2025 High Holiday President's Remarks

JAY L. KOOPER

TEMPLE B’NAI ABRAHAM

REMARKS FOR YOM KIPPUR

5786/2025

Each year, I have approached Yom Kippur with a mixture of relief, cautious optimism and dread. At each year’s Yizkor service, I would hear aloud the names of loved ones who had passed in the year now ending and find relief knowing not one of those names called was one of my loved ones. Each year I would hear the congregation’s collective plea that we and all our loved ones all be sealed in the Book of Life for another good year, cautiously optimistic that the odds of this coming to pass for the coming year would be more likely than not. But each year I would also experience a sense of dread, knowing that sooner or later, one of these years, I would experience the loss of a loved one whose name would not be sealed for another year and whose name would be read at Yizkor.

This Yom Kippur, that time of dread has finally come for me and my family. As many of you already know, in the year now ending my father, Max Kooper, passed away. For my entire family, my father’s passing was a first – the first loss of a parent, the first loss of a grandparent, the first loss of a sibling and the first loss of an uncle and great uncle. And with this “first” came a range of conflicting emotions.

On the one hand, my father far outlived a grim medical prognosis for years. By any objective measure, I should have been at this sad moment in life years ago but was given the gift of time. On the other hand, that comes as little comfort in moments when I miss having my Dad here. On the one hand, I was lucky in having my Dad for 52 years. He was around not only for my entire childhood, but for the entire childhoods of all four of his grandchildren. On the other hand, I know of too many friends and family members who lost a parent in childhood, close relatives and friends early in life, or suffered the unimaginable loss of a child. As sad as I was and am over my father’s passing, I know I have had it better than most.

On the one hand, during my father’s final days and following his passing I wondered whether I did enough as a son to spend as much time with him as possible. From an objective standpoint, I know I probably did. On the other hand, for all the moments you remember being there with and for him, you come up with as many if not more moments where you let a week, a couple of weeks, or even a few weeks slip by without calling him, not because of any issues with him, but merely because you’re living a busy life with your own family, work and activities. However confident you feel that you did enough, there always exists in the back of your head doubt that you really did enough.

Over the course of this year, I have wondered what lies at the heart of these conflicting emotions. I am certainly not the first congregant to have suffered loss – far from it – and I am certainly not qualified to offer any sort of expert opinion or insight on this. All I can tell you is what I think having gone through my own experience. I believe the heart of what I have been experiencing this year goes back to something that I spoke to you about on this Bimah one year ago in my last Yom Kippur address to you. Last year, I spoke of the sin of taking the world around me – including the people, places and institutions that provide and sustain us with love, structure and comfort – for granted. I believe that sin is present here. Even where we make every effort to atone for this sin and then cast it away, it has an insidious way of returning even if our guard is down for just a millisecond. Just when you think you have somehow overcome and even conquered this sin, before you even realize it, you commit it again. It does leave one with the feeling of constantly looking over a shoulder. We may be vulnerable to committing this sin again and again, but that in and of itself is not hopeless because there is a lot we can learn from this too.

On Rosh Hashanah, I spoke of two parts of a challenge that we as a congregation must confront and address to ensure the long-term sustainability of Temple B’nai Abraham. The first part, which I covered on Rosh Hashanah, is the challenge of changing how we think of synagogues in terms of both an economic model and commitments to one another. The second part, which I speak of here and now, cuts a bit closer to us all especially on Yom Kippur, and that is to guard against taking our Temple, our community and one another for granted. Let me expand on that.

As I said to you on Rosh Hashanah, our collected dues do not cover our expenses; this has been true for long as I have been a member here and I am certain long before that. At the same time, we have families who so very much want to be part of our Temple community, who want to send their children to school here, who want to eventually see their children become a bar or bat mitzvah here, who want community and family to celebrate the simchas with and find comfort from us all when sadder life cycle events arise. But these families face significant and heartbreaking economic challenges of their own. Yet, for all these economic challenges, they are willing to do just about anything to join and remain a part of our Temple. We as a Congregation must help our fellow Congregants who find themselves in this situation as a sacred obligation to them, for us and for the well-being of our Temple.

As I also said to you on Rosh Hashanah, a synagogue’s annual giving program must serve as the centralized heart and nerve center of community giving if we are to ever bridge the gap between collected dues and expenses, achieve long-term sustainability, and remain true to our mission statement of being a warm, welcoming and inclusive community including to those in our community who are struggling financially. The Temple B’nai Abraham Annual Fund now and going forward will serve as that heart and nerve center of TBA’s community giving, funding initiatives to assist our most vulnerable congregants and congregant families and ensure they will remain the valued members of our Temple family that they are.

