Creating Community

Stitching Together Your Community

Kathy Elias
Director of Outreach, Jewish Outreach Partnership

In my work, I talk to many people who are looking for a synagogue to join. Most people are looking for an intimate, warm, friendly community of people just like them, a small enough group that everyone knows everyone else. Yet they want a synagogue large enough to have plenty of educational and social opportunities. They ask me about the "atmosphere" of the congregation. Is it a friendly place, or is it "cliquish"? Is a small congregation better than a large one? Will they find people who share their interests? Will they feel welcomed?

Most people's first impression about a synagogue depends on how they are welcomed when they go to services. We assume that the smaller the congregation, the more friendly and outgoing it will be towards strangers, with large congregations presenting a cool indifference to a new member. This is not necessarily true. Some large synagogues have an established system of recognizing the wide-eyed look of someone unfamiliar with the place, and you'll find yourself under someone's wing who has greeted many other newcomers just like you. And in some small congregations, your first few visits on Shabbat can feel like you're crashing a private party. Regardless of your welcome, you won't feel a part of the group until you can go to the synagogue and someone there knows your name. But how do you get to that point?

The quickest way to finding your place

Being a member of any community, whether it is a synagogue, a school, or your neighborhood, often depends less on the community and more on what you do in it. Many synagogues have a Welcoming Committee that will contact you right after you join. They will give you information about upcoming programs, answer questions you might have, and find out if you have any special interests. You might be invited to a new member dinner, or get a call from a "buddy" who will invite you to Shabbat dinner. Unfortunately, even in the most intimate communities, that first contact might be the last one. It will still be up to you to get to know people.

The first place to start is not, for some people, the most obvious. Where is the single most consistent place where you will meet people at a synagogue? At Shabbat services. Whether it's every Saturday morning, or a monthly Friday Night Family Service, there will always be a cadre of "regulars" on Shabbat. One new member of a synagogue told me, when I asked if she felt welcomed into the large congregation she joined, "I didn't know anyone at first, so I didn't feel welcome. But from week to week, there are always the same 35 people at Shabbat morning services. If you want people to know your name, just show up on Saturdays. Within three weeks, you'll know 35 people!"

You Can Learn Things Just By Showing Up

By regularly attending Shabbat services, you'll learn other things that will make you feel a part of the group. You'll hear about upcoming programs and events; you'll hear the names of other members and what is going on in their lives. You will get to see the rabbi in action, and get a feeling for what is valued among this group of people.

You'll learn about the minhagim, (customs) of the congregation. This may not seem important at first, but it goes a long way in making you feel comfortable in your new community. How do they dress on Shabbat-suits and dresses, or casual? What is the decorum during services? Is it filled with silent, prayerful adults who "shoosh" any whispering, or are there children moving around with friends greeting one another or chatting? You'll also get to know your way around the siddur (prayerbook) they use and learn the music.

Remember how it felt the first day of school? That uncomfortable, unfamiliar feeling didn't go away until you spent quite a few weeks in your new surroundings. You have to allow the same process to unfold as a new member of a synagogue. It might take up to a full year, going through the cycle of holidays, before this place becomes familiar to you. So give yourself time, and keep going back!

In addition to Shabbat services, how else can you make your way into a synagogue community? One of the quickest ways to meet people is by volunteering. Every synagogue is desperate for new, active volunteers. All you have to do is say, "I'll help", and, believe me, you'll be called… again and again. From one volunteer experience, no matter how short, you will meet one or two other members.

Volunteering is a good start, but don't stop there. Then sign up for a class. Attend a Sisterhood or Men's Club breakfast. Go on a trip or to a book group.

You'll meet more people with each point of contact, and when you walk into the synagogue, you'll be guaranteed to find someone there who knows your name. The more you involve yourself in those aspects of community life that are interesting to you, the better the chances will be that you will get to know other people who share your interests. That's the start of feeling like this is your group, your community.

Weave yourself into the life of the synagogue

The key is to make a connection. To show up. To step forward and make a place in the community. To take a single strand of your life, and weave it into the life of the synagogue.

If you are lucky, and find that special, magical synagogue, you will be welcomed with open arms, caressed by the congregation, in as perfect a fit as an old sweater. But most people will have to stitch their lives into the tapestry that is their synagogue community. In time, imperceptibly, you will feel part of the group, and no matter what the size or the "atmosphere", this synagogue will be your home.

