Who Can Help?

In 1999 a pharmaceutical company invited me to a conference in sunny Miami Beach at a hotel that I could not afford to stay at to help them assess a product that I prescribed with some frequency but had come under regulatory scrutiny.  They gave me an honorarium in addition to hospitality and transportation.  I assigned the money to an acquaintance who runs a charitable organization.  He responded with a note of thanks but included something he had written for publication in the near future.  With Passover approaching, he composed Danny's Four Questions.

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

I revisited this 25 years later when I attended a reception for a charitable institution.  The host was a synagogue in my county where I had not been in at least a decade.  The drive, just after prime commuting time, went well.  Since that time, their Rabbi who I knew had retired and passed on, a few successors came and went, including one that generated some discord.  This year they settled on a very worthy man who I knew well, a Rabbi of admirable accomplishment and ability.  I had been meaning to attend a service there, but this charitable event arose first.

Their synagogue sits in a sparsely built area, apparently zoned for places of worship, as I rode past some churches nearby.  After parking my car and walking up steps into an impressive entryway, I took my event ID badge, hung my winter coat, and wandered around in this large public space.  Like many suburban synagogues, they have a sanctuary.  I estimated 200 pewed seats, eight rows with sixteen cushioned seats per row.  At my last visit, I remember a raftered ceiling, which has since been revised.  A movable partition connects the sanctuary with its fixed seating to an open multifunctional space.  No doubt, on high holidays or bar mitzvahs or VIP funerals, some movable seating will get set in that area.  For this evening, a dairy buffet table had been placed in the center, beverages in a far corner, and round tables with about eight chairs each surrounding the central food placement.

My interest, though, had me wandering their oversized foyer.  A Holocaust Torah set to Mincha Yom Kippur's reading appeared in a glass case adjacent to the sanctuary entrance.  At the short wall connecting the doors to the worship area on the right and the all-purpose area to the left, the congregation had placed a table with neat stacks of papers filling most of its surface.  People could get this year's Jewish calendar with the congregation's name printed on the bottom.  What attracted my attention, though, were two invitations, both very different from how my synagogue solicits engagement from its members.  One stack towards the left of the table's surface contained vignettes of  five families their outreach committee thought the congregants might be able to help during the winter holidays.  I assume they are Christian, but there are needy members of synagogues too.  For each household, the members were listed individually with suggested gifts the Temple might fulfill.  Clothing sizes provided for each individual, ages and clothing size for each child.  All mothers seemed to wear plus size clothing, which sells for a premium.  One was apparently pregnant.  They needed basic clothing, but maybe a candle or other pleasantry thrown in.  The children also needed clothing, but the gift lists included a few recreational items.  Christmas and Hanukkah largely coincided this calendar year.

When I make a donation for my mother's Yahrtzeit each winter, I divide my remembrance three ways. One third goes to the remnant of what was my childhood congregation.  While that shul has closed, the current version had the courtesy to import the names on the memorial plaques, including my mother's, to create smaller uniform brass memorials in their rather posh new sanctuary.  Another third goes to a memorial fund named after one of my mother's friends, which supplies Kosher meals to the observant needy of my childhood county.  And the final third, supplied by check with a note of appreciation, goes to a project run by one of my high school friends who belongs to that congregation.  She collects toiletries for the homeless on behalf of the congregation.  No doubt people donate shampoos from hotels or maybe trial size cosmetics.  I provide my friend money to pursue her project in the best way.

My congregation does not excel in ministry to the poor, though we do not ignore it.  Three days a year we supply food to a soup kitchen and employ our congregants in its supply and preparation.  I'm sure the people who eat there appreciate the security of a daily lunch.  But it's less personal than holiday gifts customized to individuals, adapted to their unique needs.

The other paper, a single sheet printed front and back, lay in a short stack front and center on the table's surface. It contained a form.  People come to the congregation with skills obtained from other parts of their lives.  People enter the synagogue anticipating new connections with people they do not already know who can engage them, including creation of new talents or enhancement from novice to proficient.

The Congregation divided their personal engagement or contribute abilities form into six categories that their President, Board, Committee Chairs, and Rabbi might tap.  If only they had a database of who had what skill, now easily retrievable in our digital age.  They would like to know about:

1. Business Skills
2. Creative Arts & Technical Skills
3. Religious Proficiency
4. Educational Experience
5. Social Engagement Ability
6. Anything Else 

They have people among them who have managed small businesses or done public relations.  People might be members of the IBEW, work as decorators, or act in regional theater.  Every synagogue needs people to lead services and sometimes give a sermon.  Hebrew Schools need not only teachers but sometimes aides. Babysitters enable parents to attend events that they might otherwise have to skip.  Congregations need people proficient in the kitchen and to interface with organizations external to the synagogue.  These people float around, though not always visibly.  Identifying and engaging them apparently has high value to that synagogue.

Within the form, people are asked to estimate their proficiency.  As Danny's Four Questions hint, what you like to do is not always the same as what you are good at.  The Temple makes that distinction.  People can be Expert, Proficient, or Novices.  They can also be Enthusiastic irrespective of real ability.  Sometimes gung ho fills the need, but some projects are better performed deferring the Walter Mitty's to people of training and experience.

