Monday, October 06, 2008

The most important election

Last night we went to our shool's General Meeting, and it was the largest turnout ever. There were about 200 people there, almost all of the membership. The reason that there was such a large turnout was because of the terrible time that our shool, the New Synagogue of Netanya, known as Macdonald's shool (because it is on McDonald Street, named after a British Governor General of Palestine not the Hamburger chain), has been going through. Notably this Orthodox synagogue does all its non-liturgical functions in English, which is one reason why we are members.
Several months ago a member of the board became fed up because a small group of old men who had been in the shool for many years were controlling it, and in effect ignoring the decisions of the elected Board. This group had called themselves Trustees and controlled the budget of the shool. When required to produce a financial statement, this group either did not or could not. This Board member (who shall be nameless) went to the organization that controls non-profit making organizations (known as amutot in Israel) such as Synagogues, and asked them for a legal ruling on whether these Trustees were legitimate. He received the answer he was seeking, that they are not. The ruling body of the amutah is the board that has been elected by the paid-up membership, there is no provision for Trustees. With this legal ruling and the help of a lawyer at the next General Meeting he engineered the ouster of the Trustees. Although the attempt to remove them was declared illegal at the meeting and it was ended aburptly, the legal document prevailed and the Trustees subsequently resigned and several of them left the shool. There is no claim or imputation that these Trustees did anything illegal financially, merely that they inappropriately over-rode the decisions of the elected Board.
As a result of this situation the newly elected Chairman of the Board and other Board members also resigned, leaving the shool with no actual leadership.
Someone agreed to be the informal leader of a General Meeting of the membership that would re-elect a new Chairman and Board and this was the meeting we went to last night. Given the divisions of opinions that had riven the shool over the past few months, this meeting was remarkably civil and a new Chairman and Board were duly elected. I should say that the new Chairman, Ernie Hirsch, is a charming man, and he will be a great leader for the shool under the present circumstances.
Why would I be so involved in this situation? Mainly because Naomi is a regular shool-goer and forced me to participate. However, I went along without any visible coercion.
So there are elections and elections, and it's important to know which ones are really important

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