Shira Extravaganza

Pleasant morning.  My own congregation has not given me pleasant encounters of late, so I've opted for ten shabbatot someplace else with a few contingencies built in.  This being a special shabbos when crossing of the sea is read from the scroll itself, beyond the telling from our Siddur every morning, our synagogue neighbors arranged a special presentation.  I went there instead.

Whenever I go there I leave with admiration of what is possible when you have a real community that doesn't play favorites.  Mine has become rather bimodal:  friends of a dominant individual and irritants of that Federation type, or the USY Clique on Medicare.  Irritates me no end.  Probably would still annoy me if I were assigned to welcoming half, but I wasn't.  This experience with our neighbors contrasted with that immensely.  They created a Saturday morning spectacle to be sure, and at the evisceration of all the parts of our liturgy beyond the pre-Bar Mitzvah Hebrew School curriculum, but to do what they did took a real commitment to assuring Kehillah, or community.

An old acquaintance, a prominent figure in the American Jewish whirl, once sent me something he had written for his many subscribers in anticipation of Passover one year.  He called it Danny's Four Questions.

1. What do I like to do?
2. What am I good at?
3. Who can help?
4. Why not?

A multiplex of worship, baby naming, congregational guitarist, short remarks from their Rabbi containing wit while at the same time acknowledging the importance of various participants and how the very essence of what makes Judaism worth seeking out appears in so many ways in what we read and what their members did.

The experience of their morning dedicated to the special portion scored a 4/4.  Their baalebatim or clergy seem to think more expansively than ours, and probably respect what their membership can really do more than the Influencers at my shul do.  I will have occasion to return.