Fully Absorbed

My minimal, difficult to maintain attention span took a sudden reversal.  I had been watching some YouTube's on religion, more anti than pro, of late, scrolling past anything that took more than 15 minutes.  Comments by the late Christopher Hitchens repeatedly captured my interest, so I proceeded to check his most prominent book, God is Not Great, from the library.  The transfer of an e-book electronically failed so I requested the print version which I began reading.  And reading. And reading some more.  About a third of the book, when my intent was a chapter a day for ten days.

He writes of a more global attrition, or maybe a wishful attrition that has not happened yet, unlike my focus on decline that has already occurred.  He takes the view that religious institutions with the discipline they impose on adherents generate evil, which they do.  They also generate art, literature, music, and intricate discussions.  My spin seems more that the experience of being there falls short of other options that can be pursued instead.

After interminable Hebrew School flashbacks while I sit at services in my own congregation, with a Rabbi feeding me strings of interAliyah Sound Bites, though not at all evil, it's good to have my mind challenged in this more profound way, not so much about the merits of the Judaism that I have inherited, but the idea of deity and its historical legacy that we make so many often unconvincing excuses to defend.

Perhaps even more importantly, I had begun to doubt if I had the capacity to focus on any ideas or undertakings without the use of a timer to keep me captured on what I was doing.  This reading went on for hours, only needing short breaks to better absorb what I had just learned.  I really do have the capacity to grant full attention and derive pleasure.  I wasn't sure before.

Shabbos as Spectator

Made it to Beth Tfiloh for shabbos.  Understudy Rabbi this time, with a D'var Torah on the disappearing derech eretz in politics, one that can get quite a few cards & letters, perhaps even mine.  Yet going there, despite the substantial round trip has its allure that I find hard to duplicate.

The drive is quiet time.  No radio.  One stop for either breakfast or coffee, subsidized by the State of Delaware, since the route to the WaWa takes me around the toll.  Once there, I take my seat, having staked out two places, one on each side of an aisle which affords me a few seats of personal space and a good view.  I do not know anyone and nobody knows me, until the end when I typically encounter somebody from my home shul who now lives in Baltimore and attends there.  The Torah reader usually comes over to greet me, but I might as well be a spectator in a theater, which adds to the attraction if once a quarter but would end the attaction if I went every shabbos and remained alone amid a crowd of hundreds.

Lately I've been arriving a little earlier, typically at the Amidah repetition.  Their sequence of prayers is a little variation of AKSE's.  The Torah processional is limited to the return.  Women do the Government and Soldier's prayers in English.  Prayer for Israel is part of the Torah processional.  Torah reading is expert in accuracy and fluency.  There are no Aliyah Sound Bites, which is worth the drive in itself.  I've been there enough now and read additional sermons online to suspect they are written de novo without recycling AIPAC or other organizational FAX broadcasts to American rabbis to adapt to their weekly shabbos message.  Those messages are OK, but I think I can tell that the rabbis function as an organizational conduit and not people of personal insight when they do that.

No Bar Mitzvah this shabbos.  Musaf zips along, services conclude and we go to kiddush, not very different in content than ours but on a larger scale.

Looking around, they probably can assemble a minyan of men under age 50, but it won't be a very large minyan.  To be fair, they have parallel services elsewhere in the building and the people at kiddush seem younger than the men in the main sanctuary so that may be where the younger men worship.  The women on their side of the mechitza seemed younger than the men in the main  sanctuary.  Children come up to the bimah for kiddush.  There were about 30 of them, so generational attrition will likely happen though at a much smaller pace than at AKSE. 

So if I want to watch something done well, I go there.  If I want to be more of a participant, even a sometimes irritated one, my home base supplies that need.

