On Wednesday, the convention was offered a look at the strategic planning process that United Synagogue is beginning in partnership with HaYom. Rabbi Michael Siegel of Anshe Emet Synagogue, HaYom’s founder, snowed in at home, spoke to the group from a video monitor (and therefore loomed far larger than life at the front of the room). HaYom, he said, was formed out of a feeling of urgency about the entire Conservative movement, but with the understanding that the first movement institution to be reformed would be United Synagogue. “We came not as outliers but as stakeholders,” Siegel said, adding that the group was a broad-based coalition of synagogue leaders from across the country, representing synagogues of varying sizes and demographics. “Our demands were clear from the start,” he saide; they wanted a strategic plan to be created and implemented, they wanted HaYom to be involved in the planning, and they wanted a professional in charge of the project.
All those demands were met, and the professional, Jack Ukeles, whose name is on a management study done several years ago for us and being implemented now (although he said that he was just one among many people responsible for that report). Ukeles is just about set to start a multiphase plan, described in consultantese, that is set to show first results in about nine months.
Joanne Palmer
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