Elliot Cosgrove, PhD May 17, 2016
Last week I had the honor of delivering the first annual Dr. Byron Sherwin Memorial Lecture. Dr. Sherwin, who passed away about a year ago, was a mentor of mine in Chicago – a man without whom I would never have received my doctorate. So you can imagine the honor it was when the family invited me to Chicago to honor his memory and perpetuate his legacy.
It was a sweet evening, a homecoming of sorts. Some of the attendees were there for the subject matter or to honor Dr. Sherwin, but many were former congregants of mine from Anshe Emet Synagogue. Debbie and I lived in Chicago for almost ten years. Our four children were born there, and we made friendships that were and will always remain sacred. The kids I bar mitzvahed there are now out of college; babies I named are now teenagers. And I saw many, many former congregants. Everyone was a little grayer, myself included, but the amazing thing about it was the time warp of it all. We were all transported back into our former roles. I loved them, they loved me. Unlike the present company, whatever faults I had back then they had long since forgotten, or were willing to forgive for the evening. Every assistant rabbi should do what I did: work somewhere for a handful of years and then leave before they really get to know you! It was absolutely fabulous.
And yet delightful and surreal as it was, one thing it was not was “real.” If you have ever been to a college reunion, then you know the feeling. There was a lot of warmth and laughter, there was nostalgia, but at some point, your heart, your head, and your stomach all at once tell you “OK, I’m done, it is time to go.” It is good to walk down memory lane with the setting so familiar. But woe unto the person who does not realize when it is time to move on. They knew me “back then,” but they do not know me today. I have changed and so have they, but – more significantly – we have not changed together. Sweet as it was to walk down memory lane, the organic growth necessary for the relationship to remain vital had ceased the moment I arrived in New York in the summer of 2008. It was an indulgent treat to return, but as I landed at La Guardia, I thought of the Sinatra verse: It’s so nice to go traveling, but it is oh so much nicer to come home.”
Change is hard. To enter new territory, to find yourself disoriented, adjusting to the unfamiliar. It is far easier to remain in the familiar – with what you know. Moreover, there is an allure to daydreaming about how things once were, actual or imagined, to retrieve the glory days of yesteryear and to superimpose them upon the present. We need not look far to see the appeal of slogans promising to “make us great again.” Whether we were once great, or whether we are no longer great in the present is beside the point. The appeal is the veneration of the mythic past, a past which by definition is not the present. It is good to visit that place in time, to play it back on the Betamax of our memory bank, but it is no longer our reality and to stay there too long is not healthy. I fell in love with my wife decades ago; it was truly love at first sight. But the woman I fell in love with is not the woman I love today. I love the woman who has grown with me and hopefully, I with her. That is what makes the relationship vital; that is what makes the relationship sacred.
And so too with what we do here at Park Avenue Synagogue. This Shabbat will be a momentous Shabbat. I hope you will be there. After over thirty years, we will be opening up a new siddur, a new prayer book. Sim Shalom will be past; Lev Shalem, present and future. It is a gorgeous siddur that speaks to our highest ideals. As I have shared in all the study groups I have taught, we have a visceral connection to the siddurim of our youth: we know the layout, we know the English readings, we know when to stand for the prayer for our country. The fact that the siddur, unlike the Torah, makes no claim to be static – that it has always undergone development – matters little. It is a big change and it can be a little, if not a lot, disorienting. Like writing the correct year on a check after the new year, it will take some time to make the adjustment. But we know that no differently than our predecessors did in 1985, we are changing so that the treasures of our tradition can be communicated anew for a present and future generation.
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.