Can You Be Too Comfortable?

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Yom Kippur Morning 5766 - Thursday, October 13, 2005

Some Protestant denominations do not allow their clergy to remain in place for 15 years. They are concerned that the clergy person will grow stale and be unable to inspire the congregation. They worry that the congregation will become too comfortable and complacent. An inner circle can be created around the congregation’s leadership, a circle of active and satisfied congregants who are sure that what they are doing is great, while the rest of the community remains passive, receiving with greater or lesser enthusiasm what others have planned. Sometimes the congregation becomes unable to see those who are not connecting or doesn’t realize the barriers that have been created for new members wanting to participate. Finally, over time unfulfilled expectations on both sides accumulate and can become a drag on any positive momentum.

These are real concerns. They are in part the story of the creation of our congregation 25 years ago and just as individuals tend to find ways to replay old tapes, institutions can do that as well. But there is another side to the story. There are benefits to continuity. Protestant Churches today are moving towards lengthening the service of their clergy. They recognize what is lost with each transition, and how long it takes to really create community. In a society where instant gratification is the norm, they value a model of commitment that continues over a long period of time, day in and day out.

Personally I find satisfaction in seeing the stories through, the troubled teens who right themselves, the marriages that do survive, and the individuals who show strength of character in extraordinarily difficult circumstances and become my models of resilience and character. Trust is sometimes built up only slowly over time and I feel I am sometimes more useful because I have been present consistently for many years. I have also gained a sense of perspective as I learn that the major, world crashing to an end, crisis of one year, is barely remembered ten years later. In a relatively transient community such as ours, I have something unique to offer by way of history and community memory, not only to our congregation but in local Jewish and interfaith circles as well.

But the downsides are real too. We work on them as an institution. We ask ourselves hard questions and try and make sure that those answering the questions are not the same old faces. We integrate new staff members and new lay leadership and hopefully listen to their new ideas. We watch how you vote with your feet. We listen to how you act and not just what you say. And in intimate one on one conversations, when our board and connectedness committee call every member of the congregation, we encourage talking about unfulfilled desires. Transforming vague resentments into clear and reasonable expectations of which one is aware can go a long way into improving relations.

Perhaps this challenge of staying fresh while staying put is not just an issue for our congregation but for each of us in other aspects of our lives as well. Some of us are new to the area, but a lot more of us have been here now for a while. Some of us are newlyweds but many of us have been married now for 10, 25, even 50 years. Some of us were once newly converted to Judaism, with passion and excitement about our new found religion. We came to services all the time, until the “real” Jews explained that’s not what Jews did. Now many of our members who adopted Judaism at some point in their lives, have been Jewish as long as they were previously members of their former religious faith and treat Judaism with the same comfortable disregard. For many joining Shir Hadash was part of a journey of self discovery or a return to Jewish roots from which we had been separated for years. Some of us remember the excitement of gaining Jewish skills as adults, learning Hebrew, getting comfortable with the service, chanting Torah for the first time. What happens when it is now the 20th time?

As relations with a spouse change over the years, with periods of closeness and distance, joy and maintenance, appreciation and neglect, so too our relationship with Judaism. Judaism is meant to be a lifetime vocation, with repeating weekly and yearly cycles, but we are practicing Judaism in a generation, where “been there, done that” is the ultimate turn off.

Early this summer in preparing for a field trip to the former chicken farming community of Petaluma, I read about that small Jewish community where certain community celebrations were repeated in the same way for almost 50 years. That is not the world we live in today. There is little in our life that continues with that kind of tradition. How do we then keep our long term commitments alive?

Marriages and other long term committed relationships are sometimes renewed spontaneously, but more often the stresses and repetitiveness of daily life take their toll. We get into bad habits, or just take things for granted. We carry disappointments about expectations which we wanted our partner to fulfill, but have not made the effort to examine these expectations realistically or to express them to our partner. We get busy attending to everything else in our lives, except each other. Marriage renewal programs succeed in part just because they involve couples who value their relationship enough to focus on it for some period of time. Time is a very valuable commodity, and when we invest it in another person we often see great results. Marriage renewal also works when couples begin to do new things and not merely to continue down well worn paths.