One of the joys of wandering through entryways, whether the synagogues, JCCs, schools, or libraries, the organizations set out on their tables what seems most important to them.  My message as a visitor that evening is that this place takes Engaging more seriously than my synagogue, despite having Engaging on its letterhead banner.  Our method is a few key individuals filling their inner circles by people they know about and won't give pushback.  It is unlikely that any Committee Chair in recent years ever solicited talent from somebody they heard about but did not know, though maybe they have an informal grapevine.  It's a method that gets you by but never advances untapped potential.  You just have to be acceptable to a Dominant Influencer or two.  It is probably more expedient than inviting talent or maintaining a database to call upon people who already possess skill or want to advance what they already have.  And it has become our core culture, one that creates stability at a price.

 

This congregation's showcasing what they do internally to draw in the less engaged or find the people who lurk unrecognized made a very favorable impression.  So did their listing of five families and the individuals within each household, intending to enhance them in some way for the Winter Holidays. I exited this synagogue, where I had not been in decades, knowing that their new Rabbi, who I have known for decades, will continue to make them what they aspire to become.  Engaging and Embracing.

Pesach Next Week

My Bar Mitzvah haftarah, HaGadol, gets recycled this shabbos.  It will be a virtual shabbos, though with other synagogue online participation, I get a more graphic impression of why our Congregation has become a niche product not very attractive to anyone else who might be in quest of our logo: embracing-engaging-enriching.  For me it was none of those things, though the other people on Zoom cyberspace encounters were decent likable people.  What was imparted just seemed dull and pedantic.

But with HaGadol comes Pesach, my favorite Festival.  I've given up on the American Rabbis' platitudes of Freedom but the season of renewal, of hitting the reset button, never loses its validity.  I can prepare what needs to be done, wash a refrigerator or floor that I would make excuse to neglect the rest of the year, plan menus with the enjoyment of others in mind, at one time maybe buy some new clothes in parallel with the Easter traditions, take out an inherited Elijah's cup and my lantzmanschaften kiddush cup awarded to my grandfather when my father was just one year old.  In another era, I would be off from school most of that week.   People gather for Seder and for services and toward the end, for Yizkor.  The most endearing of traditions.  And it's almost upon us.

Relentless Pursuit of Mediocrity

One shabbos per month, our Cantor takes off, leaving Torah reading to the congregants.  We have started a periodic service where women can be participants with a few strings attached.  While coming to the rescue grudgingly during the Cantor's illness, I thought I could have the subsequent month enjoying shabbos morning someplace else, whether Chabad, Beth Tfiloh, or atop my new mattress as our Cantor makes his return.  It is not to be, at least for one shabbos.  This has been assigned to our Partnership Minyan.  The Aliyah Meister assigned the readings from the weekly portion of Yitro.  All are short except for the one with the Ten Commandments which comprises less than a full column and is familiar to many of us.  Who does the Aliyah Meister ask to do it?  Three highly experienced men.  Based on availability it defaulted to me.  I suggested that in a month one of the women assigned a shorter on can learn that one and somebody with less experience can do the shorter one.  Then she offerred me that shorter one.

Sometimes they just don't get it.  I took the one with the Ten Commandments whose text I mostly know.  Our Logo reads Embracing-Engaging-Enriching.  If you reassign everyone what they did last time and never challenge anyone to enhance their capacity even when the opportunity and the need is glaring, the people can never progress.  This Partnership Minyan has been a showcase with mixed results for a few years.  It's purpose was to provide women left on the sidelines a chance to advance their capacity.  They have the same women and the same capacity.

Does anyone hold responsibility for this?  I would think the Rabbi who approved the project and set its ground rules.  You just cannot have people languish, watch them languish, and not try to remedy this.  In the Rabbi's absence we now have people reading other people's Divrei Torah.  Hello?  We are all university graduates who can write a 5-minute talk on a topic from the week's Torah reading.  Two people do that, one especially well and the other more than adequate.  Reading somebody else's work to me, particularly a short work,  just doesn't cut it, except for maybe an audiobook read by the author or professional actor.  Personal engagement will drive the future of our failing congregation.  We have some in the search for our new location lest we be homeless.  We had it clearing out the building we sold.  However too many decisions default to expediency when the better decision, from Rabbi's contract extension to how to get the weekly portion read at an acceptable level, involves some hardship but a chance to rise to the occasion.

Elusive Kavanah

My Kavanah got up and went.  There is a certain detachment  as I observe the proceedings on shabbos morning.  There is a lot of keva, or set time to do something, and not a lot mental or spiritual immersion into what goes on around me.  It's not really boredom, more a lost opportunity to be doing something else.  Embracing-Engaging-Enriching, the congregation's logo, has not been what I think of in the chapel on shabbos morning or at kiddush afterwards.  It's not work, not that I would want to be at work instead.  It's not recreation, there being ample other times for that.  It's not ruach, at least for me.  As I stare at some of the other people there, it may not be ruach for them either, though I never took a poll.  The Board or Ritual Committee probably never took a poll either.  Attendance speaks for itself, at it has stabilized though never expanded.  That's probably a decent surrogate poll.

