Thanks for your answers and another question

So thanks for all your answers (on Facebook and in private) to my question about co-op hours and 'incentivized' volunteer time. Not sure what I'm doing with the information yet but it's something I want to explore. And thanks to Ken Kamm for pointing out The Kavanah Co-Op, a 'congregation' predicated on the idea of shared, participatory and collaborative work among its members.

This is something that's been resonating with me for a while. I'm always asking myself the question, "if I wasn't a pulpit rabbi, what synagogue would I join?" Chances are, it would look a lot like an independant minyan or chavurah; an informal, relatively unstructured community of peers coming together to create meaningful encounters with Judaism. At its heart, that's what all synagogues are. In fact, many (at least from what I've seen) were spontaneous expressions of a desire on the part of a group of Jews to create a supportive community that met their individual spiritual needs. Somewhere along the way, they accrued more and more structure: tasks that used to be done informally become formal and organized. You hire staff to do what volunteers used to do, you add more programmatic and physical offerings (events, a building, etc.) to meet expanding and varying generational needs. Mission creep sets in--or the synagogue truly evolves with the times and changing leadership.

Lance Sussman once said something in a gathering of Reform rabbis that I quote frequently: synagogues are dealing with a 19th century infrastructure (dues, boards, hierarchies, buildings, etc.) with congregants who have a 21st century mentality (destructured and decentralized lives, portability, etc.), and we have to figure out how to catch up to them fast. Or, as my youth director said quoting last week's NFTY convention: innovate or die. But the synagogue has always done this, from its earliest beginnings in the Babylonian Exile. And I have no doubt that, even through tectonic shifts in generational understanding, demographics, and Movement redefinition, the healthy synagogues will survive and be stronger for it, and be radically different, as different as the grand edifices of the 19th century were from the shteibles that preceded them and the suburban quasi-JCCs that followed.

A lot of that transition will come from how we talk about God. That sounds funny, as most synagogue talk (at least organizationally) is about physical, governmental and organizational structures, and not really about theology. At least one Reform Rabbi suggests that this is the problem: we spend all of our time talking about empowering the individual and creating programming without strengthening the theological underpinnings that lead to greater observance and personal practice, essentially creating empty shells. While I disagree with the conclusions and some of the assumptions of the writer (even if we bought into a more hierarchical theology, who's to say that anyone would find it credible?), he does raise a very interesting point, one that is also being made by the Independant Minyanim: Synagogues need to be about creating meaningful, spiritual and sacred encounters with Judaism and Jewish tradition, not only for 'mere' self-preservation, but (as Art Green argues in Radical Judaism) to empower Jews (and those who would participate) in living out a universal message of shared responsibility for our world and each other, created in the image of God. Classical Reform, for all its cold distance, got that, as surely as Neo-Chasidism and its warm fuzzies does today (now there's an image, neh?). But so long as we spend more time talking about stuff and less time talking about meaning, the less likely people are going to engage for any reason other than for services rendered (or as Menachem Creditor once quipped to me: "We get it--now let's make Torah together!").

This is especially relevant for me tomorrow, as I'm talking with the Brotherhood about God, and especially my own theological thoughts, which should be interesting since, as one congregant and friend once put it, my head is in Cincinnati, but my heart is in Lubavitch (well, at least Bratslav, or maybe Apt).

So, for those who can't make it tomorrow, let me ask you a double-barreled question:

1. What would you ask about God and encountering God (however defined by you)?

2. What do you expect to encounter in the synagogue (or your house of worship) and what do you want to encounter?

A really good article

Someone on slate (or maybe it was HuffPo, I can't remember) referred to the Ipad as a solution to a problem that didn't exist (yet). Sometimes I feel like synagogues, at least as we perpetuate and realize them today, are kind of like ipads. Are we focused too much on the institution that we forget to ask the question of what said institution is supposed to actually do? It's an important question. and if you're at all interested in synagogues or what it means to create meaningful Jewish community, you need to read this. Right now. It asks all the right questions.

