בס"ד

www.yioc.org

July, 2010

Dear Friend,

As another Jewish New Year looms, we write to invite you to kindly continue your support and participation in our dynamic young congregation.  It is hard to believe that we now are embarking on our third New Year. And yet Rosh Hashanah is in six weeks:  Wednesday evening, September 8 through Friday, September 10.  Yom Kippur is on a Shabbat: Friday eve, September 17 and Saturday, September 18.  And here we are.

We have updated our website with all our latest news (including this Shabbat’s times, etc.), along with our various web features, also incorporating the calendar of dates and times for the High Holiday services and a dedicated web page for the High Holidays, as well as pages for our YIOC Women’s Group and other programs.  The YIOC Women’s Group has had a wonderful second year, and we are so grateful to those within the group’s leadership committee for all their hard work and very exciting plans.  Please check out our web pages for news, planned events, dates, and so much more.

Your support and participation have made our second year’s success possible.  From our weekly Shabbat and Sunday services to our weekly Thursday Night Teens Program, from our full list of well-attended weekly classes to our special holiday programs and social events, you have made it possible.  And we never could have touched the lives of so many others who have come within our orbit if it had not been for you.

YIOC Household Membership Dues are $1,900 – still just about the only congregational membership under $2,000 in all of Orange County – even though we clearly have emerged and grown-into a complete, full-service shul in every way imaginable.  We offer an “Early Bird” 10% discount off those dues (comprising a $190 savings, making the discounted “Early Bird Dues” only $1,710) if dues are paid-in-full, entirely in August.  But even if one needs to pay in installments, the dues remain the best deal in this County.  For those paying in installments, we request your credit card information for the automatic monthly installment charges because that enables us effectively, efficiently, and accurately to conduct that portion of Shul Business, without needing to dilute the value of your dues by expending them on paid staff.  (As you know, YIOC Household Memberships entitle you to two admissions for High Holiday services. Additional admissions also may be obtained per the enclosed schedule.)

 Similarly, we offer Single-Adult households proportionate dues schedule:  $950 a year, with a 10% discount (comprising a $95 savings, making the discounted “Early Bird Dues” only $855) if dues are paid-in-full, entirely in August.  (Such memberships entitle you to one admission for the High Holidays.) We also offer a $600 Associate Membership Dues category for people who primarily affiliate with a different congregation but who would like to demonstrate kindness to us and support our work, too. Associate Members receive all honors and privileges as do other YIOC Members, except for admission to High Holiday Services.

If you already are a member from last year, we presumably have your Yahrzeit and family information on hand from last year’s paperwork.  Therefore, if you like, you may send in your membership-dues payment , and any credit card information we need, even without the other forms.   Please mail your payment and the Membership Form to:

Young Israel of Orange County

5319 University Drive ( # 122 )

Irvine, CA 92612

For your convenience, we have enclosed an addressed, stamped return envelope.

This has been a wonderful second year for YIOC.  Once again our High Holiday services were so inspiring and inspirational for all of us.  And we discovered – by “accident” – a beautiful new venue for the Yomim Tovim, the same Back Bay Conference Center where we daven all year.  Purely by circumstances, we davened there last year on the second day of Rosh Hashanah (because Vista Verde already had been reserved for that Sunday) – and, across the spectrum of opinion, everyone came back with the sense that Back Bay actually is more lovely and elegant, warm and intimate, and just an all-around nicer environment, with nicer facilities, comfort and charm.  Because that feeling was so universal – something we had not anticipated – we are davening all our High Holiday prayers this year at Back Bay.

As the past Jewish year subsequently unfolded, our Women’s Group evolved wonderfully. We enjoyed wonderful social and educational events in Los Angeles, our best-ever Chanukah celebration (with Comedian Marvin Silbermintz’s wonderful routine), a second-consecutive knock-out Purim event, attended by more than 100 of us, combining the traditional Megillah Reading with a wonderful buffet dinner.  We then followed with a super Seudat Purim on Purim Day. Our Passover Sedarim again set new standards in the Irvine Orthodox community for elegance alongside deep spirituality and lots of fun. Our Teens Program now is an established success, meeting every week at The Coffee Bean – and the teens look forward to it. Our Adult Education Classes continue growing in participation, as our Shabbat Day Program has expanded into full-gear and our Tuesday Night Chumash Class now attracts nearly 20 people every week, even as we begin the second year of our Hebrew Reading/Siddur Navigation Class. We are engaged in a deeply meaningful Chesed (Kindness) Program, which provides Shabbat meals to targeted households within our community.

New members have joined us, virtually every single month, and our Shabbat minyanim further have stabilized and solidified over the months.  Through most of 2008 and much of 2009, we typically fell short of a minyan on Shabbat afternoons, week after week, and we just could not get Sunday mornings launched.  But this year we turned those corners. We have new “regulars” on Friday evenings, new “regulars” on Shabbat mornings, new “regulars” at all our services. And we recently conducted spirited and moving services on Tisha B’Av night, Tisha B’Av morning, and Tisha B’Av Mincha. 

Our website now is visited by Jews throughout Orange County, who not only learn from it but also contribute to our congregation because of it.  With the help of your kindness and generosity, augmented by the particular generosity and kindness of special donors, we have made it through our second year financially stable, even as last year we additionally retired the debt burden that we initially were compelled to undertake during our founding months as the necessary cost to launch Orange County’s first brand-new Modern Orthodox shul in more than twenty years.  At the center of it all has been – you. 

