Mike Lopez’s Rosh Hashanah Speech, on behalf of the Board

I happen to have the fortune (or misfortune) of being employed by a member of the tribe. My boss, Jeff, and I are opposite kinds of Jews. I am liberal and religious, he is small C conservative and probably can’t remember the last time he set foot in a shul. He actively avoids the Jewish community. 

Jeff once told me that what he could remember of high holidays services from his youth was that he understood none of it, except the one part that was done in English – the part when they asked for money. 

As a board member with a tenure over a decade and service leader, I would be mortified if I ever learned that this was someone’s impression of the High Holidays at Temple Shalom. I hope that illustrates the gravity with which I step onto the bimah to ask for your support. We’re working hard to build and maintain a community here, and while the need for that community has grown so much in the past two years, so have the challenges in maintaining it. 

Though I could paint you a very detailed picture of those challenges and Patrick, our treasurer has provided me with all the data I need to draw up enough charts and spreadsheets and projections to cross your eyes, let’s take this discussion in a different direction. Not the what of your support, but the why. 

Why should you support temple Shalom (other than to provide me with a vehicle by which to force people to listen to me speak)?

I could remind you that you need to be a member here for your son to have his Bar Mitzvah here. While true, that leaves thirteen years from bris to bar Mitzvah and then ten or twenty or, god forbid, thirty years from bar Mitzvah to wedding during which you don’t need us, so that’s not a very good argument. 

I could tell that Temple Shalom is a great place to meet people, and that I met my best friend and countless others here. I could tell you that I met the love of my life because of a friend from Temple Shalom. But you don’t have to be a member to come and meet people at Temple Shalom, so that’s not it, either. 

I could tell you the story of a young mother who moved here and whose husband had to be hospitalized and how members of the Temple helped her in her time of need. I could tell you that being a member means that other temple members would help you out if you were in a similar crisis. But there are a lot of kind people here, and they would do that for someone in the community, regardless of whether they were a member.

If the point of membership isn’t to get all of those things and high holidays tickets, then what is it?

The point, my friends, is not to get those things for yourself, but to secure them for the community. Don’t be a member this year because your daughter will have her bat Mitzvah in February. Be a member every year because you want there to be a place in Waterloo for daughters to have bat mitzvahs.

Don’t join so you can make friends. Join because Jews need a place to be friends. 

Don’t join just to get the support of our community, join to help ensure that there is a supportive community for all who need it. 

That is what your membership does here. And by having helped to build and maintain this community, you can take pride in your contribution, you can take solace that it is here for all who need it and you can take pleasure in all of our enjoyment of what we have wrought.