Monday, October 21, 2013

How to Find Good News Every Day

I look for good news stories every week because I need a break from the daily overdose of negative in the media. My favorite one-stop shopping for a smile, besides YouTube cat videos, is the Good News Network. Here's an uplifting story from Sunday's pages: A man sat next to a table with two women who had clearly heard bad news about a diagnosis. Seeing their distress, he asked the waiter to give him their bill. He paid his and theirs, and then quietly left. The waiter, who shared the note on Reddit, wrote, "Faith in humanity restored."

And here's another nice piece: Ethan Metzger performs his poem, My Parents Brainwashed Me, at the Bronx Youth Poetry Jam. Watch the whole thing, but here is something that stands out:
My parents did brainwash me... 
As early as I can remember, my parents were brainwashing me to have respect for other people, for their belongings and for myself...
Yeah, my father twisted my infant brain in such a horrific way that he made me value my integrity, and to make matters even worse, he led by example.
Kindness. Respect. Setting a positive example. The enduring values in these stories caught my attention this week. Last week, I got my good news in a different way - through United Synagogue's Centennial Solomon Schechter Awards.

The Solomon Schechter Awards have been the primary way that United Synagogue recognized excellence in programming in our synagogues for many years. Hundreds of synagogues would nominate the programs that they considered innovative or well received. This year, from 190 nominations, we gave eight major awards, and commendations for 40 programs that we hope will be replicated in other communities. Judges looked for more than creativity or events that had a positive response; they looked for impact in creating kehilla - sacred community. The programs receiving this year's Centennial Solomon Schechter Awards - from the deeply rooted focus in the Jewish Center of Princeton's religious school curriculum, The Story of My Family Coming to America, to Shaar Shalom Synagogue's Mitzvah Knitters - grew from a core vision to engage hearts, minds and souls.


We'll be sharing descriptions of all the award-winning programs, but I want to highlight the three that received special once-in-a-century "Chesed" acknowledgment. They were notable because they made an impact on the lives of people beyond their own communities. Here are the descriptions provided by the founders of each of these award-winning programs.




Living Tzedakah in Appalachia, from Congregation B'nai Israel, Millburn, NJ:
Congregation Bnai Israel (CBI) has established, over the past 4 years a presence in McRoberts, Kentucky, in the heart of  Appalachia. There are no Jews in McRoberts, only rural poor.  McRoberts is considered the poorest town in the poorest section of the United States. The goals of the ongoing program include:  1) To introduce the concepts of tikkun olam and tzedakah as responsibilities of our community to the entire world.  2) To educate our members as to the difference between rural and urban poor.  3) To brings hands on experience to our members in working with people outside our comfort zone.  4) To make a difference in the lives of poor people and families in McRoberts, Kentucky.
Weathering Superstorm Sandy as a Family, from Greenburgh Hebrew Center, Dobbs Ferry, NY:
In the Spring of 2012, we adopted a mission and vision statement that lists as one of our core values to "Be a family."  As Superstorm Sandy was approaching, during the storm, and in its aftermath, we applied that core value by actively engaging and caring for the members of our synagogue community as well as the greater community.  By doing so we helped build a sacred community among the members of our kehilla on many levels, including that people had the opportunity to perform mitzvot for one another; our shul became more clearly not just a building but a home, a place of safety and comfort; our Rabbi provided spiritual leadership; and all worked together to collect tzedakah for people in the greater community who were less fortunate than we were.
The Altamont Bakery, from Congregation B'nai Emunah, Tulsa, OK:
The Altamont Bakery, a pro-social enterprise founded by Congregation B'nai Emunah, operates year-round in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Founded in the summer of 2011, it was designed to bring members of the congregation together with formerly homeless mentally ill citizens of our community in a shared, cooperative venture. The goal was to produce an outstanding product line while offering support, encouragement, and a sense of community to men and women who have been marginalized by circumstance.     A large team of Synagogue volunteers works without compensation in this project. A complimentary community dinner is served at the Synagogue on each baking day. A full description of the project is available at the bakery website: www.altamontbakery.com. The great gift of the program is a new insight into mental illness for everyone who volunteers for the project. Our bakers are troubled, uneasy souls who are also talented, generous, thoughtful people, capable of sustained effort and genuine achievement. We have entered into a deep and lasting relationship which feels less and less like a benefaction and more and more like a mutual relationship. The program has opened all of us to a new way of seeing, and to enlarging our sense of the human community where everyone, truly, is an image of the living God.
These programs might not be replicable in your community. They responded to extraordinary circumstances, like a hurricane, or required continual devotion to the vision of extending a helping hand to others. But the enduring values that were the foundation for these programs - kindness, respect, setting a good example - are no different than those in the good news stories I look for every week. They're just practiced on a communal level intentionally, every day, in a sacred community.



