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.