Major Breakthrough!


People ask me all the time, “Rabbi, is the community growing?”  It’s a very hard question for me to answer.  We don’t live in a particularly religious community so how do we measure growth?  Is it membership?  We don’t have membership!  Is it the amount of people at weekly services?  Hebrew School enrollment?  Volunteers?  High Holidays?  Current list of local Jews?

There has been one metric or milestone in the back of my mind for a long time.


For the past eight years, every single minyan has required me to pick up the phone, and I hate it.  I love people and I love talking with people.  But when I have to call to ask for something, it’s not comfortable (minyan is worse than fundraising because it doesn’t even pay the bills!).  And even worse is when someone commits to coming, but then forgets and everyone is down because we missed minyan 😞.


It would take between 1-3 hours of working the phones just to get a minyan for Shabbos, and so the Temecula minyan had waves of ups and downs.


After the high holidays this year, Natanya and I made a bunch of resolutions for this special year of “Hakhel”- gathering.  One of them was to face my minyanphobia and “gather” the community for a minyan once a month (first Shabbos of the secular month).  This minyan has been going strong for six months and become quite enjoyable.  I look forward to it every month and Natanya prepares a killer Kiddush.  Two weeks ago, I sent an email about this weeks minyan to the people who sometimes attend, and a miracle happened!


Without any phone calls or text messages, ten people responded that they would “love” to join the minyan!


This is a huge breakthrough for our community and I’m looking forward to building on it! 💪


I was so excited that I continued calling and texting the regulars that didn’t respond.  It was such a good feeling to send the message, “We have a minyan already, but I’d love to see you anyways!”


You may recall me saying the permits were about to be issued in December, with plans to pour foundation in January.


“Man plans and G-d laughs.”  In the last minute, the city decided to require a clearance from the county environmental department (which we were told earlier we didn’t need), which created a six month long hiccup involving neighbors, easements and some very heated conversations.


Yesterday (malchus shebenetzach) the water district mailed us our water connection application, and after we sign this our permits will finally be issued.


Now there is really only one thing left to make this a reality: 🤑🤑🤑.  It’s happened time and again, though, that when all you need is money, somehow, it all comes together.

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