Reflections on the JRF Conference - Boston Nov. 13-16

The bi-annual JRF conference provided a wealth of insights and experiences to the 8 of us who attended from Keddem Congregation. Operating under the theme of Transformational Judaism for the 21^st Century, the organizers made good use of our presence in Boston, drawing on local speakers with national perspectives from Brandeis University, and Harvard University as well as visits to local historical sites such as the Vilna Shul on Beacon Hill .

Two of the keynote speakers from the Boston community were Jonathan Sarna, Brandeis University Professor of American Jewish History on the writings of Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan during the economic challenges of 1928-1932. and Noah Feldman, Harvard Professor of International Law on conflict negotiation, compromise and cooperation.

A discussion panel addressed the challenges of growth, transformation, the synagogue of the future. and the specifics of creating sustainable congregations while engaging both new and existing members. Rabbi Elliot Tepperman of B’nai Keshet in Montclair, New Jersey addressed the rabbinic role in leading congregants in their spiritual growth and connectedness and the responsibility of Ritual Committees to not only define ritual, but to support services by making them spiritually meaningful and engaging. Reinforcing the principal that “the best way to understand an organization is to try to change it”, Amy Sales, Brandeis University – Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, presented the findings of their surveys of Congregational participation and engagement within the Synagogue 2000 program, and their report “Developing the Developers” http://www.cmjs.org/Publication.cfm?IDResearch=149. Their survey revealed difficulties across the whole course of human resource development, from encouraging the uninvolved to participate more and getting members to accept leadership positions to developing and training leaders. So, we at Keddem, are not alone in facing these challenges.

The series of workshops on Leadership Development, Strategic Planning and Best Practices in Synagogue Transformation were excellent in communicating how other congregations has thrived and grown in the face of organizational and financial challenges similar to those facing Keddem. Later in the conference, over twenty representatives of mid-size congregations in university towns met to discuss their experiences and challenges for sustainability and growth. This will be the subject of considerable Keddem board focus and articles in the months ahead.

Rabbi Sid Schwartz, founder of PANIM, The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, spoke of new paradigm communities which pursue being deeply Reconstructionist, with a change of organizational culture to a participatory community, with an articulated mission which includes being the source and purveyor of serious Judaism. He described a congregation as made up of those who are a combination of justice seekers, spirituality seekers and wisdom seekers (darshei zedek, darshei ruach, and darshei chesed. Whether its davening ”out of the box” or making Congregationally based Community Organizing central – identifying the issues that face the community and engaging in an effort to understand how to confront them together.

Environment Challenges: Rabbi Michael Cohen (RRC 1990) described water management challenges being addressed by the Arava Institute in Israel including up-stream contamination problems in the rivers that flow through Israel from Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan due to the lack of sewage management and their agricultural pesticides and practices, and the problems due to water diversion causing rapid reductions in the level of the Dead Sea. Rabbi Cohen was a founding faculty member of The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies www.arava.org, affiliated with Kibbitz Ketura and Ben Gurion University of the Negev. The Institute is a multinational environmental study and research center with a student body comprised of Israelis, Jordanians, Palestinians, and North Americans preparing future Arab and Jewish leaders to cooperatively solve the regions environmental challenges. They is also developing a research facility for solar power generation and distribution with international affiliates and sponsorship. The closing ceremony also focused on tikkun olam and environmental action, with recognition awards to 12 congregations for their programs and leadership in energy conservation as a path to protecting the environment.

Shabbat Celebration: The Friday night celebration, Saturday morning Torah study and services were terrific Shabbat experiences, energetic and engaging from the style of leadership, the pace and approach to prayer, as well as the infectious enthusiasm of the 400 representatives. Of particular note on Friday night was the cantorial contributions by Marcelo Gindlin, originally from Argentina, but now at the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue. The Torah study session Demanding Torah, Demanding Peace was a midrash on the naming of Isaac (Yitzhak = will laugh), and contrasting the laughter of Abraham and that of Sarah – and their subsequent dialogs with G-d. The midrash was based on the poetry of Haim Bialik as interpreted by Ari Elon, the former Talmud instructor at the Reconstructionist Rabbinic College and the author of From Jerusalem to Plumbedita. Elon is compiling a whole new series of progressive / humanist commentaries in Hebrew which are being translated through the sponsorship of the RRC.

