How often has someone asked, “What’s New?” and you’ve replied, “Not Much”? It’s true that a lot of our daily routines are, well, routine. Yet, this month I could not honestly answer, “What’s new?” with “Not much”. Rather, it would be the opposite, perhaps I would reply, “A whole lot of something”.

By now, most of you have heard of the plan for Kol Ami and Neshamah to combine into one congregation at the end of this month. This is by no means a small undertaking. While Kol Ami and Neshamah are both Reform congregations based in Thornhill, we each had a religious school. Each congregation had its own prayer books, textbooks, and locations; each congregation had its own tunes to the same prayers, its own social agenda and, of course, its own Rabbi.

While the decision to keep Rabbi Streiffer as the leader of the combined congregation was an easy one, all the other factors and issues have required extensive discussions, Zoom meetings, e-mails and conference calls. Many of these have been successfully resolved, such as the decision to keep both schools open for the upcoming 2018-19 school year. Other decisions, such as how to combine the schools for 2019-20, will require a lot more discussion.

The other major news item that you have heard about for the last several months is our move to the Voluntary Community Support (VCS) model instead of fixed membership dues amounts. As part of the transition to the VCS model, we have been explaining the true cost of running our congregation, and we are asking our members to pay this cost to the best of their abilities. VCS also eliminates barriers to joining the congregation and increases membership engagement.

These two projects can best be described as “a whole lot of something” new, but neither is official yet. Both items must be voted on at our upcoming Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Monday, June 11 at 7:30 pm. Please make sure to attend, or if you are unavailable, please make sure to submit a signed voting proxy.

I look forward to seeing many of you there and working with you on the successful completion of both projects.

B’shalom,

Elliot