Beth Tzedec is constantly striving to be a vibrant, inclusive community where members feel strongly connected to our congregation and to each other. A caring community involves more than just membership contributions. We want Beth Tzedec to foster relationships that motivate members to live meaningful and impactful Jewish lives that include taking responsibility for caring for our fellow members.

To further this vision, over the past six months a group of creative lay leaders together with Yacov Fruchter, our Director of Community Building & Spiritual Engagement and Klara Romm, our Membership Engagement & Development Coordinator, have worked on creating our Small Groups plan.

A Beth Tzedec Small Group is an opportunity to connect with other people over a shared goal, project or interest and to build relationships.

We invite you to imagine hundreds of Beth Tzedec members gathering regularly in small, lay-led groups to learn, to laugh and to develop meaningful relationships that deepen their connection to one another, to Judaism and to Beth Tzedec, while engaging in activities that are important to each of them.

In order to create these experiences, we need to hear and learn from you. However, like many things during this time of physical distancing, our plans as we move forward with this initiative have also been affected. Our hope was to spend the spring season hosting many community conversations in the living rooms of members in order to collect your stories, ideas and concerns as well as to give you a taste of what the Small Group experiences would ultimately feel like. As badly as we all want to come together physically at this time, the blessing of technology has afforded us with the opportunity to use Zoom to proceed with these community conversations.

There are two ways for you to help us now as we build the Small Groups plan:

1. Participate in a community conversation (focus group), facilitated by a member of the Small Groups leadership team over Zoom. Please email Klara Romm at kromm@beth-tzedec.org, who will help you find a community conversation to join.
2. Please complete our five-minute Small Groups survey by Monday, May 18. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BTSmallGroups

Using what we learn from the survey and community conversations, the leadership team will identify common interests and needs and begin to invite members together to form small groups that:

• organize around shared interests, life stages and geographies;
• are self-led by lay leaders working in a group dynamic;
• decide when, where and how often to meet (usually every 4-6 weeks in homes and other interesting places);
• focus on the lives and significant concerns of our members.

We appreciate you taking the time to share with us at this time of physical distancing as we maintain our spiritual and emotional connections to one another.

We can’t wait to see you face-to-face in Beth Tzedec!

Debbie Rothstein, President, Beth Tzedec Congregation
Debra Wolfe, Chair, Beth Tzedec Small Groups