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THINK! (11/07)

THINK!

Think! Think! Think!

I was staring at the proverbial “blank piece of paper,” which these days, is really an empty Microsoft word file, trying to decide what I should share with the congregation tonight.

I know how much members of this congregation value and enjoy a good sermon, and I have the important task of filling that role this evening.

Temple Emanuel has been blessed by sermons with the scholarly wisdom of Rabbi Buchdahl and the passionate teachings of Rabbi Mieri. Their words place in a Jewish context our moral obligations as Jews, Americans, and citizens of the planet Earth. They do so from a position of years of study and the important role as spiritual leader of a congregation; a mantle to which I lay no claim.

Therefore, I thought to myself. My best course of action is to avoid any topic they may ever have talked about, since my sermon will pale by comparison.

Think!

I leaned back in my chair, placed my chin in my hand and thought to myself, that when embarking on a journey, as the cliché says, one must begin at the beginning. In this case the beginning is

“Why did my fellow members of the Temple Emanuel Brotherhood, grant me the honor of giving the sermon at the Brotherhood Shabbat service?”

Was it that they knew I enjoyed writing and public speaking?

Was it that they wanted the perspective of a younger, active member of the congregation?

Was it that my life experiences including living in London, England, being an at-home Dad, and an active volunteer in the larger community, would allow me to have something meaningful to say?

Or ……. was it that I missed the planning meeting …… and was thusly “volunteered” for this high honor.

Whatever the reason it did not change the fact that I had a speech to write.

THINK!

I turned for inspiration to this week’s Torah portion VAH-YEAH-TZEH for ideas on what to say. It is the story of Jacob’s dream. Jacob rests on the ground with only a stone for a pillow. That night he dreams of climbing a ladder to heaven and being told by G-d that he was giving him the land upon which he slept, the land of Israel, to be the home of his descendants.

I learned that this parsha, aka Jacob’s ladder, has inspired countless paintings and poems throughout the centuries. I contemplated how I could share some of those with the congregation. I eagerly awaited discovering what great work of art or prose would move me and I would share that with everyone this evening.

Alas, what struck me was written by Rabbi Ed Rosenthal.

He posed the question: What do you get when you cross Martin Luther King Jr. and 70s rock legends Led Zeppelin?

A: The dream of a stairway to heaven or ….. this week’s Parsha.

I realized at that moment that maybe I was the wrong guy to speak about Torah. Besides, this is not my bar mitzvah. I don’t have to speak about the Torah portion.

I sought the counsel of Rabbi Meiri, and after hearing that joke, she quickly supported my decision to avoid biblical scholarship.

THINK!

Well, this is the Brotherhood Shabbat. Brotherhood is the obvious topic. I have two brothers I can talk about brotherhood.

Where should I go from here? There was a recent article in Time Magazine about birth order which described the differences in oldest, middle and youngest children. That might make an interesting and relevant topic.

I re-read the piece and, as an oldest child, wholeheartedly agreed with the conclusion that the oldest child is usually the smartest child. Ask any oldest child, we could have told you that fact and saved the authors years of research.

Then I read the part about how birth order also impacts size and that the oldest child tends to be the tallest. As I straightened myself out to my altitudinally challenged 5 feet 5 inches I thought, …..maybe this is not such a great piece of research after all.

Back to the drawing board.

Think!

Besides, Brotherhood tonight is not about genetics, but more about coming together as one. Tonight is about coming together as men and women, as Jewish men and women, and being a part of something greater than ourselves.

An example of this type of Jewish brotherhood took place on November 1, at the funeral for my paternal Grandmother whom we called Nana. Nana’s funeral brought together 4 generations of our family.

I was particularly struck by my generation, the seven grandchildren, ranging from 26 to 46 years of age. From the outside looking in, you would see the wide range of differences in our Jewish lives.

Two are Orthodox with children in yeshiva schools, one is Conservative, two are Reform, and two are unaffiliated. Yet we all were united, not simply by our love and mourning for Nana, but by the rituals of our heritage.

We shared the Brotherhood of Judaism, put aside the labels, and followed Jewish teachings common to all of us. We were focused on what brought us together at that moment:

Love,
Loss,
Family,
Heritage
and Jewish rituals.

These common bonds, a brotherhood if you will, were of overwhelmingly greater importance and value than the many differences in our lives. All of these things that brought us together made everything else, seem so small.

Think!

The funeral took place a few days before the recent Baltimore Jewish Times article concerning Reform Judaism in Baltimore. Regardless of some of the articles flaws, the most prominent of which was so eloquently exposed by our own Cantor Silverman, its general point of view interested me. It looked at the Reform Jewish community from an outsider’s perspective. It treated Reform Judaism as a single entity with common problems to overcome, and issues to resolve. The point of view of the article was to treat the Reform community as a whole, a brotherhood if you will, and ask questions about Reform Judaism as a movement in Baltimore.

Those of us on the inside of the Baltimore Reform movement have a tendency to look at things quite differently. We think of ourselves as members of one of four congregations. For some, the divergences between the temples run far deeper than simply our different mailing addresses.

Some can speak of the stereotypes that have been assigned to each congregation’s members.

Some congregants at all four Reform synagogues can name all of the slights, real and imagined, that have occurred between the congregations going back many years.

I, myself, have sat through meetings, the most recent of which was yesterday, at which all four congregations were represented. I have seen first hand the challenges faced when trying to find common ground on a subject for which all involved profess total support.

