NOTE: The following is an edited version of notes shared during the Kehilat Sukkat Shalom fall community meeting in November. KSS members gathering twice a year, fall and spring, to connect on organizational business. These notes set the stage for our 20th anniversary and plans for a thriving future.
20 years ago, the founders of what was then The Little Minyan That Could, joined together and wandered away from the temple they attended. They were both leaving practices that no longer served them, and attempting to create the kind of community they wanted to be a part of. A community responsive to members’ spiritual yearnings – their desire to not only recite the right prayers on the right days at the right times, but to find prayers and poetry that spoke to their souls. To experiment with new traditions that helped them feel more enlivened so they could be better people, better parents, friends, citizens. They studied, they collected poetry and melodies, and created new minhagim – new traditions for their new community.
We are the continuation of that legacy. And true to form, we haven’t arrived at any particular destination – much as we might wish we could settle some things to make our work a bit easier. Rather, our founders’ visions live on in our wandering and wrestling to figure out how to be a community drawn to one another and held together by our search for meaning in the remixing of Jewish traditions with other ideas that speak to us, not bound to any one way of doing Jewish. It’s messy, and sometimes frustrating work, but all that struggle and mess is a sign we’re on the right track.
As we set out on another decade in the Jewish wilderness and plan for our thriving future, we’re excited to host Lex Rofeberg, Senior Jewish Educator of Judaism Unbound for a Shabbaton this weekend. Unbound listeners will recognize the phrase “architects of the next Jewish future,” and relistening to some early JU episodes it really hit me that our community is absolutely part of that project – in all our successes and all our challenges. The better we understand this context, the more successful we will be in developing a new story about ourselves and what we want from Judaism to carry us into our next chapter.
The following are a few key ideas, guideposts for our journey, based on the work of Judaism Unbound guests and leaders of contemporary Judaism.
- Third Era Judaism
R’ Yitz Greenburg (episode 100) has been described as “one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the last half century,” his “ideas laid the foundation that Judaism Unbound and many of their guests have been building upon.” He didn’t just propose new Jewish theories in sermons. Together with Ellie Wiesel and R’ Steve Shaw, Greenburg identified that after the Holocaust, the founding of the state of Israel, Jewish acceptance and success in the U.S., Jews were living in a completely new paradigm – one in which human relations would take precedence over human-God relationships. The trio formed CLAL – The National Center for Learning and Leadership.
Greenberg refers to this as Third Era Judaism – the first being biblical Judaism set at the time of the ancient temple, and Rabbinic Judaism which ultimately grew out of its destruction. This third era is still relatively young but marked by a decline in synagogue attendance as Jews increasingly and simultaneously feel little faith in or frankly interest in a relationship with a G@d who could let the Holocaust happen, aren’t interested in taking orders on how to live from a Rabbi, and who have just gotten too busy with other things our capitalist culture demands of us.
- Judaism as a path to human flourishing
According to the 2020 Pew Study of Jews in America, only 20% report attending services once a month. We see this in our own membership. No shade. Just facts. And I get it. I didn’t attend services for many years and now, even when I do, sometimes I’m not sure why I go. I think it’s mostly because I like the people who show up, I like singing together, and every so often some poem or commentary we read touches something in me and offers me some fresh perspective. This is what the folks at CLAL are currently exploring as Jewish practices that promote human flourishing.
Accepting that Rabbinic Judaism is over might sound scary or even far fetched to some, but let’s flesh out the options. Rather than accept that going to temple and following a rabbi’s instructions doesn’t help them find more joy in their lives, be more patient in their relationships, or work to make their world a little better – some Jews choose to just keep doing what they were raised doing because they are afraid of what might happen if they stop. (For more on this, listen to episodes 53 & 54.)
- Third Option Judaism
This is what R’ Benay Lappe (episodes 3, 36, 56, 200, 216, 395, 506) calls Option 1. Some folks can’t or won’t abandon old traditions for x, y, z reason – all of which they equate in some way with the Judaism they know disappearing.
Those who can’t bear that, who are too bored or too busy, choose Option 2 and just stop doing Jewish altogether. They run marathons, join a band or political organizing group, volunteer in a community garden, or attend yoga retreats to find spiritual fulfillment. It should be noted many of us do those things AND are a part of Sukkat Shalom. Which leads us to option 3.
As R’ Mordecai Kaplan the founder of Jewish Reconstructionism taught – Judaism is an evolving civilization – and it’s up to us, in every generation, to play around with the source materials and rituals and find new understandings and meanings. We stick around, study and ask questions, write new poetry and sing new songs, to re-mix and re-enliven rituals as we set aside those that don’t work for us. When we do all this, we go from being the chosen people, to the choosing people. Voluntarily committing to a relationship with our tradition. This is Option 3.
Lappe positions these three options in response to a crash. For many of our grandparents that crash was the Holocaust. For some of us or our parents it was the response of family or clergy to the decision to marry a non-Jew. For others it was when we weren’t allowed to read from the Torah at our Bat Mitzvah because we didn’t have a penis. For many today, it is Israel’s war on Gaza and Palestinians in the West Bank.
Lappe argues that in each case, it’s the folks on the outside that pave the way to the next Jewish future. So let’s assume that we’re all here because we’re outsiders in some way or another. At some point, in Jewish or some other space in your life, you had what Lappe describes as a queer or “profound experience of marginality, the insights from which you bring to bear on the world.”
With all this in mind, I hope you will join us this weekend, and in the months ahead, as we chart a course for whatever comes next.