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Shalom my friends,

I’m writing to you with an unexpected but important request.

As you know, our building is an anchor for the Jewish community in downtown Chicago.  In addition to our prayer services, onsite programs and rental events, we are featured in many architectural tours and publications, and we regularly host people from around the world. This is an important mission we are proud to accept.

Although we have been very proactive about maintaining our 65-year-old boiler, it recently failed without warning.  And after evaluation by professionals, it became clear that repairing the system would have so many unknown costs that the more prudent step would be to have the boiler fully replaced.

This is a large expense that we did not anticipate for this year. The cost of replacing the boiler—including asbestos remediation, removal of the old boiler and replacing it with the new, permits, city water issues and various safety requirements — plus the add-on cost of repairing pipes that burst because of the cold weather — is significant, but we had no choice.  This project is essential to the functioning of our building and continuing our operations.

Without a working boiler our sanctuary and meeting spaces could not be safely used, our rentals and onsite cultural programs would be disrupted and we risked long-term damage to the building itself, so we immediately took action to start the repairs.  We moved shacharit services offsite for two weeks to facilitate the process, we communicated weekly with all our stakeholders about our progress, and our vendors worked as swiftly as they could to return heat to our spaces.

Although the project is ongoing, the worst is behind us and we are now back in our building, faced with paying for a six-figure repair.  As a community, I know we are not negligent.  We want to preserve the building we – and in many cases, our parents and grandparents – have counted on and loved.  We have more than 3000 plaques on our walls, some (from predecessor congregations) going back to the 1800s, and that is a responsibility I do not take lightly.  Just as these people preserved our building for us, I am asking you to pay it forward and preserve our building for future generations as well. 

In my heart, I firmly believe that the best days for Chicago Loop Synagogue are yet to come.  We are surrounded by opportunity as the LaSalle Street corridor converts from business to residential and people return to downtown for culture and work; in fact, a recent article in Crain’s estimates that the residential population of downtown will double to 300,000 by 2040. We have an army of volunteers who lead our services, plan our cultural programming and generally keep our synagogue alive.  We have engaged a social media company to handle our marketing, and the results have been significant.  Perhaps most important, we have kept our doors open in this location for 65 years, when many businesses around us have failed.

We are reaching out now to ask for your help in meeting this urgent need. We hope that you will be able to contribute an additional amount to offset the cost of replacing our boiler. This gift will be directly supporting the continuity of synagogue life, ensuring that our doors remain open and our building remains warm. Every gift matters, whether large or small, and all contributions will go exclusively toward the boiler replacement.  There are several convenient ways for you to contribute:

• Through our website, chiloopsyn.org;
• By Zelle at payments@chiloopsyn.org;
• By phone, 312-346-7370, for a credit card payment
• By mail to Chicago Loop Synagogue, PO Box 2537, Chicago, IL 60690

This synagogue has always been sustained by a community that steps forward when it matters most. The time to help Chicago Loop Synagogue is now, and your generosity will make an immediate and tangible difference – not only for us, but for our friends, neighbors, children and grandchildren. If we save our synagogue now, people can continue to call Chicago Loop Synagogue their spiritual home – people we may never meet, but fellow Jews we are responsible for whether we know them or not.

Thank you for being part of this sacred community, for caring so deeply about its future, and for supporting us in our mission to be an anchor for Chicago’s Jewish community downtown.

With gratitude,

Lee Zoldan
President

P.S. If you have questions or would like to discuss a contribution, Mary Lynn Pross is managing this project.  Please feel free to contact her at loopadmn@chiloopsyn.org or 773-343-2545.