Sunday, October 28, 2012

All Are Welcome in a Hurricane

Like most of the residents of the east coast, except for the hardiest warning-ignorers, I am watching the Weather Channel and preparing for life without electricity. It's fascinating what becomes important - charging up my electronic devices, stocking up on water and non-perishable food, and getting my laundry done. (Special thanks to one of my Facebook friends who suggested freezing batches of coffee.)

The breathless meteorologists predict that Hurricane Sandy will be an unprecedented event, affecting millions of people. This is where kehilla - community - becomes real.

Last year, after Hurricane Irene, Temple Sholom in Greenwich, CT, put the concept of kehilla and the stability of their synagogue building together to help the entire community. In his Torah teaching from September 2, 2011, Rabbi Mitch Hurvitz describes what they did:

As a professional staff, as soon as we saw that our community would be in the path of the hurricane, we took action and mobilized.  We came up with a careful process; did a Costco run; brought large quantities of kosher food and drink to the shul; set up the lounge with tables, chairs, and snacks; made sure our WiFi was in working order; took an inventory of our board games and kids activities; and prepared our spiritual home to be an effective physical refuge for all those in need. Like everyone else, we had no idea whether or not we would have power; we didn’t know if we would even be able to open our doors. But we did know this much: in taking part in this process, we weren’t accepting powerlessness. We knew we would be ready to serve our community in the best way we could, whenever the time came.
And the time, fortunately, arrived. After the storm, when we received the “all-clear” from the Town of Greenwich, we put the word out:  "Our doors are open – all are welcome.” These three simple words made the key difference between the perception of insularity, and the spirit of community.
What are kehillot doing about this storm? I see that Rabbi Aaron Gaber of Congregation Beth Judah in Ventnor is posting evacuation sites on Facebook. Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, VA, not only has helpful emergency information on its website, but they also have an online form to notify them if someone needs help with evacuation. In Baltimore, the local news reported what churches and synagogues are doing to help people with early voting.

Preparations for emergencies and disasters need to be done well before the Weather Channel tracks a storm bearing down on us. I hope that all of our kehillot have used the resources from United Synagogue and other organizations long before this weekend to ensure safety and security. Emergencies like the hurricane coming towards us are a chance to live out the full concept of kehilla as sacred community when we actively find ways to reach out and be responsible for one another.

Share with me what your kehilla is doing. I'll post it here and on the United Synagogue Facebook and Twitter feeds. Your ideas might help someone else take action.

Stay safe, chevre.


Thursday, October 18, 2012

Turning 100

If you were 100 years old, and could throw yourself a party, what would you do?

I imagine that if I were lucky enough to reach 100, one of the most important things to me would be to gather my family and friends around me. I'd want as many of the people who started life with me as possible - my siblings and husband, cousins, nieces and nephews, childhood friends, in-laws and those I met along the way. By the time I'm 100, my sons will be on that list, too, since we would have spent more than 60 years together. I'd want to reminisce, and bring back the feelings from our shared history and the memories of the people who are no longer with us.

I would definitely want children at my party - my grandchildren and their children. I could puzzle about how they're acting and talking: Is that a boy or a girl? Why don't they use phones anymore? How can she write in the air in front of her - where's her iPad? I hope I smile at how different their world is from the one I knew. I want to search for the familiarity in their faces and voices, recognize glimmers of myself or my relatives in them, and know that even though I might not understand their lives, our familial DNA is in them and will be there in future generations.

The room would be covered with photos from my 100 years, and the young people will be surprised about how I looked and what I accomplished. Grandma drove that? Look at her hair - it was brown! She had a job? They'll understand that the outward appearance of someone they know at 100 years old is not her whole story. I hope they'll feel closer to me, and, rather than seeing me as the old lady in the chair over there, take away a different image of me after they leave.

I'd want the party to be more than cake and ice cream and a couple of words about how I had the good fortune to survive 100 years. I'd want great food and lots of laughter to make every person glad that they took the time to be with me that day. I'd give them things to take home to remind them of their connection not just to me but to each other. Living 100 years is not the accomplishment. Creating my family will be my accomplishment, and I want my 100th birthday to be about us and our future.

Why am I thinking about this?

100th birthday parties are front and center for me these days as I work with the team that is planning the Centennial Celebration of United Synagogue in Baltimore from October 11-15, 2013.

United Synagogue was founded by Rabbi Solomon Schechter, president of the Jewish Theological Seminary, in 1913. The idea behind United Synagogue as a congregational organization came from Schechter as he placed his seminary graduates into primarily orthodox synagogues around the country. Their mission, chronicled by Michael R. Cohen in The Birth of Conservative Judaism: Solomon Schechter's Disciples and the Creation of an American Religious Movement, was to change the nature of religious services and education, with a vision of a new American Judaism.

Cohen gives us details about what the first Conservative rabbis encountered in congregations in the beginning of the 20th Century. In some ways, they're as unrecognizable as a photo of 100-year old grandma when she was 20. Cohen gives us a snapshot, for example, of Rabbi Herman Rubenovitz's experience in 1910 at Mishkan Tefila in Boston:
Though the cantor did have "a fairly good voice," he also had "very little musical education." During High Holiday service, "the choirboys invariably became restless," and often did not "observe their cues and had punishment administered by the cantor in view of the entire congregation. It became clear to me that this sort of thing had no place in the Conservative Synagogue."
Indeed!