Respect

My hospital got its docs a new device called a Dragon Dictation System where I can speak into a microphone and mostly correct text appears.  It is modified for the reality of having learned spoken English in the Bronx.  It has two options for text, one general English and the default of an Endocrinology vocabulary as nearly all its use has been to dictate patient consultations.  I tried dictating a more general article once, ended up typing it myself, but this week took another shot at something I've been meaning to prepare into an article called "The Places I Like to Daven".  It's mostly past tense, but for all my Beth Sodom and Aliyah Sound Bite quips of my contemporary shabbat morning options, there were and to a lesser extent are places that serve as prime destinations on a shabbos morning.  Eventually as a youngster I got to like our shul's Junior Congregation, despised the teen experience, and would inconvenience myself to leave home early to get to that shul now 100+ miles away if possible when passing through the area.  WashU and Penn Hillel could expect my presence most shabbos mornings.  Beth El Quincy, z"l, for my final year of residency.  Beth Tfiloh in Baltimore once a quarter, again at a little personal inconvenience and needing some advance planning.

I tried to tease out common themes.  Like the Rabbi?  For sure at the adult synagogues but the Hillel experiences had no Rabbi.  Friendly congregants?  After multiple visits to Beth Tfiloh the total number of people who have come over to me sitting by myself and chatting with me is ONE, their assistant Rabbi who serves as Torah reader.   Personal participation?  I've been a very active Bimah participant by default at my current shul and the one before it, neither of which makes my must be there list while often serving as the destination of my many verbal harpoons.

After pondering the Why as I dictate the Where, the common thread seems to be the level of respect that I have for the composite experience and the people that I am with.  The JCC of Spring Valley, my Bar Mitzvah congregation, seemed bimodal.  It distilled to how I was treated.  Contemptuously by the teen director who played favorites, inconsistently by the Rabbi who presided over my  Bar Mitzvah, to be followed by a Rabbi of my later high school years who endeared himself, not only to me, but forty years later when high school classmates post photos of their wedding, his picture appears with a note of his kindness and sometimes his professional competence.  Services were done expertly.  Those in attendance were were more my mother's friends than mine, but as a an adult visitor who made time to stop there while in transit from the Delaware Valley to New England these people gained my respect for their ongoing dedication even as their congregation was aging and eventually failing.

Hillel I was more a part of.  People were happy to have me there whether they needed another tuchis for a minyan or not.  There were interactions about exams.  My first Kaddish obligation was fulfilled there.  It was the custom that mourners should not stand alone, a custom exported by me to subsequent places.  Not having a Rabbi, the Hillels brought out the best in what Jewishly committed students could do.  There were no fights over Mechitza, just a recognition that the Orthodox needed one and we would set our own druthers aside to enable their worship.  Somebody had to prepare Torah reading, even if an Organic Chemistry test loomed in the near future.  People rose to the occasions.  I'm very respectful of that to this day.

I only lived in Quincy for one year, my final year of residency.  The town at the time had a kosher butcher which folded a few months after we arrived.  My first experience at Beth El occurred for the Holy Days which might have been my last as the Rabbi rambled and the crowded sanctuary could have used better climate control.  But while I spent the summer at an arduous hospital assignment, my wife attended shul, assuring me that the spectacle of Rosh Hashana did not occur on shabbat.  As my medical assignments got a little more tame, I started going with her.  The experience was the closest I've ever had to a Hillel duplication in a Conservative synagogue.  Personable, knowledgeablle, interactive Rabbi.  Cantor davened and read Torah expertly without the flourishes of a Cantorial institute alumnus, having acquired his skill in Europe.  Not a lot of congregants but enough, ranging from Harvard professors to younger people who had just escaped the Iranian Revolution but still had family left behind.  The role of women was in transition then but both my wife and I got invitations to be among the haftarah readers.  Kiddush was mingling and chat time, something never duplicated for me since.  Then mostly home and rest afterwards.  If they had macher swoops I was unaware of them.  I know they had a benefactor, an owner of a small regional home improvement chain.  I never met him and never sensed I was being manipulated in any way.

So those are the basic models, diverse but with a common theme of being among people who I basically admire.  Sounds like something fairly easy to duplicate or at least aspire to, though strangely elusive.

