President's Blog

L'shanah tovah, everyone. It looks like we made it through High Holy Days 5781. I think our staff, clergy and HHD chair people have earned (yet another) hearty thank you for putting together a meaningful prayer experience. As I have said before, they had no template to draw from in creating this year's services. They created everything from scratch. And as Rabbi Freedman pointed out, there was more than double the effort.  In order for the services to flow smoothly on our screens, the scripts had to be accurate and detailed. Every service went through a full dress rehearsal (hence the time doubling). But in the end, the service allowed me (and hopefully you as well) to fully be in the moment and focus on the service instead of the process.

The only production error I noticed ironically involved me and my wife. During our ark opening honor we were seen closing the ark twice. I want to take this opportunity to publicly declare that despite my advancing age, I know the difference between 'open' and 'close'. 'Nuff said.

The building reopening task force has been busy defining the preparations that need to be made to welcome our congregants back into the building. With Austin's infection rates dropping (as of this writing) we want to make sure we're ready to swing our doors open once we've deemed it safe to do so. But we can't immediately return to our old ways, so we've been mapping out the intermediate steps we must take.  Let me give you a few examples:

• Masks: Likely a requirement for the foreseeable future.
• Screening: We'll need to have some sort of screening process to ensure those in the building are not likely to be infected.
• Social distancing: Congregants will be seated in pods - we still need to determine how to space them out and how big to make each pod. But what about the clergy on the bimah? Plexiglass? What about singing (known to be an efficient way to spread the virus)? What about our cantor singing (have her in another room and projected electronically)?
• Restrooms: Yes, even the restroom policy is up for debate. From a pure safety perspective, the best policy is closing the restrooms - but that's not very practical. We'll need to develop safe procedures to make our restrooms available.
• Oneg: For now, just say no. 

There are even more topics associated with reopening our building. As good as our virtual services have been, there's no substitute for being physically together again. We are hard at work preparing for the moment we can welcome you back into the building. When the conditions allow, rest assured that we'll be ready.

As always, I'd love to hear your praise, comments or concerns. You can contact me at president@bethshalomaustin.org or 281-352-9404.

--Steve Fintel