- Pastor Corey Brooks continued on his Walk Across America to end gun violence, and was welcomed last Shabbat at Congregation B'nai Amoona in St. Louis. According to Mueriel Carp, United Synagogue's Central District Chair, "The congregants of B’nai Amoona were proud to offer hospitality to Pastor Brooks and his group during their stay in St. Louis. After his talk, Pastor Brooks met individually with members of the kehilla, and many of those pledged their financial support for Project HOOD."
- Marsha Davis, President of Beth El Temple in Harrisburg, PA, went on a listening tour of her kehilla as she began her term in June. She has been holding "Community Conversations" in people's homes, and was pleasantly surprised by how many people volunteered to host them. She said, "I'm getting to know congregants, what they need, and they get to be able to write their positive suggestions about what they would wish for from our community. I provide them with questionnaires and I'm compiling the sugggestions because I dont't want to take back my interpretation of what I heard. I want it to be their words."
- My friend, Shirley, left Jefferson, IA, and moved in with her son's family in California after her husband died. She jumped right in to helping care for his two young children. Five years later, she has developed macular degeneration, leaving her partially blind. She moved back to Iowa to be closer to her daughters as she finds she needs help now. When she called the phone company for a new phone, the customer service representative said, "How about if we give you your old number, Shirley? We saved it for you in case you came back so you wouldn't have to learn a new one."
These are three stories of relationships that range from how we open our communities to strangers, to how we re-connect with the people we think we know, to the unbelievable, yet somewhat true, story of knowing someone so well that organizational obstacles are overcome to help her, even if we lose track of her for awhile.
I watched Pastor Brooks' progress across the country because United Synagogue supports his efforts in what we're calling Operation Tent of Abraham and Sarah, a reference to Abraham's welcoming of strangers in Genesis 18. He started in New York, was greeted in Newark, NJ, but his path from New Jersey to Chicago didn't have much formal engagement with Conservative synagogues.
As United Synagogue staff and volunteers contacted people along the way, we learned that it takes more than just positive, supportive intentions to bring people to action. It takes a sense of urgency. Advance notice, tv coverage and twitter haven't made it easier for communities to send people out to hear the message of a passing pastor. Encouraging whole communities to respond to an external event asks them to move aside their regular planning cycle and activate a communications and mobilization network that may or may not exist. Most of our kehillot along the way expressed support, but not necessarily with action that was visible. As he heads west, and our kehillot have had more time to prepare, we're seeing more activation.
Congregational conversations or parlor meetings also get organized when there is an external push or urgency, like strategic planning or a rabbinic search. Marsha's listening tour comes from her motivation to align goals with action, something she and other presidents dug into at United Synagogue's Sulam for Presidents, and to make sure that she is clear about what her community wants. Marsha is building relationships while she accomplishes what she says is, "More joy...less oy."
What are we to make of the phone company in Jefferson, IA, though? Regardless of whether or not I believe Shirley that the phone company kept her phone number for her, that's how Shirley experienced it. Her move from the little Iowa community where she raised her children, to the big city in California, and back created no sense of urgency for anyone. But to Shirley, even the phone company was trying to help her through what is a monumental change in her life, equal to the death of her husband.
I see all three stories in terms of how we continually build relationships so that it doesn't take an external threat or sense of urgency before we can live kehilla as a verb.
How can we be like the phone company that Shirley imagines, so aware of her life that our entire community plans for and saves her a place even when she's not there?
I watched Pastor Brooks' progress across the country because United Synagogue supports his efforts in what we're calling Operation Tent of Abraham and Sarah, a reference to Abraham's welcoming of strangers in Genesis 18. He started in New York, was greeted in Newark, NJ, but his path from New Jersey to Chicago didn't have much formal engagement with Conservative synagogues.
As United Synagogue staff and volunteers contacted people along the way, we learned that it takes more than just positive, supportive intentions to bring people to action. It takes a sense of urgency. Advance notice, tv coverage and twitter haven't made it easier for communities to send people out to hear the message of a passing pastor. Encouraging whole communities to respond to an external event asks them to move aside their regular planning cycle and activate a communications and mobilization network that may or may not exist. Most of our kehillot along the way expressed support, but not necessarily with action that was visible. As he heads west, and our kehillot have had more time to prepare, we're seeing more activation.
Congregational conversations or parlor meetings also get organized when there is an external push or urgency, like strategic planning or a rabbinic search. Marsha's listening tour comes from her motivation to align goals with action, something she and other presidents dug into at United Synagogue's Sulam for Presidents, and to make sure that she is clear about what her community wants. Marsha is building relationships while she accomplishes what she says is, "More joy...less oy."
What are we to make of the phone company in Jefferson, IA, though? Regardless of whether or not I believe Shirley that the phone company kept her phone number for her, that's how Shirley experienced it. Her move from the little Iowa community where she raised her children, to the big city in California, and back created no sense of urgency for anyone. But to Shirley, even the phone company was trying to help her through what is a monumental change in her life, equal to the death of her husband.
I see all three stories in terms of how we continually build relationships so that it doesn't take an external threat or sense of urgency before we can live kehilla as a verb.
How can we be like the phone company that Shirley imagines, so aware of her life that our entire community plans for and saves her a place even when she's not there?
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