No Clergy

We have an unusual circumstance this shabbat with the Rabbi away in Israel and the Cantor out ill.  So we see what our men can do.  I am ba-al shacharit, we have a ba-al musaf, a person who gives a uniformly superior D'Var Torah, leaving us to get Torah reading done.  About five guys stepped up to the plate, so we'll see how it goes.  Mincha/Maariv a little less secure. Hopefully no surrogate for those irritating Aliyah Sound Bites which I think mar our weekly experience.

I came of age Jewishly in Hillel sanctuaries where students created the weekly services they wanted.  There are problems when the shabbos reaches it peak in your 20's followed a suburban sanctuary wasteland dependent on hired professionals, often less talented than the students but more sustainable, if not more reliable.  But's that's what we have with a brief welcome interlude from time to time when we can return to what we once had.

Sparkle

Our congregation finally addressed its albatross last shabbos, the classification of our shul's women as dhimi's, a protected but subordinate class of people.  Orthodox and other non-egal places like ours sometimes get a bad rap about how we treat our women, banning them from leading our worship based on assessments of Rabbis of yore whose world had a very different form than ours.  Whether you adhere to tradition or schect the Sacred Cow of these sages' ruling, the proper treatment of women is really a moral issue of our generation that cannot be simply dismissed or even undermined by a few guys in our minyanim whose Y-chromosome may be their principal asset.  Despite the subordinate religious standing of our women and those of any Orthodox congregation, it is also hard to escape the reality that the talent within our cohort far exceeds the talent within the movements that have brought women to ritual equality.  It is a matter of showcasing that talent, enabling those women to acquire those 15 minutes of fame that should be the destiny of all human beings.

To do that, AKSE arranged a suitable forum, not quite egalitarian but recognizable as parity if not equality.  A mechitza of balloons was placed, some Tircha d'Tzibburah imposed by the Rabbi by having two services each at inconvenient times to run consecutively when they could have just as well run simultaneously, and the service that people actually attended conducted half by women and half by men.  Pseudkei D'Zimrah, Torah Service, half the Aliyot, and Haftarah all performed expertly by some very outstanding women, all far more capable than those Ritual Committee denizens who impede them.  Rabbi stayed in the background, no Aliyah Sound Bites, only the briefest of remarks on his part.  Some of these women can and have given pretty decent Divrei Torah at a collegiate level far in excess of the more typical fare that has become our norm, but with the time shift making a late morning, that opportunity had to be set aside.  And the women prepare an ever outstanding Kiddush each shabbos, duplicated for this shabbos as well.  What differed at this kiddush were the sincere congratulations bestowed upon the participants and a little more camaraderie than has been our norm, but something that should be aspired to.

With a little tweaking, this reflects AKSE at its best, a sanctuary that comes alive, that makes shabbos morning the sparkling centerpiece of a synagogue's existence, something it can really use as the favorable product differentiation that has been so difficult to achieve.

Preparing a Presentation

Each year AKSE holds a night of college level adult education known as the AKSE Academy, created by me and run by me until frustration in setting it up got the better of me and I walked away but others picked up the ball.  This year the committee offered me a slot to present something, opting for a medical ethics topic but giving me some leeway.  Narrowed down to three options:  The Sages Guide to Electronic Medicine, The Otisville Minyan and Other Tales of Frum Misconduct, Tircha D'Tziburrah or burdening the congregation.  Each has the potential to take a little poke at people's personal experiences, amid a cast of presentations that seem more pedantic, or at least removed a bit from what people encounter Jewishly or personally.

There's a certain Jewishness and a certain reality to each.  As I read and create medical records each day, there is a certain misrepresentation built into the electronic form where people do the illusion of a physical exam and discharge analysis but establish a document for payment, known by the Rabbis as genevat da-at.  Every frum criminal has loyal supporters and rationalization of the crimes committed, or at least offset by the ill gotten gains going to tzedakah.  And for Tircha, don't even get me started on Aliyah Sound Bites.

So I have a week to decide, then it's on to sources and Power Point.

