Making the Old New and the New Sacred - PAS 134th Annual Meeting
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Rav Kook, the first chief rabbi of Palestine famously wrote, ha-yashan yithadesh, v’he-hadash yitkadesh, The old shall be made new and the new shall be made sacred. Our project as a synagogue is twofold: on the one hand, to preserve tradition, on the other hand, to present the riches of our tradition in a manner compelling to the contemporary searching Jew. We are not just about preserving the past – a Jewish museum, or historical society. The lay and professional leadership of this community have been entrusted to take the most sacred possession we have – the inheritance of our faith, our yerusha – and to teach it to our children, a mission that requires a commitment to both tradition and change.
By a certain telling, the roots of our community are not Reform, Conservative or Orthodox, but Reconstructionist. The very movement of which Rabbi Milton Steinberg was a leading voice was responsible for reinventing synagogue life, rewriting the prayer book and haggadah and rethinking local and national Jewish communal structures. His method was called functional interpretation: a process by which we study the past, identify the central values of our tradition, and then – when and if necessary – find new vehicles and sometimes new rituals to reconstruct our tradition (thus the name), a mission by which the old shall be made new and the new made sacred.
The new siddur we are introducing this week reflects such a renewed and refreshed commitment to what is perhaps the most basic pillar of our people: avodah, prayer and the search for God. But at this annual meeting we know that it is but one of many such efforts taking place right now at PAS. Grateful as we are to those in the 1970s who dedicated our present building in 1980, we too are embarking on a generational physical reconstruction of our institutional footprint. There will be dust. There will be, I imagine, some displacement. The building will be different on the outside and on the inside – as it should be, as it better be. I think of the Gottlieb windows, commissioned and designed for the 1950s building and the difficult decisions the PAS leadership made in the 1970s to redistribute those windows, respecting their moment but not being beholden to decisions and aesthetics of three decades prior. “How could you do such a thing?” I imagine someone crying out in the congregational meeting. “How could we not?” I imagine my predecessor Rabbi Nadich of blessed memory responding. As Rabbi Steinberg’s teacher Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan wrote: “The only ones to decide whether the continuity of a culture is maintained are those who are actually confronted with the problem. The past or its proxies can no more pass judgment upon the present that the child can sit in judgment upon the man.” (Judaism as a Civilization, p. 404)
The siddur, the building – these are visible changes. But in a sense these are merely the vehicles by which the internal efforts of our synagogue – the lifeblood of our community – actually happens. One doesn’t go to rabbinical school to build buildings, and a siddur is a once-in-a-generation initiative. Internally, the task is the same. Here too we must identify the eternal commitments of our community and then be willing to transform the manner in which those values are inculcated in our children and grandchildren. The Hebrew language, for instance, is a non-negotiable. And yet why should we assume that the method of teaching it be the same today as that of yesteryear? Ours is and will remain a Shabbat-based congregational school, but if the hours of Hebrew language instruction are redistributed online or otherwise, we signal that we take our commitment to Hebrew and supplementary education more, not less, seriously. I know I speak for Cantor Schwartz and the entire clergy team when I affirm our commitment to leading a congregation who are at home in the prayer service, who can and are invited to participate in the prayer service, to read Torah, and engage in learning. These are non-negotiable. But how that happens, if services start at different times or are configured differently, or the music develops as it always has at PAS, those are the very gestures by which we affirm our love for our people. The new must and does become sacred. I love the moment when in a final meeting with a bar mitzvah family, a parent says, “Would you mind asking the cantor to do the ‘traditional l’kha dodi,’ and I ask which one, and they hum a few bars of Oran Eldor’s and I say “of course,” smiling inwardly and never mentioning that that this “traditional” l’kha dodi was written just three years ago. Hebrew, services, adult learning, early childhood education, Israel engagement, bikur holim, how we communicate on the website, on emails, and on platforms we presently do not use – we can go through the entire list of what we do here at PAS, in content and administration – the muscle group is one and the same. We must ask openly what are the values by which we stand, the elements that make PAS PAS, and then be willing to adapt, evolve, and advance so that our claim to being the flagship synagogue of the Conservative movement is deserved and earned on a daily basis.
And so how do we do this? How do we pivot from strength to strength? That is the mission of those past, present, and future leaders in this room. I want to thank the best team of Jewish professionals in the business. Whether you know it or not, aside from your professional competencies, the litmus test for working at PAS is the fulfillment of the obligation and opportunity to always think anew, never to be saddled by the weight of nostalgia and never ever to say “Well, that is the way it’s always been done.” We can and must always be better – this year and every year – always laying a foundation for new horizons to come.
And so too our lay leadership – past, present and future. Not only are you the volunteers, but you are the muscle memory and the trustees, formal and informal, of this institution. The officers, board and advisory council have an obligation and opportunity to listen, to assess needs, to collate the hopes and dreams of 1600 families, and to set our institutional priorities moving forward. Never to be driven by personal agenda – but always to ask what is the best interest of the synagogue. It is not easy to let your ego be subsumed by the needs of the greater good, but that is in the fine print of your position. That is what it means to be a lay leader at PAS.
And finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is not the professional staff or the lay leaders – not one or the other – but the relationship shared between the two that is the core, at the heart of what makes the magic of any synagogue happen. It demands trust, it demands transparency, constant communication, it calls on us to forgive, and it demands that we are self-reflective and self-critical as stewards of the institution and faith that we have for this short window been entrusted to care for. Professionals must take as sacred the countless volunteer hours, the wisdom, and the resources that lay leaders extend on behalf of the synagogue. They should be thanked profusely and frequently, individually and collectively for their efforts. So too lay leaders need to value the contributions and expertise of professionals, especially in a not-for profit world – as none of us are in our jobs for the money. We do what we do because it is our passion, our vocation and our lifeblood. How does one make a not-for-profit professional feel treasured given the limitations of financial compensation? It is a great question – one that we should discuss openly as a community in the year and years ahead. Most of all, in nurturing the lay-professional relationship, we must be willing do that which we ask in any relationship we hope will endure over the course of our lives. We need to let people grow and we need to grow together. Who we are today is not and should not be who we are tomorrow. It is a constant organic process built on communication and on mutual respect.
The word synagogue comes from Greek, meaning “a place of assembly.” Assembling in prayer, in learning, in deeds of kindness; professionals and lay people, young and old. That is what we do. We come together, assembling on Shabbat, on holidays, on 87th Street, on 89th Street. Each one of us, no different than our predecessors, created in the equal and infinite dignity of our God and creator. In this time of transition may we come together as we always have, trusting each other, loving each other, working together, and building yet another glorious chapter for this community and the Jewish people.