Our congregation is at a crossroad. It is not our first and will certainly not be our last, but we have a fork in the road and have to decide which way to go. Fortunately for us, many other synagogues in the Reform movement are at the same crossroad and the URJ president, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, has put a big flashing arrow in the road to guide us in our path.
Shabbat morning services in our congregation has become one of two things: an intimate gathering of a few congregants led by Rabbi Mills and Debbie Rogers, who have put a lot of time preparing for the day or a celebration of a Bar/Bat mitzvah where the congregation is filled with friends and family of the celebrant who are unknown to the rest of us.
Rabbi Yoffie put it this way in his speech given at the URJ biennial this past December. “ Bar Mitzvah is the occasion, symbolically at least, when a young person joins an adult community of Jews. But you cannot join what does not exist. A regular community of worshippers, who would be best suited to mentor the child, is not even present. At the average bar mitzvah what you almost always get is a one-time assemblage of well-wishers with nothing in common but an invitation. And worst of all: Absent a knowledgeable congregation, worship of God gives way to worship of the child and self-serving worship is a contradiction in terms.”
A Bar or Bat Mitzvah celebration should be celebrated with not only our extended family and friends, but our Kol Chadash family. When a child becomes a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, how special it is for him or her to be surrounded by the congregational family that has watched him or her grow and mature. But Shabbat mornings are not just about Bar or Bat Mitzvah celebrations. In our hectic lives, we are always moving and running. Shabbat is to be our day of rest. It is beautiful on Saturday morning to get together and say prayers that are special to this time. We have added a Torah study as well. Many of us learned Torah as a child, if at all. To look at it from an adult perspective is a whole new experience. This past Shabbat’s discussion centered around the Torah’s significant emphasis on Shabbat. Did you know that it was God’s first commandment to the Jews? I didn’t. Our next few discussions will center on more modern interpretations of observing Shabbat.
If all of our members tried to make a few more of our Shabbat morning services that are every fourth Saturday of the month at 10:30 a.m., we can start building a foundation that will become as meaningful as our Friday night services have come to be. Let’s follow the path that the URJ has lit for us and include one Saturday morning a month as a time for congregational worship.
