Annual AGM

Dear Members of Colchester and District Jewish Community

The AGM is on Sunday 12 July 2026 starting at 3pm in the Spiritualist Centre. It will be followed tea, cake, music and a celebration of John Gottesman’s recent 90th Birthday. We hope you will attend.

Your community needs you!

Over the past year the very small committee has worked hard to keep everything afloat. We really need more hands to share the workload to keep both our Shul and community going.

This has been a particularly difficult year with the world political scene and how that impacts us, along with the repeat of water escape in our building. In order to make our building safe and usable in the coming years upgrades are also needed. Some of these upgrades are being incorporated to be carried out while we get the water damage fixed. This is all a lot of work over and beyond the usual running of our Shul. Once the building works are completed the workload will ease and we will have a centre to build community, a place to gather, pray and celebrate, for us and for the coming generations.

To do this we need many hands, below are a few of the identified roles.

· Someone good with spreadsheets and accurate with numbers or /and bookkeeping skills to assist in managing the accounts.
· People to visit the sick or/and those more isolated. This could be 2 or 3 different people’s roles and range from visiting those in hospital to phoning people living alone or in need of connection.
· Garden support and some maintenance e.g. watering in hot weather.
· Event / celebrations support.
· A catering group – we used to have an active team and hope to bring this back.
· Lay readers to take services or assist in service taking. If you are interested but feel you would need guidance and learning to be able to, please make contact. Our current lay readers are willing to support and encourage others to join them.

Finally, the committee is currently running on minimum numbers and would welcome people to join the governing body (the committee) to help with the overview, decisions and running of the Shul. To join the governing committee you must have been a member for a minimum of a year, this does not stop anyone from taking on any of the other roles or even assisting the committee with a very hands-on approach.

We are currently putting together the list of nominees for next year’s committee to be voted in at the AGM on the 12 July 26. We need nominee’s names as soon as possible. Please put your name forward for the committee or to offer other assistance by contacting Linda on CDJCsecretary@gmail.com

Best wishes, and looking forward to seeing you on 12th.

Rina

CDJC Chair