Powers of Ten
Home late tonight from a meeting at the Shul with the Ritual Committee, charged with the task of working in tandem with the clergy (rabbis and cantor) to oversee and make recommendations on the “ritual life” of the congregation. In Beth Elohim, that business is usually about Shabbat and High Holy Days Services and then secondarily about other ritual aspects of the synagogue.
I noticed something tonight that is worth reporting.
In our day, we are reading more and more about the desire for community among the unaffiliated; we’re reading about new communities and configurations and how the current generation finds community in non-traditional ways. Various studies have been commissioned to and publicized to shed light on these manifestations of community building in order to help fuel some new strategic thinking in Jewish life about reaching new people.
Tonight I heard about that same desire for community among the 60 and above crowd, whose perception is that the younger generation is all about individuality and individual expression, ideas that seem, on the surface, to be the very antithesis of community.
Could it be, I wonder, that each “community” seeks community while erroneously thinking the other “community” is not really interested in community?
What would happen if you brought together representatives of all these generations and they realize that there are more shared goals than people currently realize? Would new seas part and the Jewish people find yet another opportunity for a small act of redemption?
One of the lessons I’m learning by listening and watching the process of how Jews make community is that we all bring so many perceptions of what community is to the table with the sometimes incorrect assumption that everyone else, because there’s a shared purpose, have a shared assumption.
Not so.
But what is shared is the desire for community. If you’re 75 or 65 or 55 or 45 or 35 or 25, you crave community. The great surprise, the hidden blessing waiting to be revealed, may be in discovering that a unified community is not everyone doing the same thing but everyone making community in a broader context of community.
It’s like that great film that Charles and Ray Eames made about shifting perspectives on the Earth in Powers of Ten. From one angle, you can only see the immediate of what’s before you; but when you pull the camera back far enough, perspective changes and you see new definitions of Unity of Design and Purpose never before considered.
The fun in serving this community as their rabbi is, in part, bringing a new perspective to a well-honed challenge; and hopefully, helping people free themselves to see things in new ways while preserving the values they hold most dear.
And remember: the ultimate Powers of Ten is found in the ten it takes to make a minyan.
April 26th, 2006 at 7:58 pm
Would it be such a shock if the yearning for Jewish community in the 35-and-under crowd was another manifestation of our navel-gazing culture? I’m glad someone thought to ask the old folks!
April 26th, 2006 at 8:02 pm
Are you saying that to desire community (to be among like-minded or like-valued people) is another manifestation of naval gazing? If so, a daring maneuver! Say more.
April 26th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
Andy writes:
“What would happen if you brought together representatives of all these generations and they realize that there are more shared goals than people currently realize? Would new seas part and the Jewish people find yet another opportunity for a small act of redemption?”
Hazon, founded by Nigel Savage, and its Jewish Enviromental Bike Rides (both in NY and Israel) is an amazing example of intergenerational community.
Though temporary, the shared communal experience of the Ride is intense and by most reports enables a deeply moving and powerful experience, Jewishly and otherwise, for the participants….whatever their age…from 10 to 70+.
You might see if you can get Nigel to share his thoughts.
Love your blog, btw. (Shouldn’t have “buried the lead,” but there it is.)
With thanks,
Michael
April 26th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
No question Nigel is onto it with the Rides, which as you point out, are temporary. The question becomes for all these so called Emergents and their minyans and gatherings, can they go “cross-generational?” It is a deep concern of the older generation that feels the community is becoming factionalized. At the same time, can the older generation create open institutions that welcome a younger generation and its way of doing things. This is the challenge that those of us wrestling with the idea of the Synagogue are going to be learning about for the next few decades.
May 2nd, 2006 at 8:52 pm
If it were truly a “deep concern of the older generation”, then they would have done something a long time ago to create truly multigenerational communities (rather than communities that include only parents, children, and senior citizens). Jews in their 20s and 30s who don’t have children haven’t been joining synagogues for decades. This isn’t a new thing, and certainly wasn’t caused by the new independent minyanim. But all along, the older generation simply assumed that we weren’t interested in Judaism. Now we finally create meaningful communities for ourselves, and they realize that we are interested in deep involvement with Judaism (which we can’t find in synagogues), so they blame us for making the community “factionalized”. The blame lies with the institutions that separated themselves from us long ago, not the other way around.
See “Profile of an ‘Unaffiliated’ Jew”.
May 3rd, 2006 at 4:29 am
I don’t necessarily disagree, BZ. I’m trying to articulate the concern that I think is very real and the challenge that comes with that concern. The reckoning that I am witnessing among those in the “older” generation (and it’s never as old as we think) is testing themselves to see if they have the flexibility to truly deal with change.
The independendent minyanim don’t represent factionalization as much as they represent change, which we all know, has been far more a constant in Jewish life than many leaders care to allow.
One more thing: by the same token, “unaffiliated” is also here a loaded and in some ways meaningless term. Unaffiliated from what? Much evidence points to an equally strong trend pushing us to rethink that term as well.
Keep doing your thing–the future is in your hands.