Annual Meeting 5772

This past Shabbat, we held our Annual Meeting & took time to thank many of the people who helped to make 5772 the wonderful year that it was.

With full hearts we shared our gratitude with outgoing president, Don Simon, and enthusiastically welcomed his predecessor and our current president, Ann Roth. An additional thank-you is owed to Lois Michaels who chaired this evening and stayed true to her promise to make this year's meeting two things: fun and short! Many of you were able to share in our celebrations of the past year in person with us, but for those of you who could not make it to Temple, allow us to recap this moment in the life of our Temple family.

Photos from the evening can be found here on our Facebook page.

Remarks from Rabbi Bisno:

This has been a tremendous year for Rodef Shalom.

Over and above all the wonderful and challenging rhythms that make for a year-in-the-life, our congregation has engaged in a number of serious and significant moves that are designed – specifically – to better position ourselves to meet the realities of a dramatically changed Jewish communal landscape. 

When I first I arrived in Pittsburgh, now eight years ago, I looked forward to building upon the accomplishments and legacies of the rabbis and congregational leaders who had so ably laid the foundations of our Temple’s earlier successes.

I was attracted to this opportunity and was excited about the possibilities we could together achieve, as I was aware that for all that had been true over the course of the first 150 years of our congregation’s history, it was going to be over the course of the next decade or two – in these first years of the 21st Century – that we’d learn if our congregation and her membership would be able to successfully pivot from all that had been accomplished in-house to that which can only be achieved when we work in partnership with our neighbors.

It was only a year ago, in May of 2011, having just returned from a welcome and much appreciated sabbatical, and in the spirit of the shared programs already by them underway with some of our neighbors, that I first wrote of our need for a Courageous Conversation about the future of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community.

And in the course of these last twelve months, with your support – and especially with the encouragement and in partnership with our Board of Trustees and our dedicated officers and lay leaders – this conversation has truly gained purchase. (Read More)