makes ends meet, and these difficulties mean that we must tap into our reserves to balance our budget.  This past year's budget required a draw of $50,000, as will next year's. Right now, our available reserves stand at about $200,000.  You can do the math and see that we don't have too many years to enhance our revenues so that they match our expenses and stop depleting reserves.

Most congregations in these parts would be thrilled to have $200,000 in unrestricted reserves on top of healthy endowments.  And while congregations and other non-profit institutions locally and nationally have had to scramble to slash expenses in the face of plummeting revenues, we have gradually, and thoughtfully, reduced our spending over the past several years to deal with our shrinking population.  We have been cautious in our budgeting and spending practices in every conceivable way.  In fact, we spend only about 2/3 what similarly sized congregations spend. 

But we must be ever mindful that both our signature Delaware building and the Broder Center remain saddled with elderly building systems, and repairs run tens of thousands of dollars each year.  This year, we spent almost $20,000 on capital improvements not even including the parking lot here at Delaware, a $100,000 repair job that cost us just $28,000 because of the generosity of the Ron Benderson family.

Despite these heavy burdens, though, this year produced plenty of good news.  First, there's our dues collections, which are ahead of last year's for the first time since 2007, despite a reduced membership.  While total collections are about what they were twelve years ago, at least the decline has finally been halted. 

Second, we exceeded all of our fund-raising goals for this year.  Thanks to the great efforts of chairs Ken & Kathy Rogers and Alan & Barbara Mollot, Kol Nidre topped our budget by 12%. Stained Glass Ad sales were up 14%. Our Golf Tournament, under the inspired leadership of Deny Adelman and David Goldberg, was up an astonishing 20%.  And next Friday night, we celebrate those who have pledged legacy gifts to our Synagogue through the Rabbi Joseph and Janice Fink Legacy Society, chaired so effectively by David Desmon and Orrin Tobbe. 

Third, we enjoyed a huge windfall.  Decades ago, Mrs. Bertha Cofeld gave us a small interest in a gas field in Texas and this year, for the first time, the gift produced $45,000 in profits for us.  What's more, the field should continue producing profits, although at a reduced level, for several more years. 

This brings me to next year's budget you received tonight, unanimously recommended by the Financial Planning Committee and Board of Trustees. Many difficult decisions were made to keep our dues increase to only 4%. The budget includes assumptions, which we believe will reasonably represent the financial condition of the Temple during the coming year.  Actual performance during the year will probably vary somewhat from the budget as presented. 

As I mentioned, it's again a deficit budget, calling for another $13,000 draw from our reserves to fund our operations $17,000 in loan payments on our chiller and $20,000 for other capital needs. It is a necessary budget, reflecting critical investments in a new dynamic clergy team, but it is also a budget that highlights our need to plan for our future.  You will be hearing much from Rabbi Pokras in the coming months about his vision for our future, a vision that depends on a strong financial base as we transform our synagogue to meet the challenges of the 21^st century. 

Can we accomplish this?  Our history says yes.  Even though this report is sobering, we must never forget that history of Temple Beth Zion is a story of challenges met and overcome, a story of a congregation which has always pulled together and produced results.  This, after all, is the congregation that, fifty years ago, came together after a devastating fire leveled its sacred house of worship and built one of the great synagogues of our times.  There are still great resources in our community and in each of our households that can be inspired to support great enterprises, which is what we believe Rabbi Pokras will be leading here.