Annual Report North Suburban Synagogue Beth El 2018-2019
Friends, It has been an honor to serve as President of NSS Beth El these past two years. This evening, as we celebrate last year’s accomplishments, we have so much to be thankful for. Below are just a few of the year’s highlights: • More than 660 community members attended the Gala to honor Rabbi Vernon & Bryna Kurtz, as well as, Beth El’s 70th and Israel’s 70th anniversaries • To date, the Vision 70 Campaign has raised over $5.8 million, surpassing all of our goals • As a result of the Capital gifts to the Campaign, we installed a handicapped accessible ramp in the Field Family Sanctuary, and added a hearing loop to the sanctuary and Paset Lounge. This spring, we will be adding a hearing loop to the Blumberg Social Hall, and are in the process of completely renovating the Zell South Wing, the Cohen Religious School/ Steinberg Preschool’s bathrooms and the Gan Sylvia playground • We appointed Rabbi Michael Schwab as our new Senior Rabbi and welcomed Rabbi Alex Freedman to our Beth El family I hope you will take a moment to look through the “Year in Review” insert to see just how much has been accomplished this year. Tonight, we will also inaugurate the Vernon H. Kurtz Senior Rabbinic Chair. As a result of the extraordinary efforts of our Campaign Chairs, Karen Kesner, Stuart Hochwert and Larry Pachter, and the entire Campaign Committee, we are so proud to have surpassed our goal of raising $1.8 million to establish this fund. Increasing our Endowment Fund has been a dream of so many, and the income generated from the fund will allow us to nurture and improve our staff, programs and services in perpetuity. As we come together for this, our 71st Annual Meeting, I’d like to personally thank the outgoing 2018-2019 Board and welcome the incoming 2019-2020 slate. How fitting it is that celebrate together on this particular day, which is also Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day! May we continue to go from strength to strength. Richard Zelin
Vision 70 Campaign as of 4/30/2019 Total Raised: $5,818,113
Vision
Campaign
$2,570,663 $1,921,340
$693,280
Rabbi Vernon H. Kurtz Senior Rabbinic Chair Fund
Capital Gifts & Physical Accessibility & Inclusion
$452,500
Family Engagement Fund and Center
Other Endowments
$180,360 Other Funds
Campaign Chair: Karen Kesner Campaign Co-Chairs: Stuart Hochwert
Larry Pachter
Honorary Chairs: Harvey Barnett Cynthia Kaplan
Lawrence Field Andrea Saffir
Past Presidents with Rabbi Vernon Kurtz
Campaign Committee: Steve Abrams Gerald Blumberg Andrew Brown Carey Cooper Arnold Harris Josh Herz Marilyn Hirsch Andrew Hochberg Larry Hochberg Barbara Hochwert Pearl Kagan Michael Levin Victor Levitan Richard Rabinowitz Lisa Rosenkranz Lynn Schrayer William Silverstein Morton Steinberg Richard Zelin
Rabbi Vernon and Bryna Kurtz
Advisor: Skip Schrayer
FINANCIAL INFORMATION YEAR ENDING 6/30/2018 Total Budget $4.6 Million INCOME BREAKDOWN 41% Programs/Education
41% Dues
12% Facility
4% Endowment
40% Education Programs/Services
14% Fundraising 48% Clergy/Administration
Board of Trustees with Rabbi Vernon Kurtz
DEPARTMENT REPORTS YEAR IN REVIEW Paul S. & Sylvia Steinberg Preschool: 1. The Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Preschool has 145 preschool children and will have over 75 children for camp this summer. 2. We are thrilled to announce that we will be building a new outdoor classroom this summer. 3. Some new additions to our program this year include a Hanukkah Light Room and a Hebrew emergent program featuring an Israeli classroom experience. 4. This year we were fortunate enough to have a children’s developmental therapist on staff to support children and their families. She has been a wonderful resource. 5. We are pleased to be able to send 3 teachers and myself to the Paradigm Project Conference which will be in Chicago May 5-7.