The closing session was a meeting of Western Regional Representatives from congregations spanning California, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon. The hiring of Rabbi Jane Litman, as the new regional coordinator was announced, and we discussed the scheduling of a regional gathering in 2010 to follow-up on the January 2008 event at University Synagogue, in Irvine California. The JRF Camp located in Northeast Pennsylvania has been extremely popular and successful and there is considerable interest in the possible creation of a West coast camp and conference center – possibly in northern California. There continues to be a need to improve the use of technology to enable better information sharing among the western congregations, covering events of mutual interest as well as the specifics of organizational processes.

I’d like to encourage members to contact me directly if they would like to learn more about the issues covered or how to apply them in the Keddem community. This is still a highly condensed, impressionist overview of a broad, rich, thought provoking set of experiences and meetings with leaders who are passionate about their causes and pursuing them in the context of Reconstructionist Judaism.

Forgiveness

Written and delivered by Edith Gelles, a Senior Scholar at Stanford's Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and a founding member of Keddem Congregation, on Yom Kippur morning.

FORGIVENESS
KEDDEM—YOM KIPPUR 2008

Edith Gelles

The story is told of the Dali Lama that when he escaped from Tibet after the Chinese takeover, many monks were left behind. They were cruelly tortured by their conquerors. Eventually some of these monks also escaped and were reunited with the Dali Lama. He asked them what was the most terrible consequence of their torture. One of them responded: He feared, he said, that he would not be able to forgive.

My topic today is forgiveness. It is NOT a topic upon which I am an expert. But I have discovered in the past few weeks that there is a vast literature on the subject of forgiveness; there are studies in psychology, in law, in ethics, in religion. In fact every religion has its own body of literature about forgiveness. My reading has been at best superficial.

But I am NOT an expert for another reason. I don't forgive easily. To me the two or three most vapid words in the language are "I'm sorry." I don’t say them easily; and I don’t hear them easily. I don’t say them, I suppose, because of pride, because my stubborn sense of justice, of right and wrong, doesn't permit me often, to see issues from another point of view. I don't hear them, because I don’t believe in the sincerity or the staying power of the apology. And I have discovered from my reading that I am not alone; I have inherited a strain of Jewish teaching that I will tell you about.

Yom Kippur is about forgiveness. It is about atonement, repentance and forgiveness, all of them related. Just as Matt Kowit told us last week about his childhood remembrance of awaiting for the entire Rosh Hashana service to hear the blast of the Shofar, so one of my outstanding childhood memories was my fascination with watching my grandfather read the Al Cheyt, the catalogue of sins that we all read many times during the Yom Kippur service. My grandfather read them in Hebrew that I am not sure that he understood, but still there was something especially profound, spiritual, even frightening about this list. And it was made so because he stood, swaying back and forth and with his fist lightly struck his chest. It was this physical gesture that fascinated the little girl that was me and who, like Matt waiting for the tone of the shofar, waited to observe it, because it was so bizarre a gesture. I knew that something very important was occurring. The litany of words was read very quickly, like speedreading. But my grandfather's face, the lined face of the elderly, clean-shaven but the few days of growth for the holidays, was intense, ethereal, transported. Surely this was a day of awe.

Let me tell you something of this grandfather. It is probably because of him that I am here at services today. He emigrated to our little town in upstate New York from another little town called Klesk, just south of Minsk in Belorus, and he did physical labor all his life. He was small and wiry, originally blond and blue-eyed but mostly bald and grey-haired when I knew him. What I DID know then and know now was that I was a favorite grandchild. As a little girl he walked with me every day to the ice cream store and purchased me a vanilla ice cream cone for a nickel. What’s most amazing to me in retrospect is that he took me to synagogue with him every Sat. morning, and I sat downstairs beside him among the men instead of being sent upstairs to the women's gallery. I became Jewish not just by birth, not just by training, but by realizing that I was given the privilege of being Jewish by my grandfather who kept me by his side in the men's section.

