As I write this, we are just days away from our annual dinner and I look forward to seeing all of you there and celebrating together what makes Rinat special. Given that our dinner will be held on the same night as the Oscars, and given that there will be no band to play me off if I run too long, I would like to thank some of the people who helped make it such a beautiful affair. Thank you to Andrea Fields and her committees for overseeing every detail.
Dinner Committee: Maureen Ash, Yocheved Deutsch, Yael Bailey, Bina Faber, Mali Baer and Gitit Ness
Books of Tribute: Shelia Last, Debbie Adler, Yael Davidovics and Divsha Tollinsky
Special Dedications: Sara Prager and Shari Mann
Formatting and Printing: David Olivestone
Everything else and then some – Adina and Rackel
Note: For those who complained that our dinner was scheduled on the same night as the Oscars, I can tell you that the Rinat dinner was scheduled on the community calendar first, and that the Oscars committee had agreed to check with us– they apologize for the double booking.
As we get past Purim and start preparing for Pesach, I would like to ask for volunteers to help us prepare for our move as well. I am not bold enough to compare it to Yetziat Mitzraim, but we will be moving from the current building into the new sanctuary and ask that you join us on Sundays in March to help pack – see the weekly briefs or contact Joey Greenberg for specific start times, but know that Chesed Hours and food will be available.
In the spirit of Purim, I leave you with one more thought and request. One of the underlying themes of Purim is the concept of V’Nahafoch Hu – the idea that things are essentially turned upside down, and we sometimes feel like Alice after she went through the Looking Glass. On Feb. 26th, the day before Purim, we woke up to find over one foot of snow on the ground. When I was younger, a late season snow was a great thing as it inevitable led to extra days off from school and with it, extra time for sledding and snowball fights with my brother (I usually won). While I still appreciate the snow, and have started to take my children skiing, this snow has been very inconvenient to say the least as we work towards our goal of moving in to the new sanctuary on Shabbat HaGadol. My request to our members is as follows: I know that we are in the time of year where we add Mashiv HaRuach u’Morid HaGeshem - but I ask our members to focus just a little bit less on the geshem/sheleg part and more on the Mashiv part – returning us to our regularly scheduled weather.