Sunday, August 25, 2013

Kehilla Across the Generations

The early 20th Century American humorist, Frank "Kin" Hubbard, said about vacation: "If some people didn't tell you, you'd never know they'd been away on a vacation."

My vacation this month took another tack: If some people didn't tell me, I'd never know I had been away on a vacation. That's because my weeks were filled with activities that were very much like my work: nearly constant connection with people, a retreat, and a spiritually moving bar mitzvah experience in a most surprising place.

My two-week vacation revolved around a reunion of my husband's closely-knit Greek family, (picture a Sephardic "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"), on the occasion of the bar mitzvah of his nephew, Kevan. Kevan lives in Hawaii, and knew that few family members could go there this summer, especially his 98-year old grandfather and 90-something grandmother. Because Kevan is an amazing kid, (now picture a young man making a "hang loose" sign), he chose to have his bar mitzvah at Martin's Run Senior Living Community, in Broomall, PA, where his grandparents reside.

A bar mitzvah at a senior living community. It meant that weeks before the actual date, residents at Martins Run who I met during visits or out in the community told me about how excited they were for the weekend. "We're having a bar mitzvah!" they beamed, becoming the extended family for the event. For an entire weekend, the Elias family and the Martin's Run residents were a mashup, from sharing a communal Shabbat kiddush lunch, to Sunday swimming around the residents doing water exercises, and Elias grandchildren shooting pool and playing video games on the TV next to the residents' bridge group table.

Shabbat morning, though, crossed more than the generations in the facility; it linked the world-wide Jewish community across time. The Torah scroll from which Kevan read was Torah Number 586, a 130-year old scroll rescued from the Czech Republic town of Lipnik nad Becvou. Purchased and re-kashered by the Martin's Run Community, it was rededicated in April 2012.

The last bar mitzvah boy to read from Torah Number 586 was Irik Schreiber - in 1941 before the 100 Jews in the town were sent to concentration camps by the Nazis. Now in 2013, another boy, a surfer kid whose back yard is the Pacific Ocean and summer camp was in Japan, became bar mitzvah using the scroll.

I had a moment when I wondered what the Jews of Lipnik nad Becvou would think about the American community where their Torah came back to life. That morning, the rabbi and gabbai were women. The family of the bar mitzvah boy lives in Israel, the U.S., and Canada, and spans a spectrum of Jewish affiliation from ultra-Orthodox to Reform. The bar mitzvah boy's mom is not Jewish, and the next bar mitzvah boy in the family is being raised by two dads, one of whom is a convert to Judaism. I know that the residents of Martins Run, whose life perspectives were shaped by the fate of Jews in communities like Lipnik nad Becvou, were proud to be able to make the voice of a bar mitzvah boy be heard again on their behalf.

My next vacation will come in late October, after United Synagogue's Centennial Celebration. In that venue, hundreds of voices representing the diversity of Conservative Jewish experience will come together. Until then, I'm satisfied that even though I can't say I went away on vacation this summer, finding kehilla across the generations was much more memorable.