So let me ask you this question: what is the purpose of the synagogue? What is your ideal synagogue (or Jewish community)? And what would it take to make the community you do affiliate with your ideal congregation?

Learning from others

So a pastor/high school buddy of mine posted a blog entry to his Facebook (Thanks David!), which caused me to go looking around and find this entry. Yes, both are filled with the language of the Church and Christianity, but both share a lot of insight into the problems we have in Jewish congregational life today. The over-reliance on staff (who burn out in the process), the desire to grow the membership base without paying attention to what brought people to the congregation in the first place (especially the mission and vision of the congregation), the desire to be all things to all people and instead be burdened with false expectations from laity and staff alike.

So, let me ask this question: what makes a congregation (Jewish or Christian) 'good', from a staff and a volunteer perspective? What qualities are you looking for in a spiritual home? I'd love to hear from those of you who have volunteered and who work professionally in the congregational world...

A change will do you good.

Two shabbatot ago, Memorial Day weekend, I had a wonderful opportunity; I got to sit in the back (think about it; how often does a rabbi get to do that) for a morning service/bar mitzvah at Beth Emeth, my soon-to-be new congregation. It was an opportunity to learn something about the culture, wish mazel tov to the family, daven, chase my son around (hope grilled cheese is allowed in the sanctuary!) and get to know the congregation a little better. In the course of conversation about how nice the service was, what a great job the bar mitzvah candidate did, etc. with people, two individuals (no names!) both said, 'so, I guess you're going to be changing things, huh?'

Change is an incredibly loaded term, with both positive and negative connotations. For many, the first thought is negative: watching a neighborhood of proud historic buildings give way to big box stores (or worse, vacant lots), or a ball player go from star to benchwarmer (I'm looking at you, Big Papi) can be heartwrenching for people. When that change is sudden, it can be a shock to the system. And when it comes to a spiritual community like a synagogue, well, 'change' can be as frightening a word as you're going to get (the others are 'dues increase' and 'out of cookies', but that never happens). Our tradition itself has a mixed response to change. Additions to the liturgy were acceptable, but subtractions weren't (which is how you get a one hour service evolve into four). New ways of understanding Jewish ethics were warmly embraced (well, by some) so long as they didn't contradict the halakha. The Reform movement emerged not out of a desire to form a new branch or denomination or stream of Judaism but to remake traditional Judaism for a modern age (and we all know what happened, ya?).

What makes it so anxiety inducing is the implication; change might mean losing what made the community--its programs, services, its relationships--special for you. It also suggests criticism; that something is being changed because the way it was done before was somehow fundamentally wrong (which, of course, implies that all the hard work you and your forebears did was wrong, they and you were wrong and you were wasting your time. Put that in your peace pipe and smoke it.).

But change doesn't have to be all negatives, hiding in the closet like the boogeyman waiting to scare folk. Lots of change is good and healthy. As cliche as it is, my life has been inextricably changed by my son coming into this world; some of it has been a challenge (though thank God, manageable in nature) but all of it has been a blessing that has allowed me to grow and appreciate the world differently than I did in my 20s, when the only one I had to worry about was me. Likewise, for a congregation, change can reinvigorate, filling the community with new purpose. It can allow previously uninvolved and unaffiliated individuals to engage. It can give a congregation the opportunity for reflection on who it is and who it wants to be.

Change (assuming we're not all suffering from fatigue of the word) doesn't have to be bad. It does have to happen in a thoughtful and meaningful way. As my teachers Terry Bookman and Bill Kahn repeatedly reminded my PEER classmates and me, change can only happen when you honor what came before, and you have buy-in from the congregation. It means building consensus, putting out feelers and (dare I say it?) marketing (creating focus groups, putting out surveys). It means listening . It means experimenting (I prefer the term beta testing; sounds a little less threatening to me) the idea and soliciting feedback. It means building on what's already worked and slowly, gently, pushing the boundaries of what's comfortable for the congregants.

