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__Anne Stein's Speech at the CATE Luncheon June 4__
In this week’s parasha, B’haalotecha, we read that after the Israelites overwhelm Moses with their complaining about their desire to eat more than manna, God instructs Moses to appoint elders to share the burden of ruling the people and settling their many issues. Several months ago some of us “elders” set up a past presidents council to discuss the future of CATE. After much discussion (and good food I might add) we decided that perhaps we should have a shared presidency with one “elder” and one fairly new person to share, as the Torah says, the burden of ruling the Jewish people of CATE. So, here we are!

The Chicagoland area has been fortunate in having a lot of stability as far as Reform Jewish educators go. Many of us have been in the community for over twenty years and on the same job for most, if not all of those years. We have all been president of CATE. The only downside to that is when we realized that we had all “been there, done that”. But, we all still feel a strong sense of community and know how important CATE has been to all of us. Those of you in the room may remember how difficult my first year in Chicago was and it CATE that gave me the support to stick it out and continue in the field. For that I will be forever grateful. Judy and I are very excited to try out this new model. We feel we can compliment each other very well as we have a shared vision for the organization. We have a few visions we would like to share with you now.

Communication is at the heart of the success of our organization. In today’s world we feel it is not important for all of our communication to be face to face so we will only meet in person every other month. In order to remain in touch with each other regularly though, Judy has set up a WIKI page for us. We will make sure that the link is included in all CATE emails so you will get comfortable with it and will be a contributor to it. It only works if everyone contributes. It will be a way for us to have discussions, ask questions, share curriculum and more. Our first meeting in the fall will help us all get familiar with this new technology.

Communication between CATE and our local Jewish educational institutions We are excited to rebuild our relationship with the CFJE. The principal advisory committee has been put back into action and we will again be involved in decision making and planning ideas for programs in which we are involved.

We will have many new members of CATE next year. Most of these people are not new to Chicago or new to the field but we must reach out to them and make sure they know that CATE is here for them and we want their participation.

The board will be meeting in July to set the topics for next year’s meetings If you have any ideas for meeting topics during the coming year, please let us know..We want to make our meetings meaningful for all of us.

Today we ate more than manna and had no complaints! The elders and the next generation are ready to work together. We hope you will be involved in this process. We wish you all a wonderful summer and look forward to serving you during the upcoming year.