For a few years, I’ve been blogging “From Leslie’s Laptop.” It wasn’t a very descriptive name for my blog, but you knew it was my personal take on the Jewish world around me. If you have been following it, you’ve noticed that I haven’t really blogged much recently. 

I stopped not because I ran out of things to tell you about. I stopped because I have so much to tell you about that I didn’t know where to start. As president of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest, my days are full with so many wonderful conversations, exciting new ideas, and enormous challenges and opportunities that I couldn’t figure out how to convey all of these stories to my readers. But I’m having such a great time that I do want to keep sharing my take on our Jewish community with you regularly.

As a kid, I loved kaleidoscopes. I loved how the shifting shapes fell into place to show you something totally different from one minute to the next. That’s a little like what my life is like right now. I don’t get to sit at Leslie’s Laptop very often. Instead, I have the privilege of being out, traveling across our widespread geographical area; meeting agency leadership, our volunteers, and lay leaders; and working with our federation staff. And all day long, I see new and interesting patterns emerging that I want to share with you.

Sometimes, when a particularly beautiful pattern falls into place in a kaleidoscope, you wish you could take a picture of it to keep. That’s what I want to do here. I’m going to share with you the “screen shots,” if you will, from my personal kaleidoscope. And if you see something new, exciting, or challenging in our Jewish community that you want to share with me, you can still reach me through my laptop, by emailing me at ldanninrosenthal@gmail.com.