Before I discuss Holy Days versus Holidays, if it is not too late, I would like to ask forgiveness for just one more item: folks, please forgive our new, outside accounting company for any recent billing errors that we as congregants may have experienced!

By the time you read this we will have been using the Kesef service for seven full months. Overall, our books, records and reporting abilities are now in better shape than before. However, there are still snags that occur in our accounting activities.

Please continue to bring any and all questions to the attention of our office staff, as they will help facilitate prompt resolutions for us all. And, in fact, if you don’t mind, for those of us who pay our fair share pledges in monthly installments, please take a quick look to see if Kesef and we have been charging your accounts properly.

While we are on the subject of pledges, records and financial matters, you may recall that the 2016-2017 annual budget that we approved at the May membership meeting called for about $1,200,000 in costs, including the monthly mortgage payments. Thanks to our VP of Finance, Garry Goodman, taking an early lead, our finance committee and board (see the inside back page for a listing of members of both) have taken the necessary steps to put a new, advantageous building loan into place, which will help us realize operating savings in this area several months earlier than scheduled.

Meanwhile, the board of directors’ newest member, Steven Farkas, as our Treasurer, has been helping the finance committee and the board to develop detailed budget re-forecasting tools so that we can check on our expenditures on a monthly basis and update our likely year-end totals. Enhancing our monitoring of routine and special expenses will help us to better meet our own high standards for stewardship of the pledges and contributions we receive from you.

No amount of expense monitoring, though, can fully balance out the fact that CST, similar to many other Reform congregations, only receives about half of our budgeted expenses through the annual pledges – the other half of our essential income needs comes from entirely voluntary gift sources! And in our prior fiscal year, our total income actually fell short of meeting our expenses, as we utilized funds previously collected to fill the gap.

So, as I did last month in this space, I again ask for your financial help in maintaining Shomrei Torah’s broad, vital programming at its very best, through the generous, continuing gifts of your financial resources. In addition to and above and beyond your existing sustaining gifts of money, and we are very grateful to you for the many, many years of those gifts, please make an additional gift before calendar year-end to CST in honor of yourself or others, and in expressing your own gratitude for the gifts you have received in your own lives.

I know we will all be receiving many similar appeals for donations this month and next, as all of our favorite causes implore us to send them our tax-deductible, 2016-dated additional contributions. In fact, this has become one of the defining aspects of the “Holidays” in America, in each November/December period. We should all support as many of these good causes as we can; just please include Congregation Shomrei Torah among them.

Okay, so now for at least the start of a more complete discussion of Holy Days versus Holidays.

The Holy Days we just experienced in October tie many of us to our Jewish heritage, traditions and values – truly wonderful! And while the Holidays ahead are in fact, seemingly filled with solicitations, crass commercialization and tediously repetitive, usually non-Jewish images and activities, that’s not all, as these months also bring us that most beautifully named American holiday: Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is one day where the finest of Jewish and secular values all come together, in peace and love, as we gather with family, friends and neighbors to share food, fellowship and fun, as we give thanks to our Creator.

Then, for many of us who are part of inter-faith couples and families at CST, beyond November the most challenging of months unfolds, December, with its non-stop Christmas messages and incessant jingles. But wait! What about our partners who may not have been raised in Jewish homes, and for whom Christmas still does represent fond memories of their own beloved childhoods and traditions? Surely there is a way we can honor all of us, this Holiday season? Surely, indeed!