For those of you who have contributed to Partners in Leadership in the past, thank you! For those of you in a position to do so, we now continue to need your help with the Temple B’nai Abraham Annual Fund, we continue to need you to please be generous, whatever your own level of financial ability, and we welcome any level of participation you can provide. The success of the Temple B’nai Abraham Annual Fund hinges on your participation and your generosity. Only through your commitment can our Temple achieve stability and sustainability for itself even in a greater world where we have no control over either stability or sustainability. If this congregation can participate in this endeavor with the same level of caring, empathy, energy and engagement that it has demonstrated through our many Temple programs and events this past year, we will not fail. We will succeed.

But I also need your collective help with something else. Dues remission in connection with the Temple B’nai Abraham Annual Fund is designed for and must continue to be designed for families who are truly in economic need. To come forward to request dues remission is an incredibly difficult, humbling and courageous thing for someone to do. As President I have made every effort within my scope of control to make this process as comfortable as possible under inherently uncomfortable circumstances, and to ensure that families in need receive what they need so that they do not have to worry about not being able to be part of our Temple community.

Dues remission is, however, meant to be a lifeline – hopefully a temporary lifeline – for families in true economic need and not as a vehicle for those not truly in need to seek a discount or reduction in dues just because a congregant “does not use the Temple enough times during the year to justify the cost” or “wishes to take a gap year” from paying dues because he or she is “just not feeling as good a vibe this year compared to previous years.” Dues remission cannot bring with it an expectation of permanent entitlement if we are to achieve long-term sustainability for our Temple.

Do not misunderstand me, that all of you want to be a part of our Temple community is a gift, and I want every one of you to remain with us and for new friends to join us. And I am certainly sensitive to the fact that we live in a world of ever rising costs and competition over where to allocate our own precious resources. Also do not misunderstand me, as I said in my remarks on Rosh Hashanah, you as a congregation have done beautifully in making our Temple warm, welcoming and vibrant with capacity crowd attendance at our events and activities. But we cannot let our guard down. We cannot commit the sin of taking what we have achieved and all the wonderful things Temple B’nai Abraham is for granted. Not even for a millisecond.

As a Temple we have done and must continue to do everything within our own power to make sure we can create and maintain a community that meets your needs. That certainly starts with me, our lay leadership, our clergy and our staff. But no synagogue – not ours, and certainly not any of our neighboring synagogues in our area – can sustain the community this congregation wants on an economic model of permanent dues remission for all. We all need to guard against the sin of taking our Temple, our Temple community and all we have achieved together for granted. Seeking, and in some cases demanding, dues remission when one is truly not in economic need of it is a form of taking all of what is Temple B’nai Abraham for granted. So, my challenge for us all, me included, is to work on this and do better on this in the coming year.

Today on Yom Kippur, I ask for your forgiveness for the sins I have committed against you personally and as Temple President. I pledge to do everything in my power for the year to come to do better. That includes working to correct the sin of taking you and the world around me for granted. I hope to not commit these sins in the future, and if I do, to continue to do better. That is not only my confession and pledge, but my hope and wish for all of us. Because if we can collectively commit to work on this, I know for certain that our Temple will long endure.

May you and your loved ones all be inscribed in the Book of Life for a sweet, happy and prosperous year.

G’mar chatimah tovah and tzom kal. A meaningful fast to all.

L’Shana Tova u’metukah.

JAY L. KOOPER

TEMPLE B’NAI ABRAHAM

REMARKS FOR ROSH HASHANAH

5786/2025

Shana Tovah!

Each Rosh Hashanah marks a time of fresh starts, new beginnings and new challenges. At the start of this New Year, Temple B’nai Abraham is in the middle of all three.

