Welcome to the beginning of our online newsletter, The Scroll. Originally, the congregation published a monthly newsletter and mailed a hard copy to each congregant or congregant-family. We eventually replaced this paper monthly bulletin with weekly e-mails, as postage and printing costs increased and the costs of e-mail decreased.
Some of you have asked for the monthly bulletin to return. You recognize that e-mails are fast, flexible, cheap, and convenient. They allow the temple to address current topics quickly, as we did in reaction to Charlottesville, for example. But you also note that e-mails are hard to sort through and clutter your inbox. And you have also noted that while our e-mails convey what’s happening on the calendar, they often lack the content that our monthly bulletin conveyed: thoughts from the clergy and the president, introductions to b’nai mitzvah students and new congregants, and the like.
We have listened and responded. In addition to our weekly e-mails about upcoming events, we are reintroducing longer articles (such as this message) on this new online newsletter, The Scroll, essentially a congregational blog. At the same time, we are upgrading our website to make its information more current and accessible. And for those of you who want hard copies, we will collect these articles and other information into a printed newsletter which we will mail to you quarterly. In recognition of higher printing and mailing costs, however, this quarterly printed newsletter will be subscription-only and require a modest reimbursement.
We hope that this multi-pronged approach meets our congregants’ varied needs. We will be setting up an Aceptiva page for subscriptions to the printed newsletter. To contribute or comment about our communications, or, even better, help the Communications Committee, please contact csscommunications101@gmail.com.
I look forward to all that the coming year brings and to spending more time with you. If you ever need to talk with me about anything, please e-mail me at president@shaaray.org.
Shalom,
Scott Garland
President
