 | Happy secular new year, Shir Ami! This year's Hanukkah started on Christmas night and ends on New Years night. The secular new year coincides with Hanukkah's brightest light. And with it, some transitions in our beloved community, and an important opportunity to begin visioning Shir Ami's brightest future. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Happy 2025, Shir Ami! I hope this new secular year is dawning bright for you and your loved ones.
This year, Hanukkah's peak light – all eight candles (plus the shamash utility candle) – coincides with New Year's night. It's a fitting launch into a secular new year filled with ... well, we can't fully know what.
It's easy to say, "Hey, let's take Hanukkah's peak light – the brightest potential actualized, the most unlikely becoming real – into the secular year ahead." It's easier said than done, yet it's our Jewish calling to try.
The year ahead is bound to have lots of ups and downs – in political life, for individual life, for community life. We're here for each other in all of them, come what may. And, the launch of 2025 offers an important opportunity to focus on community life and our shared future.
Shir Ami is the "little shul that could." Each of us is part of how and why. Our Shabbat participation is triple or more than larger communities. Our learning programs are robust and engage a growing group of lifelong learners. Our community deeply cares for each other: it's palpable to all who visit whether "live" or online.
I'm proud of what Shir Ami has achieved in her first 20 years, and excited for where we might take Shir Ami together in the future.
Where exactly? It's a question I sit with precisely now. It's a core rabbinic responsibility to ask this question, and I invite you to help answer it during the year ahead.
The timing is prescient. New Years 2025 launches Shir Ami's next leadership constellation. Let's shower Marie Orsini Rosen with love and gratitude for her deeply caring and tireless service to Shir Ami during her years as co-president. We welcome Abby Ross and Fran Pribish as co-presidents with now senior co-president Jackie Marschall, and we welcome Julie Preng as secretary to fill out the Executive Committee with David Green as treasurer.
While Shir Ami's leadership evolves, this New Years 2025 also marks the halfway point of my first rabbinic contract (July 2023 - June 2026). And to boot, this month marks the 10th anniversary of my ordination as rabbi.
All three of these converging time markers – for Shir Ami, for me personally, and for us together – combine with January's "new year resolutions" moment as an opportunity to take stock and set sights on our community's future.
Yes, we know the challenges. There's no such thing as "part time" community, but we rely on a "part-time" rabbi, a very part-time administrator, and lots of congregant volunteerism. At the same time, many congregants who participated in Shir Ami's founding era already served in leadership roles. All of us have aged 20 years in the last two decades. The pandemic, and post-pandemic life, have shifted the foundations of all synagogues, all houses of worship and community organizations across society.
Even so, Shir Ami is well positioned to be nimble and forge whatever future Shir Ami chooses for herself. We're unburdened by the costs and burdens of physical infrastructure. We're not bound by rigid denominationalism. We have no debt. We're accustomed to doing things differently, making Jewish life vibrant in homes and elsewhere in community. We have a strong foundation of history, community and care.
We're well positioned to dream. So let's dream.
What are your dreams for Shir Ami and your own Jewish life? What might excite you and your circle of friends and beloveds both inside and outside Shir Ami? What do we want our "little shul that could" to become in the year ahead? the next five years? the next 10 years? How are we willing to help power those dreams for the community we cherish?
Maybe we know already. If you do, I want to hear. Even if we don't yet fully know, maybe we have at least a first sense. If so, I want to hear that. And if perhaps we truly don't know, it's time to start figuring it out together.
In the months ahead, expect these kind of discussions to percolate through our community in different ways. And as they do, let's each do our part to cultivate a vision that can see what might become, our openness to alternate perspectives, and our resolve to lift our hopes with more than words.
That's what the fullest light of Hanukkah is really all about – the "more" our ancestors didn't think possible, the future our ancestors didn't think possible. It was. It still is.
Happy 2025, Shir Ami! I hope this new secular year is dawning bright for you and your loved ones.
This year, Hanukkah's peak light – all eight candles (plus the shamash utility candle) – coincides with New Year's night. It's a fitting launch into a secular new year filled with ... well, we can't fully know what.
