During the next few weeks Panim Hadashot will be wrapping up its programs here in Seattle and the East Side. I would like to reflect on the impact and lessons learned from 3 years of running New Faces of Judaism. Panim Hadashot was an experiment, an attempt to think outside the box about contemporary Jewish life and community.
In this message, I would like to address the question of the role that Panim Hadashot attempted to create in the community.Panim Hadashot was conceived to be a community resource which worked cooperatively with local synagogues, Jewish organizations, and agencies. Our focus was on non-denominational outreach, education, and celebrations. Our programs and events were designed to provide very positive and joyful Jewish experiences for participants, especially those who had not formally connected or affiliated with the organized Jewish community.
I would often use a military analogy to explain our work (lhavdil-to differentiate). I saw the synagogues and Jewish organizations as conventional forces. Panim Hadashot acted like special forces, primed to be flexible, portable, and focused. Our work enabled us to meet Jews who do not make their way easily to the synagogues.Two examples of our approach illustrate this effort.
First, our alternative High Holidays programs sought to engage independent and secular Jews who do not resonate with the traditional services of this time of year. We offered text study, special festival seders, and "services for the ambivalent". The program was a thinking person's high holidays which encouraged questioning while engaging people with Jewish tradition. We purposely met in neutral settings and simplified prayer services to make them more accessible without compromising the richness of the presentations, teaching, and dialogue.
Another example of our approach was the Shabbat Around Seattle program. This flagship program of Panim Hadashot brought the rabbi into homes of hosts to share with guests a powerful Shabbat experience. Hosts were encouraged to invite guests who were less connected with Jewish institutions but who might enjoy the informal and joyful celebration in a home. Our approach to programs was to offer our participants rich, engaging, thought-provoking, and ultimately joyful encounters with Judaism. We wanted to stimulate hearts and minds, but also to respect the thoughtfulness and intelligence of our participants. We did not have an specific ideological agenda except to share the joy of Judaism with those we encountered. We wanted to serve as a bridge to a wider and diverse Jewish community.
In order to make our efforts as accessible as possible we did not structure ourselves as a synagogue with membership dues. We rarely charged admission fees or placed high barriers to participation in our programs. In fact we avoided any semblance of being a congregation at all. I saw Panim's role as a catalyst, a networker, and a resource. While I think this was a strength of Panim, it was in the end part of our weakness. In my next column I will tackle the question of outreach and community as this series continues. Please feel free to comment by writing to rabbidov@panimhadashot.com
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Exploring the Impact of Panim Hadashot Part 2 in a Series of Reflections by Rabbi Dov Gartenberg
The Relationship between Panim Hadashot and the Wider Jewish Community
The first program that Panim Hadashot conceived was an festival outreach program called Shaarei Tikvah-Gates of Hope. The program invited families with disabled loved ones to join us for a festival services and programs that created a nurturing and accepting environment for severely disabled children, adults, their families and compassionate friends. I took the idea to the Jewish Family Service, where it was embraced by JFS staff, Don Armstrong and Marjorie Schyder. Soon afterwards, Cantor David Serkin-Poole of Temple Bnai Torah joined in what was to be an effective team to lead this wonderful program.
This is a good example of the attempts by Panim Hadashot to create communal coalitions to bring new and impactful programs to the wider Jewish community. From the beginning, Panim Hadashot saw itself as a communal resource and catalyst for this type of outreach. During the last two and ½ years we have worked with several Jewish organizations and synagogues on other joint programs. We worked together with the Jewish Federation on offering the Hartman Global Beit Midrash. We joined the Hillel Foundation to offer a Tu Bishvat Seder.
While these programs helped to enrich the Jewish community, Panim Hadashot did not receive any funding for them. In an attempt to provide resources while also obtaining critical funding we developed a consultation to work with rabbis and congregations to build up their Shabbat table community. This consultation led to close consultations with Herzl-Ner Tamid (Conservative) and Kol Haneshamah (Reform).
Despite these successful collaborations and our principled efforts to work with the community, Panim Hadashot was not able to receive the type of communal support that would have made it a viable and contributing force in the Jewish community. Below are a series of observations about outreach and community support based on our experience.
1. The organized community is not yet willing or able to support pluralistic oriented Jewish outreach.
2. Most Reform and Conservative synagogues in the area are focused on their programs and survival to coordinate with the community outreach that Panim Hadashot offered. While lip service was given to Panim’s innovations, local rabbis for the most point did not have the time or inclination to utilize Panim’s resources.
3. Orthodox outreach organizations have built strong networks in Seattle that make it difficult for a non-Orthodox organization to take hold. There are over 20 rabbis (and rebbetzins) from organizations like Chabad, Kollel, and Aish Hatorah. Much of their support comes from people who are not Orthodox. I admire the success of Orthodox outreach in our community, but believe they cannot meet the needs of the overwhelming large number of disconnected or independent secular and non-religious Jews in our area.
4. Panim Hadashot approached United Synagogue for funding to build up Conservative Jewish outreach in the region. While there was strong interest in this, the movement does not have resources to support a much needed initiative to galvanize Conservative Jewish institutions in the area.
5. The Federation, JFS, and the JCCs are logical partners in the type of Jewish outreach Panim was doing. While we worked with all three, none were able to offer funding outside of small grants to help Panim achieve sustainability.
6. Panim Hadashot depended on the generosity and support of local donors and funders. Their vision and support helped us to establish and develop Panim Hadashot for 3 years. We came close to winning national grants, but local funding was hard to come by to give us the time to mine national resources.
I would take responsibility for not doing enough to build relationships with other Jewish organizations and synagogues. Panim Hadashot highlighted our work as a bridge to Jewish community, but we did not do enough to highlight programs and activities of the community in the outreach work that we did. Taking more time to do this would have shown the value of our outreach and might have engendered more support and grant possibilities.
For example, we had a very popular food booth at a local Whole Foods. It would have been an excellent opportunity to inform people of programs at several institutions as a way of welcoming unaffiliated and independent Jews to participate. It would have been a good opportunity to recruit volunteers from different synagogues to join me at the booth and to meet folks. This is the close collaboration necessary to demonstrate the value of Panim’s work.
To be successful, future organizations like Panim will need to work harder to establish the value of its work to local institutions and to make them true partners and beneficiaries of the unique outreach work that we were able to do.
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