Thursday, October 17, 2013

We Became A Kehilla In About 5 Minutes

Last Friday afternoon, 200 people walked seven blocks in the pouring rain rather than wait with 300 others for buses that were stuck in Baltimore rush hour traffic. Fifty gave up the wait, avoided the walk and hailed cabs. When they got to the hotel where Shabbat dinner and Friday night services were to begin, the prayerbooks, which were shipped on the buses, were still being hauled upstairs.

The music in four of the five services carried through the thin walls. The choir accompanying Cantor David Propis had to hold their beat against the drums in the Mishkan Chicago service next door. The hallway outside was lined with people in costumes ringing cowbells and banging drums. As we welcomed the Sabbath, they welcomed runners who were competing the next day to raise funds for breast cancer research.

Rabbi Felipe Goodman, of Temple Beth Sholom in Las Vegas, put the cacophony into perspective. "When you go to the Kotel in Jerusalem," he said, "you hear the voices and music of thousands of Jews praying in their own style. We're getting a little bit of that here tonight."

As we settled in, and five different versions of Lecha Dodi floated through the hallways, we were a community that forgot the rain and the rushing. We moved into sacred time and space, and remembered why we came there in the first place - to find each other.

This is why Marty Stein, from Temple Beth El in Aliso Viejo, CA, said, "We became a kehilla in about five minutes."



Over the next four days, 1,200 Conservative Jews would find each other. They would learn with some of the best teachers and thinkers in the Jewish world. Two poets in residence, Andrew Lustig and Vanessa Hidary, would inspire and challenge them with spoken word performances about Jewish identity. 150 USY teens and college students would remind the older adults that there is, in fact, a new generation hungry for the friendship, joy, and exploration that Conservative Judaism allows them. 1,000 clergy and synagogue leaders would see that they are not alone. They would share ideas and ignite relationships that they'll follow up on. United Synagogue would announce new projects, including a cost containment program, health insurance for synagogue professionals, the launch of the continent-wide PJ Library program, and a new teen engagement initiative thanks to the generous gift from the Susser Family Trust.

As for me, I would meet 500 new people each day, and stay up much too late in the Sulam Suite with synagogue presidents, educators, and young musicians and artists. I bit my nails through presentations that ran overtime, re-wrote speeches up to the moment when presenters took the stage, moved chairs, directed traffic, and walked 20 miles a day without ever leaving the building. I have never been more proud or grateful to work with my dedicated, talented colleagues, and our generous volunteers and supporters.

In every session during the conference, we asked people to write what their next steps will be when they get home. Here is a small sampling:

  • Focus on builders, not buildings.
  • Evaluate how we address people in transition.
  • Read more about process theology. I am a committed Conservative Jew, but my theology is still a work in progress. 
  • Observe areas where my shul innovates and where there is resistance to change.
  • Find ways to help our parents have a “moment” of in-shul spirituality.
  • Find a “champion” to start the conversation about reaching out to 20’s and 30’s
  • Join “God’s Timeline” and will look into setting up a congregational timeline.
  • Speak with my rabbi about his approach to same sex marriage and synagogue wedding ceremonies.
  • Taking back to my synagogue a “lens” to see how we might be unintentionally discriminating against those who don’t meet the norm.
  • Bring board members into the school wing.

News articles are still being written, and people are still discussing what this gathering meant. Our team is back to work sending out thank you notes, getting the videos of our speakers onto our website, and bundling the resources from nearly 50 workshops together by topic to share with our United Synagogue network. We're debriefing to remember what worked, and fix what went wrong as we begin to plan the next convention in two years.

How would you follow up on the Conversation of the Century?

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Break A Leg

I used to volunteer to be assistant director for our synagogue's biannual musical. Having minored in theatre in college, I knew the three priorities for the position: 1) Take copious notes during rehearsals to ensure that decisions one day turn into actions by the next. 2) Get the cast and crew what they need to work together seamlessly. 3) Keep people's spirits up.

