Dear Congregants,

When we officially closed our building to our normal flow of programming and services, we had to brainstorm unique new ways to celebrate our holidays and Shabbat Services and still feel like we were together. Our Clergy created beautiful High Holy Day worship services and our Shabbat Services and Adult Programming continue to have a very strong viewing audience. In fact, now that many of us are used to Zooming together we may even keep some of our events on-line in the future. We will not have to worry about rain or snow or cold weather, we can just continue to Zoom together from the comfort of our homes. We can even travel to warmer climates in the winter and Zoom back to Elkins Park.

Keeping with the theme of being together, with the help of our Senior Staff and our talented Clergy and Office staff, we came up with a special way to celebrate Hanukkah this year. Beginning next Thursday night December 10, 2020 members of our Congregation will be lighting menorahs in their homes and Zooming with our entire community so everyone can light their candles together. I look forward to lighting my menorahs with you next Tuesday night on the 6th night of Hanukkah. I invited our KI Officers and Board of Directors to join me on Zoom so we can share a short list of some of our personal Hanukkah traditions with you.

Please read the special announcement in this e-KI and during the coming week and be sure to tune in at 6:00 p.m. every evening so we can truly be #TogetherApart.

#TogetherApart is the hashtag on Twitter and Instagram that has been used since the beginning of the pandemic to signify the challenges we have to meet together and to ensure that there is no shortage of goodwill and effort towards building something better than before.

While this is not unique to KI, we first used this hashtag at our Annual Meeting last June. Our community has remained Together while we are physically Apart and I wish you all a Happy and Meaningful and of course a very Healthy Hanukkah!

Sincerely,

Janice