Good morning and gut yontif. My name is Sarah Allyn, and it is my honor to serve on the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue’s Board of Directors.
I want to begin by thanking the Bethel Community Transformation Center for welcoming us once again to their beautiful space. Thank you to Rabbi Shere for leading our community in prayer this season, and I’m wishing Rabbi Silverman a refuah shelma. Thank you to our dedicated synagogue staff, and my fellow board members for working tirelessly to make this season possible.
We all know why I’m up here on the holiest, least-caffeinated day of the year. I promise to keep it short, if you promise to make my job easy. Jokes aside, I believe it’s an honor to ask you to invest in our community.
This year has been a challenging one. We live in a time of increasing polarization, vitriol, violence, and, of course, rising antisemitism. Many of us have felt the anxiety that comes from scrolling the news or wondering if the spaces we gather in are safe.
And yet, we also live in a time of extraordinary Jewish renewal. Here in Detroit, we are developing something unique: a synagogue rooted in tradition and the new Samantha Woll Center for Jewish Detroit—a home for programming, learning, and gathering that extends our reach and deepens our impact. Together, the Downtown Synagogue and the Woll Center form a true hub of Jewish life in the city: a place where the doors are not locked by dues, where High Holiday tickets are not priced like Taylor Swift concerts, where you can show up and belong—no questions asked.
This is both radical and deeply Jewish.
Of course, ideals alone don’t pay the bills. It costs real money to keep the lights on, to pay our extraordinary staff, to create the programs that keep us engaged, to show up for those who need us most.
The real cost of sustaining this community is about $180 per household, per month.
And so, once again, I’m asking you to become a Downtown Synagogue Sustainer. Can you put a hand up if you’re already a sustainer? Thank you!
If your hand isn’t up, please consider swapping out one of your streaming subscriptions. Whether it’s $18 a month, $180, or somewhere in between, your contribution makes a difference.
On Rosh Hashanah, tradition teaches that we are judged twice—once as individuals, and once as part of the community. The first day is about me: my choices, my actions, my impact. The second day is about us: how we show up for one another, what kind of community we are building together.
This appeal is about both. Each of us has the power to give as an individual, to make a personal choice to sustain Jewish life. But the real measure comes in how those individual gifts add up to something larger—how, together, we create a community that is strong, inclusive, welcoming, and enduring.
We cannot always control what happens in the wider world. But we can take responsibility for one another. We can make sure that the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue is here not just for us today, but for our children and their children tomorrow.
G’mar Chatima Tova