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If you did not attend the Weinstein weekend, please read all the summaries once they are posted. Read it even if you did attend, and add your own thoughts on what’s important. There’s a rich source of ideas for our congregation there, and the more people who absorb the material, think about it and comment, the more likely we are to achieve a new togetherness and collective outlook for KAMII.
I took copious notes. Here’s a sort of collected wisdom of our speakers on how to make KAMII a strong and effective congregation, remarks that seem to me to be really important for all of us to consider as we move toward the next chapter of our congregational life. I am taking statements out of context, but only somewhat and, I hope, not in a way that distorts or abuses the thought.
1. Rabbi Knobel made a very good point about making major changes in congregational life: we need to engage in strong conversations with each other, where we may disagree agreeably. Congregations have a lot of people with entrenched interests; we need people who don’t fear speaking truth to power.
2. Rabbi Moffic said we have to create a sense of community in the temple.
3. Rabbi Block urged providing “fanatical” consumer service. Answer the phones pleasantly, welcome people, listen to needs, but remember we’re here to provide what God, our tradition and Reform Judaism demand.
4. He also said: The people who apply for the rabbi post at KAMII will know about Rabbi Wolf and his long tenure, and they’ll know the congregation then went through two rabbis in a short time. They’ll probably talk to those rabbis. Today’s rabbi looks forward to a lay-rabbinic partnership; we must be ready to be partners with a rabbi. The candidate must be assured of a partnership, but also responsibility and authority; he or she can’t discharge responsibility without authority. The congregation needs to be ready, but it takes time. Consider an interim rabbi, trained in helping a congregation ready itself. One who can correctly say, “This congregation is healed.”
5. Larry Joseph asked Rabbi Block to elaborate on issues relating to expectations of new rabbis. The answer was that the big handicap, of course, is about going through two rabbis in a short time. A rabbi will take a huge leap of faith in taking the job this summer. We would have to take the leap with that person. An interim rabbi would be better than not getting the right person. And the right person has to want to enter a congregation that’s in transition.
6. Clive Kamins asked about KAMII’s current situation. He said it was a privilege to serve on the Special Committee and that its report deals in detail with the roles of professionals in the synagogue, but now he wants to hear the board’s view of the report. It recommends a partnership and collegial relationship. He emphasized that being a lay leader means accepting a responsibility, not obtaining certain rights. He feels the Nominating Committee must recognize that we don’t just need people who know governance, or people who are smart.
7. Rabbi Block said that now the congregation needs to decide who and what KAMII will be. What worship patterns, what organizational structure? And move out any toxic people. Soon we’ll read in the Torah that when the children of Israel came to the sanctuary, they brought too much in gifts. Likewise, KAMII has a plethora of gifts—human, physical and also commitment. So can the congregation say ,“Be strong and of good courage to lead us to the promised land”?
8. Jerry Meites said there’s been discussion of an interim rabbi, even with URJ, and that it would be better than a wrong choice. There are 17 or 18 applicants, and some seem quite good on paper. The Search Committee is sorting through; maybe the “needle in the haystack” is there.
9. Jerry also said board members feel that we need to hire a rabbi before a cantor, though if there’s an interim rabbi, a permanent cantor would be hired. Rabbi Block mentioned that in the past the cantor was expected to leave when a new rabbi arrived, but that has changed. You don’t have to call a halt to everything while seeking a rabbi, though it can be delicate when things are in flux.
I think this is a good stopping point. “You don’t have to call a halt to everything while seeking a rabbi.” I hope our congregation will learn more about the work of the Special Committee—how it defined its job and what’s really important in its report. I hope our concerned members will have ample opportunity to express their own views and feelings about what they want and expect from the temple. This has to be done in dialogue, in small but not stifling forums, so people can listen to and learn from each other, not just state their own opinions. I sincerely hope there are others who agree. Please chime in. Your friend, Jane Heron
I appreciate Jane’s synopsis of our week end’s speakers. I would like to take this opportunity to comment on some of Rabbi Block’s ideas. Much of what he told us may have been some strong medicine to swallow. However, it is important information for us to consider. One of the points I felt was significant that was not mentioned in the previous posting was Rabbi Block telling us that we need to move from a position of “crisis” to “transition”. It seems to me that this should be a critical first step. We all should quickly adopt that attitude.