When I come to services, I am connected with that little girl who sat by her grandfather. When I come to services I connect forcefully with that grandfather who represents to me the history of the Jews and especially the history of Jews in America and then backward in time to the Pale and from there into Jewish history as long as there has been a tradition of pounding on one's heart during the Al Cheyt. So do we all. That is our privileged identity in the history of the world. And we recapture it and relive it by coming here today.


But more about my beloved grandfather. He had helped literally to build the little synagogue in our small town in upstate N.Y. It became the focus of his life. Years later, after I was grown and off to college, we had in town a rabbi, who, in some manner, offended my grandfather. It was undoubtedly an unintended offense, but my grandfather was wounded. For the last twenty or so years of his life, he never again went back to the synagogue that he had helped to build. He prayed at home and by himself, every day, many times a day. He would not be coaxed back to the synagogue by anyone. He couldn't forgive.

I tell this as a very sad story. I thought a lot about whether to tell it out loud here today. Am I telling gossip? Am I hurting my grandfather's memory that I so cherish? Some members of my family will doubtlessly think so. But a dear friend said I can tell it because I also tell you what a kind and generous and loving and devout man was my grandfather. And I tell it because it illustrates so much about the topic of Jewish forgiveness and forgiveness in general.

Until the last few weeks when I started reading about forgiveness, I had attributed my grandfather’s stubbornness to the "shtetl mentality." When I don't forgive, I attribute it to my peasant roots in Klesk. It’s in the metaphorical genes.

Forgiveness in Jewish law and tradition requires work, hard work. Forgiveness is a process and involves consideration and generosity. Forgiveness, in Jewish practice differs from that we know in the broader communities in which we live.

On Yom Kippur when we recite the Al Cheyt, we are asking forgiveness from God, not from each other. We are furthermore doing it in the plural. We ask God to forgive the sins of the community and we inherit the sins of the community, like it or not. Who among us has not balked at some of sins that we are asked to confess, but know we did not consciously commit? And who among us has not resisted notion that we should have to share the bad behavior of other Jews?

And at the end, we ask God's forgiveness, not for the sins past, but for the rules that we will struggle with and possibly break in the year to come. However we may interpret God—as male or female, as androgynous, as dwelling in nature, in our own good conscience, or a social conscience—that God will hear this community confession and, write us in the book or life—or not. We know not. This is our humility, the overarching human ache that we do not know what the future will bring.

But on Yom Kippur we are asked as well to clear the slate for the New Year, to repent, atone, reconcile with our families, our friends, our communities. And this is the hard part.

Jewish law and tradition set the bar for forgiveness at a high level, and contrasts with some other religions. Jews are NOT told to "turn the other cheek." Nor are Jews told that there is no standard of right and wrong; there is just behavior. Jews are not other-worldly in the sense that love supercedes and automatically cancels bad behavior. What is unique is that Judaism proposes a course of action. In Judaism, there is a distinction between the work of the victim of an offense and the offender. Each is provided with guidelines.

First, only the victim may forgive a crime or an offense. There can be no forgiveness for killing. The dead person cannot forgive. This is the one crime for which there is no atonement. The relatives of a victim may forgive the killer but they can only forgive for the hurt they experienced. They may not forgive the crime. This, of course, raises grave problems for those who would wish to forgive the Holocaust. Only the dead may forgive the criminals, but then, too, only the killers may be held responsible for the crime, not their children.

Another observation about victimhood, Jewish law also says there is a difference between forgiving and forgetting. One can forgive, that is absolve a person for a hurt, but need not forget that hurt. This suggests that a relationship may be forever changed. If your partner embezzles from your firm, you may, with the fulfillment of certain conditions, forgive him, but you probably won't do business with him in the future.

And what are those conditions that fall on the person who offends? If a person wishes to be forgiven, that person must sincerely repent and change her behavior. In other words, "I'm sorry" isn’t enough. If the offense was grave enough to require forgiveness, then the offender must reconsider the behavior that was hurtful and take action as well. She must make restitution.