Shabbos Ready

Sometimes I get annoyed with the congregational leadership.  Sometimes the irritations are petty, sometimes they seem to be neglecting activities that portend the future.  Among my beliefs, probably true though maybe not, is that if Shabbos does not measure up as a synagogue's centerpiece, none of the other offerings will compensate for that.  And so it was when the last few times I entered the place of worship and found that nobody had placed the necessary Chumashim, or in the main sanctuary even ample siddurim.  I have come into the building on a Shabbos morning to find the talesim strewn when it would have been more attractive to find them neatly folded.  My daughter visited in January, commented that she felt chilly, yet the basket of woolen or acrylic shawls kept in a basket for that purpose were not displayed in their usual conspicuous place.   So last Shabbat with the President in the pews I pulled him aside and asked him to count books in a few of the rows.  I then asked if there was a checklist of who had to do what for Shabbat.  There wasn’t.  Moreover he seemed rather annoyed at the question but at least not hostile, something that I cannot say when I posed the suggestion to the Ritual Chairman at Kiddush who retorted in his lawyerly way that if I thought it was important I could write a draft myself, give it to him and he would have the Rabbi edit it.   Hardly Embracing/Engaging/Enriching as the logo on the Home Page displays.

So should I write it?  There are things that are just fine.  The Torah is always at its proper place, the big print haftarah book is always to be found.  Kiddush has been a reliable centerpiece worth the price of admission every week.  The weekly newsletter is mostly accurate.  Never saw any litter on the floor on Shabbos morning.  If a mechitza is needed it is set up.  Yet there really isn’t a sense of having to correct what is obviously deficient, and perhaps even a little irritation with the messenger. 

There was an interesting study some years back.  With the disclaimer that I didn’t read it but know about it second hand, it involved neurosurgeons in a training program whose entering class was tracked forward many years.  Of the cohort, most become neurosurgeons in various communities but a few achieved major prominence or became department chairmen while some dropped out of the residency to do something else.  The one consistent characteristic that separated the future stars from the drop-outs was their tenacity in correcting their own shortcomings, whether spending extra time in the research lab or acquiring a mentor to show them the fine points.  They were the ones who moved ahead.  That's true of upper tier places of worship as well. 

No Response

Sent an inquiry last week to the three ritual officials of AKSE.  We had a week in which the Rabbi was away on shabbos morning.  The Torah reading proceeded in its entirety without those annoying Aliyah Sound Bites that interrupt the natural flow of the chanting and choreography of honors that I've come to expect.  So I asked them if there were any standards of interrupting a Torah reading.  None of them even had the courtesy to acknowledge the question.  I posed it to a reputable Webbe Rebbe who provided me the answer in a day.  There are two conflicting positions of recognized Poskim.  One says the Torah reading should not be interrupted, the other says it may be interrupted to honor somebody or to teach Torah.  So that interaliyah running commentary meets threshold, leaving me with the option of limiting my exposure to it, something I've already done.  Since sending my  inquiry, two of those three gentlemen asked something of me, one to conduct Shacharit, the other to chant a haftarah on relatively short notice.

And last week the head of medical technology stopped by my office late in the afternoon on no notice to promote his agenda on behalf of the hospital.  One inquiry to him in the past unresponded.  Detracts from his agenda.

And finally, there is a controversy over medical specialty recertification for which the Endocrine Society invited comment.  I'm sure a lot of people put in their two cents, as did I.  There was no acknowledgement, though to be fair the new Society President sent a note later that he and other medical society officials had met with them to express their constituents' displeasure.

In our era there seems no shortage of forums for expression, and the things we comment about get seen.  But without the response, which has become decreasingly obligatory as these venues expand, engagement suffers.  AKSE's logo:  Embracing/Engaging/Enriching.  This time I had to seek that interaction and knowledge externally.

We Need More Money

Dr. Simon Baruch, the renowned Confederate Army surgeon wanted his son to follow his professional path but Bernard took an early interest in the American capital markets, earning his first million while in his twenties.  His father asked him what he planned to do with that million dollars, for which the answer at the time was unclear.  Having a winning strategy was Bernard's end point with the amount as a method of keeping score.

That parallel approach to finances seems to have made its way into the psyche of the AKSE leadership.  About ten years ago, the congregation embarked on a Capital Campaign to raise $1 Million, coming fairly close to this somewhat arbitrary goal.  A congregational solicitor visited us at home accompanied by a fundraising professional to encourage us to pledge more than we ordinarily would for something like this.  I asked the fellow shul member what they planned to do with the money.  She seemed stunned by the question.  Some was to retire debt on the building but there would be quite a pot left over if the goal were reached, yet it was not clear why they needed so much more if there were no purpose for it to advance the congregation.  If the goal was to retire debt, we could pledge a lot less.  If the goal were to advance the congregation, there would need to be a plan in place for doing that.

