Apr. 10, 2026 – Shemini
Our Centennial, Your Big Night
Tonight we celebrate the 100th anniversary of our sanctuary and a century here at North Ashland Avenue. The planning committee started meeting more than a year ago, the choir has been practicing for months. Photos and documents have been collected, a slide show has been organized, food has been prepared, and worship booklets printed. Now the moment is here. The remaining piece of the puzzle is you, our congregants. Please do not treat tonight as someone else’s service, someone else’s celebration, someone else’s, obligation. We ask for the one thing only you can give: the honor of your presence.
If you were brought up here, then this is your night. If you have worshipped, studied, participated in social and community action efforts here, then this is your night. If you are raising children and grandchildren here, then this is your night. You need not be from a founding family to be part of our foundation here. Each and every one of us is a significant part of our history no matter how many years we have been here. As God says to the people in the Deuteronomy reading for the High Holy Days, this is about kulchem, all of you. It’s about “All y’all” as we say around here. Not a select few, not a particular group, not a distinct cohort or two, everyone.
Tonight we celebrate the generations that went before us, not only by incorporating their prayers and melodies but by recommitting to the values they brought to this place. They dedicated it with hope and trust that we might rededicate it. It is ours to protect, cherish and preserve, just as they did. We feel their presence here tonight. We pray that our words and deeds would make them proud.
Coming just a day or two after the conclusion of Passover we bring the spirit of the seders with us. (The matzo we can relinquish until next year.) “What makes this night different than all other nights?” At all other services the sanctuary is a place to celebrate our values. Tonight we celebrate the value of our sanctuary. We only get one centennial year. We are planning to do this exact service only once. There are many days throughout the course of a year, a decade or a lifetime, but there is only one April 10, 2026, only one 23 Nisan 5786. May this sacred place remind us to sanctify time, encourage us to cherish Torah and inspire us to work for peace.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi David Wirtschafter