Regarding Rabbi Block’s suggestions that we, as a congregation need to decide who and what KAMII will be including worship patterns and organizational structure – we have done a tremendous amount of self reflection over the past two years. What we should decide is simply to learn to live with all of the differences that run through our community and to respect and listen to each other as was emphasized by Rabbi Knobel on Saturday. As for Rabbi Block’s suggestion that we “remove the toxic people” from our board – I refuse to see anyone in our lay leadership as toxic. Anyone willing to volunteer their time to serve on the board is demonstrating a commitment and passion that could never be considered “toxic”. I found that terminology to be offensive. I did agree with the Rabbi Block’s conclusion that we should move forward with selecting our new leadership by showing strength and good courage.
We, as a Congregation, are at a turning point. We have lost our Administrator and are about to lose both our Rabbi and our Cantor. Our physical plant is old and needs a significant input of capital in order for it to continue to be used safely.
To analogize our current position, we Congregants are like passengers on an airplane featured in a 70’s disaster; the pilot has had a heart attack, the co-pilot has food poisoning from the in-flight meal and there is no flight engineer because, due to deregulation, that position has been eliminated. Regardless of the direction that Reform Judaism is taking, we Congregants need to quickly learn to fly the plane and land it or it will meet an untimely end.
To do this, the Congregation, in selecting both a Rabbi and a Cantor need to arrive at a vision for this Congregation that will both satisfy its current membership and, thereby, maintain these members and makes us attractive to getting new members.
As a member of the Special Committee, I received a handout entitled Rethinking Synagogues (I don’t know the author as it was a chapter of a larger publication. It raises some very good points, which we need to address in order to arrive at that vision.)
It talks about synagogue culture, namely “private” congregations and “public” congregations. “Private congregations cater to the spiritual life of their members. They offer a variety of worship patterns, either within one service or in several parallel minyamim. They are likely also to work hard at religious education, for children and for adults.” There has been a movement towards spirituality in Reform Judaism, one that we cannot ignore. In prayer one has an opportunity to seek personal solace in mourning the loss of loved ones, to seek the Almighty’s help in confronting illness, to transcend the day-to-day and reimagine oneself in relationship to humanity and humanity in relationship to the universe, particularly on the Sabbath, and on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur to explore one’s own soul and purpose and reinvent oneself. In order to meet those spiritual needs, we have a menu of options to choose from; we can wear yarmulke’s or not, pray in Hebrew or English, carry the Torah down from the bimah into the Congregation, allow our non-Jewish members to read from the Torah, etc.
We as a Congregation should not get hung up on those options; what we do need to do is not lose sight of the spiritual needs, described above, of our present and future members, which include a large number of non-Jews. To do this should not be complicated. (I don’t buy the approach of a Synaplex where we avoid the difficult issues by scheduling different services for different people at different times; this only balkanizes our community.)
We need to recognize, however, that English is the spoken tongue of our community, that many of our members, even if they can read Hebrew, cannot translate it and, therefore, the messages implicit in our worship services need to be delivered in English. That doesn’t mean that our services must be wholly in English. Hebrew is our historical tongue and is to be both preserved and cherished. Our most cherished melodies, the words of our holy book, the Torah, and the central prayers of our services, should be heard as they were heard throughout the ages, in Hebrew. But the pulpit must conduct enough of each of our services in English so that their message can be both understood and instructive to our community as a whole. Similarly, we must give our non-Jewish members as much of an opportunity as we can to participate and enjoy Judaism and to make them full members of our community. If our worship raises our spirits as Jews, we should deny that experience to our non-Jewish members.
The other questions, e.g., whether one wants to wear a Tallit or a Yarmulke, for example, should be secondary. Those should be matters of personal choice, left to each individual, and in some matters of religious practice to our clergy; if it heightens the spiritual experience of our congregants, we should not deny those options to them.
