Our next guest, Suzy Zemel, is the Sisterhood president at Congregation Kneseth Israel. She spends many volunteer hours making CKI a better place and knows the value of community. These words she spoke on the second day of Rosh Hashanah.
Almost 28 years ago, I was extremely unenthused about attending my first Sisterhood function. However, I felt obligated to attend. That and Marc’s nudging, I thought, I’ll go but I AM NOT joining. At the end of this function I joined Sisterhood. Why? The women were friendly. I realized my check would show my support of Sisterhood. I joined Sisterhood not expecting to become active, and certainly with no intention of becoming Sisterhood president. Later I started volunteering. One of my favorite memories was helping set tables for a holiday event. My youngest toddled around the social hall while I worked with someone with grown children. I enjoyed meeting her and working together. So here are a few more points about our community: people assist by volunteering, aiding financially, and demonstrate support by becoming members, and attending various functions. I continued attending functions, enjoying the company of these women, the activities, and working together. So another point about community is we work for the common good of our synagogue and people.
Our own CKI Family supports, respects, and accepts that we come to CKI with different needs and desires. Community is about the day-to-day living, as well as life cycle events. We are there through illnesses and the loss of loved ones. We share happiness at each other’s simchas, joyous occasions, and celebrate with great joy, pride and happiness. This occurs because friendships have bloomed into beautiful bouquets. So another aspect to community is sharing happiness and laughter as well as support of each other during hard times. Community includes establishing relationships along with developing roots to this organizations.
So where does this leave us? Clearly community involves people. For me, CKI is a place I cherish and value. If you haven’t felt that you are plant of this community, it isn’t too late to start developing your roots. Try something new here at CKI. Share your ideas for our betterment. For those of you that are firmly set within this community, thank you for working together for the betterment of this wonderful place we fondly call CKI.