Taking Up the Mantle

As the calendar flips from May 31 to June 1, I am charged with taking up the mantle of Board President. It is both a challenge and an honour.

We are saying goodbye and thank you, to three amazing people, who are stepping down from the board after many years of service to Solel. Roz Allen (Past President), Andrea Galambos (membership) and Emma Weizenbluth (2nd VP). Each of them has contributed in many different ways to our community and I look forward to continuing to see them at Solel services and events.

At the same time, we are saying welcome to four new board members. Dan Moscowitz (1st VP), Horace Brown (member at large), Sam Feuer (member at large) and Ruth McCrae (member at large). Each one will bring new skills, ideas and energy to our board discussions and activities.

Additionally, a special congratulations to Zach Harper who is moving from member at large to 2nd VP (even as he heads off to Rabbinic School). A truly dedicated Solelnik who is involved in many different aspects of synagogue life.

Continuing Board Members include John Lewsen (Past President), Joel Brown (Treasurer), Miriam Schoeman (Secretary), Noah Farber (member at large), Dave Gordon (member at large) and Mike van Thyn (member at large). A group of individuals who will continue to add strength and value to all that we do at Solel.

At the Board Installation Service, we shared in the leading of prayers, the passing of the Torah from board member to board member and committed to serve Solel to the best of our ability. I look forward to the coming year as we collectively explore new ways in which to ensure that Solel continues to be an open, welcoming and safe space for our members.

Please find below the thoughts that I shared during the installation Service as we set off on this journey together to ensure, as I said during my speech, that Solel doesn’t just survive, but thrives.

---

I have to confess that after only two years on the board I feel a bit of ‘how did I get here so fast’ response to the fact that I am stepping into the shoes of the Board President.

Especially when you consider that I am following in the footsteps of many amazing individuals, several of whom are here with us tonight. It is an illustrious club made up of people who have been responsible for steering our community through a variety of challenges. Both of our two most recent Past Presidents can speak to the difficulty of dealing with CoVid (Roz Allen) and October 7, 2023 (John Lewsen). At the same time, they both shared in the joy of our Solel@50 Celebration and the completion of Solel’s most successful fundraising campaign ever. Which just goes to show that even in the darkest of tunnels, there is light.

Here at Solel we have an amazing group of members who care deeply about each other and our community as a whole.

As a board, our role is to try to create an environment in which we can all not just survive but thrive.

We are blessed with an amazing staff – Rabbi Pollack, Arliene Botnick, Carol van Thyn and Nilon Ross.

We also have many many volunteers who contribute to the well-being of our community. Those who assist with services, teach our Bet Sefer students, sit on one or more of our many committees, or work at Bingo halls, each responsible for a different aspect of synagogue life.

We are also a community of diversity, some of our members were born Jewish, some came to Judaism later in life, some are Jewish adjacent partners. Each one adds something unique and special to our community.

Over the past year the Board has focused on six key priorities, some of which addressed capital projects and fundraising; community outreach and building membership.

On Monday evening, we will be hosting a Board Meeting to be attended by both outgoing and incoming Board Members. It will be a time to look at the successes of the past year and to identify where more work still needs to be done. A time to identify where we need to focus our energies for the next year.

For me, key issues are leadership development and succession planning along with growing our membership.

Given the speed with which I moved up the ranks, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend a couple of programs this year that are put on by the URJ. One is the Scheidt Seminar (funded by the Scheidt family) which provides an opportunity for incoming and current presidents to come together over three days to attend many different workshops, along with praying, studying and, of course, eating together. It is an opportunity to meet with and create a network of peers, many of whom are also dealing with some of the same issues that we face. URJ also puts on an online boot camp once a year, which was attended in 2025 by Rabbi Pollack, John and me – which also provides insight and useful information on many different topics.

Under the heading of leadership development and succession planning, members of the nominating committee told me that when they went knocking on doors to discuss board membership with some people, they said no because they didn’t feel they had the necessary skills to contribute to the board in a meaningful manner. We are looking at ways in which we can share the information gained during both the Scheidt Seminar and the Bootcamp in order to strengthen our existing board and to grow our pool of potential board members, thereby establishing a clear path of succession which will last for several years to come.

Membership growth is another area that is a key concern for me and in that area, I will have the assistance of both our new 1st VP Dan Moscowitz and our 2nd VP Zach Harper, each of whom has various skills in the area of communications and bringing people together.

We are also looking to engage with our wider community, something that I believe has become even more critical since October 7, 2023. To that end, we are planning to re-establish our bring your neighbour service and we are working with the Peel interfaith community and Pathway to see if we can find ways to assist other faith communities to grow the amount of affordable housing in Peel Region through gentle intensification on their properties.

We need to look after our own community and we need to be a part of the wider community and I look forward to working with the Board and congregation on a variety of initiatives in order to promote these values.

Filed under: President's Message

« Read more articles

---