Rabbi Shawn Israel Zevit: Article

Kehillot Kedoshot: Towards The Conscious Development of Sacred Community

- Rabbi Shawn Israel Zevit

“For One thing I ask,
For one thing I long
to build Your house
with my life”¹

In the fall of 1982, having been through a couple of years of shared living spaces, I had just rented my first “solo” apartment in mid-town Toronto, Canada, as I entered my last year of the theater program at York University. It was a move that filled me with both the excitement of independence and some anxiety. Having grown up in Winnipeg, in an extended family that valued tradition, song, multiple gatherings, I was quick to join the nearest Conservative synagogue. It was a place of familiarity to me, despite the 2,500 households that were also members.

I made quick friends with the young new assistant rabbi, Lawrence Troster, and in our first conversation we were off scheming about creative and family oriented Jewish programs to transform the shul. It was a homecoming and part of a spiritual rebirth for me after a ten year, post-bar mitzvah decade of absence from Jewish institutional life. Yet the journey has only begun, and over time I will discover that to truly stay creative and alive on the path of the soul is not to return to “home”, but rather to keep re-finding, redefining and refining home on different insights, new and old relationships, and the Divine constancy of change.

One year later, in 1983, I was invited by friends Shalom and Marcy to attend a monthly oneg Shabbat group that was meeting in someone’s home. The place was packed with infants, children and adults and the ma’ariv service was lead by a group member with everyone chiming in and owning the service in a way that I had not experienced in more formal prayer settings. It was joyous, celebratory and participatory. The pot-luck meal was terrific. The people were warm, learned, engaging and welcoming. Until that night I never realized that I associated one kind of Judaism with my family life and another with Synagogue life. I had found a middle ground, a spiritual hunger that I did not know I had until I experienced it and then felt its absence the next Shabbat. Within two years I was a founding member of an egalitarian havurah, leading services regularly and functioning as Chair for four years.

“We Jews who are still in the process of reclaiming our Judaism and returning to tradition in one way or another often think we do so as a result of our own individual odysseys, life experiences, and struggles that seem to us entirely private and idiosyncratic. But as we identify again with Judaism, we begin to find ourselves living richly in the context of the Jewish people, past, present, and future… Somewhere in the course of living in community, we come to see that the journey is not an isolated one any more.”²

A decade after, I began my studies for the rabbinate at RRC. Leaving a home I had known all my adult life, I packed my belongings in a u-haul and within 12 hours I arrived in Philadelphia to begin again. There was fear and exhilaration, but RRC was the only choice for me. The people I met in previous trips to Philadelphia seemed to share my longing for a communal model where the journey of the individual could join in prayer, mutual support and societal transformation along with a communal journey of greater possibilities. To take a page from Rabbis Staub and Alpert’s, “Exploring Judaism”:

“When Kaplan defined Judaism as the religion of ethical nationhood, he sought to express our conviction that the Jewish civilization is a means to greater ends-the fulfillment of the individual, the responsibility of individuals to treat others as reflections of the Divine image, and the responsibility of each community to seek global justice and peace amongst all communities. We need to do more than emphasize Jewish survival; we must also make Jewish civilization function in the service of these transcendent ends.”³

A fall of 1994 Utne Reader article on new thinking on community focused on what has come to be called “communitarianism”. The article states that at its simplest, communitarianism is a movement based on an effort to balance individual rights with community responsibilities. It is the valuing of both immanent experience and transcendent goals that attracted me to our movement and to the Reconstructionist rabbinate in particular. I have found Reconstructionist Judaism to be a response to the particular beauty that flowers as the Jewish people and to our deep knowing that there is a Universal Process that calls us into world community beyond parochial concerns. We also recognize that each of us has unique individual hopes, longings and potential. Respecting and nurturing these personal needs, while balancing a commitment to creating caring and spiritually rich communities is also a core value of our movement. If we deepen our connections to each other, we can see these changes as incredible opportunities for individual and communal spiritual development:

“The transition to moral adulthood illumines the communal reality of personal life. We discover who we are or can become through our own bonding with others. We dwell in a cosmos of interrelated, internally connected energies and processes, each event affecting and altering every other event, however slightly.”⁴

As with every growth spurt, there can be joy in new-found capabilities, independence and possibilities as well as distress around change, real or perceived loss of intimacy, and uncertainty about the future. What is true for the individual path is also true for the communal, and what drew me to this path and what sustains me in times of change, are the Jewish values, the emphasis on holiness in ethical action, and importance of democratic process that are among our defining features.

While we need to continuously look at what it means to take on mutual responsibility as members and clergy of faith communities, true democratic process does not always mean consensus at all costs. I have seen groups atrophy and self-destruct because of the unwillingness to make hard choices when the future of the community was at stake and no one being upset was held up as the core value. I have also been part of communities that motored ahead with quick growth and increased membership as the ultimate goal, only to fragment or implode because of lack of planning, ongoing communication between leadership and membership, and loss of a sense of mission or purpose.

Conflict is a natural process in any living relationship. Like personal and organizational development, the way we approach conflict, and the value system we uphold in keeping compassionately in connection with each other will have a great impact on how and whether differences are resolved. There are always growth pains. And I am not holding member units as the ultimate arbiter here. Again the way we make these decisions- valuing of our sacred texts and rich tradition in balance with the passions and insights of the time in which we live is one of our defining features. As someone who both attends and teaches at retreat centers, I would always encourage any serious “soul-journer” to keep their own personal spiritual practice and growth in view even as we reach out to those who could find a home at Dor Hadash. As Rabbi Rami Shapiro states in his book Minyan:

“If you are serious about your spiritual practice you will recognize community and synagogue to be a testing ground for your maturation. Can you maintain clarity of focus and gentleness of spirit in the face of political hassles and hostilities? It is a good measure of your spiritual development.”⁵

We all try to do a lot with a little. Most of us are trying to grow in the quiet of our own souls and in the loving connection with each other. The more we can reach out and reach in at the same time, the more we can mindfully keep steering a course into an exciting future as a community of communities, the more we will see our individual and collective faith strengthened and flourish.The potential has only begun to be realized.

“We can create communities of commitment. Becoming a Kehillah Kedoshah, a holy community is an aspiration that can deepen and brighten our lives. If we want greater meaning in…life; if we want it to provide the type of guidance that we know we really need; if we want to be attractive to future generations; if we want to be authentic in our own time and in the light of generations that have gone before us, then it is time to think about the steps we want to take on the journey toward holiness, and toward mutual commitment of community. Those are the echoes I hope we hear whenever we hear the extraordinary Biblical pronouncement, “You shall be holy for I your God am holy.”⁶

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NOTES
1. Ps 27, Adapted by Shawn Zevit, from “Heart & Soul” CD
2. Green, Arthur, Seek My Face, Speak My Name: A Contemporary Jewish Theology Jason Aaronson Inc., USA, 1992, p.140-1
3. Staub, Alpert, “Exploring Judaism” Reconstructionist Press, NY, 2000
4. Winter, Gibson, “Community and Spiritual Transformation” Crossroad Press, NY, 1989, p.36
5. Shapiro, Rabbi Rami, “Minyan” Bell Tower, NY, 1997 p.187
6. Teutsch, Dr. David, “Creating a Community of Commitment” Reconstructionism Today, Spring, 1996, www.jrf.org

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