February 22nd, 2024

One of the key ideas from the parts of the Torah we read over these weeks is the message that a community is greater than the sum of its parts. Over the course of the final five parshiyot of the book of Shemot, we read, in exhaustive detail, of the ingredients and procedures for building and maintaining the Mishkan. On a basic level, the Mishkan wouldn’t be complete or fully functional without any one of those pieces –  so one could say that the community is exactly the sum of its parts. But when those parts come together in the way they’re intended to, the magic happens and something holy is brought into the world, making the Mishkan – and any sacred community – so much more than just the conglomerate of things that went into building it. 

As we well know, so much can happen to a community to compromise that magic. Our community has been weathering such a challenging period and we’ve been working to find opportunities to bring us back together, reconnect us as individuals and as a larger group. The first step to beginning this work is creating spaces for really and truly listening to each other. 

This past week, we were fortunate to welcome Daniel Langenthal, a community consultant and educator from the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, to help us take the first steps on this journey. Starting with a smaller group, we spent an evening working on attuning our listening skills. We began by singing together, each of us spending some time contributing to the music in the room and some time taking a step back to listen to each other’s voices. The depth and connection that emerged from that experience were palpable. 

We then spent time looking inward, exploring our own responses to conflicts we’ve individually experienced and thinking deeply about the perspectives of the others with whom we’ve had discord. We turned next to each other, sharing our feelings about the challenges in our community, aiming to speak from our own experiences and feelings rather than rehashing what had already happened. 

We learned a number of important lessons from this first conversation:

• Speaking to our own feelings is hard! When we’ve gone through something difficult, it’s natural to focus on what happened, rather than how we feel. But what helps (re)build connections with each other is the empathy that we engage when we hear how someone else is feeling.
  
• We need more opportunities to connect with each other in this way. Our conversation with Daniel Langenthal was just a beginning and we’re planning on holding listening circles, in both small- and large-group settings over the coming months. Please keep an eye out over the next few weeks for announcements of those upcoming conversations - and please join us!
  
• We care about each other deeply. Our community is so special because of the multi-layered relationships we have with each other. In our post-pandemic world, we haven’t entirely reestablished all the ways we’ve enjoyed being with each other outside of services. We’re beginning to explore opportunities to bring us closer together in other settings and at other times. If you have ideas about this or want to help us brainstorm and plan, please get in touch!
  

During this time of sacred building in the Torah, I’m grateful to be living that out in the work we do together. I hope you’ll join me in it.

​Shabbat shalom.