Rabbi Janet Marder

April 19, 2009

Wow – there are few things I enjoy more than standing up before hundreds of people who are about to vote on the renewal of my contract.  This is like a dream come true – I hope you’re all having as much fun as I am.

And speaking of dreams come true…Rabbis, you know, don’t have the same kind of fantasies as other people. Normal people, I guess, fantasize about winning the lottery or some cute person they saw on the Internet – I wouldn’t really know. But I do know rabbis. A few rabbis, including one who lives with me, fantasize about finding the perfect obituary. But most rabbis fantasize about the living; they fantasize about their congregations. That’s right – all of you.

Perhaps you’re curious about the content of my fantasies. I hope you are, because I want to share a few of them with you today. I want you to know that the vision I’ll present this afternoon was not created in a vacuum. It emerged out of the ten years I’ve spent studying and praying and being with you, listening carefully, watching what you do and learning who you are.  From the first day I came here you have inspired me, and the feeling hasn’t gone away. So let me tell you about my dreams for Congregation Beth Am.

I brought some visual aids today to demonstrate my vision. Three different tallitot – each one has special significance for me, and for our congregation. Here’s the first one – it’s a tallit I bought just last month, when I traveled to Israel with our Beth Am group. It portrays the beautiful flowers of Israel and the four matriarchs of our people. This tallit was created by Women of the Wall, a group of Israeli women who gather each month, early in the morning, to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem .  Often they are harassed, screamed at and cursed by the ultra-orthodox people around them for daring to lift up their voices in song and put on a prayer shawl. For twenty years this small group has been struggling courageously for the rights of all women in the Jewish people’s most sacred spot on earth. Their tallit, for me, is a symbol of social justice and engagement with the larger community. It stands for breaking down barriers, openness and acceptance of others.

What does it mean for us?

Number one: I want us to be an open congregation. This means a genuine openness to those who are not yet members. We should want to get to know them, to make them feel at home and befriend them, to share with them the beautiful treasure that is Jewish life at Beth Am.  I want us to be known for the warm and gracious welcome that all of us give to anyone who walks through our doors. This calls for conscious, ongoing change in our congregational culture. We should all begin to see ourselves as hosts, not guests.

We should lower barriers of all kinds – accessibility barriers, the barriers that make our congregation feel like a huge, confusing place where it’s easy to get lost and hard to break in. I’d especially like to see us reach out creatively to those who don’t always feel comfortable in synagogues: single people with and without kids, young adults in their 20s and 30s, gay and lesbian Jews, intermarried families, Israelis, young émigré families.  We should do this in faithfulness to Jewish principles of hospitality and kindness – but also because it is the only way we will thrive in the long-term. Synagogues that do not successfully bring in new people eventually stagnate and die.

We should find new ways to make this large congregation feel cozy and friendly and haimish to newcomers and old-timers alike. We can do it by empowering large numbers of lay leaders, drawing on the abundant talents of our members.  Lay and professional leaders, working together, can create new networks of small groups – neighborhood groups, friendship groups, groups for study or hiking, for support and for Jewish celebration. Nobody should slip through Beth Am without developing “traction” – points of attachment and connection that bond them with other members.

An open congregation practices open dialogue, pluralism and diversity. Beth Am should be a center for discussion of significant, sometimes controversial, issues; able to tolerate a wide range of opinion and to communicate respectfully with one another. Republicans as well as Democrats should feel that they belong here. I want us to hear speakers from the Israeli left, center and right wings. I want us to disagree without being disagreeable.

This tallit stands for tzedek, justice, and tikkun olam, the repair of our broken world. Tikkun olam is not the work of a committee. It is integral to a Jewish life. We should draw all our members onto a path of continuous Jewish ethical growth, offering multiple ways for all ages to take part in the mitzvah of healing the world.

In the years ahead, we should create one significant ongoing tikkun olam project that engages our whole congregation and puts Beth Am on the map. Maybe our Costano school project in East Palo Alto will evolve into something like this. Maybe, like Congregation Beth El of Sudbury, MA, we’ll open an after-hours medical clinic on our premises, staffed by our members, to serve those with limited means. Maybe we’ll build houses together, or send groups of members to do tikkun olam in New Orleans , Israel , Africa or Central America . Maybe we’ll dream up something else, equally ambitious.