Bimah Participant

In keeping with my promise to myself, now approaching the one year mark, if I think somebody will benefit from my being in shul on shabbos morning, I go.  Mostly that has been as a bimah participant with the main exceptions being to honor somebody who has a milestone, usually a kiddush sponsor.  Both events took place this past shabbos.

As a spectator, the shabbos morning experience can vary a lot from place to place, often tiresome, irritating with sufficient frequency to account for gradual attrition in some places mine among them, sometimes elevating when portions are executed especially well or an insight is acquired from having been there, and sometimes reconnecting with friends or exchanging thoughts with people at kiddush.  As a participant I tend to be more focused upon me than on what is around me, awaiting my turn with some laudable wariness, sensing some relief when mission accomplished and largely leaving the rest of the morning subordinate to my personal task that morning.  The weekly pageant of shabbos morning of which I am part that week maintains its expected course as it always does, but my attention goes to me, in the process leaving me relatively neutral to the other components to which I would have a favorable or unfavorable opinion if I were there only because my attendance is expected on every shabbos morning.

The Aliyah Sound Bites annoyed me less, though to be fair they have gotten more brief, the skills of the other participants just blending it with my skills, handshakes were fulfilled largely as an offshoot of the assignment, and I rewarded myself at the end with some Scotch at the kiddush table and a generous piece of cake from the weekly sponsors.  Had I attended with no personal contribution to the proceedings, I probably would have been more of an analyst of the experience.  This may be why I made the decision last fall to attend selectively this calendar year.

The Yom Tovim

We're not quite done.  Midway through Chol HaMoed Sukkot, not yet bentched lulav.  

It remains the time to think about Judaism, what went well, what did not.  I kept to my synagogue plan set in November 2014 to go to my congregation if somebody else benefited from my being there, usually as bimah participant but to honor a special guest as well.  Will continue that through the end of the calendar year.  Been to Chabad once a month and Beth Tfiloh once a quarter as planned.  Went to a transdenominational Rosh Hashana, one in existence for 25 years but only attended by me for about five.  I think it's where my synagogue experience tops out.  Participants have been top notch.  No pretense   No formal Rabbis.  Probably the best application of meritocracy to a synagogue that I have encountered anywhere.

Rabbi Robinson, our community's Reform spiritual leader and in my mind the most articulate Jewish thinker of my town posted his YK sermon: 

 http://rabbiyair.blogspot.com/2015/09/yom-kippur-morning-5776-holiness-of.html?showComment=1443689618718#c1564464014608044707

He often focuses on synagogue development for his congregation with implications that are applicable anywhere.  He took an interesting approach, maybe even a nihilist one, to isolate the strengths of his congregation and move them ahead while not trying to remedy the short comings.  His reasoning, which I always hold in great respect, is that if you do something well you can proceed to excellence.  If you focus on correcting a weakness, the best you can hope for is mediocrity.  It's an interesting perspective with all sorts of applications.  If AKSE cannot move women ahead effectively, then write off the project, accept the reality that young families will see us as a dinosaur and promote our excellent kiddush and Sisterhood and small cadre of daveners.  Accept shabbos morning as a variant of Hebrew school beyond redemption with those interAliyah Sound Bites and make the AKSE Academy project sparkle since it has the potential to sparkle.  I'm not sure that this type of writing off one's deficits is really in keeping with the spirit of the High Holy Days, but I can respect the reasoning behind it.  

My own initiatives of what I might like to pursue Jewishly still come in June and December but the fall holidays set the background.

Shavuot Approaching

Nearing the completion of the Omer, a little rocky to remember the first week but accomplished, much easier since, even with recent travel where I took a small Omer card.  While the upward counting of the Omer implies an ascent to from Exodus to Torah, I think of Pesach as the crest of the calendar year with high grade ritual and Shavuot as a  denouement, a festival much less celebrated and largely devoid of imaging.  It coincides with Memorial Day this year, enabling me the days away from the office, though I will need to pass through the hospital at the midpoint.  It coincides by season with graduations, waning days of the public school calendar, planting the gardens, all which add to the seasonal elements of the Festival itself. I am one of the Torah readers for Bamidbar the day before.  Even Torah moves on to its next phase.

