Halfway through 2024

2024 is almost half over with June already here! This past year, CSI tried something new! As co-presidents, we had a very successful year with excellent programming, a wonderful religious school, and meaningful services for Shabbat and the various holidays. We both are looking forward to an exciting year and welcome suggestions for programming, fundraising and volunteers for everything CSI! Our annual meeting is coming up and will be available both in person and on zoom. Please plan to join in and participate as needed to make sure we have a quorum to vote in our new Board of Governors. As you are aware by now, the Finance Committee and Board of Governors instituted a small dues increase across the board. By making dues increases in small regular amounts, the Board feels it will be less burdensome and easier for people to budget for when they plan their expenses.

Last year, we reinstituted our annual pre-Kol Nidre dinner and had several Shabbat dinners as well as holiday meals. We hope these events will be well attended and plan to try some new ways to make reservations and pay for those functions that have a fee. This should make planning and executing these functions easier and more cost effective. In an effort to make these functions a zero-cost item, we will be exploring options to either cut costs or raise funds to help defray expenses. We need volunteers to help with any of these meals and programming. Please let us both know if you are willing to help. As we do not have a full-time custodian, your assistance would be greatly appreciated as well as volunteers to be responsible for Kiddush lunches. Please contact either of us with ideas or suggestions on how to make communal meals easier on all of us.

We both want to mention some of our accomplishments this past year. After a very dedicated effort, we were able to draft, vote on and approve a new constitution. This constitution adopted several major changes which many of you may not have realized. Two main changes include provisions that non-Jewish Spouses are voting members and can serve on the board for almost all positions except ritual chair and president. In addition, non-Jewish spouses can be buried in the CSI cemetery. The redrafting of the constitution, which had not been updated since the 1990s, was a major undertaking and could not have been accomplished without the hard work of Gary Simpson and his committee. We both want to thank Gary and the committee for their hard work bringing our
constitution more in line with the ideals of both the Conservation movement and our congregation. Yasha Koach.

We want to thank everyone who has helped make this year fly by! We know we will have a great year with amazing programming and services for the upcoming year. Hope all of you have a great month! See all of you in shul!

Shalom!
Shelley and Jan