Dear Friends,
    Temple Beth El is a place of connections, a community with so much to offer each and every one of us. It is where we seek comfort and where we celebrate, where we seek sanctuary and where we seek connection to others. It is where we come to live out much of our Jewish lives, where we share the good times and mourn the difficult.  It is where we learn and do, share and grow. It is a place to give back to our community in ways big and small.
Our community touches our people and is strengthened by them every day:
   We offer comfort in the form of soothing words of a friend or rabbi, a friendly phone call, or just a warm welcome to someone new to our community.  We make a difference in people's lives, simply by being there for them, with them, to help them through a difficult time.
We offer our support of Israel by educating our community, sending our children there, and visiting ourselves.
 Volunteers regularly drive elders in our community to services and programs they could not otherwise attend, or act as a friendly visitor to the homebound.  Others volunteer in the library and in the school, or turn on the coffee pot for the daily morning minyan.
 We gather as friends to study, to pray, share a Shabbat meal, a cup of coffee or a story, and to offer words of support.
 This is what a sacred community is all about. This is Temple Beth El. 
 As we enter our final year as your president, it is with profound thanks, love and appreciation to all who have made my job such a pleasure. I hope in the coming year we will continue to reach more people, more deeply and thereby strengthen the wonderful sacred community that is Temple Beth El.