It's easy to say, "Hey, let's take Hanukkah's peak light – the brightest potential actualized, the most unlikely becoming real – into the secular year ahead." It's easier said than done, yet it's our Jewish calling to try.
The year ahead is bound to have lots of ups and downs – in political life, for individual life, for community life. We're here for each other in all of them, come what may. And, the launch of 2025 offers an important opportunity to focus on community life and our shared future.
Shir Ami is the "little shul that could." Each of us is part of how and why. Our Shabbat participation is triple or more than larger communities. Our learning programs are robust and engage a growing group of lifelong learners. Our community deeply cares for each other: it's palpable to all who visit whether "live" or online.
I'm proud of what Shir Ami has achieved in her first 20 years, and excited for where we might take Shir Ami together in the future.
Where exactly? It's a question I sit with precisely now. It's a core rabbinic responsibility to ask this question, and I invite you to help answer it during the year ahead.
The timing is prescient. New Years 2025 launches Shir Ami's next leadership constellation. Let's shower Marie Orsini Rosen with love and gratitude for her deeply caring and tireless service to Shir Ami during her years as co-president. We welcome Abby Ross and Fran Pribish as co-presidents with now senior co-president Jackie Marschall, and we welcome Julie Preng as secretary to fill out the Executive Committee with David Green as treasurer.
While Shir Ami's leadership evolves, this New Years 2025 also marks the halfway point of my first rabbinic contract (July 2023 - June 2026). And to boot, this month marks the 10th anniversary of my ordination as rabbi.
All three of these converging time markers – for Shir Ami, for me personally, and for us together – combine with January's "new year resolutions" moment as an opportunity to take stock and set sights on our community's future.
Yes, we know the challenges. There's no such thing as "part time" community, but we rely on a "part-time" rabbi, a very part-time administrator, and lots of congregant volunteerism. At the same time, many congregants who participated in Shir Ami's founding era already served in leadership roles. All of us have aged 20 years in the last two decades. The pandemic, and post-pandemic life, have shifted the foundations of all synagogues, all houses of worship and community organizations across society.
Even so, Shir Ami is well positioned to be nimble and forge whatever future Shir Ami chooses for herself. We're unburdened by the costs and burdens of physical infrastructure. We're not bound by rigid denominationalism. We have no debt. We're accustomed to doing things differently, making Jewish life vibrant in homes and elsewhere in community. We have a strong foundation of history, community and care.
We're well positioned to dream. So let's dream.
What are your dreams for Shir Ami and your own Jewish life? What might excite you and your circle of friends and beloveds both inside and outside Shir Ami? What do we want our "little shul that could" to become in the year ahead? the next five years? the next 10 years? How are we willing to help power those dreams for the community we cherish?
Maybe we know already. If you do, I want to hear. Even if we don't yet fully know, maybe we have at least a first sense. If so, I want to hear that. And if perhaps we truly don't know, it's time to start figuring it out together.
In the months ahead, expect these kind of discussions to percolate through our community in different ways. And as they do, let's each do our part to cultivate a vision that can see what might become, our openness to alternate perspectives, and our resolve to lift our hopes with more than words.
That's what the fullest light of Hanukkah is really all about – the "more" our ancestors didn't think possible, the future our ancestors didn't think possible. It was. It still is.
* * *
Speaking of bright futures, already days are lengthening and the Jewish month of Tevet has begun... which means that next month is Shevat... which means that, Jewishly, it's time to start leaning forward to the start of spiritual spring.
Mark your calendars for the evening of Friday, February 7. It'll be a celebratory Shabbat mash-up with a slightly early Tu b'Shevat, Judaism's entrance into spiritual spring.
Back by popular demand, we'll enjoy a four-course "wine and cheese" Tu b'Shevat seder that basks in nature's bounty, song, meaning and social justice. Stay tuned for more light.
Mark your calendars for the evening of Friday, February 7. It'll be a celebratory Shabbat mash-up with a slightly early Tu b'Shevat, Judaism's entrance into spiritual spring.
Back by popular demand, we'll enjoy a four-course "wine and cheese" Tu b'Shevat seder that basks in nature's bounty, song, meaning and social justice. Stay tuned for more light.
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