Emerging Sacred Communities

I just returned from an unusual gathering in New York City of a "Working Group of Jewish Emerging Sacred Communities". I was invited to participate by the organizers of the meeting, Synagogue 3000, a think tank based in Los Angeles dedicated to synagogue transformation. The staff at Synagogue 3K has followed the emergence of Panim Hadashot with great interest and have sought my participation in two meetings to share ideas and to bring together Jewish spiritual innovators across the country. I am honored to have been invited. I would like to share a bit of what I learned.

Ron Wolfson, the director of Synagogue 3000, offers this as their organizing principle: "The future of the Jewish community in America is directly connected to the effectiveness of synagogues in transforming the Jewish people. By "transforming," I refer to two things: (1) the spiritual transformation of Jewish individuals and families and (2) the physical transformation of the Jewish community through incentives to increase our numbers through population growth, outreach to unaffiliated Jews, and welcoming and encouraging of non-Jews in Jewish relationships and families to become Jewish and/or to raise their children as Jews.

Transformation is about changing people's lives. It is not about membership or affiliation. It is not about numbers. It is about transforming the spiritual lives of individuals, one at a time. It is about "forming" a Jewish identity through the experience of living in a sacred community."

Synagogue 3K set up the Emerging Sacred Communities group to explore the burgeoning of new and alternative communities and initiatives within the Jewish community. The participants were mostly Rabbis in their 20s and 30s who are starting new communities in cities around the country. Also participating were 3 Rabbis from Israel engaged in building new communities and approaches. The emerging communities represented at this gathering were diverse and hard to characterize. Some are attempting to create alternatives to conventional synagogues.

Some are trying to transform older synagogues into something else. Some like myself were creating completely different models distinct from synagogues. Some of these communities organized themselves around social justice causes, while others were working on revitalizing and reformulating Jewish prayer. There were representatives from all the major denominations and many who identified themselves as post-denominational. Everyone agreed that the current Jewish communal structure is in crisis and that the modern synagogue and congregational rabbinate is in a struggle for legitimacy and relevance among many Jews.

My colleague, Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum, participated in the conference as well representing the community she is leading, the Kavanah Cooperative. One way of getting a taste of the emerging responses would be to compare the two innovative approaches of the Kavanah Cooperative and our effort, Panim Hadashot-New Faces of Judaism. Kavanah, like a number of other initiatives around the country is attempting to form a new model of Jewish community. Like Ikar in Los Angeles, Kavanah eschews the label synagogue.

The uniqueness of Kavanah is the choice of the word, cooperative. One of the central aims of Kavanah as I understand it is to form an intentional community. In the business world, a cooperative is different than a conventional market. The PCC cooperative requires membership and fosters a commitment to organic or alternative foods. In the world of Jewish communal life, synagogues are not considered 'intentional communities' (even though it takes a lot of intention to join one) because they do not ask members to make more than financial commitments at the time of joining.

Kavanah is attempting to build strong community by asking members to commit to dedicating time to an array of mitzvot, social justice, study, prayer, or community building. Kavanah has also defined itself as non-denominational as opposed to affiliating with a movement. Its programming differs from a conventional synagogue by creating a wider array of choices and balance of communal activity. There are multiple points of entry and there are fewer barriers to participation. I am excited for Kavanah and support its emergence and growth.

Panim Hadashot, however, is a very different model than Kavanah. First, Panim Hadashot is not about building a single cohesive community. Our emphasis is strictly on offering people powerful and meaningful Jewish experiences of celebration and study and to share these with others. Once Jews are engaged or reengaged in Judaism there are many communities to choose from and we will help people navigate that choice. I conceived of Panim Hadashot as a bridge to the organized Jewish community, a context for people to celebrate and study and experience Judaism more directly and without barriers. We are deliberately non-denominational, so we can reach out to every kind of Jew and also serve the many non-Jews who are connected to Jews through marriage and family.

We are focused on bringing a living and vital Judaism to homes and offering intensive and relationship building celebrations and learning experiences. In Panim Hadashot the Rabbi functions as a teacher, mentor, coach, and connector. I reach out to anyone who is interested and I go to where they are, in their homes and among their friends and circles of relationships. I am not trying to gain members or build a specific community, but rather to engage people with Judaism and help each to develop a practice of hospitality of sharing a enlivened Judaism with others.

In the past few months we have expanded our programs to serve congregations and Jewish organizations. We offer a program that intensifies and strengthens the Shabbat home and table culture of the congregation. We help to make communties more hospitable, more spiritual, more integrated between the private and public sphere. So it might be best to summarize Panim Hadashot as a catalyst for Jewish community building which is a resource for everyone in our diverse community.

I think Seattle needs both Kavanah and Panim Hadashot. Kavanah offers Seattle a serious experiment in building a more intentional community, a Jewish collective with a distinctive focus and ideal. Panim Hadashot offers a way to reclaim a Jewish home life and path to a more engaging Judaism that makes one appreciate the many choices that the Jewish community offers. Together we are part of a fascinating change taking place in American Jewry. Our gathering in New York was an ongoing attempt to make sense of the very creative spiritual ventures growing around the country. I is thrilling to be part of this creative ferment.