Jack and Mildred Cohen Religious School: 1. Our Junior Congregation continues to be a success. Every Shabbat Beth El families and their children in 2nd thru 6th grade gather together to pray, socialize and learn. Children as young as second grade are encouraged to read Torah starting with the chanting of one verse and building on. 2. Hannah Ayzman’s project, 36 Kinder, is one of the selected displays of the My Family Story 2019 International Competition in Memory of Manuel Hirsch Grosskopf. Hannah has a chance to join a special group of 50 kids worldwide, and take part in the celebrations held at Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot at Tel Aviv on Sunday, June 16th, as well as an activity at a partner Israeli school on Monday, June 17th, 2019. At the event, the participants’ displays will be unveiled at the worldwide exhibition where they will be on view to the thousands of people visiting the museum. 3. For a second consecutive year we are planning to offer free tuition for our Second to None program. This special offer commemorates the lives of Lois & Howard Hirschfield through the Jack and Mildred Cohen Religious School, in the interest of introducing religious education at an early age. This year’s Bet class (second grade) included 27 children; one of our largest classes, and a 37% increase over the previous year. 4. The Cohen Religious School Committee ran a Challah Bake program for the third consecutive year. The program brought together 160 people from all walks of the congregation; some families brought three generations to the kneading table.
Informal Education and Family Programming: 1. Our Gertrude Lederman Family Continuing Education Program had 395 individual adult learners take classes with us last year. We are so excited about our new directions including On Demand and online learning. 2. We are thrilled that the Board of Directors is supporting the creation of a new Young Family Programming committee who will oversee enriching the lives of our families with young children and supporting them on their Jewish journey.
3. In the last year we’ve had record numbers at our Jeans and Jammies Friday night Shabbat celebrations, with attendance ranging between 175-225 people. 4. We’ve added several new initiatives for families including enhanced holiday experiences like our Hanukkah Party and Purim Party and Shabbat dinners for families with young children. 5. We were chosen to participate in a special partnership with Camp Ramah in Wisconsin and Ramah Day Camp where we received special funding to have a program associate, Annie Glasser, work with our congregation to enhance learning and engagement in our Cohen Religious School, Youth Community, and family programming.
The Joseph & May Gray Cultural & Learning Center: 1. The Maxwell Abbell Library and Pinsof Children’s Reading Room includes over 20,000 items and is one of the largest collections of Judaica in the State of Illinois. Each year, our Steinberg Pre-School and Cohen Religious School students and teachers check out over 1500 books. 2. The Gray Cultural & Learning Center, the Hazak Senior Life Committee, and the Beth El Sisterhood partnered together to host three “Afternoon @ the Movies” programs this year along with an “Afternoon of Trivia,” with 60-75 people in attendance at each event. Additionally, the special Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas “Evening @ the Movies” event on December 23, 2018, featuring a kosher Chinese dinner buffet, was sold-out with over 150 people! 3. Between 24-50 women (and men!) participate in the Sisterhood Torah Fund Book Club each month with over 60 people attending the special event with award-winning and best-selling author James Carroll in February 2019. 4. The 2019 Used Book Sale raised over $1900 for our Libraries - almost twice the amount raised last year and the highest total in recent history! 35 volunteers helped to set-up, staff, and pack up the sale this year. 90 boxes of books were donated after the sale to Open Books, a Chicago-based nonprofit social venture, as well as Bernie’s Book Bank, the new Holocaust Research Center at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, NY, and the iCenter for Israel Education. 5. The Rissman Kol Ami Collection hosted 6 exhibits this year: Amy Reichert: Judaica, Zamenhof: The Creator of the International Language Esperanto (in partnership with the Esperanto Society of Chicago and the Polish Ministry of Culture), Of the Body, In the Body: Torah and Art (an Artists Beit Midrash Exhibition), Consider This My Prayer: Lilach Schrag, People, Book, Land: The 3,500 Year Journey of the Jewish People to the Holy Land (a travelling exhibit from the Simon Wiesenthal Center) along with the 6th Grade/Vav “My Family Story” projects, and Israel Impressions: Photography by Paul Margolis.
Youth Department: 1. Sisterhood College Connection sent out three rounds of boxes this year to college students – for fall, Hannukah and Passover. 2. For more than a dozen years BEANS USY has won the award at the International USY Convention for collecting the most Tikun Olam charity funds of all of the USY chapters across the country. The convention at the end of 2018 was no exception. NSS Beth El walked away with the award once again! 3. The Youth Department received a $10,000 donation for new audio/visual equipment for the Horwitz Hoffman Youth Lounge. 4. Launched a new teen Shabbat study group called “Teen Nosh & Drash”, scheduled to meet monthly. 5. Created innovative holiday programming such as Sushi in the Sukkah and Maccabeans USY group that travels to Kindergarten and first-grade homes to teach about the Jewish holidays.
The Shehecheyanu Outdoor Education Playscape on the Gan Sylvia Playground
This playscape is made possible through Vision 70 Campaign donors and the Pre-School Parent Auxiliary. Construction photos showing the progress for the Playscape and the South Wing can be found on our website at: www.nssbethel.org/making-beth-el-better.
Rendering: Outside View of Zell Hall