I’m afraid this month’s message is a little long, but I have four things I’d like to talk about:
First, if you haven’t submitted your 2024 dues yet, please hurry! When you don’t renew your membership in Havurah by March 1st, our website automatically removes you from our email list, and you will no longer receive invitations, notifications, and newsletters. If we receive your renewal check after March 1st, you will resume receiving our messages once we have an opportunity to process your payment. If you opt not to renew, I would love to hear from you about why. I am always looking for ways to improve our Havurah, and if we fall short in some way, I want to know about it. I can’t fix something I don’t know about. I certainly understand that we can’t please everyone 100% of the time, but I’d like to come as close as we possibly can.
Second, I hope you’ll join us for our Quarterly Membership Meeting on Wednesday, March 6th at 6:30 pm. We have a special election that evening to fill the vacancy on our Leadership Team. Carol Levey stepped forward to serve in the position and has already begun working with Ricki Weintraub to plan several New Member Meet and Greet functions and has numerous wonderful ideas to engage our new Members to help them feel comfortable and make new Havurah friends. In addition, we have a wonderful program planned for you by Susan Dubin and Hart Hoffman, People of the Book: The Story of the Haggadah. It will include the fascinating story of how the Sarajevo Haggadah has survived many close calls with destruction.
Third, the RSVP deadline for our “Purim Around the World” Party is Friday, March 8th, or when we reach capacity. It is going to be a blast! We have several games to play in the courtyard, including mini golf, ring toss, and corn hole. We have small prizes for the games and bigger prizes for three featured activities: our HULA HOOP CONTEST, PURIM PURSUIT, our trivia game, and last but not least, our COSTUME CONTEST! I encourage you to attend in costume. We ask that everyone also bring a box of MACARONI AND CHEESE. It will serve as your grogger during the event, and then we will collect and donate all of the boxes to a food bank. Thank you to Alan Alterbaum for sharing that idea a long time ago. This event is a bargain at $18 per person. We’ll have delicious Chinese appetizers and, of course, hamantaschen for dessert. We will provide the water; you bring the wine! If you are wondering why we chose to change this event to a Happy Hour at Independence Center, we knew that having two events in the ballroom a month apart would be tough on people’s pocketbooks.
That brings us to the fourth thing I want to talk about: Passover. We are very excited to have our first large-scale community Seder on the first night of Passover, Monday, April 22nd. Jan and Helene, your Event Leaders, have done a brilliant job working with Yorktown Grill to keep our price down to $58 per person for Havurah Members and $65 for guests. We will give Havurah Members and their guests priority registration through March 18th. After that, we will open to the rest of the SCA community if space allows it. The deadline to RSVP will be Monday, April 1st. We will have a dynamic Seder led by Havurah’s own Rabbi Danny Gottlieb and Cantorial Soloist and Jewish Educator Ricki Weintraub (P.S.-yes, they are a couple for those who haven’t met them yet). Due to the nature of a Seder, this meal will be served in various courses throughout the evening, not a buffet like we do for other occasions. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about anything.
If you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read this.