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Building Community: A Personal Perspective

By Rabbi Leonard Gordon
Germantown Jewish Centre

Many of us at times feel disconnected and anxious about work, families, our ability to keep up with constant demands of life. We drive alone in our cars and we interact with computer terminals rather than people.

We manage information, instead of creating new knowledge through dialogue with other people. Our exercise often takes place on the treadmill in front of the television, and we frequently eat our meals alone and in haste. An evening with friends is usually planned well in advance, balanced against competing claims on our time. The pressures of our lives have encouraged us to develop our individuality, but in meeting those pressures we have unwittingly lost the benefits of the community.

The desire to help sustain com-munity initially drew me to the rabbinate. It has also led me down an interesting path of creating communities during the past decade. After completing rabbinical school in New York City, I first taught in deeply rural Ohio and then in the local "big city" of Columbus.

In rural Ohio, there were so few Jews that we fought to defeat our isolation by meeting together regularly on Friday evenings. We gathered up a handful of Jews from here and there. We ate latkes on Hanukkah, read Esther on Purim, sang Hebrew songs, and generally put a Jewish rhythm in our lives. We studied a text, talked about politics, ate challah, and learned to depend on and value each other.

In the bigger cities, I worked with friends to create a livable Judaism within our oversized and sometimes impersonal Jewish institutions. We formed havurot (fellowships), groups of like-minded people to rely on, like the old-fashioned extended family. We met to celebrate life cycle occasions or holidays.

We studied together and we were available to each other, as islands of safety in the vast city. Most recently in Columbus, a strong, well-organized Jewish community, I worked again with friends to create havurot organized around different themes: a literature club, a family folk-dancing group, a Saturday afternoon prayer group with Torah study, and an over-arching organization uniting us through holidays and occasional weekend retreats. During these events we shared meals, sang prayers, and studied together in a warmly Jewish environment.

Synagogue as Gateway

Judaism is about shared communal responsibility and the redress of the injustices in the world. This sense of community can ease the loneliness of modern life. A Friday night service, whether at the home of friends or in a synagogue, can be engaging, beautiful, and rich in friendship. With the right intention and in the right environment, the synagogue can become a place to nurture our families, rather than just a place that makes more demands for time and energy. The synagogue is a true gateway to community.

Returning to Jewish communal values by celebrating the passages of life together is one way to mark the turning of the year. These occasions are meant to be opportunities to reconsider the larger philosophical questions: questions of personal freedom, social justice and what it takes to create a positive fate. If we nurture ourselves as part of the community, we can find smiling faces to share our personal triumphs, helping hands to tough it out when life's road is rocky, and comfort among other mourners when we suffer life's inevitable sorrows.

Judaism, in contrast with other religions that emphasize personal prayer and individual salvation, is a communal religion. The challenge to all of us in modern life is to find opportunities to pause and be with each other in ways that meet our very real emotional and intellectual needs.

Inter-connectedness and com-munity are old Jewish ideas in good currency even now. Let us meet the challenge by seeking new ways to embrace it.

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Connecting Through Cyberspace

Dr. Kerry M. Olitsky
Executive Director, Jewish Outreach Institute

When I was eight years old, my family left Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, one of the last of the colorful transdenominational Jewish enclaves in North America. We moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, where-in the early 1960's-most of its local residents had never even met a Jew. Midway through high school, I decided to become a rabbi.

I initially thought the decision emerged out of a desire to study more sacred literature, especially because Jewish resources had become relatively unavailable to me. On reflection, I now realize that what primarily ignited my passion for Judaism was a desire for community-something that continues to drive me. Having been imprinted with the template of a vibrant Jewish community so early in my life, I longed to recreate it, if I could not return to it. That challenge has not receded, even if it has changed, even though I have spent my entire adult life immersed in the Jewish community.

An Electronic Shtetl

I arrive at my office early each day, and in the quiet of the morning, I boot up my computer. It has become part of my daily ritual, as habitual-and nearly as sacred-as morning prayers. I review the entries in several discussion groups where I am a subscriber. Then I enter into dialogue with a disparate number of individuals who literally span the globe: friends, family members, and colleagues. In an asynchronous way we schmooze, we joke, we share, we study, we cry, and we learn together-all before I begin my formal day at work. (These conversations also continue throughout the day.) Were I forced to use the telephone, these conversations would be less informative and less intimate.