This lack of brotherhood between the Reform congregations, I would suggest, is part of the movement’s problem. We are not Catholics, Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists trying to seek common spiritual ground. We are all Reform Jews living within a few miles of one another in Greater Baltimore. We are the approximately 3000 families, down from over 5000 families in the 1990s, which have chosen to be part of a Reform Jewish congregation in this area.

Sometimes we Baltimore Reform Jews need to be reminded that we share so much in common.

The Jewish population is a drop in a bucket on this planet,
a tiny fraction of our nation’s populace,
a small minority within the state of Maryland,
and even a distinct minority in Baltimore.

Inside the local Jewish community, Reform Jews are dwarfed by the Orthodox movement, overshadowed by the Conservative movement, and pale in comparison to what may be the largest Jewish movement in our community, the unaffiliated.

Who are the unaffiliated?

They are our colleagues,
Our neighbors,
our friends,
our cousins
our siblings
and our former congregants.

Unaffiliated Jews are people for whom congregational life does not hold enough meaning, or rank of sufficient importance, on which to spend their time or money.

They may have been congregants in the past.
They may plan to be congregants in the future.
They may never be congregants at all.

They are of all ages and income levels. They had a variety of Jewish experiences as children. However, they all have one thing in common.

They have all come to the conclusion that at this time it is neither spiritually important nor financially worthwhile, to be a member of a synagogue.

They have decided that congregational life is not for them.

WHY IS THIS?

In part, more and more families’ believe that their lives include Judaism just by virtue of being residents of this Northwest Baltimore corridor. They socialize with other Jewish families; they buy bagels at Goldberg’s; they work out at the JCC; they celebrate Hanukah, and they eat Chinese food and see a movie on Christmas Day. What more is there to being a Jew than that?

A portion of the unaffiliated see synagogues as an expense they must shoulder for a few years to send their children to Religious School so that they can have a B’nai Mitzvah. After that, it is no longer worth the time or money. They never were engaged by the congregation or never sought to become a part of the life of the synagogue.

Some parents may see Temple as an extra activity that takes up too much time for them and their children. It is one more destination to which they do not have time to go, and one more place they would rather not have to schlep their kids.

These parents have decided that of higher priority for their children are homework, sports practice and dance classes. These families are choosing to either skip B’nai Mitzvah, or have ceremonies performed by “Rent-A-Rabbis” who teach the child their Torah portion and put on an event at a country club or at a catering facility.

While some may reasonably say that there is a failing in these people. I also say that the Reform congregations must shoulder some of the responsibility. We must look at how we are failing them, because they should be here with us.

Failing to offer programs that are attractive and engaging.

Failing to make congregational life more affordable.

Failing to give the unaffiliated a compelling reason to choose to be here at synagogue, instead of somewhere else.

Failing to make people realize that if they join a synagogue, it won’t simply be one more place contacting them only to ask for money or to volunteer their time.

Failing to make them feel that their Temple is an extended family and a second home.

In previous generations the idea of not belonging to a synagogue was unfathomable. In my generation, it is an acceptable and popular, personal choice.

Our challenge in the Reform movement is to create a Brotherhood with the unaffiliated. Especially as they likely would become Reform congregants.
However, we cannot reach out to the unaffiliated with a compelling case to join us, until we strengthen the Brotherhood among the already existing members of Reform congregations.

We Reform Jews cannot possibly have more in common, yet we cannot seem to create a brotherhood to reinvigorate our ailing movement, let alone create something to attract those who do not know what they are missing.

Think!

As Rabbi Nagle of Oheb Shalom reminded us in his D’var Torah before yesterday’s meeting of the four Reform Congregation’s, Jacob slept on a rock before having his dream. The lesson is that Baltimore’s Reform Jewish Community must put itself in places of discomfort in order to reach our big dreams.

Think about the fact that Jacob’s dream was an inclusive dream. The land was for all of his descendants. We are Jacob’s descendants and we are united by a common set of beliefs and rituals. As my Nana’s funeral showed, we all share the brotherhood of Judaism.

If we as Reform Jews in Greater Baltimore can focus on the myriad of things that bind us together in Brotherhood, and change the divisive, negative, distrustful attitudes that permeate our community, then we have an important role to play in the Baltimore Jewish community for generations to come.

If Reform Jews in Greater Baltimore continue to be a house divided against itself then we CANNOT stand. We must change and reformulate our approach or we will surely continue down the path of steady decay that we are on right now. This is a path that we have sadly greased with the blood of our own self-inflicted wounds.

In the broadest spirit of Brotherhood I challenge each of us to look out into the world and see all the things that should bind all people to each other in pursuit of what is good and what is right.

With a more narrow focus I ask each of you to consider how we can work together to revitalize the Reform Jewish community in Baltimore, so that the next cover story in the Baltimore Jewish Times regarding the Reform community, can send a positive message of ascendancy out into the populace. I hope that all of you will choose to be a part of the process of building brotherhood among Reform Jews in our community.

While this will not be easy, nothing that is worth doing ever is easy. While there are risks involved, nothing worth doing is without risk, and the risk of doing nothing, far outweighs the risk of doing something.

In the spirit of Brotherhood I ask you to please pause,
and reflect on this challenge
and THINK!

SHABBAT SHALOM!

Jonathan Schwartz