Yet other accounts from that time are like looking at the picture of grandma in her youth and seeing the distinctive family features that recur generation after generation. All of us who work with congregations can see this dynamic alive and well today:
While Schechter's students often bounced from job to job and from city to city, they listed a variety of reasons as to why their positions did not work out...one of the most common reasons that these rabbis cited was their inability to navigate two very different factions within their congregations. Generally these factions were based on generational differences, with a younger generation clamoring for change and older generation urging the congregation to keep its traditions intact.
Cohen traces the birth of United Synagogue as Schechter's strategy to help new Conservative rabbis navigate the complexities and resistance to change from congregational leaders. What United Synagogue looked like then and how it has changed during its lifetime is as rich a story as any person who builds a network of family and friends over a century.

United Synagogue's story can't be told without telling the story of the Conservative movement, with its origins at the Jewish Theological Seminary, its sister organizations like Women's League of Conservative Judaism and Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs, nearly 20 Conservative affiliate cousins, and the programs, like USY and Sulam, that it created.

The best 100th birthday party we can imagine for United Synagogue is one that celebrates Conservative Judaism. We want to gather all of our family and friends from all parts of the Conservative movement and the Jewish community. We'll honor the impact of Conservative Judaism, and the people who continue to make an impact today. We'll launch new ideas and initiatives from United Synagogue as we reach the milestone of completing the two-year implementation of our strategic plan. There will be great food, lots of laughter, and time for connecting spiritually and communally.

We will get to know the people who are the next generation of Conservative Jews. If their definition of kehilla - sacred community - is new to us, I hope we can recognize that it comes from the same familial DNA that we call Conservative Judaism. When they leave, we'll want them to remember their roots, whether their Judaism is practiced in a synagogue building, at camp, on campus, online or anywhere else they find themselves.

This party will not be just about congratulating ourselves for surviving 100 years. It will be about how we create the Conservative kehillot for the next century. 100 years ago, United Synagogue started a congregational network that allowed Conservative Judaism to evolve as a movement. Next October, we'll form the foundation for our next hundred years. You won't want to miss it.




Friday, October 5, 2012

Waiting for the Tenth

On Monday morning I walked into services for Sukkot and was greeted warmly by the rabbi. "Kathy, we're so glad you're here," he said. "You're the tenth person...now we can start!"

At the end of services, he said to the 30 or so people assembled, "I know we all have our own groove and timetable for when we get here, but tomorrow we can't start until we have a minyan. So I'll ask you to please try to get here by 9:00. We depend on each other."

I didn't forget what he said, and had every intention of leaving early enough to get to the synagogue promptly. But the next morning I chatted with my house guests, drank that second cup of coffee in the sukkah before the impending rain would ruin my chances for the day, and I don't recall what else. I walked into the synagogue building at exactly 9:25 with another person. I could see Rabbi chatting with the seven other people in the sanctuary, and motion to the Cantor to start when he saw that numbers nine and ten had just walked in.

At that point, I remembered a time fourteen years earlier when another group was eagerly waiting for the tenth person.

I walked into morning services for Simchat Torah at a small synagogue in upstate New York. I was on vacation in the area, and wanted to say kaddish for my brother, who had passed away the year before. The rabbi and eight men, mostly elderly retirees, looked shocked and then joyous, as my entry interrupted their discussion about whether or not to wait or count a Torah as the tenth presence. When they learned that my last name is Elias, they called me, "Elijah," for the rest of the morning. I never felt more valued and necessary to a community than I did on that day.

I ran into the upstate New York rabbi two years ago at a conference. We remembered each other almost instantly, and he called me Elijah before he remembered my name is Kathy. He told me about how important my presence was on that day. What he didn't know was that it was a milestone day for me as well.

My Jewish journey began as an adult, when I converted to Judaism more than 30 years ago. Fourteen years ago, when I entered that sanctuary in upstate New York, I had learned to read Hebrew, and although I went to services regularly, every week felt like a test of my Hebrew skills and Jewish identity. I refrained from accepting an aliyah or any honor that would put me in front of the congregation. I approached every service as if I were the worst student in a class, hiding in the back and hoping not to be called upon.

My motivation to walk into the upstate New York shul that morning was to say kaddish for my brother. I'm not sure I knew what else would be possible. But those eight elderly men and their rabbi, and their expectation that I would take my place in sharing the joy of the Torah, swept away my reticence. I became the tenth person in their community and, for the first time, fully participated in a religious service.

The first time I said the Torah blessings was on that morning. The first time I held and danced with a Torah was that morning. The first time I felt the full inclusion into Jewish ritual life was that morning.

Being the tenth or the 110th person doesn't matter. Showing up matters. It is our presence in kehilla - sacred community - that creates the potential for something in someone's life to change, even if we never know about it.

We depend on each other.