Good evening and Gut Yuntuf.

On behalf of Foundation Board and its new Executive Director, Janet Schwab, I want to bring you up to date on the progress made by the Temple Foundation during the past year and ask you to pledge a contribution to the Foundation for the coming year or from your estate in the future.

First I must tell you, I’m standing here at the bema, looking at myself and quite frankly, laughing at the fact that it is me who is addressing our wonderful congregation of approximately 350 families.

You see, it was fifty years ago, almost to the day when I completed my Bar Mitzvah and ran – not walked - from the Orthodox Synagogue in Philadelphia, promising never to return to that shul or any other.

Although I was an all “A” student in school, when required to attend an Orthodox yeshiva four days a week, I rebelled. For three years, each afternoon and every Sunday I went to Cobbs Creek Park when my parents thought I was in class, until one day I heard the two scariest words a 12 year old brother ever heard from his older sister…, “He knows!”

Because my Grandfather was a “macher,” I was given special treatment and spent the next six months studying every afternoon with the Cantor and was successfully Bar Mitzvah’d.

I also remember of that synagogue that part way through the two endless days of Rosh Hashanah service, the president would exhort the members to publicly pledge their annual contribution for the coming year in what seemed like an unseemly, competitive auction.

So, fifty years later, you’ll hear no public auctioning of a front row seat from me this evening. But I do want to tell you how I came to this point of being the individual to ask you to consider supporting the long-term mission of the Foundation.

Circumstances brought me into a conversion class for those wishing to become Jews. I attended those twelve, hour-long classes and concluded “That’s it?” I learned more than that after two abbreviated years of elementary yeshiva before my happy, exile to Cobbs Creek Park.

Telling some good friends of this while living in Chicago, I had the good fortune of being invited to join the class of Dawn Schuman, a teacher of Jewish history. This wonderful teacher became known throughout the country. Today, there’s the Dawn Schuman Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago that offers classes and meets with hundreds of interested students who seek a further understanding of their heritage.

Dawn was a true tzaddic, a righteous person and teacher of our social, political and geographical Jewish history which is so tied to world history. A teacher of how our ancestors – ancient and within recent memory - were an integral part of every generation, just as we Jews are critical to current day’s world events.

The more I knew, the more I wanted to know. And from that grew my understanding of my own relation to Judaism. I saw myself as part of a multi-thousand year continuum. I still don’t know if we chose God or He… or She chose us. I remember hearing Dawn state that after years of study, one doesn’t have better answers; it’s just that you ask better questions, but she made me understand my place in the continuum.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote: “In this hour we, the living, are the people of Israel. The tasks, begun by our ancestors and prophets and continued by their descendants, are now entrusted to us. We are either the last Jews or those who will hand over the entire past to generations to come. We will either forfeit or enrich the legacy of ages.”
On behalf of the TBS Foundation Board, we hope that you’ll consider how you might pass on the legacy of those who came before you, continuing to build a vibrant and vital congregation for tomorrow. An endowment gift, which continues into posterity, enables our children’s children to learn the meaning of a positive Jewish life, full of pride in our sacred traditions.

There are many different ways to provide sustenance or resources to the Temple Beth Shalom Foundation – a long-term giving and investing branch of our Temple.

By speaking with members of the TBS Foundation Board or consulting your financial advisor, a plan can be designed that will provide the best advantages for you, while creating significant benefits for our Temple. The recent Pension Protection Act offers major tax advantages for donations made by the end of 2007, after which the law sunsets.

From Rabbi Heschel to the Pension Protection Act…, boy, talk about a shift from the profound to the prosaic.

But it’s necessary, because ideals and legacies need the wherewithal to live and survive.

The TBS Foundation has set an endowment goal of $3 million. Although the amount sounds ambitious, it could be reached if every TBS family committed to sharing the burden. We currently have almost $1 million in the endowment. $2 million more can be achieved if everyone were to make a contribution. Your support would be gratefully appreciated no matter what you decide to contribute. A bequest in your will of $10,000 would go a long way to helping the Foundation meet its goal. On the other hand, there are so many tax advantages to providing support during your lifetime that too should be investigated. With $3 million invested, the TBS Foundation could distribute a significant level of support to the Temple each year, in perpetuity.

With the level of annual income we could distribute from a $3 million endowment, we could accomplish Rabbi Morrow’s and Rabbi Schwab’s dream of being the center for the Institute of Jewish Learning of the Southwest. We need more brilliant, charismatic, professional teachers, like Dawn Schuman, to instill in our children and adults, young and old alike, the knowledge of the very history that allows us to be sitting here today, despite all the odds that would suggest otherwise. Additionally, such an annual income would allow us the ability to welcome all Santa Fe Jews to our congregation whether or not they have the means to pay annual dues.

All our TBS Foundation Board members and their families have or will be making a pledge to contribute to the Foundation. Please join us in our efforts to help continue the legacy that draws us and our families together during these High Holidays.

This Rosh Hashanah, I wish you and your family a healthy and wonderful New Year and I hope your New Year’s plans will include a pledge to the TBS Foundation.