What is more problematic is that KAMII, to date, has been, what Rethinking Synagogues calls a “Public Synagogue.” To quote that reading, “They stake out public claims in worship style or issues of conscience; they are the place you go to hear sermons on moral topics; they exchange pulpits with the local African American Church’ they feature guest speakers on matter of moment…They pride themselves on specific causes, like being “the social action synagogue” or “the synagogue with great music.” Sounds familiar! The reading goes on to state, “Public synagogues vest powers in senior rabbis, who are encouraged to speak to and for the congregation and to represent Judaism on a communal, interfaith, or even national scale.”
Herein lies our dilemma, which we must resolve if we are going to bring this plane down without breaking it apart. We can seek and should hire a rabbi who will successfully meet the spiritual and pastoral needs of our members, who is sensitive to the fact that many members of our Congregation are not Jewish and will make them feel as equal members of our community and is a fine teacher of Torah, Talmud and the ethics of the Prophets. However, if we also seek a Rabbi who can perpetuate KAMII as a great “public synagogue,” who is outspoken, who is a leader on issues of conscience, who is unafraid to take controversial positions on issues such as civil rights or the Palestinians or poverty and who challenges each congregant’s values and beliefs from the pulpit, we may find that we have set the bar too high for ourselves, end up with a good portion of the Congregation feeling disappointed and find ourselves in the same position that we have been twice before in the past ten years, searching for a rabbi.
Why, a ten-minute drive from our Congregation, does downtown Chicago teem with cranes and is the South Loop filling up with high-rise condos and why is this relevant to our Congregation? Rethinking Synagogues suggests an answer. It states that a certain class of workers, what may be described as “knowledge workers” or the “creative class,” are attracted to a community and their presence, in turn, attracts enterprises to that community. Downtown Chicago is growing, because unlike Cleveland or Detroit, and like New York or London, it has developed an economy based on information technology, advertising, financial and legal services, which is a mecca for these workers. KAMII is not only a short drive from that mecca but is on the campus of one of the world’s great incubators of such workers, the University of Chicago. It therefore places us in a unique position, one enjoyed by only a handful of Jewish congregations throughout the world, that of being located proximate to the downtown of one of the great world cities and on the campus of one of the globe’s greatest institutions of higher learning. (The (London) Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) ranks the U of C #7 in the world.) Rethinking Synagogues states thaw these workers look for experiences and deplore boredom, they like each other and look for a place that attracts a critical mass of others like themselves. They appreciate human differences-they are part of a “live and let live” culture. They avoid places where law and custom define a single “right” lifestyle. They are independent an individualistic. That is what make them creative. It is also what make them Reform and not Conservative or Orthodox. Rethinking Synagogues states that Rabbis hope to make the synagogue a proper community were people pray together, study together and work together, thereby restoring social capital but the creative class sees that kind of all-embracing community as stifling. The creative class is not interested in that kind of community. It prefers loosely knit communities of choice..these are people who manufacture their identity by piecing together bits and pieces of work, relationships, and interests, each one connected to a group of like-minded folk; they commute from group to group. What they do not want is the kind of romanticized all-embracing community that rabbis think the synagogue should be.
KAMII is both uniquely situated to attract these individuals as members and must do so to survive. So how do we do so and at the same time rejuvenate our congregation and bring it to a safe landing? Rethinking Synagogues would seem to suggest a Synaplex model, with a variety of chavurah’s, types of services, etc. But I would suggest a more radical model, a rethink outside the box.
We can turn our historic sanctuary nestled within one of the great world universities into a forum for debate on some of the great public issues of the day, inviting into its sacred space great writers, scholars and teachers who can speak to us on the great moral and civic issues of the day, thereby inviting prospective members into the Congregation, doing social action and maintaining our historic tradition as a renowned “Public Synagogue.“ We can provide a meeting space for environmental groups, political groups such as Move-on.org, self-help groups, and civic organizations. We can be a venue for concerts, theater, comics and other performing arts groups (although I wouldn‘t urge us to host hair-metal bands), which doesn’t otherwise exist on the South Side. In doing this, we would provide revenue for our Congregation as well as exposing ourselves to the “creative class” discussed above. To those who say our house of worship is not an appropriate place for these activities, I would ask them to visit a megachurch which sponsors such activities on a regular basis. Each one of these encounters with our institution would provide us with an opportunity to invite new members into our community, members who might otherwise be motivated not by spiritual pursuits but by other interests, e.g., in saving the environment, in political action (a.k.a. Tikun Olam), in music, in yoga, etc.
