From the Presidents Desk

Thank you Marty Seefer for your little talk with me.

Marty & I had a little talk a week or two ago about the proposal I wanted to present to the board about non-Jews on the board. This Idea IS NOT MINE . This idea comes from the 2005 Biennial in Houston by Rabbi Yaffe, the President of the URJ. At the Biennial when I heard this I thought how odd this would be, but after thinking about it for a year & talking to some of the active non-Jews in our congregation I realized this might be the right thing to do. Rabbi Yaffe feels if these non-Jews were able to work in the “system” we could talk to them about converting to Judaism in a more direct way.

Rabbi Yaffe’s initiative about going out & looking for people to convert was very upsetting to me at first blush. But, as I said, after one year of thinking about it & praying about it I realized that YOU the congregation should have YOUR voices heard before the board talked about it.

Over the past few weeks, I have heard from many of you both directly & indirectly on the proposal. I had no idea what an uproar this would produce. It is my belief from the amount of negative feedback I have had that the congregation is more opposed then in favor of the idea. With this in mind, at this point in time I will not reschedule the open forum on this topic and will not bring it up to the board for debate.

Steven Sternberg