Eric Weiss

Yom Kippur 5768

When Rabbi Marder asked me to speak today on the meaning of the Beth Am community my first reaction was one of fear and, -- given this day of atonement – naturally some guilt.  Why me?  What sin did I commit to deserve this?    After some discussion with wife Kathryn, I surmised that it might be because, in a pretty short amount of time, my family and I  have built a rich community life and range of friendships thanks to Beth Am.   

The Beth Am community witnessed and celebrated our marriage just 14 years, 2 kids, 3 dogs, 2 pet rats and at least 5 now deceased goldfish ago.   Shortly after our wedding at Beth Am in 1993, in 1994, we moved to Montreal and experienced the reach and strength of the Beth Am “Kehilla” (or community) when fellow congregant Gwyn Wachtel casually mentioned to us, before we left California, that we should look up her sister and brother in law, Rachel and Ted Tasch, who had also recently moved to Montreal. At a High Holy Day Service, all those years ago, we met Ted and Rachel, who, with odds of < 1/1000, just happened to be seated next to us at another very large congregation in Montreal . We fast became friends, and this friendship endured our 11 year “exile” to the East Coast. From Montreal , we moved to Princeton , New Jersey where we stayed 9 years.

While in New Jersey , I have to confess that we didn’t have the same connection to the Jewish community or our synagogue as we do now at Beth Am.  Naturally, I blame myself (of course I tried to blame my wife first to no avail….). Basically, we dropped off our son at Sunday school, attended high holy day services, the occasional Friday night Shabbat service, and not too much else.  The first problem was we kept comparing our synagogue in New Jersey to Beth Am – a comparison that was unfair since  Beth Am is by all accounts a very special place.   But the other issue was that you only get out of the community what you put into it. And since we’re acknowledging our sins today, I’ll say we didn’t put enough into it.   

When we finally moved back to the Bay Area three years ago, our kids were older and we were nervous about the move and how we’d all settle in.  One of the first things we did, therefore, even before actually arriving on the West Coast was rejoin Beth Am.  We only knew one other family here, ironically the same family – the Tasches -- we had met in Montreal thru Beth Am 11 years earlier. 

From there, Rachel Tasch urged us to join Shabbaton -- Beth Am's family education program on Shabbat afternoons.  Within weeks we were talking torah as a family with our children and with new friends and after just arriving back to California , Beth Am had instantly became our kehilla.  

People tell me that, at first, it’s easy to find the sheer size and number of the Beth Am community overwhelming and anonymous.   But Beth Am for me is an intimate community.  As Kathryn says, it’s a community of communities.  And you have to find the one that fits you. But if you don’t put in the effort, it might not find you. 

It’s appropriate on Yom Kippur to point out that my family and I knew we had the responsibility to learn from our experience in prior synagogues and redouble our efforts to join and participate in and contribute to building a strong community for ourselves – especially since we were transplants here. But we also knew that if we made that effort, we would be embraced by the community at Beth Am, and I might add, by the wider peninsula Jewish community.  Reaching into our community when we need support or providing it to others when they need it, is  a mitzvah we are commanded to do as part of Ahavat Yirsael, love for the community of Israel . 

Moreover, the reason we pray communally at synagogue with at minimum ten people, the Talmud says, is because it brings about Shechinah or the presence of G-d, especially in the Temple .  We are meant to be social creatures particular in and around the synagogue.

Getting involved in Beth Am’s Kehilla was not without challenges, however,  We were both starting new jobs.  New schools for the kids.  A new home.   New lives altogether. 

As I have learned in the business world, a focused strategy is often most likely to succeed.  And so we put our enthusiasm and energy as a family into a few focused Synagogue activities.  We broke down the immense size of the Beth Am congregation by getting particularly engaged with Shabbaton, where Kathryn is now a lay leader.  While I have been to Israel many times, I can’t even begin to explain the depth of community I feel that my family built with other families on the trip that we took last summer with Rabbi Yoshi and his family, with Israelis, and even within my family as a result of this trip.  I feel I have strong, lasting friendships from this one experience that I owe largely to Beth Am. 

The result of these focused engagements is that I am always assured of seeing some familiar faces even at the largest of synagogue events, or at the Jewish LIFE street fair, thus making these seemingly anonymous impersonal settings actually quite intimate and very personal  and meaningful community experiences.   Indeed Beth Am has managed to entangle its way into almost every facet of our lives from the kids’ school, to AIPAC events, to professional relationships and associations.

Beth Am kehilla has been an experience across time as well. The music at Beth Am (and Rabbi Yoshi’s illustrious Mah Tovu band) revive and link to the Kehilla of my childhood with their similarity to Reform Jewish tunes of my childhood in the bay area…attending Camp Swig and Sherith Israel in San Francisco. My children singing many of these same songs perpetuate this. The presence of my parents and mother-in-law here today bridges 3 generations of Kehilla.

By using its resources to cater to a diverse range of families, I think that Beth Am adheres to one of the fundamental principles of Reform Judaism -- the mitzvah of ahavat k'lal Yisrael, love for the entirety of the community of Israel . Recognizing that “all Jews are responsible for one another,” we reach out to all Jews across ideological and geographical boundaries.  

Beth Am extends Kehilla outside the Jewish community as well, practicing the mitzvah of ahavat ger, loving the stranger, for “…[we] too were strangers in the land of Egypt .”   I’ll conclude with an example…the Beth Am Social Action Committee organized volunteers to assist with providing food to the poor in East Palo Alto via the Ecunemical Hunger Project.   The mere fact that this event was organized by the Beth Community provided my kids with a religious connection to the mitzvah they were performing, once again transforming a seemingly nonreligious event into an meaningful kehilla experience.

Thank you and G’mar Chatima Tova... may you be inscribed for a good year.