Just over two months ago – July 11, 2025 to be exact – I attended a Friday night Shabbat Service unlike any I have experienced in the more than 22 years I have been a member of this Congregation. It was a beautiful, cloudless evening outside on our patio. Approximately 250 people were in attendance with standing room going all the way back to the outside wall of the building. Many in attendance were congregants, some were not and just checking us out. On the bimah, for the first time, we as a congregation heard the beautiful voice and experienced for ourselves the incredible warmth of Cantor Emily Simkin. One week later, over 100 people were in attendance, again on the patio in the middle of July, for Cantor Simkin’s first Tot Shabbat service. These were certainly by far the most well-attended Friday night Regular and Tot Shabbat services I have seen here. Far more than that, the warmth, inclusivity and sheer joy I saw in everyone who attended and participated with Cantor Simkin in song was a living embodiment of when our mission statement of being a warm, welcoming and inclusive community to all is fulfilled. Today, we mark an exciting new beginning on this sacred bimah with Cantor Simkin leading us in song for the first time on the High Holy Days, and for those who did not get an opportunity to meet or experience Cantor Simkin over the summer, I cannot wait for you to have that opportunity starting today. Cantor Simkin, what a wonderful addition to our TBA family you already are. How lucky we are to have you.

Last Rosh Hashanah, I spoke with you of the coming launch of JStart, Temple B’nai Abraham’s new pre-school and successor to the Early School. This past January, ahead of schedule we launched the program and I am pleased to report to you that enrollment for JStart for the Fall of 2025 is quadruple the enrollment of the Early School for the Fall of 2024. Summer Camp 2025 enrollment was more than quadruple Summer Camp 2024 enrollment. At the heart of this growth was and is the reimagined curriculum and experiential education philosophy developed by our Director of Jewish Learning Melissa Weiner, JStart Site Director Michelle Nulman and their incredible team of educators, providing a curriculum and experience no other provider in this area is offering and that our kids and their parents are responding to. To Melissa, Michelle and all our educators, I have literally run out of superlatives when it comes to praising what you have all achieved with JStart. Yasher Koach to you all and Yasher Koach to our Director of our JPlay after care program, Alyssa Campbell, and to Debbie Aronson-Ziering for all she has done to keep our Universal Pre-Kindergarten program running on all cylinders, and in the process showing to our friends and neighbors in West Orange and our other neighboring towns all the positive benefits of community that come with joining our Temple B’nai Abraham family.

I would also be remiss if I did not acknowledge what has been the fastest growing program at the Temple over the entire course of my Presidency, and that is our Teen Makom Program for our 8^th through 12^th graders led by our Associate Rabbi Max Edwards. From the classroom to walks through our great local Jewish neighborhoods to the halls of Congress to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Rabbi Edwards has instilled in our teens not just a sense of pride in our Jewish heritage and identity, but a sense of community, purpose, service to others and kindness. Rabbi Edwards is a truly special person and a remarkable Rabbi, and I know how deeply that sentiment is felt across the entire Congregation.

Senior Rabbi David Vaisberg, no one has cared so deeply in furthering our Temple’s mission to become and remain a warm and welcoming community to all. You have been our kind overseer in times of joy, sorrow, excitement and change. Thank you for all you do every day in making sure we are all loved and cared for. I know how all you do and all you try is appreciated not just today, but throughout the year.

And speaking of the day-to-day, to Mara Suskauer and our entire administrative department and Tracey Bent and our entire maintenance team; this Temple only runs smoothly because of you. In the past year, we have enhanced our social media presence, our technology and security capabilities, and our overall outreach to the Congregation as a whole because of your and your teams’ forward-thinking and the pride you all take in your work. We are very lucky to have every single one of you, and we are the envy of synagogues in that regard. Thank you!

To our volunteers and lay leadership. What you have accomplished this year is astonishing. Temple event after Temple event after Temple event with capacity crowds. Your hard work gave this Temple the community and events this congregation wanted, and the congregation has responded. To our Board of Trustees, Officers and Committee Chairs, for all you do in tackling the most challenging tasks and difficult problems facing our Temple, thank you for the sacred work you have selflessly performed.

And to you, the Congregation. Today, the Temple is teeming with life because of all of you. Your level of engagement with the Temple is a true gift. After every interaction you have with me – whether it is to compliment, criticize or flat-out vent – I always end each conversation with a smile, because all these conversations reveal to me how deeply you love and care for our Temple. That is all any Temple President could ever hope or ask for from a congregation.

As a community, you have all done beautifully. But challenges still lie ahead for our Temple that we as a congregation will need to confront and address together to ensure the long-term stability and sustainability of our Temple. These challenges and how we address them will be the focus of the remainder of my remarks today and the remarks I will deliver on Yom Kippur.

One of the great unanswered questions facing not just our Temple, but all synagogues in our greater area no matter their size is what is the singular key for ensuring a synagogue’s long-term sustainability? Four times each year, I meet with all the other Temple Presidents in this area for dinner and group discussions on this very topic. And I can report to you that no synagogue has the answer to this question. No one has found the magic dues structure or strategic plan or golden key that unlocks the door to long-term sustainability. If someone had, we would all be implementing it.