While the Yontiff has little formality, dairy meals pose a pleasurable challenge.  Not elaborate meals like Seder, no major restrictions of content or recipe, but something a little different just the same.  Sometimes new preparation, but more typically the blintzes and kugel and quiche.  Horn & Hardardt Macaroni and Cheese, one of my favorites this year.  I have apples so apple walnut pie.

Never got enthused about overnight studying the night before, would much rather rest up for the Festival.  But if any ritual has emerged in recent years it has been the rising popularity of people who are otherwise passive in their learning, partaking of whatever the Rabbi feeds them in his Aliyah Sound Bites, going out of their way at an inconvenient time to add to their Jewish knowledge.

But still a few more days of Omer to go.

Creating Synagogue Value

Somebody sent me a nicely written essay, one that apparently deleted the comment I had intended for it on www.kveller.com so I editorialize in my own forum.

Black= original text, Blue=comments

Michael Paulson reported in The New York Times on the “Pay What You Want” model that some synagogues are implementing to reduce the financial barrier to membership. Paulson estimated that about 30 synagogues across the United States are trying voluntary dues.

These changes, Paulson wrote Monday, have come from “an acknowledgement that many Jewish communal organizations are suffering the effects of growing secularization, declining affection for institutions, a dispersal of Jewish philanthropy and an end to the era in which membership in a congregation was seen as a social obligation.”

 

It has increasingly been seen as a consumer purchase. Need to send tykes to Hebrew School for Bar Mitzvah.  There are competing purchases, of course.  Day school, summer camp, psychiatrist to talk about Mom, trip to Israel, all Jewish in their own way with different assessments of economic value.   As a consumer purchase, the shul often seems overpriced with marginal return on expense.

With those realities, a massive change in the dues structure is necessary, but is it sufficient? Changing the financial requirement for membership without addressing the widespread lack of interest in attending synagogue or engaging in a Jewish life is going to yield more of the same long term: low participation and apathy.

 

I do not agree that the dues structure needs to be revised as much as the product being sold needs to be improved, if synagogue expenditure is to be a viable consumer purchase.  A more productive path, though, would be to have it something other than a product to be traded for cash.

 

Full disclosure: My husband and I are members of three synagogues. We’re members of my husband’s childhood Conservative synagogue in St. Louis Park, Minn., where our kids went to preschool, and we’re active at a newly revived Orthodox synagogue. We also consistently go to Chabad (where voluntary dues has been in place for decades). I was raised Reform, and we are not Orthodox. Are we an anomaly? Perhaps. Do we have to be? No.

We stay at all three synagogues because of the relationships we have with the rabbis, their families and with the other congregants. We have also studied with Reform and Conservative rabbis, Aish Hatorah teachers and with our local kollel leaders. Like many modern Jews, we’re not tied to one denomination.

 

Or becoming 21st century Hellenists.  In reality, not all Rabbi’s have engendered great loyalty, nor have a lot of the baalebatim.

 

“I’m hyper-affiliated,” I say whenever someone wants to know where I stand. Though I prefer, “I’m Jewish.”

After reading Paulson’s article, I asked friends on Facebook what keeps them from wanting to be more Jewishly involved in and out of synagogues. I admit that I already suspected money had little to do with their hesitation. The discussion went on for 12 hours, yielding more than 100 comments from Jews across the country. One friend summed up the issue succinctly: “Many [Jewish leaders] are asking, ‘How can we get people more involved in our synagogue?’ as opposed to asking ‘How can we get people more involved with Jewish life?’”

 

Be nicer to them.  Value them. 

 

Only a small fraction of the answers focused on the expense. I received numerous versions of “Services are at bad times for little kids,” “It’s too cliquey,” “Everything is geared to young families” and “I feel out of place as a single person.” The grievances mostly focused on Shabbat services.

 

those aliyah sound bites drive me nuts.  As one of the Baalebatim told me, no place is better than our shul on Shabbos morning.  Scientist that I am, I went to shul a few times and stayed home a few times.  He was right.  I could upgrade my Shabbos experience by going no place.