So are things going to change? Sure; they have to. I'm different than the previous rabbis at Beth Emeth, with a different kind of energy (thanks for that turn of phrase, Cantor Stanton). I have ideas that are different, I lead services in a different way, I have a different style. That doesn't make me right or them wrong; it doesn't make their way worse or mine better. Just different. And over time (God willing) as I build relationships with the folks at Beth Emeth, and we begin to build trust, we--we --will change things. We'll beta test things. We'll listen to each other and talk about what makes our congregation wonderful, and we'll build on that. Some people will like what's changed, some won't, but will understand. Hopefully, so long as we honor what has come before, the foundations of our community, folks won't equate change with knocking the house down. So long as we keep talking and listening and learning about each other and with each other, the changes made don't have to be so scary.

So, I can talk on this all day, but it's no good if you're not talking back. Let me, then, ask this of you, dear reader: share with this blog a positive change from your life that you faced with trepidation. What made you anxious, or scared you? What reinvigorated you? How were you transformed? What blessing did you take away from the experience? What changes excite you, and what changes worry you? Leave your comments below!

What, another one?

Yes, dear readers, I have fallen into blogging. My hopes is that this will allow me to maintain a connection with my friends at Shir Ami and build new connections at Congregation Beth Emeth, my new spiritual home, as well as those who might stop in along the way and those who've journeyed with me in the past.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The first question is: who am I, and what is this all about?

Well, I suppose I could point you to my Facebook (look to the side) or linkedin profile, or point you to my new congregation's website (again, elsewhere on this blog) or the website of my soon-to-be former congregation, Shir Ami. Heck, you could probably just Google me, if you were so inclined, and come up with all kinds of interesting and not so interesting things about me (including some random t-shirts at Amazon. We are not amused).

But each of these social networking and internet utilities only tells you so much about me, and doesn't really answer the question posed in a meaningful way, though it does point to how these social networking tools and the internet in general is shaping identity. What network am I in, and does it define who I am? Am I really from Philadelphia, or am I still a Cape Codder at heart? Am I defined by my 'friends' list, and what does it say about me not only to my small, realspace community, but to the world? Just because Google finds five pages of stuff about me, does that make my words and actions significant in any way (or any thoughts worth blogging about)?

The third book of the Torah, Bamidbar (Numbers) , also struggles with this question of identity for the people of Israel. Throughout the book, they are counted, sent to spy on the land they are meant to 'inherit' (that is, take by force), divided up into roles, asked to wear special garments, divided again between rebels and observers, time and again trying to define what it really means to be Israel in the wildnerness and once they've settled the land. For us as Jews living at the end of the 58th century (or beginning of the 21st, if you prefer), that question of identity is even more important. We as a people are at a crossroads, experiencing greater freedoms and creativity than ever, while that very same freedom and creativity are calling us to question whether being Jewish is even relevant in the world today (much hay has been made of these issues by people smarter than me. To start your exploration, look for Stephen Cohen's article on the changing shape of Jewish life, Douglas Rushkoff's book, which asks all the right questions, and Hayim Herring's blog. The rest is commentary; go and study). Transitional moments can be exhilerating as we look to a new direction, or they can provoke anxiety as old assumptions and relationships fall away.

That's why I'm starting this blog. I personally am in a moment of transition, from associate rabbi of one congregation to senior rabbi of another, which of course has implications on my family life (aside from new house, school for the kid, etc.), social life, theological and spritual life, etc. At the same time, both my congregations are in moments of transition (though I'll most likely focus on transitioning into the new shul), calling their entire identity into question, at least on certain levels.

So enough already. Who am I? I'm a father, a husband, a son and a brother. I'm a friend. I'm a student and a teacher. I've been blessed to serve Shir Ami for 6 years as a rabbi, and am further blessed to go serve Beth Emeth for however long God allows. What is this about? Transitions, my thoughts on the world and how I relate to it as Jew, the Torah I explore, wacky ideas about pop culture, our conversations and the Torah that comes from them.

Mostly, it's about questions. The questions we ask each other, that we ask of the tradition, that we ask God, that God asks of us. Sometimes it'll be about the answers we create, and sometimes it'll just be about the exploration of those questions.

So, here we go!