Dear Congregants, 

As the school year ends and summer begins, we are excited to update you on the progress we are making in our visioning process for TBE’s future. Please be sure to read through to the end of this email for important information about our Vivid Vision, our building, and our potential partnerships and synergies. 

Our Vivid Vision 

Our congregants are responding with enthusiasm for our vision to secure TBE’s future as a vibrant center of Reform Jewish life in Great Neck, where every member can be their authentic Jewish self, for many years to come. We are proud and delighted to announce that, as a show of faith in the vision, one of our congregants has recently made a very generous and significant gift to establish a new Temple Beth-El Adult Learning Fund. This fund will seed the creation of a robust and intellectually challenging adult learning program, which we believe is key to positioning TBE as a leader in shaping the future of pluralistic Judaism on the western North Shore. Members who share this vision now have an opportunity to build on our fellow congregant’s initial investment and help raise adult learning to a new level at TBE by generously supporting the TBE Adult Learning Fund. To make a gift to this new vision-driven fund, please CLICK HERE.  

Additionally, the recently launched Susan Stumer Cultural Arts Fund is already enabling us to plan a variety of musical and cultural arts experiences for the coming year, including musician-in-residence weekends, guest cantors to join our clergy on the bimah, bimonthly Shabbat services with The Shabbatones band and the hiring of Dr. Pam Levy to direct and grow our choir. We have also formed a congregant committee that is partnering with the Gold Coast Arts Center to create a robust schedule of music, film and other cultural arts programs at TBE for the enjoyment of our members and the broader Great Neck community. If you support making TBE a recognized center for Jewish cultural arts experiences in Great Neck, please consider making a gift to the Susan Stumer Cultural Arts Fund by CLICKING HERE.  

Finally, we are pleased to announce that we have successfully unveiled The Kehillah Project at the Gershwind Religious School, and we have already hit our enrollment target for the fall. While our program will start out small due to the demographics of our community, our leadership made the forward-thinking decision to open The Kehillah Project to nonmember children at an affordable rate, which we hope will help grow our enrollment in the years to come. Plus, our small size enables us to create an innovative and nimble program for our students, featuring field trips, hands-on learning and intergenerational experiences.  

Our Building 

At our May 13 congregational meeting, our Visioning Team explained that our 120,000-square-foot facility is both too large and too expensive for the TBE of today, and we announced our plan to engage a real estate advisor to help us understand how we might adapt and/or monetize the building to benefit our congregation going forward. We are pleased to tell you that last night our Board of Trustees made the decision to engage Marcus & Millichap, a leading commercial real estate firm with expertise in valuing special properties in the tristate region.  

We have also engaged Mojo Stumer, a highly regarded local architectural firm led by our congregant Mark Stumer, to help us understand what space we actually need and how we might utilize the property to best serve our congregation. Now that we have this expert team in place, they will begin doing the research and analyses that will help them make eventual recommendations to the board regarding our building. 

Partnerships & Synergies 

Since we announced our intention last month to explore potential partnerships and synergies with other local congregations, this process has been moving forward apace. On May 18, we hosted Congregation L’Dor V'Dor—Oakland Little Neck Jewish Center for a Shabbat morning service in the Rudin Chapel. After each congregation worshipped in its own service, about 100 people—half from Oakland Little Neck Jewish Center and half from TBE—came together in the Oneg Room for conversation and friendship-building over a delicious Shabbat lunch. Everyone who attended had a delightful time and expressed interest in continuing to explore partnership opportunities between the two congregations. 

We have also been engaged in exciting conversations with Temple Tikvah of New Hyde Park, and we are pleased to announce that we have planned three wonderful opportunities for our two congregations to get together during the summer:

• This Saturday morning, June 29, we will host the members of Temple Tikvah for a joint Torah Study led by Rabbi Stoller and Temple Tikvah’s Rabbi Randy Sheinberg (9:15 a.m.), a joint Shabbat morning service led by TBE and Temple Tikvah clergy (10:30 a.m.), and a shared Kiddush brunch (11:30 a.m.). Please CLICK HERE to register for the brunch.

• On Friday night, July 19, at 6:30 p.m., we will hold a joint TBE/Temple Tikvah Shabbat service at Steppingstone Park. 

• On Sunday afternoon, July 28, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., we will host Temple Tikvah for a Rooftop BBQ in the Rudin Garden. This event is for congregants of all ages, including families and children, and will be an excellent opportunity for the two congregations’ religious school-age families to get to know each other. We’d like to give special thanks to the TBE Brotherhood for organizing and cooking the food for the BBQ. Please CLICK HERE to register. 

Temple Tikvah is a warm, friendly and caring community just like ours, and we hope you will come and meet them at some or all of these events. We are also excited that Rabbi Megan is working with the Temple Tikvah team to find opportunities for The Kehillah Project religious school children to do some joint programs with the Temple Tikvah children during the coming year. 

As you can see, our Visioning Team, our board, our professional leadership and, most importantly, our wonderful community of congregants are working together toward a shared vision for TBE’s long-term future. We hope you share our excitement for all the possibilities that lie ahead. Please stay informed about our visioning process by visiting the Visioning section of our TBE website. 

L’shalom, 

Jordana Levine, President 

Gary Slobin, Visioning Team Chair 

Rabbi A. Brian Stoller 

Stu Botwinick, Executive Director