Bereishit for our Project

There were lots of smiles, handshakes, hugs and back slaps yesterday at the official groundbreaking event to mark the beginning of our construction project. The sunny, windy and chilly conditions didn’t seem to dampen anyone’s spirits — or their appetites for the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Tizzert’s cake.

The crowd of 100+ arrived to the sounds of Patty Torcellini and her team of teenage guitarists singing and strumming Hebrew tunes. Rabbi Schindler began the program with a d’var torah and the theme of Bereishit: “In the beginning there is today. The beginning of the Torah. The beginning of this building project. With an excavator. With construction hats. With shovels. With prayers. With dreams. With reality. With passion. With desire and with will. Today is that beginning. In just a moment our children with their shovels and our adults with theirs will move forward as together, our dreams become reality, our long hours of labors of love begin to bear their fruits.”

After a shechiyanu by Cantor Bernard, yours truly and Jonathan Howard thanked the dozens of donors, volunteers, staff and the entire congregation for their support and commitment in bringing us to the historic day.

But the highlight of the morning had to be the digging. Our construction supervisor, David Hatch, fired up a big yellow back hoe and took two big bites out of the turf. Then several congregants donned white hard hats with Samet Construction logos, grabbed silver plated shovels and started digging. Each represented a different facet of Temple:

• Our past: Marc Silverman, whose uncle “Happy” Schloss was one of the founders
• Sustainers: Jill Blumenthal
• The Present: Moira Quinn, First Vice President of the Board
• Our Future: Zoe Kronovet, president of the LIBERTY youth group
• Volunteers: Fred Dumas of the Building Committee; a past president and the person credited with conceiving the idea for the project
• Clergy: Rabbi Streiffer and Rabbi Judy, who wielded a gold-plated shovel that was used at the groundbreaking for the current building some 18 years ago. Staff found it when they were packing up for the move
• Staff: Bill Loya

The adults were joined by a dozen or so kids who brought their own shovels and scrambled happily into the hole to dig on their own.

Here’s a short story that News 14 ran about the event.

The true beginning of this project came more than five years ago with an idea from one visionary congregant. But yesterday, that idea became tangible. It’s going to be fun to watch what grows out of that big hole.