The campaign sort of succeeded in raising money but the residual never really went to the congregation.  It served as a paper interest free loan for more operating expenses, to where it languishes on the books to the present.  The congregation has a secure building with secure economic value but not much else beyond that for all the effort that this project entailed.

As the congregation moves to its waning years, another project to raise funds for the sake of raising funds has emerged, a Dinner Dance, an evening of merriment done by many non-profits from museums to social service agencies to religious institutions, selling well heeled people a good time while allowing business a chance to sell stuff to them by purchasing space in an advertising book.  When the Diabetes Association does this they intend to take better care of people with diabetes.  When AKSE does this, the mission of the project seems less clear.

To perhaps make more sense of this I will take a fabulous lecture by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks recently presented at Yeshiva University and transpose his principles of personal happiness to organizational success.

http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/804344/Rabbi_Lord_Jonathan_Sacks/True_Path_to_Inner_Happiness

He organized seven things people can do to make their lives more fulfilling, which organizations probably think they do, though maybe erroneously.  Let's see how the congregation did, or how I think they are doing and perhaps might do better.

1. dream:  I will assume this means aspiring to something rather than foretelling the future, more like Yaakov's dreams than Joseph's.  There was a time when the congregation did work toward something unique in the community, whether that be educating the kids, maintaining Kashrut, having secure minyanim.  If the congregation were to close next year, what would the community miss as a result.  Lord Sacks assessed the optimal vision as one where what you like to do merges with what needs to be done.  Raising money enables what needs to be done, but it is not a surrogate for vision or an accomplishment independent of the vision.  If I were to take a yellow pad and try to write down what AKSE's niche currently is and what it might be instead, I would have difficulty doing that.  But being a Nobody, that is not my task.  There are Somebody's in place, a Rabbi, a President, and Executive Committee who could come up with a logo of Embracing/Engaging/Enriching which is conceptually fine but it lacks the dream of what might be put in place that makes that logo an operating reality.
2. assess:  There is certainly a local, national and international Jewish landscape to which AKSE contributes.  Our members are the largest local purchasers of Israel Bonds despite being the smallest size.  We have embraced CUFI, which has its pluses and minuses.  But we also live in an environment in which the role of women is very different than it was in the 1960's and where the authority of the Rabbi is more limited.  People can and do walk away.  Most college or medical students remember the first time they walked out of a lecture in the middle.  Whether this happened for a good reason like the pager went off or an editorial response to the content of the class, most people had reservations about walking out until about the third opportunity, when it was no longer seen as something to avoid doing.  Moreover, there are things that are either AKSE exclusives or could be, whether afternoon minyan, members who are literate in Hebrew or the annual Cafe Tamar.  I think that officers and Rabbis who should be well versed in what other places are doing successfully have not made that assessment, even though cyberspace has made this much easier than it once was.
3. venture:  And then there was BINGO.  It failed in its mission of fundraising but it succeeded in gathering forty individuals to make the project happen.  And there is mixed Megillah reading and there is Pizza & Parsha.  Amid these ventures are also some dead horses that have lives of their own.  While it is OK to innovate and fail, I would question the wisdom of plodding on once the failure has been established.  And then there are the ventures that should happen but don't.  What do the membership people do, what do the ritual people do?  Why does Women's Tefillah Group function like a Junior Congregation indefinitely or more importantly why does the Rabbi permit this?  There can be no growth without these ventures, keeping the final segment of the logo Enriching either vacant or at best an illusion.
4. work:  People do work, they are dependable. They don't always do the work in a way that is productive but for the most part it is diligent.  Amid the yeoman's efforts that people put forth, there is also a reticence to undertake projects, most notably the governance.  I do not know for sure if the Executive Committee adopted its Peter Principle due to the Nominating Committee failing its role of talent scout or because real talent that was solicited declined the offer.  To be fair, I've also become more selective about what I will undertake there.
5. offer:  AKSE has a face that the world can see.  People support the hungry and on Christmas morning people volunteer at the Mary Campbell Center.  But social justice belongs to the reform congregation as a core tenet.  Missions to disaster areas get organized someplace else.  Even money for disaster relief never makes the AKSE agenda.  It's a very inwardly looking amalgam of people, yet there is a sincere desire to appeal more broadly.  Chabad as part of its mission understands that the door to success opens outward, as the shelichim reach out to Yiddishe Neshamas who have no formal affiliation.  They are the affiliation of default.  There probably is no barrier to people at AKSE organizing small groups to benefit others and better broadcast AKSE as a place that infuses the best of Judaism wherever it might be welcome.
6. recover:  I suppose the chronic depletion of members constitutes adversity but not nearly so explicitly as losing one's Hazzan suddenly right before the Holy Days or hiring a Rabbi who really isn't a Rabbi.  And they will weather the vacancy in the Presidency.  But are those things what you might regard as resilience, the incentive to change fundamental policies to be stronger?  They are temporarily setbacks viewed as temporary but the depletion of participation is a long term trend that has no finite pivotal point which changes direction.  I sense instead an acceptance of progression to the congregations final years, an unwillingness to set out on a bold new course that might give a different result.  
7. thank:  At the close of shabbos the person making the announcements has begun to include a work of thanks for showing up.  Ostensibly the synagogue exists as a resource so the thanks really should be the other way around, a thanks to the synagogue for enabling the enjoyment of shabbos.  There used to be more people so I suppose a word of gratitude to those who have resisted attrition becomes appropriate.  Whatever happens in the congregation happens because people make it so.  Things like the Women's Tefillah Group or the Implementation Committee or socialization of new members efforts all failed to reach their goal because people did not promote interest beyond the original concepts.  We do pretty well thanking people for what they do, not as well at thanking people for what they tried to do.  And while there is much to be said about having a measure of contentment for what is, there also needs to be a measure of discontent for what was but is no more and for what might be but either nobody realizes it or nobody steps up to the place to make the possible a reality.

