Letter from the President – Shabbat Survey Results

Editor’s note: This message was originally emailed to the congregation on April 14th.

IMG_0397To the Shomrei community,

I wanted to send a note about the recent Shabbat Survey results and our next steps.  First a huge thank you to Sarita Eisenberg for doing the heavy lifting regarding the survey and collaborating with the Ritual Committee to develop the questions and to tally and summarize the results.

We received 93 responses across a wide range of age groups including families with preschool, elementary school and older children as well as adults across all the age ranges listed in the survey.  I am very pleased with the cross section of responses.

Overwhelmingly, respondents were comfortable with outdoor services.  We did have several respondents who would also be interested in indoor services.

The comments were extremely helpful and provided insight into the varying needs of our diverse community.  While we received several comments, there were three central themes of interest:

Interaction and Community – Significant focus on being together in person where there is participation.

Shabbat Service Experience – A mixture of thoughts about keeping traditional elements of the service but shortening given the current environment along with a desire to have communal participation.

Teaching by the Rabbi – Comments centered on various forms of teaching with comments suggesting different times for the teaching – before, during and after the service.

We are doing our first outdoor Kabbalat Shabbat this Friday April 16th; weather permitting and are working on plans to offer a myriad of options for both Kabbalat Shabbat and Saturday morning services.  We will be providing more details on our plans based on your responses in the next few weeks.  We are considering both indoor and outdoor options and will continue to live stream to enable participation by everyone who chooses to participate.  Our plans continue to evolve based on public health guidance and we will ensure that all gatherings have the appropriate safety protocols.

I look forward to sharing more details shortly and I do hope you sign up for our services this Friday night on the Shomrei lawn at 6:30 pm: www.shomrei.org/lawn

Thank you for providing your input as we navigate through this ever-changing environment.

With gratitude,
Miriam Haimes

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