11 Marheshvan 5781
October 28, 2020
Dear Young Israel Community,
After seven months of Zoom, canopies, parking lots and tents, we are pleased to announce that Young Israel of West Hartford will be reopening our building for indoor daily and Shabbat services, on days the weather warrants it, beginning immediately! This is a huge step forward, as the harshness of fall and winter loom around the corner.
While we are excited about returning to our shul, we want to emphasize to you that our priority is the safety and well-being of every member of our community. To that end, we have made several modifications that will enable us to gather indoors safely, such as HVAC adjustments, enabling additional fresh airflow into the building, navigating the flow of foot traffic in the building, designating seating areas, and much more. We will continue to evaluate & reassess these protocols and ask that you embrace them. Working together, we can look forward to returning to our shul and keeping ourselves and each other as safe as possible.
Moving forward, our Shabbat Sign Up will only open on Thursdays. This will allow us to make an informed decision considering the weekend’s weather and deciding to plan for either an outdoor or indoor minyan. Our plan is to continue to utilize our outdoor minyan space for as long as possible – provided the forecast is above 45 F and does not call for precipitation. Please be sure to carefully read the time and location of the minyan, as it has the potential to change each week.
Weekly minyan too will continue to operate outdoors, weather permitting. We ask that you please sign up in advance with the recognition that we will convene inside if weather conditions require. Each day at approximately 5 pm, we will assess the next day's weather and notify attendees if the minyan be will inside or outside.
New indoor guidelines & modifications are listed below and are available here. Additionally, revised outdoor guidelines can be accessed here. Please review and familiarize yourself with both of them!
We want to also highlight one additional, significant change, specifically. Due to physical distancing requirements, we have been forced to greatly reduce the number of usable seats when we are in the sanctuary. We can only seat 20 pods, which roughly a maximum of 30 individuals per service (depending on groupings). To give as many people as possible the opportunity to daven in shul, particularly on Shabbat morning, we have added an overflow sign up. If enough people sign up in this section, then we will have a second Shabbat morning minyan. We can only permit those who have signed up online, prior to services, to enter the building. By the same token, if you sign up – please be sure to come!
We recognize that, unfortunately, we are continuing to see a surge of COVID-19 around the country and across our state. We continue to carefully monitor these background external factors as well and include them in our decision-making process at every juncture.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact Rabbi Brander (rabbi@youngisraelwh.org) or our COVID-19 Medical Committee (dr@youngisraelwh.org).
Thank you in advance for your understanding and continued diligence in keeping yourselves and our community safe.
The Young Israel of West Hartford COVID-19 Task Force |
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