Tonight, I address you for the final time as President of KI, after four gratifying one-year terms. 

I’ll share with you my profound thanks, a perspective on service, a look to the future, and two quick lessons.

A special thanks goes out to Naomi Godel for our dinner and Sleen, Jose, and Michael for our room and A/V setup. 

I have to start with my Attitude of Gratitude practice. Each time people asked me why I agreed to serve as president, my answer was always easy: the work and the people. Tonight, I thank you, the people, all of you, and I tried to list everyone but your names won’t fit in the doc. I appreciate your support, collaboration, and diverse perspectives. Clergy and senior staff, lay leaders, office and maintenance staff, educators, volunteers, chairs, really all Congregants in some fashion, all of our security staff and campus partners, all of our guests, friends, and family members.  We shared a love of and commitment to our congregation, and I’ve been so blessed, and my work so magnified, having you all by my side.

My most important collaborator has been, of course, my husband Lee Chudzinski. He’s been my thought partner, my kindest and smartest critic, my editor, and my most heartfelt motivator. Thank you, Lee, for all of that, and of course for putting up with me and for the demands of the office. Nothing noteworthy in my life happens without you.

I also started writing a list of KI’s Accomplishments over the past four years. It got way too long. So I’ll ask you to write on a post-it note something special that KI has accomplished over the past four years. I’ll add them to my doc and share it with you. I want us all to contribute to the doc as we’ve all contributed to KI. 

[If you’d like to add to the list, feel free to send me an email!]

There’s obviously so much to be proud of over the past four years, including just these five highlights: 

• We as a Congregation selected and enthusiastically embraced our highly anticipated, wildly successful Rabbi Benjamin David, and we now mark his four-year anniversary (as well as KI’s Time Capsule on display in the lobby in honor of Rabbi David’s installation). 

We also celebrated twenty years of deeply spiritual and communal achievements of our nationally recognized and talented Cantor Amy Levy.

We celebrated our beloved Executive Director Brian Rissinger, and his genius-level and highly effective and personal leadership for twenty years.

It has been profoundly meaningful and uplifting for me to join them in our sacred partnership over the past four years. 

• Every single one of the lay leaders with whom I was honored to work collaborated closely to build up our governance structure and uphold the ironclad duties of our governance position to the best of our abilities. I emphasize tonight your sacred service to KI.
• We’ve reinforced our Culture of Philanthropy, with consistently successful annual fundraising opportunities, input from our Congregants, and a new staff Philanthropy Manager to help build upon and systematize our work.
• We, all of us, created an explosion of “hype and buzz” around campus, with more activities, with more students and families and seniors, and more volunteers than we’ve had in a long time. We’ve truly strengthened our Center for Jewish Living with our own stories and with our seven Campus Partners; 
• We’ve together, through our audacious hospitality, a new staff position, and through programming that is creative and diverse and connects people with people as well as with KI, helped everyone feel embraced, fully included, and safe.

Then, there’s another list: of goals left botched by me or incomplete, which I shared with our next president, Ryan Perlman, and other leaders for their consideration as they form their agenda. The world doesn’t stand still and neither do we. 

I’ve learned many lessons about service over the past many years. Here is just one:

I saw an article recently asking: Who caused the Red Sea to part, allowing the fleeing Hebrews to escape the chasing Egyptians? Moses with his staff, following a directive from God? Or a Hebrew of faith named Nachshon, the Prince of the Tribe of Judah? Did the seas part due to faith or the staff of a leader? 

My brain went straight to our volunteers at KI, that’s you, where some leap right into the crashing waves, in order to reach a goal. Others wait for safer conditions or maybe someone to walk with to wade into the water. Then there are those of you who hold your own staff high, and with faith, a clear vision, and a strong sense of the possible, raise that staff over the water. I see all of you acting with a deeply spiritual conviction that you are making something good happen for others. 

I am, and I encourage us all to be, grateful for all of our congregants’, staff’s, and clergy’s eagerness to serve the greater good, in whatever style, with love and open arms for all. 

When I look forward to the work ahead, I can’t help but think of the backward-facing aspects of the 250th anniversary of our country – because it isn’t actually, is it? We’re really marking the date of a pronouncement of rebellion, the colonists loudly voicing their intent on achieving independence from Britain. A Declaration of Independence.

But then it took about seven years of war until Britain surrendered, and another eight years, until both the The Constitution and the first ten amendments – the Bill of Rights – were ratified. 

And still, people of good conscience had to fight, as the Constitution says, “in order to make this a more perfect union.” Ending slavery, full access to the voting booth for all, equal opportunity to success, and stronger protections from government overreach. And there’s still more to do.

So as we prepare to celebrate KI’s 180th anniversary in 2027, let’s bear in mind the history we’ve made without turning a blind eye to the promises we’ve yet to fulfill.  

I call on us all to commit tonight to the never ending journey of living up to our seven core values, as you see hanging so boldly from the lobby ceiling, and to fully enable KI to be that Center for Jewish Living, with the most vigorously mighty and enduring programs, staff, and facilities. 

When I consider the distant future and my legacy at KI, I think about my role in governance, my volunteer worker bee efforts, and Lee’s and my financial gifts. Last year, Lee and I updated our wills and included KI in our estate planning. I encourage you to join Lee and me and many others. Ask yourself what values brought you and keep you here, and then consider applying those thoughts to your own Legacy charitable plans. Feel free to talk with Bob or Brian or head to KI’s Give page online. 

In the more immediate future, I’m thrilled to say that I have absolute confidence in Ryan Perlman and KI’s future with him at the helm. Like the birds in flight using the V formation to pave the way for everyone behind them, at some point, for the good of the whole, the leader is replaced by another. 

I’ll close with these two inspirational lessons I learned as President:

1. Assume goodwill from others, and come to the table with it.
2. If you care, you have power. 

In more poetic terms, Amanda Gorman says in her poem “The Hill We Climb”:

“For there’s always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. 

If only we’re brave enough to be it.”  

— 

As our youths say, “Let’s Go!”

Andrew Altman