 

 

Adina Frydman, the executive director of  UJA-Federation of New York’s Synergy program, which recently published a study on congregations with voluntary dues, said, “Changes to the synagogue dues system are just part of a much bigger picture, namely the ways synagogues can continue to evolve to be places that create a deeper, more authentic sense of community.”

 

That's the role of the Rabbi and the baalebatim.  It is very much a community though a much smaller one than the baalebatim would like.  Unfortunately, I have attended many a board meeting both as a board member and as a board observer in which the purpose of expanding membership as a primary initiative is to provide financial stability to do more of the same programming.  If we like what we do, somebody else will like what we do just as much, and other delusions.  Not everybody there is on the A-list.  Invitations to participate for me have been few and far between, nearly all bimah activity, while for my wife they have been plentiful.  They just do not think of new people as sources of energy or creativity.  It is often a fine line that separates a resource from a threat to stability.

 

 

My experience with a wide variety of synagogues and Jewish organizations tells me that the pressing challenge now for non-Orthodox synagogues is creating communities where congregants care about Judaism and therefore see their synagogues as valuable. 

 

Important for Orthodox synagogues as well. They just don't have to pay their Rabbi's as much or hire as much staff or run Hebrew schools.  And they cater to a community that regards Shabbos as central, one that will put up with other indignities if Shabbos is a meaningful experience.  Once Shabbos is no longer a focus, those leadership generated indignities and expense begin to matter more.

 

That is not to deny a real need for dollars, but the financial insecurity is a symptom of a Jewish population that does not see how the Judaism offered by the synagogue has anything to do with their lives. If the perception of the product or the way it’s delivered (low rabbi-to-congregant ratio) does not change, how will a lower cost or even a free membership make people want to spend time, their other highly protected currency, at synagogues or in any aspect of Jewish life?

 

At the risk of going off on a tangent, but an important one, revision of the dues structure assumes financial neutrality with revenue provided by either voluntary offerings as many Protestant churches do, or by tithing or income based fees as the Mormons do and Jews did at one time.  The expenses continue but the means of meeting those expenses is redistributed.

 

 

Provide value and people will pay. Show members the joy of Judaism and empower them to bring that joy home. Engage members with discussions on how to be a better person, a better parent, sibling, spouse, friend, and a more ethical businessperson, and they will come back for more. If congregants do not see how Judaism can be relevant in their homes and everyday lives, then they will go somewhere else in search of meaning and take their dollars with them.

 

However, I am hard pressed to think of any synagogue officer or Rabbi who thinks their congregation’s mission now is anything other than imparting meaning to people’s lives through Judaism.  They may be misjudging how well they think they are performing and serving the Jewish public, often rationalizing any negative feedback on this, right down to people voting with their feet.  It is much too common for leaders or mature Jewish institutions for the last fifty years to regard people who do not take a liking to their institution as being inferior in some way.

 

 

I’m not implying that synagogues have it all wrong. Organizations don’t die because they provide no value; they die because they fail to provide enough value to enough people.

 

It depends on your perspective.  The synagogues have an inherent life cycle of birth, growth, maturity and senescence.  Demographic matter a lot. Social and economic shifts cannot simply be dismissed as inconvenient.

 

As Rabbi Avi Olitzky, co-author with his father, Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, of the forthcoming book “New Membership & Financial Alternatives for the American Synagogue” (Jewish Lights Publishing), told me, “There has to be harmony between the synagogue’s mission and its agenda. A synagogue cannot just be in the business of being in business.” When I told him that so many of us want community but don’t always know how to define it, he described community as a circle to which you feel you belong that will miss your presence.

 

I’ve not attended Shabbos services at my shul for six weeks.  Thus far nobody has asked what I did on Shabbos morning instead.

 

 

The reality for synagogues is that members – and those not even considering joining – can find  community in any number of places from yoga studios to the racquetball court to their careers, or their kids’ schools and sports teams. If we can’t give people a reason to infuse that circle with Judaism (not just with Jews, but with Judaism), then sadly I don’t see a future for synagogues whether they cost money to belong or not.

