After several false starts, I have finally turned over the last of my administrative responsibilities and can consider myself truly retired, sort of.
A bit of personal history:
Hanna and I left Boston in 2005 for a home on Hornby Island in British Columbia. Our decision was based primarily on the increasing difficulty of making ends meet in a wonderful, but very expensive city. ALEPH could not support both a director of development (i.e. a fundraiser) and a full time rabbinic director and so I found myself at first earning a half time salary with benefits and then a half time salary without benefits. I took part time jobs to make the difference including a stint as shammes at my neighbourhood shul and sharing rabbinic duties with Hanna for B’nai Or of Boston. I loved both jobs, but with health insurance costs growing every year and the good fortune of being a Canadian, it became clear that we needed to give up our wonderful rental in West Roxbury and move back across the border where health insurance at the time was 1/12 of what it cost in Boston (and now is free of fees altogether).
I brought my work with me to Canada. A friend did the paperwork to get ALEPH Canada incorporated and several people got together and began donating. That allowed me to earn just enough to continue working on the now digital ALEPH ReSources Catalogue, the Integral Halachah Institute (successor to the ALEPH Bet Midrash), and the Reb Zalman Legacy project.
Now, the board of ALEPH Canada is growing and centred in Montreal. There are four new dayanim and a fifth coming. The ReSources Catalogue has nearly all the original offerings restored and several new items have been added. And I have gone through hundreds of Reb Zalman’s files and organized most of them into easily accessible categories along with the ALEPH collection of his 200 sound files. The ALEPH Canada website is undergoing a face lift and there are new projects taking shape.
Taken together (along with other things I haven’t mentioned), I’m satisfied that this is a good moment to pass the responsibility for these programs to others. Rabbis Sherril Gilbert and Schachar Orenstein are now the co-executive directors of ALEPH Canada, with R. Schachar taking primary responsibility for the IHI, the Reb Zalman Legacy Project, and the catalogue. Sherril and I have been teacher and student, close friends, and now rabbinic colleagues and working with her over the past several years has been a source of deep satisfaction. I met R. Schachar when he served as rabbi in Vancouver and then again in Montreal. He had a personal relationship with R. Zalman, is deeply learned, and working with him is a pleasure.
I encourage you all to get to know and support them as they continue this holy work and take it to new levels.
With many blessing to you and a change in our collective fortunes as we enter the month of Av.
Daniel
Reb Sherril Gilbert: director@alephcanada.ca
Schachar Orenstein: execdirector@alephcanada.ca
Website: Alephcanada.ca
PS: I plan to continue working on Reb Zalman’s files, blogging on occasion, and doing some other writing and perhaps teaching, along with more gardening and participation in our local Hornby Island community which, like all of us, is struggling with the pandemic.