The old shall dream dreams, the youth shall see visions. --Joel 2:28

The founders of Temple Micah had a great vision for what a synagogue could be. They dreamt of a place infused with Jewish learning, Jewish values and Jewish spirit. They sought to create a religious environment imbued with modesty and egalitarian in nature, where everyone was welcome and could feel at home. They prized creativity and the questioning of old assumptions. Most of all, they valued a sense of community. We are the heirs of our founders' strong vision. We have built on their foundation to create the Temple Micah that we know and love, the Temple Micah that has become a model across America for what a synagogue might strive to be.

In my 24 years as rabbi of Micah, in keeping with the vision of our founders, I have rarely talked about money for ourselves, for Temple Micah. I have asked for money to support programs in Israel and provide scholarships for our children; for social service organizations that combat hunger, homelessness, illiteracy and other problems in our nation, as well as for emergency relief in response to disasters around the world. The founders of Temple Micah also knew well that there is great wisdom in the rabbinic injunction "Im Ein Kemach Ein Torah"--"Where there is no sustenance there can be no Torah" (Mishnah Avot 3:17). Sustaining ourselves, sustaining Jewish life, enhancing Jewish life: these are all sacred mitzvot. And while generosity alone is no guarantee that an institution is rooted in and guided by Torah, without it, Torah and the values it teaches are in danger of withering. This is what we face at Temple Micah.

We are now on the last push to raise money for a building expansion that will provide much-needed offices for our staff, classroom space for our children and adult learners and an expanded social hall for religious-school assemblies, simchas, Kiddush following Shabbat services, holiday celebrations and other special events. Even more than it is now, our building will be a place for us to thrive as a community, a place of "dreams and visions."

Approximately 1 years ago, when we began to raise money for what would become our beautiful new synagogue, in the spirit of our founders, we made the commitment to nameless giving--a most uncommon one for Jewish institutional fund raising in the modern world. I sometimes ask myself why this principle is so important to the character of who we are. After all, I grew up loving such Chicago landmarks as the Shedd Aquarium, the Adler Planetarium and the Field Museum. What makes the "namings" there different?

"My house shall be a house of prayer for all people." (Isaiah 5 :7) Isaiah's call is an elegant, even poetic answer. We want Temple Micah to be God's house. We strive to make our communal home a place where we encounter the sacred. We want the classrooms, the social hall and every corner of our building to reflect God's holiness and the spirit of Psalms 24:1, which says, "The Earth is the Lord's and all that is within it..." The sanctuary, where we lift our voices to search for God, should welcome all of us as equals. We want all who enter our home to feel as if they are entering God's home, and that there is a special place here for them. We want to be egalitarian in every way. We want to be welcoming in every way. No expression of our commitment to a holy community that pursues God's sacred work could be made more elegantly than by the implicit statement that all of this belongs to God. We seek to use it in a way that honors God's name. How better can we express the utter simplicity of what we are about, the vision that was rooted in the dream of our founders?

These very values are now being tested. Can we raise the money necessary to support our programs and our growing membership without compromising our core values? We know that you can build and expand synagogues by offering "naming opportunities." It is done everywhere. Can we be who we, in our better moments, wish to be and raise the funds we need in our low-key, almost anonymous manner? The success of this drive depends on each one of us giving generously as an act of faith that, communally, demonstrates our strong belief that there is a place for a congregation that does "synagogue" a little bit differently, in a way that, for us anyhow, honors God. When we raise this last million dollars in the "Micah way," our community will have, once again, lived up to the vision of our founders.

I believe we have both the resources and the faith to succeed in our efforts. The Torah teaches us that when Moses called upon the Israelites, in the wilderness, to contribute to the building of the tabernacle that would be God's dwelling, they gave so much that Moses finally had to turn their gifts away. Let us honor that text and stand in that tradition, although rather than turn gifts away, we may decide to furnish what we are building.