So Rabbi Lord Sacks teaches about people and he teaches about groups of people.  Money becomes the tool for doing the things that move you forward.   If you are not planning to move forward with it, to make use of it to expand the horizons, you may as well just take your delight in the portion you already have.

Blank Canvas

Our new secular year has commenced.  Predictions and good intentions at the outset have a way of being faulty before long.  With good fortune having come my way, there seems to be relatively little that I need that I currently lack.  More energy and motivation, perhaps, but no material items.  A better future legacy than I've amassed thus far, perhaps.  Professionally I've gotten into the groove, given up my futile inclination to make Electronic Medial Record keeping compatible with optimal medical care, contenting myself to toss a few harpoons at the management that salutes this mandate and the non-participants in medical care who harbor a delusion that it will accomplish something other than what will really accomplish.  But there are things of personal gratification that can be accomplished.  After some pondering of what I value and what the realistic opportunities seem to be, I afforded myself twelve things to pursue.

1. Beer

While I lived in walking distance to America's largest brewery and took advantage of the proximity by walking there periodically for the Anheuser-Busch tour and tasting room, this was beer ordinaire.  As resident in Boston with a fondness for an occasional treat at Legal Seafood, a mug of suds would usually accompany supper, with the bar offerings for this expanding my culinary horizons.  Eventually a craft industry developed while importers made available choices that had been available elsewhere for centuries.  And it's not a particularly expensive adventure as creature pleasures go.  There is no reason why I cannot sample one that I've not had before twice monthly, once in a bottle at my own table and once at one of the growing number of places nearby that have extensive offerings that I could not possible sample in their entirety.

2. Professional

I work in an inner city taking care of primarily diabetes.  My folks do pretty well but there are a lot of statistics to suggest that their outcome under the best of circumstances lags behind where it might have been if their ethnicity and economic standing were different. I am in the perfect place to study this and my own professional Endocrine Society has an initiative to make resources available.  Unfortunately, the Endo Society is dominated by academics who are more interested in why they cannot get minority research subjects into clinical trials than they are in why they fail to derive maximum advantage from what exists for their care now.  It's worth a try to get some funds and absorb a resident into this type of project for which our patient population may be a prototype for a very large medical opportunity.

3.  Family

I do not neglect my family but they seem to work around the odd moments more than having pre-arranged time to do things together.  The priorities on my to-do list seem to need some revision.

4. My Blog

This past half-year, it was my intent to make my blog a forum for Jewish laytzanos with some medical cynicism thrown in.  In the process, I explored the world of Jewish blogging.  To my pleasant surprise, mine seems to have a niche with a largely untapped audience of potential participants.  The genres come in a number of forms.  The most consistently funny and appropriately cynical comes from www.frumsatire.com.  Heshy writes a lot more frequently than I do and his wit attracts comments.  His draw, though, is a limited Orthodox perspective that lobs its share of darts at misconduct and hypocrisy.  The other genres come from a mixture of Rabbis who want to teach something or Conservative cheerleaders of various types who cannot understand why they are experiencing an affiliation crisis.  What seems to be missing is my perspective of people who are loyal to ideology but look at the leadership as a mixture of operators and buffoons not up to the task of matching the Jewish excellence that people seek with the actual experience of participation.  The Pew Research study suggests that the people affected by this type of disillusion and desire for something more engaging might be huge and currently unfulfilled.  I have to figure out some better way to attract readers and engage in electronic sharing of ideas.

5.  Loyal Democrat

Among Will Rogers' many political quips, "I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat."  For most of my voting life, I've looked at the political branch points much as I've functioned as a physician.  There is a problem to solve or decision to make, look at the options and pick the one that seems most likely to succeed within the bounds of Derech Eretz.  Umpire, Judge, Doctor, Scientist.  It is what it is.  Sure there are elements of competence and elements of morality that influence choices but until the past ten years, public positions that fall into the category of evil in America have been increasingly marginalized.  But wicked as a concept seems to be having enough of a resurgence to justify some effort at resisting it or at least pointing out what it is.  From the days of Amos and Isaiah, it has been unseemly to accept people of title who victimize vulnerable people in the name of expediency or social order.  That any support exists at all for denial of science to get votes or policies that deny people their due participation by placing stumbling blocks moves me to become more of a partisan in the other direction.  While my region has become solidly Democratic by affiliation, with even the elected Republicans for the most part staying a step ahead of venal, that is not true other places.  I have to offer my help in some way this half-year.