We should become known for this project, and for our inspiring ethical leadership in the larger community. Our kids should be proud of what we do here. Our members should feel honored that this congregation motivates them to be better, mobilizes their best energies, calls them together to bring light into places of darkness.

Tallit number one was about outreach, the face we turn to the larger community, the open hand we extend to those outside our doors. Here’s my second tallit. It was also created in Israel , at a wonderful place called Yad Lakashish, Lifeline for the Old, which provides productive, creative work opportunities for needy elders in Jerusalem . It’s adorned with pomegranates, Jewish symbols of abundance and goodness; a righteous person is supposed to be as full of mitzvot as a pomegranate is full of seeds. This tallit was a gift from Rabbi Josh, a person who is himself abundant in goodness and righteous deeds.

For me, this tallit symbolizes the practice of inreach – the good and loving care we should give to one another. I want Beth Am to be a congregation defined by compassion. When you’ve met a person who embodies true compassion, you know it. When you’re in a place that embodies compassion, you can feel it. I want that feeling to be real and palpable within these walls.

I want us to honor our mothers and fathers and show kavod to the elders in our midst. Our congregation includes isolated older people, some of whom can’t drive at night or have no reliable transportation to synagogue. It is hard for them to call and ask for rides; most of them don’t do it. Our Yad L’Yad committee has worked to find rides for some people; it takes much effort to make each arrangement.

I’d like to do more to solve this problem, once and for all. In the years ahead I’d like to see us purchase or lease a van to transport older adults to services and other activities. It could also be used to help kids of working parents get to Hebrew school.

For those too frail to travel, we should find ways of broadcasting our worship services, and we should expand our current efforts to offer regular, personal visits by congregants to those who are homebound.

In past years, there was a neat division of labor between synagogues and other Jewish institutions. Synagogues offered religious school and religious services; Jewish family services offered counseling and psychological support. But we have learned that Jewish spiritual care means providing comfort and healing to those who suffer – and that is absolutely the holy work of the synagogue. I hope that Beth Am, partnering with other community organizations, will dramatically expand our inreach, bringing compassionate care to members in need – those who are going through bereavement, job loss, illness, divorce or depression, problems with their children.

This means mobilizing many congregants to extend a hand to others, or to be willing to let others extend a hand to them. Part of the challenge is educating our members to see the synagogue more broadly: as not just a place where your children get a Jewish education, but a place where you can find strength to face life’s challenges: through music, prayer and ritual, through sensitive pastoral counsel and peer support.

To be in a sacred community is to give when you are strong and to receive when life has knocked you down.  Beth Am can be a place that teaches us to do both beautifully. Here we can cultivate in ourselves a deeper generosity of spirit; here we plant abundant seeds of goodness in our children.

Here’s my third tallit – it’s my oldest one, and it shows a few signs of wear and tear. But I love everything about it. Its simple colors: kachol v’lavan, blue and white, the traditional colors of a prayer shawl, the colors of the flag of Israel . Its symbol, the Magen David, one of the oldest representations of Judaism. Its fringes, reminders of our sacred obligations as Jews.

To me this tallit symbolizes Jewish tradition and identity; the star of David a representation of our aspirations – two triangles interlinked, one pointing heavenward, the other towards the earth where we dwell. I’ve talked about outreach and I’ve talked about inreach – wearing this tallit I will speak about “upreach” – the inspiration that makes us want to go higher, and be better than we are.

I want us to be a congregation that is Jewishly dynamic, focused on moving every member forward from where they are right now. Imagine a synagogue in which you’re always looking for ways to climb up to the next step; progressing towards deeper learning, richer faith and spiritual development, greater commitment and practice.  In this place, we’re ambitious for our own growth; we’ve tasted something delicious and we’re always hungry for the next bite. Our Judaism is not fueled by habit, guilt or fear of anti-Semitism; we’re drawn forward by love and joy, motivated by curiosity and the search for meaning. We know that new discoveries will unfold every year of our life; we’re excited about making this lifelong journey with good companions who will be with us all the way.

