Back.

I disappeared for about three weeks, and along with my absence, so did the traffic to the blog. I suspect we'll get more traffic over the next several weeks since there is a reference to the blog on the Kadima website. We will also put a regular message in the Kol Echad referencing the blog. If you have feedback on the blog, please let me know.

But enough about what hasn't been happening.

Shanah Tovah and Sukkot Sameach.

With the holidays and my day job, there has been little time for blogging. But that doesn't mean that people haven't been busy at Kadima. We've been running a magazine drive, and I urge everyone to participate in it.

Moreover, over the past several weeks, our Board Committees have been meeting, and preparing reports for review by the Board at the next Board meeting on October 21. Everyone is welcome to come to Board meetings, although there may be sections of the meeting in which we go into Executive Session, the meetings are open to the Community. I urge everyone to attend.

Since my last posting, our Marketing Committee, chaired by Rich Abronson (our Secretary) and Bronwyn Spencer, held a great meeting to discuss the Name issue and bring a recommendation to the Executive Committee and Board for approval. They did not come to consensus on the exact name, but did decide on a few possible options. The Admissions team did a great job in vetting names and researching them. We hope that by the end of our October meeting, we will have a new name for Kadima. It will include Kadima, but may have something instead of "Hebrew Academy" after it.

Pam Teitelbaum led a difficult, but important, discussion regarding our By Laws in our By Laws Committee. Kadima has had a set of By Laws that needs revision, and has struggled over the past several years to complete the revision. Dave Leon and Richard Spencer are going through the By Laws to clean them up; in our next By Law meeting, we will be discussing several structural issues. We hope to complete the process and bring it to the Board by November.

At its retreat in August, the Board asked me, as President, to appoint a Core Documents Committee, to examine Kadima's mission statement, and, "modernize" it. I asked our Executive Vice President, Mark Teitelbaum, to lead a team of thinkers, and they met last night to discuss the Mission Statement. In one night, they accomplished a great deal, and I think that we are our way to defining Kadima in a sharp, incisive, and persuasive way. We're hoping to have something to submit to the Board soon.

Meanwhile, this Thursday, October 8, we'll be installing Bill Cohen, our Head of School at our annual Sukkot Under the Stars Program. I urge all to attend. It will be a great evening, and a wonderful chance to hear some words of wisdom from Bill, and to show support for your school.

And please check this spot for, hopefully, more frequent updates as to what is going on at Kadima. I'll try to update more frequently in the days ahead.

See you on Thursday night at the Kadima sukkah!