Congregational Board Meeting

It was my intent to appear in name but not photo and not say a word at the recent Board of Governors Meeting, to which all congregants are nominally invited.  And that's exactly what I did.  No agenda on my part but a lot of observations on the Board's agenda, what went well, what did not, the missing parts, and the significance of what was discussed and how it was discussed in relation to trend toward congregational denouement.  There have been no personal invitations from anyone to me for any meaningful participatory role that requires any discernment on my part. Bimah skills are really a form of my possessions, which seems to be what they want.  Yet I might be the congregations most astute observer, so if that's the role it needs to be pursued in a meaningful capacity to the best of my INTJ gift to me from God, perhaps.  

Grand Rounds begins with a patient, followed by a discussion of what the patient has.  Board Meetings begin with a Rabbi statement.  He spoke about the role of diversity of expression and tolerance for it.  Much better discussion topic than presentation topic.  Actually pretty easy to skewer or in the spirit of the presentation challenge in a polite way using Torah sources from the weekly Parsha of Bereshit.  As the congregation rides to its destiny, so did creation.  The congregation has loose ends.  So did Creation.  As twilight moved toward shabbos but not quite arrived, ten final creations came in to being just in the nick of time for the first shabbat.  The first of the divine afterthoughts?  פִּי הָאָרֶץ  Korach's dissent was a necessary part of our history and later heritage.  It was planned for from the time of creation with a means of dispatching unwelcome or hazardous dissents.  וּפִי הָאָתוֹן also appears.  They knew Bilaam would one day arrive and a means of suppression dates back to creation.  Derech Eretz doesn't really arrive until Talmudic times, once the experience and downside of withholding civility becomes more tangible.  I would not expect the Board members to appreciate that.  I would expect the Rabbinical comments to be more profound than they seemed to me.  But it's the failure to challenge what the titled propose, be that the Rabbi or the Officers, which more than anything has harmed our congregation one cumulative whack at a time.  And the Board discussion played out in that pattern from there, one of immense Group Think, with reasonable challenges, nods to the head, but not a whole lot of why or alternatives.  Definitely not one those stimulating discussions I viewed as the norm in my university or professional years or see routinely a few times a week on Zoom as agencies of all types previously inaccessible to my peasant class assemble people who have large funds of knowledge and experience to joust with each other verbally and invite questions from listeners which invariable expand the expert discussion.

Our Congregation has two very big challenges that don't do well with Group Think.  First we are homeless, cashing out for expediency with desperation on the horizon though not yet arrived but now with the reality of having a large amount of cash that will be spent down in a predictable way without a means of replenishing either the funds or the people who generated it over a protracted time.  That situation is largely unique to us, a direct result of decisions that went through our governance one drip at a time for a long time, much like creating that stalactite that you knew would eventually appear but not be appreciated until it does.  

We share the second challenge, coronavirus limitations with everyone else.  This has been a very mixed experience for most individuals.  Some institutions were able to draw on their creativity, others more content to adapt business as usual to the altered circumstances.  I used to attend shabbat services with reasonable regularity.  I understood why better in my college years than my maturity years but had enough of an aspiration for a satisfying Jewish experience to change congregations when Beth Sodom transitioned from a fast quip to more of a situational imprint.  Has covid given me a better experience or a worse experience?  Depends.  I don't miss shabbos services nearly as much as I thought I would, stopped driving until being at home devoid of electronics and mobility became a form of sensory deprivation.  I wasn't an individual participant in the congregation as it became more virtual.  We can argue whether I was blackballed from intent or insensitivity but with Covid it didn't really matter.  