I want, more than anything, for Beth Am to be a place where children feel that sense of “upreach” and develop a lifelong appetite for Jewish growth. A dynamic congregation that’s devoted to transforming its members’ lives can’t afford to lose any kids. We can’t have kids whose Beth Am experience is empty, irrelevant, painful or friendless. All of them should grow up here feeling safe and loved and happy to be in the Beth Am family.

We’ll need to invest in education programs that nourish kids of all ages, both intellectually and spiritually, structured to help all of our kids find friends. We’ll need to continue building a superb professional staff of clergy and educators; as well as a faculty of outstanding teachers and specialists in the Jewish arts, including music, film, writing and drama.

Because classroom learning isn’t necessarily the most powerful learning, we should expand our camping and retreat program, offering a range of Jewish outdoor adventures, as well as enrichment opportunities like a variety of Jewishly-themed trips for families and teens.

Accomplishing all this would keep us plenty busy for the next decade. But it wouldn’t be enough. We can control only so much of our kids’ environments through what we do at Beth Am because they spend only a handful of hours here during the week. To address our real education challenges we need to consider what happens in their most important learning environment: the home.

Many parents, through no fault of their own, cannot provide a rich Jewish home environment for their kids; they are disconnected from Jewish study, from ritual and tradition, from the worship life of our congregation. It’s no wonder that these children can’t see the point of what they’re being taught at Beth Am.

If we want our kids’ Jewish learning to stick, if we want their Judaism to have substance and staying power, we’re going to have to focus more intensively on educating parents – starting with parents of infants and toddlers and preschoolers. We’ll have to find meaningful new ways of engaging families in prayer – on Shabbat and the High Holy Days, at home as well as in synagogue. We’ll have to continue building a culture for our kids to grow into – one that values and practices Jewish learning for grownups; one in which parents and grandparents lovingly and joyfully share Jewish traditions with their kids. All Beth Am children should know what it feels like to be tenderly blessed by their parents on Friday night, to say the Sh’ma at bedtime with the people they love and trust the most.

A word about holidays. Most American Jews express their Judaism in sporadic, once a year events: they light Chanukah candles in December; they attend a Seder in April; maybe spend a few hours in synagogue in September. But I think the most powerful way to shape Jewish identity is to celebrate Shabbat. It’s the most important Jewish holy day because it comes every single week. It’s effective because it’s affective – done well, it reaches us on a deep emotional and sensory level.

So I hope that in the years ahead we’ll find compelling ways to keep Shabbat at the very center of our congregational life. How can we help all our members to find power and meaning in the worship service? How can we bring individuals and families together to share Friday night meals? How can we find a place for stillness and peace in a world so full of noise and demands? How can we personally, patiently help each busy, tired, overstressed family to discover the beauty of Shabbat?

Last Friday night I stood on the bima and I watched you, as I always do. I saw a woman whose elderly mother is sick, and not an easy person to deal with. This woman had worked hard all day at her job, and then she came to Beth Am to celebrate Shabbat. Her eyes were closed. She was singing her heart out. On her face was an expression of joy. When I see a sight like that, I know that what we have to offer is precious, irreplaceable, and transformational.

Three tallitot that express my dreams for this holy congregation.  Each one speaks to me about what a synagogue can be: open, compassionate, dynamic; a place that calls us to reach out and work for justice; to reach in and care for one another; to reach up and grow into a life of beauty and significance and joy. 

Of course we cannot know what the future will bring to Congregation Beth Am. Few of us could have predicted what’s happened in the last 9 months, and every year will have its challenges to meet. The task of a great synagogue is to respond to the events of its time while faithfully, enthusiastically pursuing its long- term vision.

“I have spread my dreams under your feet,” wrote William Butler Yeats.

“Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” 

It is hard, you know, to spread out your dreams before others, not knowing how they will react. But I offer my dreams to you today in gratitude and trust, in love and in hope.