Most importantly, we would go beyond internal conflict and debate as to the future, both of our institution and of Reform Judaism, and show our face to the world as a living, breathing organism willing to open our doors to both intellectual discourse and the community at large while, at the same time, maintaining our traditions as a Reform house of worship, and land the plane in one piece.
We, as a Congregation, are at a turning point. We have lost our Administrator and are about to lose both our Rabbi and our Cantor. Our physical plant is old and needs a significant input of capital in order for it to continue to be used safely.
To analogize our current position, we Congregants are like passengers on an airplane featured in a 70’s disaster; the pilot has had a heart attack, the co-pilot has food poisoning from the in-flight meal and there is no flight engineer because, due to deregulation, that position has been eliminated. Regardless of the direction that Reform Judaism is taking, we Congregants need to quickly learn to fly the plane and land it or it will meet an untimely end.
To do this, the Congregation, in selecting both a Rabbi and a Cantor need to arrive at a vision for this Congregation that will both satisfy its current membership and, thereby, maintain these members and makes us attractive to getting new members.
As a member of the Special Committee, I received a handout entitled Rethinking Synagogues (I don’t know the author as it was a chapter of a larger publication. It raises some very good points, which we need to address in order to arrive at that vision.)
It talks about synagogue culture, namely “private” congregations and “public” congregations. “Private congregations cater to the spiritual life of their members. They offer a variety of worship patterns, either within one service or in several parallel minyamim. They are likely also to work hard at religious education, for children and for adults.” There has been a movement towards spirituality in Reform Judaism, one that we cannot ignore. In prayer one has an opportunity to seek personal solace in mourning the loss of loved ones, to seek the Almighty’s help in confronting illness, to transcend the day-to-day and reimagine oneself in relationship to humanity and humanity in relationship to the universe, particularly on the Sabbath, and on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur to explore one’s own soul and purpose and reinvent oneself. In order to meet those spiritual needs, we have a menu of options to choose from; we can wear yarmulke’s or not, pray in Hebrew or English, carry the Torah down from the bimah into the Congregation, allow our non-Jewish members to read from the Torah, etc.
We as a Congregation should not get hung up on those options; what we do need to do is not lose sight of the spiritual needs, described above, of our present and future members, which include a large number of non-Jews. To do this should not be complicated. (I don’t buy the approach of a Synaplex where we avoid the difficult issues by scheduling different services for different people at different times; this only balkanizes our community.)
We need to recognize, however, that English is the spoken tongue of our community, that many of our members, even if they can read Hebrew, cannot translate it and, therefore, the messages implicit in our worship services need to be delivered in English. That doesn’t mean that our services must be wholly in English. Hebrew is our historical tongue and is to be both preserved and cherished. Our most cherished melodies, the words of our holy book, the Torah, and the central prayers of our services, should be heard as they were heard throughout the ages, in Hebrew. But the pulpit must conduct enough of each of our services in English so that their message can be both understood and instructive to our community as a whole. Similarly, we must give our non-Jewish members as much of an opportunity as we can to participate and enjoy Judaism and to make them full members of our community. If our worship raises our spirits as Jews, we should deny that experience to our non-Jewish members.
The other questions, e.g., whether one wants to wear a Tallit or a Yarmulke, for example, should be secondary. Those should be matters of personal choice, left to each individual, and in some matters of religious practice to our clergy; if it heightens the spiritual experience of our congregants, we should not deny those options to them.
What is more problematic is that KAMII, to date, has been, what Rethinking Synagogues calls a “Public Synagogue.” To quote that reading, “They stake out public claims in worship style or issues of conscience; they are the place you go to hear sermons on moral topics; they exchange pulpits with the local African American Church’ they feature guest speakers on matter of moment…They pride themselves on specific causes, like being “the social action synagogue” or “the synagogue with great music.” Sounds familiar! The reading goes on to state, “Public synagogues vest powers in senior rabbis, who are encouraged to speak to and for the congregation and to represent Judaism on a communal, interfaith, or even national scale.”
