Learning and Community: Jewish Supplementary Schools in the Twenty-First Century

4 | Belonging Before Belief

Chapter 4 Belonging Before Belief Harold Wechsler with Cyd Beth Weissman How good it is for friends to sit together! —Song sung by pre-K students sitting in a circle. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is For brethren to dwell together in unity! —Psalm 1331 If this Reconstructionist synagogue ever adopted an anthem, it would be Henai Matov. The song emanates from boom boxes in classrooms; the cantor and the congregation sing it in services; congregation members hum it in the halls. Psalm 133 represents the synagogue’s credo and the essential value of Reconstructionist Judaism: Belonging to a community comes before all beliefs save for a belief in belonging. Belonging comes before behavior . Reconstructionists eschew supernaturalism and reject the possibility of divine intervention in the laws of the physical sciences. Teachers and students in this naturalistic movement frequently discuss the nature of God. But belief in God is neither necessary nor sufficient to belong to this branch of Judaism. Enter the synagogue office. On the counter is an advertisement for Camp jrf, the Reconstructionist summer camp founded in 2002. The ad shows a man rowing a canoe. Look closely and it’s Mordecai Kaplan’s head superimposed on the rower. “Kappy” is more than superimposed at this synagogue; he is ever-present. And so are some of his key precepts: belonging before belief; the past gets a vote, not a veto; and democratize the Jewish community. A meaningful Jewish life in a rapidly changing America requires a communal form of Judaism; it may entail “reconstructing ” traditions and practices inherited from different times and cultural conditions—even from Kaplan’s formulations—to meet changed living conditions. We’re only two generations from the beginning of Reconstruction, but as one would suspect in a religious movement that attempts to balance tra113 ❖ Job Name: 560670 PDF Page: txt_560670.p131.pdf denisek dition and innovation, the current leaders are not dogmatic followers of Kaplan. “We have long passed the time when the writings of the charismatic founder and the early disciples were considered definitive,” writes one of Reconstruction’s current leaders.2 Policies and practices vary considerably among Reconstructionist rabbis, and movement leaders see these variations as inevitable, even desirable. “Our liberal predilection towards being nonjudgmental coupled with our principled preference for pluralism ,” one leader writes, “suggests we are unlikely to coerce compliance.”3 But Reconstructionist thinkers, then and now, promote “community”— a word with special meaning. “A community implies sharing of ideas, purposes , thoughts, and emotions,” wrote Gratz College professor and cultural Zionist William Chomsky in the 1930s. But what should the community share? The community, he continued, “must be based on common memories, common experiences, common beliefs and practices, common aims and aspirations; as well as common means of sharing all these, such as language, art, and music.” Fraternal defense and charitable goals did not make a community. Neither did “worshipping together under the guidance of a minister or rabbi, who is charged with dispensing sacred knowledge and divine grace.” Community, Chomsky concluded, involved sharing, resulting in enriched lives for all members.4 Staff members understand the key role of the school and the synagogue in the Reconstructionist movement, though they also understand that the world of their members differs greatly from the time when many Jews suburbanized after World War II. The synagogue is about to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. One of the movement’s founders—a close relative of Kaplan ’s—was a rabbi here. The synagogue has no written history, but the rabbis and key laity know the congregation’s important historical moments . During the 1980s, the synagogue was located in a neighboring suburb , and members celebrated the High Holy Days in a nearby Unitarian church. The congregation, already thinking about a move, accepted an offer to purchase the church building at a cheap price when the Unitarians relocated to larger quarters. Membership could and did increase from 150 to 350 families after that move. Key staff members are part of this history, sharing personal as well as professional ties to the school and congregation . One oft-cited example: Rabbi Abby, the school’s director, celebrated her Bat Mitzvah here; she graduated from the school as a member of a class of six. Her young children now attend many school programs, and she participates as a parent in Gan Shalom, the synagogue’s cooperative nursery school. 114 Suburban Congregational Schools Job Name: 560670 PDF Page: txt_560670.p132.pdf denisek [18.191.84.32] Project MUSE (2024...