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A
State of the Art Congregation
Shabbat
Toldot 5766 Sermon
December 2, 2005
Rabbi
Samuel M. Cohon
Our own Reform movement gathers every two years for a
huge conference, called the biennial convention of the Union for Reform
Judaism--or, for short, the URJ Biennial.
It is an exercise in community on a national, even a bit of a global
scale, and includes most of the important lay leaders in our movement, its
best-known professionals, a huge cadre of local volunteers, vendors,
musicians, artists, presenters, famous speakers, students, youth groups, Women
of Reform Judaism leaders, and a whole host of other Reform and other Jewish
representatives. If you have been
involved in the movement at all and you stand in the main entry area of the
conference you will, in a short period of time, meet literally hundreds of
people you know.
The recent URJ Biennial in Houston two weeks ago was, I
believe, my sixth biennial convention, and yet another great experience in
Reform community. The general
experience of the conference changes over time: I have discovered as I become
a Reform movement veteran that I attend different sessions than I used to, and
that I see far more people I know each time.
In fact, on the shuttle bus from the airport I discovered that I knew
all but one of my nine fellow passengers, some of them quite well.
It becomes a kind of enormous family reunion, 4500 of your closest
co-workers and friends, all engaged in similar kinds of work for the sake of
furthering liberal Judaism in America and abroad.
There is actually a certain sense of time travel for me
in these conferences, and an affirmation of Einstein's understanding the time
and space are purely relative. In
one ten minute period of time on the first full day of the conference I saw
friends and relatives I had not seen in 14 years, seven years, and four years--and
met the two very young children of a classmate who had not existed at all at
the last biennial. At times you
feel as though your life is whirling before you, not as you approach death,
but simply because you are standing in the lobby of the convention hotel.
An amazing experience only reproducible, on rare occasions, in
Jerusalem.
As I participated in this grand reunion I could not help
but remember that the first national biennial convention I attended was held
in 1989 in New Orleans, Louisiana... and reflect on the fact that much of the
fun and history and experience of that marvelous city had been either washed
away or damaged extensively last summer.
I talked with a friend from my seminary days in Cincinnati, Rabbi Andy
Busch, who shared many history and literature classes with me--including one
reading course which consisted of just the two of us and our professor.
Andy had taken a new position in July as the rabbi of the historic
Touro Synagogue in New Orleans--and ended up meeting most of his congregation
not at High Holy Day services in the national historic register temple
building but as evacuees in Houston. His tale of his experiences during and after Hurricane
Katrina certainly makes our own congregational trials seem trivial in
comparison. And his concerns for
the future of this historic Jewish community as it rebuilds and seeks
financial support from a reduced and newly impoverished Jewish community
struck a central chord of response.
Rabbi Busch will be a guest on our Too Jewish Radio Show
in early January, but if you would like to assist his congregation, please
speak to me soon.
I hope that our congregation will come forward and
support the Reform movements SOS New Orleans campaign to continue the
remarkable way the URJ and our congregations and members have provided the
entire budgets of the Louisiana synagogues during this time of acute need.
While many of the congregants of the New Orleans synagogues remain in Houston,
awaiting return to the Crescent City, there is still a serious need to assist
them, and to stand in solidarity and open our hearts and our wallets for them.
New Orleans was not the only Louisiana city in which
Reform congregations sustained serious damage; my classmate Rabbi Stan Zamek's
temple in Baton Rouge lost its roof in the later storms, which the insurance
company will not cover. They were
going around the biennial seeking assistance to rebuild their structure.
Here, too, support is needed; and the remarkable community of Reform
Jews can help to make that a reality.
The biennial is many things, but perhaps most of all it
is a magnificent opportunity to find out just what is going on in the Reform
movement, and to gauge in what areas our own Temple Emanu-El is leading and
where we are lagging.
Our delegation at the biennial included eight temple
members and staff, quite a fine showing for a congregation of 800 families, as
we are. I believe that we learned
that in many areas we are quite clearly leaders within the movement.
That fact was never more clearly displayed than during the Presidential
Sermon by Rabbi Eric Yoffie on Saturday morning two weeks ago.
First, I must explain a bit about Shabbat services at the
Biennial. The joy of sharing
prayer with 4500 people at the same time--kind of a mega-shul writ large--is
awesome, of course, and the fact that musically this biennial used a complete
band--nearly an orchestra--for the largest services, as well as a huge choir,
was a wonderful endorsement of the commitment we make to a rich and varied
music program here at Temple Emanu-El. Second,
the use of the new pilot prayerbook that we are committed to as a
congregation, Mishkan Tefilah, in its latest installment included a great deal
of Hebrew prayer, sung and chanted, very much the direction we have taken over
the past six and half years. While
the tempos used--that is the speed with which the music was sung and
played--were much slower than our own more active pace of music, the feel of
services had many other similarities to our own.
