Thoughts on Affiliation for Kolot Chayeinu, part 2
Rabbi Ellen Lippmann
November 3, 2007 / 22 Heshvan 5768
I spoke 3 weeks ago about our primary question, the question I urged each of you to ask yourselves: What do I want for Kolot Chayeinu in the future? And how does affiliating, from what I have read or heard, help or hinder my vision?
I also asked during the Shabbat Café discussion what you thought the Jewish world would look like in future: If affiliation helps us connect to the larger Jewish world, what does that world look like?
Finally, I am interested in what it means to be part of a movement, a denomination if you will: What are our responsibilities, our roles?
Today I want to talk about those three questions.
First, let me say what I want for Kolot Chayeinu in the future: As so often, the joining of our Torah portion with this talk does not seem coincidental. In Chayei Sarah, Sarah dies and everything else is future: Abraham buys her burial plot in Hebron, sends for a wife for Isaac, Rebecca joins the family and gets pregnant with twins. I always want to second guess this portion: What if Abraham had not bought a plot or not bought it in Hebron? What if Rebecca had refused to come meet Isaac? What if Isaac had not fallen in love with her?
We can’t second guess the future. We can only envision and hope and pray and work hard to make our vision a reality, as we at Kolot Chayeinu have been doing since we began. We are the future some of us envisioned in 1993. Sort of. Life intervenes in envisioning, and the future comprises vision and real life.
So what do I envision now? What do I hope and want for Kolot? First, I want it to grow. That means in numbers, enough to be stable and hold itself up. Growth also means in stature: I want Kolot to continue to be a community known for its action for justice and its lively, beautiful, meaningful prayer and its creative, engaging learning, and for the stands it takes.
I want a space of our own, even one we share, that we have greater control over, and can decide to have Sunday meetings and last minute evening classes and room for school that really works and outdoor space for a sukkah and a picnic and howling at the moon when it is full—that is a Jewish custom, by the way, I am not kidding.
I want administrative structure that takes the burden off me and off all of you who do the jobs that hold this place up. We will always need to pull together, but an Executive Director sure would help. I want a web site that grows as we grow, and adult learning that matters a lot, and holiday celebrations that fit us now and in future and the money to pay a band and a major speaker and competitive salaries.
I want our kids to go to Jewish summer camps and learn how Shabbat can be and how to sing the blessings after eating while banging on tables and I want them and everyone to go to Israel as some of us just did, seeing inspirational work for justice that made me able to love the place again.
I want to join with other Jews sometimes and Muslims sometimes and other Brooklynites sometimes and other Americans sometimes and I want Kolot’s door always to be open to anyone who wants what we are having. I want what we are having to grow and change, to learn new music and new skills and new teachings and new ways to have fun and to be serious.
I want us to sing Shalom Haverim every time we meet or learn together, even when no one in the room can sing and we are sick to death of the song, because I want our connection to one another as members to be stronger than whether any one person is right or has the last word or votes a different way about affiliation.
I want us to mark the moments of each other’s lives and to hear and remember each other’s stories and I want us to have a café in that new space where we can do just that.
Question 2: Three weeks ago I asked us each to think about the future of the Jewish world as we think about Kolot’s future. When we speak about joining the Jewish world, what Jewish world might we be joining? Dr/Rabbi Judith Hauptman said a few years ago that there are two segments of the Jewish world: those who pray with a mehitzah and those who don’t. That, she thought, was the only distinction that mattered. Very often these days I think the only distinction that seems to matter is between those Jews who love Israel unconditionally and defensively and those who love it and see fit to criticize it and work to change it .
The liberal movements we might join are very similar, after all, though with some significant differences that can affect us if we join. Do we want a movement that is big or small? Do we want to help grow the small or help change the big? Is the future of the Jewish world denominational or post-denominational, as so many successful communities of today would have us think? Who do we want to learn prayer from? Who do we want to learn about justice from? Who might come help us strengthen our infrastructure? Who offers resources for our kids? Where would we have the most fun? Where would we have the most influence?
We have a lot of Reform and Conservative synagogues in our part of Brooklyn, and more recently some Orthodox ones. No Reconstructionist one and no unaffiliated one. Does that matter?
Question 3: When you think about affiliating, do you picture yourself getting involved? Going to conferences, meeting with others who do the work you do in their congregations, taking on a decision-making role? One thing I do think is that affiliation will only mean something if people from Kolot, including but not limited to me, get involved. Otherwise, why join? We have to be willing to give as well as get, to be part of that movement, to be able to have it influence us and teach us. Of course, I think we have to do that in any case: Jump in with both feet to whatever action or learning or prayer we engage in, whatever issues we grapple with, whatever group we connect to. If we think we can join a movement and have it become part of Kolot or vice versa, just by osmosis, we are mistaken.
So let me return now to the three questions I began with, because once again I turn them back to you:
- What do I want for the future of Kolot and how does affiliation help or hinder that?
- What do I think the Jewish world of the future will look like?
- What do I imagine doing in any movement we affiliate with, or going forward without affiliating? What responsibility do I take for the future of Kolot Chayeinu?
