Dear Friends:
My second job after rabbinical school was at a small Conservative-affiliated synagogue in an unremarkable suburb of southwest Philadelphia, where Jews were certainly in the minority. Consisting of 132 membership units, it was a struggling congregation whose treasurer, the most noble and honest of men, who was the official synagogue worrier. I’m sure that it was, at least in part, its precarious financial situation that helped me secure the position. My being a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the shul could pay me significantly less than the standard salary of even a newly minted graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary.
But that consideration quickly became secondary. You see, it didn’t take long for us – the congregation and me – to fall in love with one another. I was recovering from a difficult professional situation that left me thinking about social work school, and they were dealing with the fallout from a series of rabbis who loved them not. More significantly, they were in a rut, Jewishly speaking, and although they were suspicious of Reconstructionist Judaism, they were willing to engage in conversation about its philosophy and reap the benefits of its application, especially when it came to ritual practice and services. I saw myself in the role of opening the Jewish world to them by including poetry and the arts in their lives. I published a weekly Friday night reading supplement, which culminated in my first supplements for High Holidays. I brought their children along for the ride, too. One of my many responsibilities in what was essentially a one-man show was as school director, and b’nei mitsvah classroom teacher and tutor. I used the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Ben Franklin Institute as destinations for my students and their parents for treasure hunts and for teaching midrash, thereby demonstrating that Judaism is truly a civilization.
While I broadened their Jewish canvas, they showed what it truly means to live in two civilizations. In the synagogue and in their homes, they lived their lives as American Jews, but in the public sphere, they lived as Jewish Americans, engaging completely in the ‘civil religion’ of our Country. As scout masters and volunteer firefighters, as proud veterans and members of the Rotary and Kiwanis Club, they marched in parades that marked our Nation’s holidays. Memorial Day was observed as America’s Yom HaZikaron, the Fourth of July as USA’s Pesah, and Election Day as Yom Kippur, a secular day of judgment. Thanksgiving was designated as a day of communal gathering and a time to address the needs of the economically challenged among us.
I am sure that I am romanticizing the memory of all this, observing it through a fifty-year-old lens. But memories can be thought of as prayers, both of which are aspirational. To remember a community as one that measured its spirit by primordial values of decency, kindness, and concern, which are common in all religious traditions, is to inspire us to reject the egoism associated with triumphant nationalism with a vision of a just and righteous society. May such come to pass speedily in our day.
With hope and love,
Lee