So too, the victim, also, has work to do. She must to try to understand the reason she was injured. She must try to put herself in her offender’s position and to take her reasoning into account. Once she understands, forgiveness may come more easily.

The standard example in ethics is the dramatic case wherein an impoverished parent steals money from his boss to pay for medicine for his ailing child. The boss should forgive the theft, once the situation becomes clear. The parent must make restitution and vow that she will never again steal. She may even have to spend some time in jail.

Jewish law is clear. A victim of a wrongdoing should forgive the transgression, although not necessarily forget. The perpetrator must do three things to atone, that is to seek forgiveness: She must repent; she must sincerely vow to change and thirdly she must in some way make restitution. This makes sense not only in a social community where harmony among individuals is important, but in a psychological sense as well. Anger and resentment constitute too great a burden to carry into the future. Forgiveness frees one from the past.

There is in our tradition, not surprisingly, a contradiction. And perhaps it was from this contradictory position that my grandfather acted, not the "shtetl mentality" that I had always believed, but rather a Biblical mandate.

It is written several times in the Bible that God will not forgive or forget but on the contrary will punish a people forever. For instance, in Deuteronomy 25:17-19, God says that the tribe of Amalek must be exterminated. God says: "Remember what Amalek did to you in your journey out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way... you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven." And SHE adds ominously, "Do not forget."

We need to acknowledge this minor strain in our heritage. It provides us with an alternative, which is one of the magnificent aspects of Judaism. We get to choose our behavior. We are given free will.

We may choose not to forgive, but in doing so, we cling to a wound and may continue to suffer. Both options exist. I prefer the option of forgiveness with conditions, because it speaks to peace, harmony and a free soul, by which I mean mental space. It speaks to our time.

I conclude with the words of a contemporary theorist that: "Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past." In forgiving we choose a better present and a more hopeful future.

And we wish each other L’Shana Tova Tikvoteinu, May we be written in the book of life.

The Shofar Calls to Us

Written and delivered by Matt Kowitt, Physicist and Engineer, and member of the Board of Directors of Keddem Congregation, for the first day of Rosh haShanah, at morning services.

L’Shana Tovah.

I would like to speak on this Rosh Hashanah about the Shofar.

The Torah itself doesn’t tell us very much about Rosh Hashanah. In Leviticus 23, we read that Moses is instructed by God to tell the Children of Israel: In the seventh month, on the first of the month, there shall be a day of rest for you, a remembrance with shofar blasts, a holy convocation. Later, in Numbers 29, a similar instruction calls this day Yom Teruah, the day of shofar blasts, and then spells out the ritual offerings for the festival. That’s pretty much it for Rosh Hashanah and the Torah.

One of my most lasting memories of going to temple with my parents as a young child for High Holy Days is certainly the thrill of hearing the Shofar blasts. Most of the service, to my young self, was a somewhat boring chain of standing and sitting, songs and readings that seemed to go on for much longer than ordinary Friday night services. But I knew, somewhere in there, we were going to hear the Shofar. The anticipation would get me fidgeting, leafing forward in the prayer book, trying to figure out when they would happen. When it finally came, it was like fireworks! When I really try to put myself back there, I can still get goose bumps from the thrill. That was serious stuff!

What is this all about? In Numbers (15:37) we are commanded to wear tzitzit, “that you may see it and remember all the commandments of God and perform them.” Like a string around your finger, a gentle, constant reminder, to live the kind of lives that we should. Now, hearing the Shofar is different. Not a gentle, constant reminder...more like a biblical version of what modern-day sages Tom and Ray Magliozzi call the “dope slap.” For those who might not be familiar with this bit of Car Talk wisdom, Tom and Ray explain it as:

a light “whappp” to the back of the head, done with an open palm in an upward motion.

They go on, saying “We should point out that the dope slap is not meant to inflict pain. It is used strictly as an attention-getting device.”

The Shofar definitely works for me as an attention-getting device.

One of the central prayers for today is the Unetaneh Tokef, which tells us “On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed...” Near the beginning of the prayer it reads:

A great shofar is sounded and a still small voice is heard
The angels in heaven scurry about
and are seized with fear and trembling
They say: "Behold, the Day of Judgment!"

