State of the Synagogue Address 2025

Good Evening. As we enter this new Jewish year, it is with pleasure that I share with you our accomplishments and our opportunities for the future. We have a lot to be proud of and a lot to do.

There is no way that I can touch on everything, so I will highlight a few things.

Let’s start with the High Holidays, as they are fresh in our rearview mirror.

• We had 3 major services again held concurrently in our building
• Overall, we have received very positive feedback, with over 1200 people in attendance
• We continued to expand options for our youth, including children’s Kol Nidre, Neilah, and Havdalah programs.
• We had Teen-led services, and once again, we had a packed house for our family service led by Rabbi Dalton. WJC then sponsored a break fast with over 200 attendees
• Meaningful experiences continued throughout Sukkot, including an ECC cocktail party, Brotherhood Scotch and Sirloin, and a Teen Sukkah event.
• We had a great turnout for Simchat Torah, over 300 people came to the evening’s event, and the holiday concluded with a wonderful BBQ.  And we honored Cindy and Randy Heller for their tireless work across so many areas of WJC.  We can’t thank them enough for all they do!

Our annual Elul Appeal, as of today, has received $670,000 in pledges with over 200 individual and family gifts. This is our single largest fundraiser, outside of dues. This year’s appeal is shaping up to be one of our most successful campaigns ever, but we want everyone to participate to whatever level they can.  If you have not pledged yet, there is still time.  If you have, thank you for helping to keep our synagogue healthy.  

This year’s Rabbinic Intern is Jacob Lipkin, who will be here over the next few months. So far, his classes have had wonderful reviews.  When you see him, please introduce yourself. 

Our Membership is solid at 470 families. And so far in 2025, we have welcomed 17 new families

As I mentioned in my RH Address, with the goal of connecting congregants, growing participation, and strengthening community, we are excited to bring back the Progressive Dinner, which will be on December 6. Please sign up now. It will be a special evening!

The ECC has had a good start to the year. Numbers in the school are down slightly from last year, though we usually enroll additional students in the fall months. Ann is hard at work on a new enrollment strategy that we will be implementing during the year.

We have also had a successful launch of our partnership with the Rye Y! Approximately 20 children participate in programming all throughout the day. We expect this number to rise as the word gets out.

Why did we choose to enter into this partnership?

We took an underutilized space and now have a reliable income from it, and are offsetting some of our fixed costs, such as security and energy.

It is an opportunity to offer our WJC families a day care program right in our building to extend and complement our ECC, hopefully bringing additional students to our own ECC.

And it creates an opportunity to build bridges to the greater community, when we need those bridges the most.

Religious School has a new working committee that is assisting  Aleza to make our children’s experience more meaningful and further engage parents. Aleza and her committee have made great strides, and enrollment is roughly 10% higher than what we anticipated. Also, the introduction of innovative ideas, like electives for 5th and 6th graders, has generated enthusiasm in our older grades.

 Jess Berger, who leads our Teen program, has made WJC the hub of a new Larchmont-Mamaroneck BBYO chapter and is focused on engaging our otherwise very busy teens in more things Jewish.  We will also be introducing an additional program called StandWithUs, which will help our teens combat anti-semitism and anti-Israel sentiment.

 This past year, we completed many projects on our property, including the renovation of both our antiquated meat and dairy kitchens, HVAC improvements, and roof repairs, to name a few.  We also now have fully functioning solar panels, which have significantly reduced our electric consumption.  There are additional projects in the works.  Special thanks to Michael Stein, who has led the charge as chair of our house committee.  

And Michael is just one of many who deserve our appreciation.  Across the shul, we have an incredible culture of volunteerism.

Many of you may have benefited from the new technology that we have added to aid the hearing-impaired.  This Inductive Loop was funded through proceeds from investments made in our Endowment Campaign.  This campaign, which currently has over 2 million dollars in it, was launched shortly before COVID.  We had paused it due to timing, and we hope to re-engage this effort soon.

To further improve the synagogue experience for everyone, we are committed to upgrading our sound system and our live streaming capabilities. This is in the works as well.  

The synagogue is just finishing a significant renovation to our parish house at 540 Prospect Avenue, where the Arnnowitz family resides.  It is nearly complete and went off without a hitch and on budget.  This house, which was in dire need of updates, will allow the Arnnowitzes to live comfortably and give them a greater opportunity to welcome our congregants into their home, something that was important to them from the very start of Rabbi Arnnowitz’s tenure with us.

Behind the scenes, we are constantly looking to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the office. We are focused on the continued development of our administrative infrastructure.

 One of the most important areas that we expend resources and thought on is security.  We talk about this perhaps more than at any other time in our 100-year history, and we still have more to do. Two weeks ago, we had an incident. As we welcomed George Latimer, our congressman, here to speak about his trip to Israel, outsiders made their way into our event to disrupt his comments.   

Even though no one was ever in danger and our security team resolved the incident within minutes, the safety of our community is always paramount. Our security committee has met. They have reviewed the details of what happened and have recommended policies and procedures to further improve the safety and security of all who spend time within these walls.  We will strike the right balance while continuing to be the warm and welcoming Jewish center of our lives.  Please keep your eye out for a communication that is coming to explain the updates to our protocols and procedures.

I want to publicly express my gratitude to Mark Berger, who has tirelessly led this committee for years, in an effort to keep us safe. Mark has helped establish a CSS chapter here at WJC for just this purpose, and anyone concerned about security should speak to him about getting involved. The more actively security-conscious each of us is, the safer we will all be.  

I want to thank our staff for all of their hard work, especially over the last couple of months surrounding the High Holidays. When you see them, don’t be shy about thanking them for their continued efforts to better WJC.

Finally, I have been in the role of President for almost 5 months. I have learned a lot, yet there is much to learn.  It has been both exhausting and invigorating, challenging but with much reward. I want to thank you for the opportunity. Know that my door is always open.

Yale Zoland