Blog

Dear CBI Community,

We hope you're all enjoying these beautiful days of summer! We are pleased to write you now with several updates:

1.  Rabbi Ariella Rosen has agreed to extend her role as CBI's interim lead rabbi through the end of June, 2025, with the mutual option to renew for an additional interim year (which will be determined in January, 2025). We are thrilled to have Rabbi Ariella as our spiritual leader and teacher during this time.  We will start to map out the process and timeline for a permanent lead rabbi early next year. Much more community conversation and engagement lie ahead. For now, we are so grateful to Rabbi Ariella as we look forward to this year of her wonderful leadership!

2. The CBI Board of Directors unanimously voted to hire Cathy Cohen to serve as CBI's part-time Interim Executive Director, beginning November 1 for up to 4 months. Cathy is a long-time member of our congregation with a career serving as interim executive director for 9 different non-profits and facilitating board development, strategic planning and staff leadership transitions. In addition to her wealth of experience outside of CBI, Cathy has served on several CBI committees, including personnel, development, and organizational restructuring, bringing her professional expertise to support our synagogue's needs. Board members, many staff, and Emily Kieval all met with Cathy over these last couple of weeks in advance of this decision.

We feel extremely fortunate that Cathy is available and willing to support CBI through this transition. Emily and Cathy will start meeting soon to ensure as smooth a hand-off as possible. Stay tuned for more detail about the interim executive director role (e.g., responsibilities are specifically defined to facilitate fiscal and administrative stability). Together, with Cathy's leadership and Board and other volunteer engagement (thank you in advance!), we are confident our staff and community’s needs can be met over these next few months as we make our way to our new permanent executive director. 

3. The CBI Board has created an ad hoc "Organizational Review Committee" which will: "determine the job description for the next executive director, seeking input from the current executive director, staff, CBI Board members, and community members. It may also recommend ancillary organizational changes, including identifying areas of responsibility for CBI staff and lay committee members, to best support the executive director's position and to help meet CBI's organizational needs overall."  

We are grateful to our Personnel Committee Chair Nick Fleisher for leading this Committee, and to our board and community members who will support this effort. Again, more information and opportunity to participate are to come.  We want you to know now that this effort is getting started.

4. The members-only web page will be updated in the next couple of weeks to provide you the latest financial information, board meeting minutes and the board meeting schedule for this year. We will let you know as soon as it is available.

And, finally, a big thank you to all who have pledged their annual fair share dues so far.  You're making such a difference already!! With roughly 50% of our households pledging as of August 20, over 80% of households have increased their pledge at a median increase of 25%, totaling over $620,000 in dues pledged so far. Let's keep going! Thank you for pledging whatever (and all!) that you can.  Go to the Renew 24-25 page to set up your pledge and payment plan; if you have any questions, please reach out to Naomi in the CBI office.  We are here to help!

We know this has been a time of uncertainty and concern for many at CBI. We are so glad to share these next steps as a reflection of our own deep optimism for this next chapter ahead. That optimism stems above all from our tremendous community, from the devotion of our amazing staff and the commitment of our countless volunteers. We are such a source of mutual inspiration!

As always, please don't hesitate to reach out to us with any thoughts or questions.  We look forward to being in touch again soon.

Shabbat Shalom,

Barbara Black and Pamela Schwartz
Co-Presidents, on behalf of the CBI Board