 

My communities right now are the pageant of work and Sermo.  I’m part of both, technically expendable at both, but when I make a statement of some type to upgrade the operation or impart knowledge, people respond.  My last three inquiries to the baalebatim at my shul on the Shabbos experience did not even merit a response by email.  Sometimes no response is the most telling of all.

Morning at Chabad

It's been a while since I was last at Chabad on shabbos morning.  While my quest for an uninterrupted Torah reading was not fulfilled there either, I very much enjoyed being there, partaking of the differences between expected Orthodox services and the minor liturgical variations which their tradition uses.  About half, or perhaps somewhat more, had at one time been members of AKSE, most of whom I had not seen in a while but pretty near 100% came over to greet me.  They gave me the honor of Hagbah, done a little differently in their tradition but explained to me.  I then had to sit with the Torah through the Haftarah and prayers preliminary to it's return, something that got a little heavy, but maybe an incentive to me to get back in better condition.  The Rabbi's son did Musaf, lovely voice, and to be a newlywed soon.  Aliyah Sound Bites, three of them, done by the Assistant Rabbi, longer than AKSE's, of perhaps slightly more erudite content, and wonderful dvar Torah by Rabbi Vogel, the Rebbe's shaliach in Delaware.  Simple kiddush, with a little schapps offered to me by the Rabbi.  I selected the partially home made one, Polish potato vodka which he infused with etrog.  Definitely different, enough citrus to notice.  Updated overdue acquaintances, then moved on for the rest of the day.  It felt like shabbos morning.

Finding What's Important

My state has a peculiar requirement for medical license renewal.  Physicians are required to pursue twelve hours of Continuing Education on patient safety in each two year license cycle, something I do on line and largely in the last 4-6 weeks before the due date.  They give a certain amount of latitude in what qualifies, things from infection control to domestic violence to minimizing medical errors.  One of the self-study articles turned out to be a widely applicable seminar on geriatrics, which is something I do a lot of.  Specialists like myself tend to practice within disease guidelines, in my case diabetes, though optimal disease management may undermine the goals that some of these people have.  So if the goal of an elderly person is independence with a drivers license, too much insulin or a complex glucose-lipid-blood pressure program may keep that from happening.  So goals need to be established, even if optimal disease management sometimes has to be sacrificed.

Of course, this principle has widespread applicability to most activities.  There is process and there is outcome.  So what might I really want out of my Jewish experience?  Camaraderie?  Learning? Challenge?  Engagement?  Spirituality?  Acceptance?  Lot of possibilities.  I'll start with an uninterrupted Torah reading, a pet peeve perhaps but one to which approaches to the baalebatim have been literally ignored.  I think being ignored may be more of an irritant than the Aliyah Sound Bites themselves.  Maybe it's the interaction, the give and take that has been the Jewish tradition from Talmudic times that has been too dormant at AKSE.  Maybe it's respect for my mind and my knowledge that has eluded me there.  The worship part, at least, cannot meet goal and has to be replaced.

Can a synagogue really survive as a club if the worship component gets written off?  There are social activities, classes, cultural events, flyers to be made, budgets to balance.  So probably.  But it will be a less important place.

Shopping Downward

As I was finishing med school and needed to start looking presentable for patients, a best seller called Dress for Success by John Molloy had gathered considerable public interest.  He described how one's appearance correlated with one's future employment and promotability, something very relevant to me at the time.  I got the book from the library and read it over a few day, absorbing the hints of how to make clothing fit and select colors and patterns that added 10 points to one's virtual IQ.  Needless to say, the senior executives made a lot more money than senior executive wannabes and got where they are by adapting to the sartorial pageant of where they worked.  Peasants of lesser means, including myself to this very day, had to give the illusion that they were purchasing good stuff without actually spending money that they did not have.  He suggested a form of shopping down, wandering through Brooks Brothers where the boss shopped, noting what is on their most expensive racks, then going to the less expensive racks and seeing what features were maintained and what were deemed expendable.  Then onward to the Value City where I really shopped for clothing and trying to duplicated as much as possible from the upper end.