Herein lies our dilemma, which we must resolve if we are going to bring this plane down without breaking it apart. We can seek and should hire a rabbi who will successfully meet the spiritual and pastoral needs of our members, who is sensitive to the fact that many members of our Congregation are not Jewish and will make them feel as equal members of our community and is a fine teacher of Torah, Talmud and the ethics of the Prophets. However, if we also seek a Rabbi who can perpetuate KAMII as a great “public synagogue,” who is outspoken, who is a leader on issues of conscience, who is unafraid to take controversial positions on issues such as civil rights or the Palestinians or poverty and who challenges each congregant’s values and beliefs from the pulpit, we may find that we have set the bar too high for ourselves, end up with a good portion of the Congregation feeling disappointed and find ourselves in the same position that we have been twice before in the past ten years, searching for a rabbi.
Why, a ten-minute drive from our Congregation, does downtown Chicago teem with cranes and is the South Loop filling up with high-rise condos and why is this relevant to our Congregation? Rethinking Synagogues suggests an answer. It states that a certain class of workers, what may be described as “knowledge workers” or the “creative class,” are attracted to a community and their presence, in turn, attracts enterprises to that community. Downtown Chicago is growing, because unlike Cleveland or Detroit, and like New York or London, it has developed an economy based on information technology, advertising, financial and legal services, which is a mecca for these workers. KAMII is not only a short drive from that mecca but is on the campus of one of the world’s great incubators of such workers, the University of Chicago. It therefore places us in a unique position, one enjoyed by only a handful of Jewish congregations throughout the world, that of being located proximate to the downtown of one of the great world cities and on the campus of one of the globe’s greatest institutions of higher learning. (The (London) Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) ranks the U of C #7 in the world.) Rethinking Synagogues states thaw these workers look for experiences and deplore boredom, they like each other and look for a place that attracts a critical mass of others like themselves. They appreciate human differences-they are part of a “live and let live” culture. They avoid places where law and custom define a single “right” lifestyle. They are independent an individualistic. That is what make them creative. It is also what make them Reform and not Conservative or Orthodox. Rethinking Synagogues states that Rabbis hope to make the synagogue a proper community were people pray together, study together and work together, thereby restoring social capital but the creative class sees that kind of all-embracing community as stifling. The creative class is not interested in that kind of community. It prefers loosely knit communities of choice..these are people who manufacture their identity by piecing together bits and pieces of work, relationships, and interests, each one connected to a group of like-minded folk; they commute from group to group. What they do not want is the kind of romanticized all-embracing community that rabbis think the synagogue should be.
KAMII is both uniquely situated to attract these individuals as members and must do so to survive. So how do we do so and at the same time rejuvenate our congregation and bring it to a safe landing? Rethinking Synagogues would seem to suggest a Synaplex model, with a variety of chavurah’s, types of services, etc. But I would suggest a more radical model, a rethink outside the box.
We can turn our historic sanctuary nestled within one of the great world universities into a forum for debate on some of the great public issues of the day, inviting into its sacred space great writers, scholars and teachers who can speak to us on the great moral and civic issues of the day, thereby inviting prospective members into the Congregation, doing social action and maintaining our historic tradition as a renowned “Public Synagogue.“ We can provide a meeting space for environmental groups, political groups such as Move-on.org, self-help groups, and civic organizations. We can be a venue for concerts, theater, comics and other performing arts groups (although I wouldn‘t urge us to host hair-metal bands), which doesn’t otherwise exist on the South Side. In doing this, we would provide revenue for our Congregation as well as exposing ourselves to the “creative class” discussed above. To those who say our house of worship is not an appropriate place for these activities, I would ask them to visit a megachurch which sponsors such activities on a regular basis. Each one of these encounters with our institution would provide us with an opportunity to invite new members into our community, members who might otherwise be motivated not by spiritual pursuits but by other interests, e.g., in saving the environment, in political action (a.k.a. Tikun Olam), in music, in yoga, etc.
Most importantly, we would go beyond internal conflict and debate as to the future, both of our institution and of Reform Judaism, and show our face to the world as a living, breathing organism willing to open our doors to both intellectual discourse and the community at large while, at the same time, maintaining our traditions as a Reform house of worship, and land the plane in one piece.
Eric Wachspress
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