Perhaps the Internet is not the perfect place to nurture community, but I have yet to find a place that is, particularly for myself, a middle-age baby boomer. My wife and I spend many Sundays looking for a residential area to provide for our eclectic community needs: observant, liberal Jews with an eclectic Jewish lifestyle. I do not want to recreate the shtetl of my grandparents-even if it were possible to do so. And I certainly do not want to repeat my parents' mistake of moving to a place that resembles the vacuous community of my adolescence. So I have turned to the Internet as an option, an oasis in the wilderness, remaining there until I can find my way to the Promised Land.

I have come to learn that while the Internet can nurture a relationship, it cannot replace one. I have also found that the Internet can approximate some of the functions of a minyan, like supporting friends and family in need. The Internet provides a measure of safety for people, allowing some to express themselves in ways they might not in person or over the telephone.

The Internet as All-Night Diner

I have learned some things about the Internet from my children, who spend much of their late evening time with their friends on e-mail. Having spent summers and vacations with friends in Israel, at synagogue youth conventions, and at camps, they re-create their communities and reconnect with friends through "instant messages." The all-night diner with the bottomless coffeepot has been replaced by the unlimited access fees of Internet service providers.

An explosion of Jewish educational resources is available on the Internet. But as planners and as consumers, we must be careful to assess what is really Jewish education and community versus what is merely entertainment. What about those salient Jewish values that have fueled Jewish life throughout history and have been somehow lost, or at least obscured, through the Internet? What of kedusha (holiness), and the practice of mitzvot (sacred obligations)? Can we find a way to reshape these values so that we maintain the integrity of our tradition and, at the same time, respond to the expansive use of the Internet? How can we ensure that these values are enhanced by our conversations on the Internet and not replaced by them?

As for me, I teach through the Internet. I counsel. I offer spiritual guidance. I console. I stay in regular contact with people-and they with me-in ways that were nearly impossible and certainly impractical in the past. And in these relationships, I am mindful of the same values that guide my face-to-face interchanges. I believe that we have to work harder to ensure that these relationships, however abbreviated, are raised to the level of kedusha, holiness.

There are those who will nevertheless argue that the only way to study is for two or more people to sit with a book between them as they struggle and learn together. Those who regularly engage in such study have discovered the prescient insight of the rabbis who noted that God's presence indeed dwells in their midst. But what about those who look to their computer buddies for such transcendent moments? Will the presence of the Almighty be found among them on the Internet?

I don't know. Come study with me. We'll find out together.

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When I moved to Chester County 33 years ago, I stopped into a local store to buy candles and dreidels for Hanukkah. The owner, Mrs. Berman, said, "Honey, we don't carry those. You're too far away from Philadelphia."

Today, the Chester County Region has the fastest growing Jewish population in the Greater Philadelphia area. We meet each other at our own Jewish Community Festival, have regional potluck dinners complete with klezmer music, and now at Hanukkah we turn out to light a giant menorah at a local mall. We share the desire to connect with each other and create meaningful Jewish lives. I only wish Mrs. Berman were still alive to see Jews are no longer "too far away from Philadelphia."

-Sandy Moskowitz, Program Director
Jewish Community Center WithOut Walls, Chester County Region

I keep in touch with friends all over the world through e-mail and instant messaging-people I met from all over the country through United Synagogue Youth and Hazamir, (the national Jewish High School Choir), and friends and teachers I met in Israel.

-Gabe Elias, 12th grade student at Akiba Hebrew Academy

In the 1940's, most of my extended family lived in the Strawberry Mansion section of Philadelphia. I loved the energy of the neighborhood. Only a half a block away from Grandmom's house was the famous Ben Hur ice cream store, and close by was 31st Street, the shopping mecca of S.M. There were so many bakeries, kosher butcher shops, delicatessens, and variety stores! There were also butter, egg, and cheese stores and that scent comes back to me-not a pleasant one. A frequent topic of conversation among the adults was which bakery was the best, which butcher had the heaviest thumb, which corned beef or salami was the tastiest. The poultry shops had cages with live chickens that were slaughtered before your eyes-if you wanted to look. I also remember the thrill Grandpop got when he took us to his little shul on Simchat Torah and walked with us around the auditorium with red apples, representing the Jewish people, stuck on a flag. It seemed to my young mind that everyone knew everyone else and that the whole world was Jewish.

-Rhoda Ballen

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