There are places that used their resources or created new resources.  My acquaintance Ron Wolfson had an op-ed in The Forward summarizing how different congregations invested in making their Holy Days ones to remember. https://forward.com/news/national/456279/theres-no-going-back-what-rabbis-learned-from-the-extraordinary-high/  Admittedly, his professional circles are the uber machers who work out of Jewish Cathedrals, with resources to hire professionals and special talent, but all successful projects begin with somebody's imagination.  They also require an element of what have others put on their menu that will enrich our plates, and once imagined, then the internal why not? And while anyone could pop into these worship pageants, most people defaulted to their own congregation for this year's Yomim Nora-im experience.  As I skip services that I don't really miss, not exactly picking Hallel as a central necessity around which my Jewish spirit revolves, I also get an awareness of what was already there that I underutilized, things like yutorah.org or the commentators of outorah.org, and what has come on the scene that would not have existed without the necessity of Zoom.  I have access to great minds in the form of AJC or Moment Magazine seminars.  I must say, one of my most heady experiences has been having my question with my name attached announced and submitted to a worldwide audience to be answered by an expert previously inaccessible to a guy off the street like myself.  Now that I can differentiate expert from title, I read and respond to tweets more, though very selectively.  The Jewish world is global and you need not be a Macher or an inveterate schmoozer to partake of it.  If my own congregation assigns me observer status, I can be an equally good observer immersed in the most vibrant of Jewish institutions as well.  The need for my own congregation seems much better defined post covid, and I find myself a little more intolerant of not being a desirable participant there when my mind is valued at some of the most elegant Jewish institutions in the world who are content with my inquisitiveness and not in quest of my possessions.

The meeting itself had a single agenda item, a new building to upgrade our congregation to an address rather than a postal box. Ironically, as we transitioned from our longstanding building to the CBS Homeless Shelter, the Rabbi opened many a congregational meeting with the concept that the congregation was the people, the building assembled the people.  Not at all the view of this BOG meeting.  In fact there was a secondary item on reaching out to congregants alloted ten minutes at the end, whizzed through with the illusion of self-congratulation by what seems the Jewish Covid-19 version of the USY Clique, though far more important to the congregation's destiny looking forward than whether the building under scrutiny has suitable architectural features and unmolested parking.  Everyone at the virtual BOG meeting had their say, something offered to me as well but declined, though it was more a series of brief monologues than a series of exchanges.  A long way from the Talmudic tradition of Chavrusa or even my usual doctor-patient exchanges in the exam rooms or bedsides.  A vote was taken, accepted by all present.  I suspect it won't matter if Congregational Development in a precarious time is subordinate to anything else on a governance agenda.

So we really didn't have those final ten minutes.  I can say my household got a call from the individual who I would have assigned to himself.  He spoke to my wife, didn't have the saichel or the script to ask if I were home and invite my opinion.  But in AKSE fashion, memberships are counted by checks received and not by the totality of who resides in the household.  BOG can either create the culture or reinforce what is already there.  I would have expected the Rabbi of stable tenure to challenge some of this more than he has.  I do get a birthday call, "how ya doin', nice to talk to you." Never what do you think.  There was a landmark book written about thirty years ago by a linguist Deborah Tannen called You Just Don't Understand.  While the theme of the book was imprinted gender variations in speech, she also identified to broad patterns.  The male pattern was to convey information, the female pattern to use speech to generate connectedness. Since the BOG phone call I was not important enough to receive eluded me, I do not know if the content was one of telling people what the BOG put into their AKSE Trough for congregants to have their fill or whether it had more of a conversational, exchange agenda that creates connectedness as Prof. Tannen described it.  There is data, a quest that only comes naturally to a few of us.  Zoom gives clues.  I know how many people sign in to yizkor or attend a Rabbi class, as Zoom takes attendance.  It's not many, never as many as who populated that BOG session that I observed.  Harder to say if its a few people latching onto all offerings or different people having expressing different preferences.  Exploiting this information offers a lot more benefit to the congregation than  making projections of when the proceeds of the building sale fully deplete.  Might we need a Cruise Director to toss everyone into the pool and make sure they are all having a good time dancing to rhythm?  It is necessary to evaluate major initiatives with big financial implications.  But as many Rabbinical and a few Presidential messages made very clear, our future depends on the identification of people with the congregation, a bond that invited participants retain but observers or correspondents, no matter how skilled or experienced usually don't. No Board Meeting, and few committee meeting, should have anything other than enhancing connectedness as its central agenda item.

Talk about the building.  But conversation to create connectedness has long been neglected, more so as our Nominating Committees make the governance more inbred.  I saw quite a lot of recessive genes expressed amid the Board's proceedings.