PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE – October 2025
(From my High Holiday Appeal)
No one can deny that we live is unsettling times, to say the least. There is division, violence, anger, disruption of the civic order, and hate directed at people of different colors, sexual orientations, political opinions, social positions, and religions. We know that incidents of antisemitism have greatly increased. It has become an even scarier country, indeed a scarier world. But it is the world we must live in.
Reb Nachman of Breslev said “The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge, but the main thing is to have no fear at all.” Rabbi Janet has taught on this, and we have sung the Jewish camp song this saying has inspired. When you look at the original Hebrew, Reb Nachman isn’t saying we shouldn’t be afraid, but he says we shouldn’t make ourselves more afraid. The fear we allow ourselves to experience is usually stronger than the situation calls for. We have to make our way along the bridge, but we can allow ourselves to be so frightened that we get stuck.
How do we help ourselves to deal with this narrow bridge, this threatening world? An important thing to remember is that we are not making this journey alone. We know we have God with us, but sometimes it is easy to forget that. But we also have fellow travelers. We have each other.
When Jews first settle in an area they establish three things — a cemetery for the dead, and a school and synagogue for the living. They build the facilities for a community. They become an extended family, and they don’t have to cross that narrow bridge alone.
That is what we have here at Temple Beth Emet. A community, a family. Here we can reassure each other, we can support each other, we can take comfort in each other, we can laugh together, cry together, and pray together. When we are together here, in our Temple With a Heart, that bridge that is the world doesn’t seem so narrow or frightening.
And when people come to us for the first time, they feel the warmth, the friendship, the lack of pretense, the spirituality that is our Temple. We are, in a word, haimish.
Our successes have always been and will always be the result of the individual contributions of each of us. As the High Holidays come to a close and we look forward to the year ahead, I am grateful for what each of us have contributed to our Temple family, whether it be with our time, energy, money, or just our presence and personality.
May the coming year be a good one for all of us and all the world, and may our Temple community be blessed to celebrate many High Holiday seasons in the future.
— IRA L. GOLDSTEIN, President