As you all know, one of the great obstacles to long-term sustainability – and as a Temple we are certainly not an outlier when it comes to this – is that our collected dues do not cover our expenses. So how do we address this? In my own experience, when there exists no conventional solution within an industry (in this case, synagogues), my approach is to look “outside the box” at other industries that have succeeded at this. And one other industry that does this well is the industry at the heart of what has been my entire professional life – public utilities. Over the course of my term as President, I have come to view that the structure, challenges and potential solutions facing our Temple, and synagogues in general, are not too different from the ones facing the public utilities industry I work in every day. Does this mean I have been in the Temple Presidency and the public utilities industry for far too long? Absolutely! Can it also be true that the public utilities industry can be an instructive example for synagogue sustainability? Also, absolutely!

The next time you receive your electric, gas or water bill, take a closer look. Your public utility bill is comprised of three separate charges all covering a different and distinct cost. The first charge is the “commodity” charge, that is the charge for the actual electricity, gas and water that you use every time you turn on the light switch, stove or faucet. The second charge is the “delivery” charge, which as the name implies is the charge to deliver your electricity, gas and water from its source – be it an electric generation plant, water treatment plant or gas well – to your home or business. OK, simple enough, but there is a third charge that you should pay very close attention to.

The third charge is called the “capacity” charge for electricity and gas and the “facilities” charge for water. This charge covers the cost a utility incurs to ensure that electricity, gas or water is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year for you to use whenever you decide to turn on that light switch, gas stove or water faucet. It is not a charge based on how much electricity, gas and water you actually use, but based on the cost of making sure these three commodities are available for you to use at a moment’s notice.

This is in essence the economic model for public utilities – the utilities incur costs and make capital investments in their infrastructure based upon an ability to ensure that electricity, gas and water is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year regardless of when you need and use those products.  In exchange, utilities are permitted to set rates that enable them to both recover their costs and receive an opportunity earn a return on their investment, so that utilities can reinvest even more capital in new infrastructure. In the public utilities world, this economic model – “Ratemaking 101” so to speak – is called the Regulatory Compact.

Like public utilities, synagogues also provide life-sustaining products of their own – in this case, community, spiritual nourishment, education, pastoral care and care and coverage of life-cycle events to name just a few. Like public utilities, synagogues incur costs and make investments to ensure that the life-sustaining products they provide are available to congregants 24 hours as day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year regardless of when individual congregants need and use these products. In other words, like public utilities, synagogues must have the ability to recover the costs for actual congregant use of these products (your commodity charge), to deliver these products to you (your delivery charge) and to ensure these products are available to all congregants around the clock regardless of actual usage (your capacity charge).

So, what is the analogy of these charges within the economic model of a synagogue? Dues is certainly part of it but like the commodity and delivery charges in isolation, they are not enough to enable a synagogue to achieve sustainability. There needs to exist another critical piece that bridges the gap between what dues cover and the total expenses of a synagogue. That critical piece is a synagogue’s annual giving program, and it brings with it a regulatory compact of its own. For many years, that program at Temple B’nai Abraham has been called Partners in Leadership. Starting this fall, we are reimagining this fund to become a more inclusive and mission-aligned “Temple B’nai Abraham Annual Fund” that going forward will serve as the heart and nerve center of TBA’s community giving. With it must come a commitment by those of us in a position where we are able to help, to assist those in our Temple community who need our help to become and remain valued members of our Temple community; where our families in economic need can have access to our greater Temple family who cares for them, and in the process fulfill our mission of being a warm, welcoming and inclusive community to all.

I will discuss the Temple B’nai Abraham Annual Fund in some more detail on Yom Kippur. In the meantime, I hope the one thing you will take away from my remarks today is that getting our Temple to a place of long-term sustainability will require a very different way of thinking beyond budgets, dues structures, strategic planning or even philanthropy itself as vitally important as all those elements are. Achieving long-term sustainability will require each one of us to take a closer look within and honestly ask and answer for ourselves this question: what am I prepared to do to ensure that our Temple can sustainably operate at 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year so that the Temple is available for me at the important times in my life when I need the Temple. That is a significant part 1 of the challenge that lies ahead for Temple B’nai Abraham. I will discuss the equally significant part 2 of this challenge with you on Yom Kippur.

From my entire family to your family, I wish all of you a happy, healthy, prosperous and sweet New Year. May we all only know simchas.

L’Shana Tovah!