On the other hand, we do not use jumbotrons during
Shabbat services--yet.
The turn toward tradition in the Reform movement that
began in my grandfather's time and in which my family has played a long and
active part clearly continues unabated. Torah
is chanted--and during this conference projected on giant screens as it is
chanted--and most congregants wear yarmulkes and talisses.
This is clearly not your grandparent's Classical Reform service.
Again we are at the cutting edge of these trends.
In addition, the Houston conference reflected the variety of prayer
services that we have already made a central part of our worship life,
although we are actually doing
some kinds of services--our Kabbalistic Service, for example, and our Simply
Shabbat Outreach Service--that others haven't incorporated yet.
Actually, the hardest kind of worship service to find at
the Biennial was the "regular" Gates of Prayer Shabbat service; I
don't believe there was one. Reform,
as Rabbi Larry Hoffman has said, is a verb, and Reform Judaism is by its
nature a changing organism, more so now, perhaps, than ever.
A key element of Rabbi Yoffie's State of the Union
address--which ran an hour and fifteen minutes at the end of a three hour
Shabbat morning service marathon, by the way; and you thought our rabbi's
sermons were long? Ha! we were ready to blow shofar at the end of that sermon--a key
part of his excellent talk spoke to the issue of conversions, and our need as
a movement to be more proactive in encouraging non-Jewish spouses and those
who attend our services who are not Jewish to consider conversion.
Rabbi Yoffie did not speak of proselytizing or walking the streets
seeking converts, but simply of inviting those who are interested and
connected to enter our community as Jews.
As you may know, our own path here, by intention or by
the unseen direction of beshert, God's
hand, led us last year to complete 30 conversions at Temple Emanu-El, with
many more in process. While this
is a small number compared to a weekend at some of the harder core evangelical
churches, I am sure, it is also a very large number for any liberal synagogue
in America, and is a rather remarkable increase over the two or three
conversions I completed my first year as the senior rabbi here at Temple
Emanu-El. We have found that those who choose Judaism today are motivated,
energized, and committed to our people and religion, and that they often bring
attitudes and ideas that we need and use.
Our own congregation's support for our work in this area is notable,
and not typical yet nationally.
Again, it was not only reassuring but also affirming to
know that we are ahead of the curve on this important part of the Reform
movement's agenda; it was also good to hear Rabbi Yoffie, with whom I usually
agree, speaking out passionately about the Outreach program of our movement,
which he has not always supported administratively.
There are many famous speakers at each of these biennial
conventions; when Madeline Albright spoke she noted that she was uniquely
qualified to address a religious gathering on the complexities of faith, as
she had been "raised a Catholic, married and Episcopalian--and found out
she was a Jew." Perhaps
that’s the new face of Reform Judaism in the 21st century...
Rabbi Yoffie's emphasis on Adult Education is heartening
as well, and our own congregation's tremendous Adult Education Academy
preceded the national program, and now includes well over a thousand
registered students annually in over 30 courses; it is, again, an affirmation
to know that we are deeply committed to an area of focus that has become
central for our movement as well.
There were many other prominent speakers at the URJ
Biennial, among them Robert Reich and Joseph Telushkin.
Some were much better than expected, like Telushkin; some were as good
as expected; some perhaps less inspiring than we might have hoped. But all
contributed to the general sense that we were sampling the most interesting,
relevant ideas and trends in the Jewish world today, and that it is an
exciting, wonderful, energized time to be Reform Jews.
I had the opportunity during Shabbat afternoon to study
with a very interesting and unusual teacher, Roger Kamenets, author the book
The Jew in the Lotus, a poet and a the founder of the Judaic Studies
Department at Louisiana State University, which means he has had quite a year
of dislocation. Of late, Roger
Kamenets has gotten into dreams, working with them, studying them, and helping
others to explore their own dreams, all in preparation for a book he is
writing on the subject.
He spoke beautifully and whimsically about dreams in the
Hebrew Bible, about dreams persistence and meaning. And as we joined together over this conference, I was struck
by the fact that we were, in essence, dreaming together, and that this was a
dream that we could make real through our own active involvement as Reform
Jews.
So may it be for us, and may the inspiration of these
gatherings, and the direction of our own congregation life, continue to be
towards goodness and blessing.
Shabbat Shalom.
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