This strategy has served me well for a long time, not only for clothing but for my cars and my house, pretty much every large purchase except universities for my kids where I bought the real thing.  Shopping down seems similarly tempting though with my ultimate synagogue purchase predetermined, what I really get are a few shabbos mornings of the type I'd like to have most but not really the chance to purchase the closest facsimile available.  In order to do that, there would need to be a menu of experiences with different values to choose from, something not available in my community for some time.  But you take what you can get, which for me is a lovely morning at Beth Tfiloh, none of which is transferable to my usual shabbat morning.

I got there as they were starting the repetition of the Amidah.  This particular shabbat was not only a bar mitzvah, something I've come to expect but the BNai Mitzvah of a male-female twin set.  The boy excelled with flawless Torah and haftarah chanting and very appropriate speech about what it is like to  be a twin, the tension between being bundled with another person and the need to protect one's individuality.  Lest her sister remain subordinate, she had her own limelight within the local parameters, chanting the first two Aliyot from the next Parsha, as section about twins.  She then spoke of being a twin, followed by the twins speaking jointly, sometimes in unison and sometimes in alternating sentences.  Not to upstage Rabbi Wohlberg, the Dvar Torah drew on a current event, the passing of President Reagan's astrologer and the interface between fates that you cannot control and personal efforts that guide destiny.  Many parallels to this in the Parsha.  And extraordinary kiddush when it ended.  No interaliyah Sound Bites.  No contrivances like changing your seats so the Rabbi can look at everyone when he speaks.  No, it was a service suitable to college graduates who mostly work all week and could have been doing other things on Saturday but opted for the experience of shabbat morning worship.  That's what I aspire to and will have to relocate myself on shabbos morning to get a little closer to that ideal.

As Theodor Herzl noted, "If you will it, it is no dream; and if you do not will it, a dream it is and a dream it will stay."  Our baalebatim don't seem to will that type of shabbat experience and our Rabbi's style cannot deliver it.  So I think it might be time to will it for myself.

Grass Roots Shabbos Morning

We almost did it.  Rabbi away for a family simcha.  Cantor present for shacharit and Torah reading.  Everything else either not done, particularly those annoying Aliyah Sound Bites, or done by volunteers including a wonderful D'var Torah, simple, insightful and with a piece of herself revealed, not something looked up on the Internet during the week.  One of the better experiences on a shabbat morning, much like the congregants of Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El getting together, ditching their very capable clergy, and creating a fully traditional shabbat morning experience.  I understand fully why transdenominationalism is taking hold and maybe understand a little better why the AKSE service is underattended, or at least why I have been rationing my mornings there.

There was an intriguing presentation on yutorah.org a few years ago:

http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/755055/Rabbi_Ari_Kahn/Have_the_Rabbis_Ruined_Judaism

The speaker was not talking about Rabbinical Judaism, which is how we function, but the experience of dealing with an ordained class of people as focal points.  There is certainly great demand for the right Rabbi in a congregation or community which may be why Rabbi searches are often contentious and why placement organizations insist on manipulating the selection process.  But once in place, it is not entirely clear whether these people augment or mar the Jewish experience.  I am certainly rather uneasy admitting to a more satisfying experience without the Rabbi, though that is the reality repeated a few times for certainty.  That grass roots experience of shabbos morning at university Hillels conducted entirely by students has never been surpassed at any dues paying congregation that I have attended either as a member or visitor.  I've limited my attendance in the past based on disappointing if not unfavorable experience and I've gone so far as to change congregations once, but never with the formality that I do now.

This all has implications, of course.  Congregations like AKSE struggle for membership looking at their membership as a source of revenue with volunteer participation as a bonus.  Yet that membership has to be contingent on deriving something of value from it, be it worship, learning, fellowship or social action.  But ultimately the experience is rather fluid and not that hard to individualize.  If shabbos morning fails to inspire me, I can either remain uninspired or replace the experience, which is what I seem to be doing.