It was a wonderful year for so many in our YIOC Family, too – for some even a year of miracles. Cynthia met David, introduced David and his family into our lives, and they married.  Lauren and Mark celebrated the birth of their second son, and the bris was a lovely simcha. Dr. Stephen and Ruth celebrated Lewis’s wedding to Layla. Adam and Dez married. Rodney and Lisa married. Adam and Mina  married. Ivan is preparing steadily towards Candice-Lee’s autumn wedding to Byron. Jason and Arin have celebrated their first year of marriage. Tova returned from an amazing year in Israel, while Josh continues to experience Israel as few of us ever will. Carol celebrated a huge Mazal Tov on Kristin's engagement. [surnames omitted on internet version]

Amid life’s events, there have been sad moments, too. Over this past year, Ethel lost her precious sister in Israel. Susan  lost her Dad. Mark  concluded reciting Kaddish for his Mom. Janet and Roger lost parents. Peter lost a precious aunt. The unveiling of the monument for Esther was particularly poignant. [surnames omitted on internet version of this letter]

During the year, I continued publishing Torah Commentaries in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, which has been publishing my writings for these past 20 years.  The National Council of Young Israel published a full-page commentary of mine in their quarterly magazine, which circulates nationally and in Israel, and we were visited by Rav Mordechai Roizman, YI’s director of synagogue services. I continued my service in the Rabbinical Council of America, where I serve on their National Executive Committee, their Business Ethics Committee, and on their Convention Resolutions Committee.  Rebbetzin Ellen and Aharon enjoyed our second consecutive year of peace and contentment – synonymous with the joy we experience at YIOC – even as Aharon returned from New York this winter with his YULA H.S. team (Yeshiva University of Los Angeles) again winning the National Championship at the Yeshiva University National Invitational Model U.N. Competition.  He also was Political Editor of YULA’s student magazine, had a starring role in the YULA Boys theatrical production of Woody Allen’s “Don’t Drink the Water,” and now prepares for a year of study in Israel at a Torah seminary in the Old City in East Jerusalem.

This has been a wonderful, wonderful year for our Shul.  There is no need for hyperbole.  Emerging within Irvine Jewry as a “Boutique” Orthodox Shul, we seem to have “found our voice,” our unique identity and transcending purpose as we have entered our third year.  Shul life is deeply exciting, as we continually welcome into our congregational community new people, one-by-one. Really exciting people, idealistic, brimming with a love of Judaism and eagerness to grow – in Torah, in davening knowledge, in Jewish identity.  We have been joined, in two years, by households that have chosen to honor us with their membership and affiliation, giving us numbers that compare very favorably with the numbers of our sister Orthodox shuls of Irvine who each have aggregated their numbers respectively over more than 20 years each. Word has spread about us – good word, wonderful word.  By mouth.  By phone. By texting.  By internet. Word has spread.

YIOC has brought families together, parents and children who had not talked for years, siblings who were at internecine war. We have become an address for people who searched and explored one after another temple in Orange County but could not find the right fit.  Until they found us. We are “boutique” enough that we can personalize a “fit,” even as we are grounded in fundamental Orthodox halakhah and core Young Israel principles. Earlier this month, Ellen and I were at the home in Northern Irvine of a 16-year-old boy who has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s; we went there on the eve of the boy and his Mom traveling north to Stanford University for radiation and chemo treatment at the hands of an expert in the field.  They are not members of our shul, and they probably never will be.  But that is what YIOC is, how it operates, the reputation our shul has earned.  We found them because they found us, a shul with no building, no staff.  They found us.  We have reached and touched real Jews who have fallen between the cracks and below the radar of the other temples of Orange County.  In many cases, they have gone to several such places first, before searching again, finding us at Young Israel. We have become an incredibly important shul – not with a big structure, but touching a great many lives of really good people, people who work really hard for a living, people who care and have given all their young or full lives, but now come for a shul that can give them what they need for a shul ideally to offer them – a path to grow, a road back, a home and a safe Jewish haven. 

At the same time, we now start framing new ideas for turning back within, too, re-focusing on all of our wonderful families and households who have been part of YIOC from Day One – and from Before the Deluge – and who have continued as our core and mainstay families.  In the coming year, with our shul’s two feet now planted firmly on the ground, and with our shul having identified the people in our midst who are the kindest and most generous and capable donors, the kindest and most generous and capable daveners and minyan-goers, the kindest and most generous and capable volunteers, Ellen and I look forward to opening our home for more Shabbat meals with those of our families and individuals who have been with us from the beginning and who never have left but only have loyally helped YIOC grow and thrive. 

If you are receiving this, you have been with us, and you have seen what we have seen, experienced what we have experienced, and know as we do that Young Israel of Orange County, at Age Two, already has exceeded our hopes and expectations for bringing to Irvine an authentically Torah-based Jewish congregational experience, steeped in friendship and fellowship, respect and caring.  We have been true to our Mission Statement, which is published on our website as a reminder of our vision.  We invite you to join with us in making Year Three as good as Years One and Two – and if there can be better than that, why not see what that’s like?  Thank you dearly for being part of us.