6. Writing

Among the things that intrigued me this past year was the Pew Research study on Jewish trends in America.  I might be the poster child for this and my declining shul might be the organizational prototype.  I am loyal to ideology, less respectful of the organization that brings these principles to public expression.  Since the release of the report, I've read a lot of hand-wringing from the depleted organizations but not a lot of accounts from the very people like myself who voted with their feet.  It is an experience that needs to be expressed in the right forum

I have also become something of a neo-Hellenist these past few years.  Denominationalism has declined.  There is an inherent beauty on Friday nights at the local Reform congregation.  A recent Orthodox wedding I attended reminded me that this can also be an enduring connection to Jewish life.  Exposure to quality knows very little ideological distinction as the Jewish Hellenists, the Jewish Iberians and those who rejected classical Orthodoxy in the 18th century in favor of Hasidism which advanced the value of each individual taught us from time to time.  Another idea not publicly expressed often enough.

And I've not contributed to the medical literature in a long time.  Need to remind everyone that life as a doctor has its glories and its frustrations.

7. Weight

A recent visit to Happy Harry's gave me access to a digital scale for only $9.99 so I bought one.  My weight recorded at 167 lb.  In the last two years I've had to move to the next size shirt and replace some pants.  My tailored clothing hardly gets worn but it still seems to get me by.  I'm more tired than I think I ought to be.  My feeding habits differ considerably from the advice I give to the chubby folks who visit my exam room.  I need to get serious with my health.  This takes a lot of forms, but for the most part, things that get measured get accomplished.  While I could keep score on medicine use, lab results, or clothing size, weight seems to be the most consistent measure.  It is also a byproduct of the efforts that promote other facets of health.  So for Day 1, I ate breakfast, went for a walk, shopped for a waffle maker that I did not find at a suitable price but at least it will help me shift some calories to earlier in the day.  Target weight by July 4th: 155 lb.

8. Shul

AKSE and its leadership have not endeared themselves to me this past year.  To keep my interest in Jewish things afloat and at a superior level, I accepted the logo of Engaging/Embracing/Enriching for the presidential delusion that it is and either took a sabbatical for six months or went on strike, depending on perspective.  But I read, commented on people's blogs, wrote to authors of things I read, resumed a weekly Parsha review.  Basically, replaced the things the shul should have been doing with other forums that advance me better.

We had a mandatory congregational special meeting a few weeks ago to vote on the Rabbi's contract extension and deal with the reality of nobody wanting to be left holding the Congregation's bag as President when the music stops not too far into the future.  While it had been my impression that I was the last critic still there, with the final remaining handful of loyalists who want to preserve the memory of better days until the lights go out for the  final time.  From the comments from the floor, largely by members of long standing, the dissatisfaction with a marginal experience that is not realistically marketable to the larger community seems broader than expected.  After the meeting I responded electronically to the three people who made the most substantial comments, responses of very little optimism.  While reversing damage may take some doing, it is possible but needs some fundamental revision of how people think, undoing the Peter Principle that dominates the Executive Committee, and having the congregants insist that the place function like a university instead of a Hebrew school even if it means making the Rabbi a figurehead or mascot.  I will try to identify and fulfill two needed projects that really are engaging.

9. Dad

My father died intestate in 2009.  He had a small amount of assets, too little to make a material impact on me or my brother, though probably would be welcome by my sinister.  I was the only child who remained connected to him for his final two decades, so I never felt much urge to pursue this.  I really should close the chapter, distributing the funds as the laws of Florida require.  I will get an attorney to take this over or it will never get done.

10. My Refuge

The mortgage has been paid off for decades.  If I wanted to get a Christmas Tree, which I obviously don't, I would have no realistic place to put it as there do not seem to be vacant corners anywhere.  I do have a few spaces that I could call my own.  There are two desks, a large one in what was supposed to be a study room but has become a repository for whatever.  And a smaller desk in a corner of the living room that really is mine.  And there is my bedroom, or at least my half of it.  At the moment I would call it half a queen size bed where I sleep, read, use my tablets, and groom in the adjacent bathroom.  There are other things that I would like to do there other than store stuff.  Making this half-room really mine occupies an important goal for the coming six months.

11. Guests

While I very much need private space, a lot of the decisions I made for my house in the thirty years I've lived here were predicated on creating a welcoming public space.  Our open houses have been two celebrations of childbirth and shiva for three parents and one gathering for my fellowship comrades, plus some birthday parties.  We have good living room furniture, good dining space, a fully equipped Kosher kitchen with my own culinary skills enhanced gradually over time.  But no guests to share this with us.  Since goals need to be specific to allow measurement, I set a quota of four guests in the ensuing six months.  That means I have to make the public areas more presentable first but I do not anticipate much difficulty with this.  Finding guests and occasions may pose more of a challenge, but four does not seem that many.


