Board Touch Base

Hi,

I need to touch base with you on several matters:

First - we should all be very proud of Esther, who spoke beautifully yesterday offering greetings on behalf of Hillel at the Turkish Intercultural Club iftar.

Next - just yesterday Alana was asked by David Brinn, the Insrael Intern supervisor, to join him in going to Washington, DC for a protest at the UN on Sunday against the President of Iran.  When Alana told me yesterday, I did not realize that it was Ahmadinejad.  I did not know he was coming to the US.  Let's be clear - this is the "wipe Israel off the face of the earth" guy.  This is the "Holocaust is a myth" guy, who sponsored the Holocaust denial conference in Iran last year.  This is the guy who sent the sophisticated weaponery to Hezbollah and Iranian military personnel to show them how to use it against Israel in the Lebanon War.  This is the " I love nuclear weapons" guy.

We should all be very proud we have a representative going to this protest.  I think this is going to be a pretty amazing experience.

Next - as Board Members, you all need to support the Judaica Committee, who has, by far, the most responsibility in these holiday weeks:

Saturday night is the Break the Fast at Hillel at 7:45 PM.
Monday and Tuesday we are decorating the sukkah.  Every Board member needs to take time to help do this next week.  Today, you should take a minute to look outside Mundelein, since for the very first time ever - the university Facilities staff is putting up our sukkah this morning from 10 AM on.  I will be outside "supervising," and it would be good for Hillel Board members to stop by and say thank you.

Finally, about Yom Kippur - tonight I am going to send a reminder email on the listserve about services, the Break the Fast, etc.

I still do not know who can come to Hillel at 7:15 PM to meet any students who want to go to the 8 PM Yom Kippur service at Emanuel on Friday night.  Caitlin said she would do this, but she really wants to go to Northwestern, instead.  And, I think she should go there.  Lindsey, are you going to Emanuel?  Carrie, are you going to be coming to Emanuel for Yom Kippur?  Can you do this?

Steve and Katie are going to be at Hillel at 6 PM to meet with any students who want to attend services at Mitziut.  That is the funky, spirtual, aspects of traditional service that they went to on Rosh HaShanah that meets on Morse Ave.  Services there start at 6:30 PM on Friday evening.  We have offered to "the Mitziut community" to use our sukkah on days we are not having programs in it.  They are going to have a Havdallah in the sukkah on the Saturday night of Sukkot (next Saturday night) followed by a drum circle - to which our students are invited.  That will be in next week's listserve.

OK - I wanted to touch base with you on these things.

Take care,

Patti