My dear friends and community,

Fourteen years ago, as I was considering taking my first pulpit at a synagogue in Walnut Creek called Congregation B’nai Tikvah, I had a life-changing conversation with Stephen Richards, our cantor emeritus. I was hoping for some assurance in talking to him about what my experience would be like if I became the cantor here. He told me that he couldn’t, of course, predict the future, but he could reassure me that this synagogue would be a wonderful place to raise young children. He knew from his own years here what a kind and loving community it is.

With those words echoing in my heart, I took the job, and three short months after I started as your cantor, I was pregnant with my first child, Ezra Gabriel Chabon.
Cantor Richards was 100% correct about how it would feel to raise my boys in our synagogue. Ezra was just 8 weeks old at my second High Holidays, but I didn’t feel like the task was impossible, because I knew that I had the support and love of CBT to hold me up when sleep-deprivation and colic brought me down. I will never forget the first time Ezra toddled up to the bima and climbed into my lap to close the service with me. This truly is a very special place.

And now, 14 years later, we have reached another milestone. It is with tremendous love and joy in our hearts that Steve and I invite you to celebrate with us as Ezra becomes a bar mitzvah, on Friday night, June 15th, at our 7:30 Shir Joy service. Ezra will participate in the service and Rabbi Gutterman and I will offer him a special blessing in front of our beautiful ark. One of the most important parts of this lifecycle event in the life of a family is that the boy becomes bar mitzvah not in isolation, but with his community. You, our CBT family, will be witnesses to Ezra crossing the threshold into young adulthood, just as you have watched him grow into a young man.

We anticipate a very large congregation on the 15th, so please come early, carpool, and keep your eyes open on Springbrook for the shuttle that will be driving people up the hill from the overflow parking lot.

Many thanks and blessings,
Cantor Chabon