12. Day Trips

Several years back I allotted one day per month to visit a place I've not been previously.  My efforts took me to the Jersey shore on and off season, the Yuengling Brewery, Gettysburg and regional wineries, Maryland's eastern shore, the Poconos, and elsewhere.  I acquired a special liking for tours of odd mansions turned museums.  In addition to the interest that the sites create, this also becomes Me Time.  Getting to these places takes some planning, affording me a couple of private hours in transit in my car, with the ability to stop en route pretty much at whim.  I could count on this time set aside for myself.  Since I have no plans to expand my shabbos morning attendance at AKSE beyond the current twice monthly, I should be able to insert one of these day trips each month to boost my spirit as it has done in the past.

Twelve projects this time.  All with specific end points, none requiring significant hired assistance.  All creating a sense of accomplishment that can be a little elusive at times.

Easiest Person? Right Person?

For all the frustrations of my work place, I like going there and doing the things I do there.  At the other pole, as attached as I am to Judaism and eager to engage in print and cyberspace, I do not particularly like attending services or other activities at my synagogue.  Having just completed a wonderful collection of essays assembled in an extraordinary book called Jewish Megatrends, I've had a chance to tease out the difference.  The various contributors to Jewish Megatrends have a few common themes which seem highly adaptable.  The purpose of the book is to adapt elements of formal Judaism and innovative Judaism to young people who are first coming of age but never acquired a connection to the organizations that the main author, Rabbi Sidney Schwarz, refers to as tribal.  This has its analog in medicine, of course, where the AMA and the regional medical societies are struggling to maintain membership.  I allowed my American College of Physicians membership to expire this month, partly due to a financial request far in excess of its value but more directed to decisions the leadership of the organization has taken to move it away from what first attracted me to it.  No, shabbos morning services are increasingly an obligation on my part to be at least a nominal member of the community.  I think if the treasurer finds that the dues check clears the bank, the people in charge take that as a vote that contentment reigns.  While attendance lags, I find it hard to believe that the people who used to be there have made themselves Jewishly idle, any more than the people who no longer pay dues to the AMA  no longer engage enthusiastically in medical care.  I do and they do.  As the authors of the different essays recognize, the difference distills down to finding a measure of meaning in the things we do.  Rabbi Schwarz identifies four elements:  wisdom, righteousness, community and sanctity or their Hebrew chochma, tzedek, kehillah, and kedusha.

When I go to work, I am expected to be knowledgeable, do the right think for patients and residents who depend upon my skill, be a good citizen of the hospital that invited me in, and add to the holiness that befits the Catholic medical centers that trained me and where I now work.  And they do a pretty good job of keeping the people there focused on the organizational mission.  Jewishly I am expected to be knowledgeable, do right by people, contribute to the advancement of Judaism, and be the kind of person whose presence promotes sanctity.  The Judaism of cyberspace has enabled this, the Judaism that I have encountered organizationally does not give these four elements the same value.  Sometimes it can be quite difficult to absorb people into the community and insist that the people present function at the upper level of their skill.

My synagogue's baalebatim decided some time ago to go in the direction of expediency.  We had volunteer Torah readers.  Low hanging fruit required giving the holiday reader his usual section.  There has not been a new reader in some time.  The Haftarah pool has atrophied without replacement.  It is easier for a nominating committee to recycle officers than to groom new ones.  Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to assemble the right team.  And it's pretty easy to renew the Rabbi's contract with only a few changes on dollar amounts or vacation, maybe placate a few pet peeves on either side, but not the more critical performance upgrades that bring the kehillah to a destination that one could honestly call upgraded.  The easiest team and by inference easiest decisions will get you by, maybe even deliver you to the Promised Land of Judaic mediocrity.  But it will be a very restrictive view of what Judaism can be.  Those who might like something a little more engaging can figure out pretty quickly that you can't fight City Hall but you can move someplace else.

So Easy Person?  Enough of them around to fill the slots on a schedule.  Right Person?  There are enough of them around too.  Harder to tap into but these are the people who ultimately promote the logo of Embracing/Engaging/Enriching.

Inspired

Work days can be long with many necessary tasks, some immediate, some not, filling the allotted time and spilling over most days.  Immediate stuff like patient care and phone calls get done faithfully.  Less urgent stuff like signing charts or billing eventually gets done, though not always in the timely way that it should.  And then there are things that I should do that lack negative consequences if I don't so too often I don't.  And amid this task clutter lurk things that I want to do so badly that I will assign specific time.

One of them approaches this shabbat, my periodic outing to worship at Beth Tfiloh in Baltimore, partaking of Rabbi Wohlberg's comments in person, though tend to keep up with the transcripts of his sermons on the web.  Something about being in that particular sanctuary engages me.  Part of it is my intellect but a substantial part transcends that.  They have separate seating for men and women with a discrete transparent mechitza which I accept readily, even though my own tradition is to sit with my family, to get something else in return.  What I get in return may be immersion with a few hundred other people who also want to be there when they could have been doing something else.  I get a sense of sitting among experts who chant well, reason well, and show sensitivity to women when others of that OU stripe are often callous.  Is it the friendliest place I have been?  No.  Do they have macher swoops as part of their governance?  Haven't a clue but I suspect that the Rabbi has sufficient authority and temperament to resist it if they did.  Yet a morning there captures the AKSE logo of Embracing/Engaging/Enriching more that most experiences that I have.

