Kol Nidre Appeal 2003 One Rosh Hashanah morning, the Rabbi ...

we take the concept of caring community and apply it to the wider community with our
large number of social action projects.
We also saw ourselves as a learning community. The adults in our community set a
wonderful example for our children taking on the challenge of learning how to read torah,
chant a haftorah, give divrei torah, or learn special holiday nusach to lead shacharit or
psukey d’zimra on the High Holidays. I am thrilled at the number of adults who have
decided to join the rabbi’s adult bar/bat mitzvah class. It is not too late to join if you have
not already done so. In many ways our image of the perfect synagogue fit what we have
at Kol Shalom. One part of the vision though was that of a beautiful facility.
Creating that part of our vision is going to be our biggest challenge. We are fortunate to
be able to use the JCC and have the luxury of time to carefully find the right location and
plan our future. As we grow though, we will begin to find that the JCC does not meet our
needs. We are also constrained in some of the programming that we would like to do
while we are at the JCC. Our own building would give us more flexibility. Further, our
school would also benefit from having its own location. The Board of Directors
appointed a Building Committee under the able leadership of Dan Simpkins. In order to
gather data to determine what our options are they have been looking at churches,
schools, other types of buildings, and land in the Bethesda area. What they have found is
that there is not very much available and what is available is very expensive. The process
of finding a permanent location is not going to be an easy one. At the same time they are
looking at options for interim solutions, perhaps a place that we could rent that would be
ours. Again, there are not a lot of options and what is available is expensive. At this
point, we have no idea how long it will take us to find either a suitable interim option or a
permanent location. What is clear is that this is not going to be easy or inexpensive.
In an effort to give the committee the ability to act if a miracle occurred and something
perfect presented itself, we notified you of an October 21st congregational meeting. We
were overly optimistic in what we could accomplish. I must ask forgiveness from the
people who would have had to make presentations at that meeting. I did not clear the