Nursing Animosities

My personal friends are few, though invariably interesting.  A few highly accomplished, a few quirky, a few outspoken.  All stand for something.  Some have had big crashes, much bigger than my own professional or social fluctuations.  All provide me something stimulating to talk about when I am with them.  We'll leave the perfunctory Good Shabbos, Nice Tie for the Torah processional.  My friends discuss medicine, Judaism and its culture, the vagaries of our politics.  And there's our families, pretty much all turned out well.

In face meetings are few.  Synagogue has become a place where I am mostly cordial to everyone, candid with a few, social with almost none.  My closest friend, however, is of synagogue origin, almost parallel mindset as put off by mistreatment of people, more common in that setting than any presiding Rabbi would admit.  We like to move the furniture around, ask what if, and when offered a title of responsibility sometimes try to do what we imagined might be possible but may not.  As a consequence, we get some opposition, his more vociferous than mine as his ventures can generate some negative transference reactions and negative consequences.  There is an upside and a downside to boldness.  He found himself the one in isolation to the governance, basically evicted from it, soon departing.  He had a business that went on hard times as well due to some malfeasance from above.  The two events left him suspicious of authority.  We share a disappointment with our synagogues, but while he departed, I remain, sit quietly, express myself without much suppression from my higher CNS centers though politely, and on Saturday mornings more often occupy space or add to the male minyan count than benefit a lot from my personal presence.  His expression was absence from synagogue but all in on our local Kosher agency that provides Kosher products to our region.  As a result, when I see him in the last couple of years, it is almost always attending to some activities in the Kosher departments that our Shop-Rite has provided.  And as is our custom, our chats are pretty direct.

He found a friend in the now departing Rabbi, the director of the Kosher agency, and a devoted friend to have.  I liked the Rabbi personally as well, but saw his role as advancing our congregation, my Jewish commitments, and my Jewish mind, none of which really happened.  I keep a more stringent Kosher than ever, acknowledge and restrict activities for Sabbath and yontif, but find my Jewish presence more a personal one than as part of a kehillah.  Our Rabbi, his friend though more of a business deal for me, announced his departure, a nominal promotion to a larger more stable congregation in a community with a Jewish majority.  I asked my friend who the next supervisor of Kashrut would be.  He indicated that the Rabbi would continue as the supervisor, at least for the next few months.  Then the vitriol started

My friend has his bogeyman, the congregational President who eliminated him as a toxic VP who generated too many congregational complaints.  If this individual dispatched my friend, he must have worked behind the scenes to make the synagogue a toxic work environment for the Rabbi.  Since I really only associated the Rabbi as a hired professional, not as a friend, I did not really pick up on any directed toxic work environment.  He had reasons to do job hunting as the predicted longevity of our congregation would not take him to retirement age, but did not pick up on board relations as being less than professional and supportive.  As my friend related, there were clues, a closing contract with a lot more specific provisions than prior contracts that had him vigorously represented by somebody Archie Bunker would identify as a Sharp Jew Lawyer.  I did not know the sermons had to be submitted in advance for editing.  That may be why they have gotten more meaningful the past couple of years, but my friend saw it as an unwelcome assault on professional autonomy.  While I did not know about this, English comp would definitely benefit from having to go through an editor first.  

But the former congregational VP who done my friend wrong now has an enemy's imprint, one probably not deserved.  Yes, anybody looking at our synagogue with detachment would identify obvious elements of leadership failure, excessive comfort zones, and resetting the standard as mediocrity.  That is a lot different from the more nefarious Jewish canards of a few control freaks assembling together to consolidate and exert power to exploit the vulnerable.  Probably not the reality, or at least not my reality.  Stephen Covey in his 7 Habits identified people whose focus was either exacting revenge on enemies or shielding themselves with an impenetrable barrier.  Either way, the enemy always seems to control what happens, even when he really doesn't.