A synagogue play is supposed to be a community-building experience. But one year, everyone was miserable. For many reasons, this particular production brought out in 50 adults their worst high school drama behavior, from prima donna tantrums and behind-the-back whispering to sneaking out for a sip of scotch. Ticket sales were slow, no one wanted to rehearse, and the group's motivation was lower than a prison chain gang. The director and producer and I were chronically depressed. 

To cheer up my two beleaguered friends, I wrote an email with the subject line, "How to Produce a Synagogue Play." I gave ten tips that included things like, "Remove dialogue and choral numbers and replace with solos," and "Give 40 performances so every cast member gets the lead at least once." The insider jokes lifted our spirits, I assumed no one else would see it, and we got to opening night.

To my horror, the director had put my email in the printed program! She thought it was lighthearted and funny, and made a great final page. I was overcome with dread, waiting for cast members to take it personally and confront me for humiliating them publicly. I made plans for the next congregation I would join after I was ejected from this one. But no one said anything. They had felt the same way, and understood the good-natured humor.

Move forward 20 years. I am one of the lead professionals producing United Synagogue's Centennial Celebration. My role has felt like being the assistant director of the biggest, most complicated synagogue play ever attempted. It has been exciting, terrifying, and fun. Our team learned how to work together, and after a year of nearly continual communication, we can almost read each other's minds. I can honestly report that I never felt the need to write a tongue-in-cheek email to boost morale, although there was one time when I nearly crafted a fake press release that changed the date of the founding of United Synagogue so we'd have an extra year to plan.

The program guide has already gone to print, but in my own tradition of "how-to" commentary, I now offer my advice on....

HOW TO PRODUCE A SUCCESSFUL EVENT
Tip #1. Celebrate a 100-year anniversary. Really, it makes choosing a theme a breeze. 
Tip #2. Set realistic goals. It will help you make complicated decisions about your space needs. The risk is that if you surpass your expectations, you might have to walk 600 people from your hotel to another one seven blocks away for Friday night dinner and religious services. (The same risk applies to goals for the number of exhibitors. If you're not careful, you will have to convince them that the rafters outside the restrooms are prime space.) 
Tip #3. Boost attendance by holding your event during a secular four-day holiday weekend like Columbus Day. The risk is that the city will host a marathon at the same time. But, you'll enjoy the hunt as you help people search for rooms when your hotel runs out of them. 
Tip #4. If you encourage people to present workshops, be prepared for an enthusiastic response from the community. Then refer to the risks in Tip #2 about space. 
Tip #5. Don't be afraid to assign staff members to the core steering committee who are already too busy to work on one more thing. Look at it like baseball players warming up for their next at bat by swinging two or three times the weight of a regular bat. Those professionals will appreciate how light their regular work load feels when the event is over! 
Tip #6. One month out from the event, turn over 1,000 details that the core team set in motion to about 40 additional staff and volunteers. They'll thank you, too, for the reason detailed in tip #5. 
Tip #7. Look for chair people who are serial synagogue presidents. They are human beings with a strange genetic inability to run away from responsibility, weekly meetings, mind-numbing trivial detail, whining, conflict, political intrigue and constant pressure to raise or save money. 
Tip #8.  Engage an event planner. It's worth every penny to be able to say, "Our event planner is responsible for that." 
Tip #9.  Identify target audiences and ask "connectors" to keep reaching out to them. Avoid counting how many people have registered. Instead, look for who is not registered...yet. In the end, it will make your CEO extremely happy that your assurance, "Everything is going as planned," turns out to be true. Remind him/her of how right you were when it's time for your annual performance review.  
Tip #10. About your family: Remember that they won't understand the new words you'll throw around, like, "room blocks," "exposure," "values engineering," "MOS interviews," and "VOG (voice of God)." Tape a photo of yourself to your refrigerator so they'll remember what you look like if you spend more time in your office than your kitchen for a year. Thank them profusely for their patience with your continual distraction. Maybe even post your thanks publicly on your blog.
With more than 1,000 participants, the Conversation of the Century will take center stage in the Conservative Jewish community when it "opens" on Friday. To the hundreds of performers, speakers, volunteers, and staff who will bring it to life, I say thank you, and, as they say in the theatre, "Break a leg!"