On Sunday, Shalom Pittsburgh will hold its Fourth Annual Apples & Honey Festival, in Schenley Park. Literally hundreds show up every year for this great program. If you have a young family or grandchildren in town, you don’t want to miss this. If you know of a young Jewish family that would like a Jewish program that is completely welcoming to all, let them know about it.

Next Wednesday at 7 p.m., the Federation will hold its Annual Meeting at the Jewish Community Center in Squirrel Hill. While we will have some business to complete, the majority of the meeting will be dedicated to celebrations. We will celebrate the Federation’s accomplishments this past year (there are many). We will celebrate some amazing volunteers throughout our community (there are many). And we will celebrate our communal professionals. Most of all, we will celebrate our remarkable Pittsburgh Jewish community.

I hope you will indulge me as I think I have shared this story before: When I was starting off in the Jewish communal service field, at the Federation in Baltimore (it is difficult to write about Baltimore after last night’s horrendous Steelers’ loss to the Ravens), my boss came to me after staffing my first Super Sunday. She praised me and told me what a great job I had done. She then instructed me to take the next 10 minutes, savor the feeling and then get back to work. Our Annual Meeting will give us that chance to appreciate what we all together have made a reality this past year. Upon completion of the meeting, we’ll get back to the task at hand: building a thriving, vibrant and engaged Jewish community.

Wednesday night will be great. Thursday morning, it’s back to work!

Shabbat Shalom.