The marriage metaphor as a description of the relationship between God and the Jewish people is part of our Jewish tradition, from Lecha Dodi on Friday nights to the prophets railings throughout our Haftarot. Perhaps it can be a helpful metaphor for some, in thinking about our personal relationship with Judaism as well. If our relationship with Judaism has gotten a little stale, become a bit humdrum, then we might want to examine the causes as we would in any couple’s relationship. Are there unresolved conflicts, have we gotten into bad habits, are the basic issues of caring and commitment, integrity and acceptance worked out? Marriages continue but do not remain the same. What needs to change for our relationship with Judaism to be renewed? Judaism has changed again and again through its history and Reform Judaism has highlighted this ability to adapt as the source of our survival. Maybe for Judaism to flourish in our lives and in our families, it is time to refresh Shabbat and festivals, or try new forms of learning and doing.

Boredom is the great unspoken challenge to organized Jewish life today, but it is not a new challenge. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel spoke about it often in describing American Jewish life in the post World War II period. In one sermon he related it to the ancient Israelites constant grumbling during the desert years. Rabbi Heschel pointed out that one of the most important components of happiness is being really needed, and the Israelites in the desert had everything supplied for them. God provided manah from heaven, and the cloud and pillar of fire to lead them. Their shoes never needed mending, their clothes didn’t wear out, and Moses took care of all their disputes. The weekly Torah portions all through the book of Numbers, indicate how negative this situation was. Grumbling and complaining, moaning and groaning, the Israelites slowly made their way through the desert.

But there was a time in their wanderings when the Israelites were happier, when there was no evidence of grumbling. That was when the Israelites were involved in building the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary in the desert. For four entire weekly Torah portions, 12 chapters in their entirety, there is no mention of boredom or complaint but only enthusiastic support. Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson attributes the difference to the Israelites being at that point the creators of their own Judaism, rather than the recipients of something prepared for them.

Jewish clergy are meant to be teachers, those who enable others in their learning, and not priests, those who do religious acts for the community. If we are your surrogate expression of Judaism, I fear that your Jewish life will be unsatisfying. When the stereotypical husband of past generations sent his secretary to shop for the anniversary gift to his wife, it was not just the wife who was shortchanged. The husband too found his relationship less satisfying than if he had found some way of recognizing this anniversary himself.

For some members of our congregation the expansion of our Social Action committee into Social Justice has provided the opportunity for doing that has renewed their Jewish lives. There is excitement in planning a project for our congregation, and in joining in coalition with 19 other non-Jewish congregations, many of which have had little previous contact with the Jewish community. This spring we will host a Health Fair with Most Holy Trinity Church on the East Side. The leadership of the church has identified health screenings and other services that are desperately needed in their community. With the resources of our members and our contacts with a broad array of organizations we can bring them something truly worthwhile, but it will take the skills and efforts of hundred of people to make this event a success. Perhaps this is the experience that will light a spark in your heart for the work of tikkun olam.

Last fall we hosted a small group of leaders from the Soviet Union. Everyone who was involved in the project, hosting and driving, orienting and training, was renewed in seeing how precious what we offered was to these young Jews building Jewish life in the outposts of Russian, Lithuania and the Ukraine. We have similar ties to the growing Reform movement in Israel and similar opportunities to make a difference. Even doing something small like registering and voting in the WZO elections, makes you an activist, someone whose actions help promote not only Reform Judaism, but the values of democracy, tolerance and respect for civil liberties. It has been a significant year for Israel, with the disengagement from Gaza, the opportunities which have followed the death of Arafat, and the formation of a new centrist consensus. Visiting Israel, speaking out for Israel, supporting your own vision of what the Jewish state should be, is a way of being a player rather than a spectator in the history of our people. Fulfilling the mitzvah of klal yisrael, of Jewish peoplehood can be aggravating and frustrating, but if you are engaged in efforts that you have chosen, it will not be boring.

Many of our members have had the opportunity this spring and summer to write a letter in our new Torah scroll. I hope it has been a meaningful and special moment for each of you. You probably noticed as you came up close to the scroll that each letter is not written freehand, but rather the Sofer prepares and etches the outline of the letter. Our opportunity is to fill in the black ink that creates the letter in its fullness. Clearly the scribe could write the Torah on his own without our help. But if we did it that way, then our new Torah would mean much less to us as a community.

Your clergy and Temple leadership are glad to provide the parchment and the quill. Drawing on the resources of our Jewish heritage, we can etch the shape of the letters. But you must step forward to fill in the ink. Like the letters of our new Torah, your experience of Judaism will be full of life because of what you invested in it, with your own hands. In the year to come we hope you will feel welcome and at home at Shir Hadash, but not so overly comfortable and taken care of as to remain passive on your own life’s Jewish journey.