I admit that as a Reconstructionist, I don’t read this prayer with the literalism that was nearly universal a few hundred years ago. And still, the poetic imagery of the heavenly hosts trembling at the Shofar blast gets me every time.

So now we hear the Shofar, and it has our attention: what now? The Torah tells us this is a day of zichron, remembrance. But of what?

Writing almost a thousand years ago, Rashi sees “remembrance” as calling upon God to remember Israel for good, with the Shofar symbolizing the ram that Abraham offered in place of Isaac. There is even a tradition, ascribed to Rabbi Eliezer of the 9th century CE, that holds that the mighty Shofar blasts that were heard at the Revelation at Sinai, amid the thunder and lightning, as the mountain trembled, came from the shofar made from the left horn of the very ram offered by Abraham.

Maybe 800 years before Rashi, the Mishna records Rabbi Aqiba teaching that three themes shall accompany the Shofar blasts: Malchuyot, God as King; Zichronot, God’s remembrances of creation; and Shofarot, the Shofar itself. Today, we find these three themes woven into the biblical passages read during the Shofar service.

Maimonides comes in fairly close with the Magliozzi brothers. In the Shofar blast, the Rambam hears: “Awake, you sleepers, from your sleep! Arise, you slumberers, from your slumber! Repent with contrition! Remember your Creator! ... Peer into your souls, improve your ways and your deeds.”

For me, my understanding of the Shofar’s call is back in the Unetaneh Tokef, which, after listing the grim fates that hang over humanity, reminds us that

Tshuvah, Tefillah and Tzedakah, Repentance, Prayer and Just Action,
Have the power to change The character of our lives

It is the “dope slap” that tries to tell me: Hey! Wake up! Pay Attention! Do some soul searching and turn back with tshuvah, get your head and heart in the right place with tefillah. And realize that there’s work to be done that won’t do itself—it takes tzedakah!

Of course, life comes barging in almost as soon as I’m crossing the parking lot after leaving shul. I try to keep a little of that focus during the week, but work and school and carpools and soccer and... well, I suspect you get the picture. I get one more good try at Yom Kippur, and then I’m back to the tzitzit. Gentle reminders, when I remember to pay attention to them.

That’s one of the reasons I love hearing the Shofar. It always cuts through, always gets my attention, at least for a still, small moment.

May we all be inscribed in the book of life for a good, healthy, and peaceful year. L’shana Tovah.

President's Drash 5769

It is the custom at Keddem Congregation for the president to give the drash on Erev Rosh Hashanah. I did that this year as the new president. It was my first time ever giving a drash but not speaking before a large audience. I was asked to share this here. Picture if you will, it being spoken by a short, round, late-middle-aged woman with some purple in her hair. Esther A. Heller

L’shana Tovah! It is with a great deal of joy that I stand here as President of Keddem Congregation to welcome all of our members and guests who have come to worship and be a Jewish community together.

We are living in a time where there is much discussion of change in the air. Or should I say, on the airwaves? We, too, at Keddem are looking at change and transition. Our current Board took office in July and our wonderful, new, rabbi Elisheva Salamo, whom you’ve heard tonight, officially joined us in August. We have begun our work as a leadership team, work which requires balancing the needs of the present with our goals for the future.

As the new President, I have already shared with the congregation the three themes which will influence our work this year. I call them the three Ms so that we can all remember them: Membership, Money and Message. You will hear others speak throughout these services about membership and money. For now I just ask that you listen to them with open minds, open hearts and after the holy days, open checkbooks.

Tonight, I’m going to elaborate on message because it is a topic that is bigger than our congregation and all of us here tonight. We live in a society that has developed what linguist Deborah Tannen refers to as "the Argument Culture." It results in our elected officials paying more attention to beating the opposition and laying blame than to running the government in collaboration and joint responsibility. The media fuels this culture by looking for areas of disagreement, which produces lots of negatives. I recommend Tannen’s book which goes into depth on this topic. As technology advances, it seems that if anybody says anything controversial or that someone else just doesn’t like, it is immediately torn apart on blogs or posted on Youtube and linked to Myspace or Facebook or other internet sites. The dialogue gets lost, the positive gets lost, hope gets lost.