The week after, I have an appointment to donate platelets.  That is another destination for me, an experience that I will seek out.  While I function as an individual donor there, anonymous to the other donors and to the platelet recipients, being part of that project keeps me in a community even if I never interact with other members of the community.  Since breakfast is mandatory before donating, I have a large leisurely meal.  For two hours I have peace and quiet with the beeper turned off and nothing else to do but watch Create TV while whole blood flows from one antecubital vein into a machine, then returned minus a few components into the other arm.  Usually there are some perioral paresthesias from the calcium chelating agent causing me to have transient hypocalcemia which reminds me that I am doing something to benefit somebody else.  Eventually the session concludes, they offer me a souvenir which adds to my sense of community, and I have some Keurig coffee before proceeding to my next destination, which is usually an appropriate expression that this is part of my personal leisure time.

I agreed to do a long Torah portion Thanksgiving weekend.  While I do not generally regard a two hour block in my own sanctuary as particularly inspirational, the challenge of learning a new and difficult piece of Torah usually is.  It takes preparation which in itself forces a respite for a half-hour or so every night for a few weeks when TV or Facebook or other usual activities get set aside for this special activity.  In order to do this well, I also have to review what the portion is about, so I learn a little more Torah than I otherwise might as a byproduct of the effort.  And it is usually performed well in the end, so people who attend more out of obligation than desire derive some benefit with enhancement of their usual shabbat morning experience.

And finally I have my work.  Much of it is work but infused among the tasks are challenges and interactions with people who rise to the occasion, whether they be patients who return to the office better than they were, patients in the hospital whose lab work looks a lot better on day 3 than on arrival, residents who thought a problem through before seeking the answer from me, collaboration with other experts.  I do not often recognize this as inspirational while I am doing it, but on reflection it often is.

So amid much of the ordinary of the waking hours comes a few moments of mostly planned investment in time that generates psychic dollars of ample return.

A Dinner Dance

The clock ran out on my term on the AKSE board last July.  I deleted myself from the automated emails a couple of years ago.  As a consequence, I derive very little personally from exorbitant annual dues which could purchase a good deal of upper tier Jewish advancement for myself with plenty left over to donate on behalf of others.  About half the time I make an appearance shabbos morning, increasingly out of a sense of obligation to set time aside for worship and Torah more than a destination in its own right.  I strongly suspect I am not alone in this view, with many fragments of evidence to support this, though without the smoking gun to wave in front of the Rabbi and President, both of whom have valid agendas and work diligently to bring those plans about.  But if you follow the wrong map, you can never get to the desired place, irrespective of good intentions and yeoman's effort.

An email came my way announcing a Board intent to have a fundraising Dinner Dance next spring, soliciting suggestions for who would make the kind of honoree that the well-heeled of our congregation and elsewhere would come out in droves to offer a handshake and hear a speech of wisdom.  Ads would be sold to local businesses and other well-wishers, the way these events become financially profitable.  Despite my current affluence and willingness to share some of it for communal advancement, including my synagogue's, plunking down a large sum when much of it goes to underwrite my own transient entertainment runs against some very ingrained values ingrained from a time when that affluence was not there.  While I occasionally seek a measure of personal pleasure or respite, opulence has never been an attractive pursuit for me personally.  But lest I diverge too much, the purpose of the event is to raise needed funds and the mechanism has a prospect for doing that.

What is missing, though, is a destination for the funds that enable implementation of the newly minted Embracing/Engaging/Enriching logo.  That's the core business.  I've not found the experience of sitting there on shabbos morning any of those things.  I did not find my time as a Board Member any of those things.  Not only that, but there was virtually no discussion of implementation to bring those things about.

Success literature over centuries has taken two genres that have very little overlap.  One is an ethical one in which principles are established, goals are set based on the principles and a diligent effort is made to meet them.  That presupposes that the path being pursued is the correct one.  Much Biblical and Rabbinical literature approaches success that way as do many thinkers of more modern times from the Founding Fathers to Horatio Alger to the late Stephen Covey.  The other genre has to do with technique as dominant.  We can derive wealth or power or whatever else we might desire if we implement a technique that brings it about.  There are plenty of historical examples of this as well, from Machiavelli to Dale Carnegie and to certain forms of Islam.  Judaism never really takes a view that the ends justify the means.

What I saw as a Board member which sensitizes me to the little that comes my way now is an emphasis on those techniques.  It may be Bingo, Dinner Dance, A-lists, corruption of the intent of Nominating Committees, all of which have a legitimate defense were they purposeful in bringing about a more laudable Embracing/Engaging/Enriching ethos.  Unfortunately these techniques acquire a life of their own to the neglect of core business of bringing all participants from the level of Judaism they have on arrival to a loftier one from one Rosh Hashana to the next.  Discussions of that element never seem to happen.  People get left behind when these things are not addressed.  We see those people then assigning a financial value to the dues request and finding that their investment may be better realized in a different community.