CBI Blogs

Dear Ones,

My heart is very full as I sift through all the vivid memories from the Gather in Gratitude celebration of this past weekend. The Friday night Shabbat service, the Gala fundraiser on Saturday night, and the picnic on Sunday, floated on a river of love, memories, gratitude and shared experience. I am grateful beyond words to all of you who attended one or more of these events. Let me again offer my special thanks to Jan Soifer and all of the volunteers on her committee, as well as everyone on the Temple staff, who envisioned such a beautiful celebration.

Those of you who were able to attend the Gala on Saturday night heard the announcement of the launching of the Rabbi Steven Folberg Temple Retreat Fund. Allow me to explain what this is about.

Beginning in the mid to late 1990s, CBI regularly held a Family Retreat at the URJ Greene Family Camp in Bruceville, Texas, which is about a 90 minute drive north of CBI. These “Family Retreats” were remarkably popular. In fact, in their heyday, we might have close to 150 participants of all ages, including families with and without kids, and singles of all ages. In addition to CBI clergy participating in the programming, we would also hire staff to run babysitting and kids’ programming in parallel to the adult programming, so the parents among us could enjoy some downtime throughout the weekend. It was even our custom at one point to create a special T-shirt for the retreat that everyone received. The experience of sharing a leisurely Shabbat together helped people to make new friends and draw closer to the CBI community.

In time, it became increasingly difficult to hold these annual retreats, including the annual Teen Retreat Weekend for our eighth, ninth and 10th graders. Losing the latter was significant, since many of our Religious School students don’t see each other during the public school week, so that the Teen Retreat Weekend (which was sometimes part of the larger Temple Retreat) was an ideal way to create friendship and solidarity with their Jewish peers.

Why did we stop holding these retreats? The COVID-19 lockdown, of course, made our Temple retreats impossible. Additionally, the increasing cost of renting space at the camp and hiring counseling staff made it increasingly difficult for the Temple to subsidize the cost of the weekend, which made participation too expensive for some of our households.

It’s my hope and vision that the Rabbi Steven Folberg Temple Retreat Fund will, with your help, enable CBI to once again offer these delightful and impactful weekends of Jewish community and celebration, making them accessible to everyone in the Temple community. I know that the return of our Temple retreats will strengthen the cohesion and social fabric of our community, at a time when so many of us crave experiences of Jewish community more than ever.

I’m thrilled to report that over $20,000 in donations have already been made to this new fund. If you’d like to make a donation of any size, you can follow this link and select the Retreat Fund from the drop-down menu.

One other note. We will be in Austin for another couple of months, and my final Friday night service will be June 7. I hope to see you multiple times between now and then.

With love, as always,

Rabbi Steve Folberg