Leo Baeck College ONLINE
Dear friends
As valued member of the Leo Baeck College community, we wanted to let you know how the College is responding to the current period of uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, following the government’s latest advice.
Here at LBC we have the technology in place that lets us to move to on-line teaching and our offices will be closed until Sunday 31 May, though this may be extended subject to government guidance. Also subject to government guidance, we continue to plan for ordination as normal on Sunday, 5 July 2020, so do please keep that date in your diaries.
We are also pleased to let you know that we will be putting in place new on-line formats for allowing our supporters to engage with us remotely. Webinars and livestream options will allow us maintain the levels of interactivity that are the hallmark of LBC. Do have a look at what’s on offer from our adult our adult Jewish learning programme at:
https://lbc.ac.uk/…/additional-learning-opportun…/lehrhaus/…
Our summer fundraising garden party scheduled for June 14 is necessarily postponed for the time being and we are exploring other options for raising funds and patronage in the meantime. We still plan to operate as close to break-even as possible in 2019/20 on our lowest cost-base for some time but this is increasingly difficult on static revenues and there are some areas where we just do need to spend more money to remain operationally effective.
We do appreciate this is a difficult time for everyone and that we are all feeling poorer than a few weeks ago. But we do sincerely appreciate your continued and generous support of the College. For almost 65 years, we have offered high calibre teaching with a commitment to developing rabbis, other professionals, and lay leaders who have built, and will continue to build, sustainable, accessible, and thriving Progressive Jewish communities.
Please bear with us during this challenging period. We are all in uncharted territory and we need to welcome new ways of being together – to support, encourage to get through this together for as long as this new reality lasts. With your help, we will emerge firmly positioned as a sustainable centre of excellence and which trains skilled, passionate, and dedicated leaders who are inspired by and are inspiring about Judaism.
B’shalom
Rabbi Dr Deborah Kahn-Harris
Principal
Dr Stephen Herman
Chair of Trustees