Now, we are here, come together, away for a while from the argument culture, to reflect on our past year, individually and collectively and resolve to do better in the next year. We’re resolving to be more true to our intentions, more positive in our actions, more hopeful for our futures. The work I’ve done over the past decade has taught me to emphasize positive messages. I believe you can better affect change with positives than with negatives. Keddem’s five guiding values easily reflect and support that belief.

We at Keddem often refer, usually together, to our first two values - being Inclusive and Egalitarian. As it happens, reading about them on our website was one of the things that drew me to this congregation. We are inclusive in that everyone who supports our goals is welcome as a member, regardless of background, family, household structure or Jewish education. We strive to be inclusive in our activities and our policies, wanting all members to feel comfortable as members. As you will see throughout these services, we are egalitarian in our liturgy and leadership roles believing that God transcends gender. But we are also egalitarian socio-economically in our approach to dues and donations and fees. You will see during Torah services that we are given the first aliyah all together because we are a community where everyone is important.

Our third value is being Participatory. These services are led by three technology professionals, a professional artist and a professional rabbi, all of them members. Our events are organized by volunteer members of the congregation. Now, here’s where we can get a positive message challenge! Because our membership is made up of creative, people who like to think and act for themselves, we don’t always have consensus on how events should be run. So sometimes, we forget to allow our organizers to enjoy the fruits of their labor before offering feedback. Sometimes, we have to train ourselves to make that feedback use the three Ps: Positive, Polite and Pertinent. After all, we are a community and as such, we have responsibility for each other. That includes encouraging and allowing each other to take on new challenges within the community in, yes, a positive environment.

Keddem’s fourth value is being Questioning. That means we are dedicated to continuing Jewish education through study of Torah and text, by reading books or by viewing movies, always discussing. We know that our members possess an amazing depth of knowledge and a diverse range of experiences. We sometimes have to work harder at listening to and respecting each other’s opinions but we are a community and know we are stronger for that diversity and that listening.

Finally Keddem Congregation is Reconstructionist. We are affiliated with the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation (JRF.) As you’ll see again in our liturgy, we honor Jewish traditions while adapting them to modern life. At Keddem, we say “infusing tradition with new meaning” Now, how is that for a positive message? Engaging in the work of deciding how to actually adapt our Jewish traditions and what meaning we want to infuse can be challenging. So Reconstructionists have developed a saying that guides us: "the past has a vote, not a veto." But think how powerful a guide that can be for our own personal lives as well. We are all products of our backgrounds. As we begin these Days of Awe and the New Year, our personal pasts should inform, not veto, our future actions. We can foster that by delivering positive messages to ourselves and each other.

A quick review of President Esther’s mnemonics. We start with the three Ms: growing and nurturing our members, raising and managing our money and delivering our messages. Our messages are most effective using the three Ps: positive, polite and pertinent. Hmm, I’m missing something. Oh, yes - what makes it all worthwhile? The three F’s of course: good food, caring friends and having fun. I’ll tell you about opportunities for them during the announcements.

I’m a pragmatic optimist. I know what I’ve been talking about requires hard work. But I believe we can as individuals and as a community make the changes we seek.

L’shana Tova Tikateivu! May you and yours all be written for a good New Year!

Welcome!!

Welcome to the Keddem Congregation blog!

As the current president, I have the honor of making the first post. It's an honor and it's a challenge as it is also my first public blog. I've linked this to our congregational website for those of you who would like to learn more.

Here's a short summary from our home page:

Keddem Congregation is a community-led, Reconstructionist Jewish congregation, passionately committed to infusing tradition with new meaning. Keddem is based in Palo Alto, California, on the San Francisco Peninsula.

Worship, study, community and governance at Keddem are based on the following principles—Keddem is: inclusive, egalitarian, participatory, questioning, and Reconstructionist.

And now, I will move onto my second post, which will be the President's 5769 Erev Rosh Hashanah drash. Thanks for reading and I look forward to seeing your comments.

Esther A. Heller, President, Keddem Congregation