FRANCINE KLAGSBRUN
FRANCINE KLAGSBRUN Ican picture it now. It is the year 2009. I am at a dinner given by a major Jewish organization. Around me are others, like myself, who, far from young, have long been involved...
...The arrangement suited the declining religious knowledge of the people, so much so that, when transported to America, it was taken up not only by Reform congregations but by Conservative and many Orthodox ones as well...
...Congregation Or Zarua," I respond, knowing, because I will have heard it so many times before in the 20 years since the founding of the congregation, exactly what the next words will be...
...Around me are others, like myself, who, far from young, have long been involved in Jewish communal life...
...In short, instead of the grandiose temple built by some of our parents or grandparents, we wanted a shul of the type used by the grandparents or great-grandparents of others of our group, but Conservative in philosophy...
...I would not be completely honest with you if I said no acrimony was involved in our departure...
...You know the one about the two men marooned on an island who started three synagogues...
...He then, smirking more broadly, launches into the joke that was already old 20 years before the synagogue was founded...
...In every generation Jews have created religious structures and spiritual forms suited to their needs and outlooks...
...Instead of sermons, we wanted Torah study at the center of our service...
...a man to my right asks...
...Our most recent problem: May High Holiday services be held in space offered by a church...
...But do breakaway synagogues generate other breakaways...
...This mixture of informality and structure seems right for today's Jewish community...
...But what blot and why questionable...
...I have met people from congregations established 40, 50 years ago, who say that their congregations still carry the breakaway stamp and are still looked on a bit askance, as if nothing in their subsequent history can quite eliminate the blot of their questionable conception...
...Our small, breakaway shul includes people who wanted to affiliate but felt put off by the anonymity of large synagogues or left out by close-knit chavurot...
...They are people who may have wanted to affiliate but felt put off by the anonymity of large synagogues or left out by close-knit chavurot...
...I hope so...
...women were relegated to their own, distant sections—but that's part of another discussion...
...Now we and others like us have come along with different changes to meet different needs, building on what came before...
...And he laughs out loud, looking knowingly around the table, satisfied with his cleverness and the point he will have made about the foolishness of breakaway synagogues...
...Having a new synagogue in the neighborhood has been a boon to these people and, in that sense, to the community at large...
...The German Reform movement changed that arrangement, moving the bimah to the front of the synagogue, where rabbi and cantor could conduct services while congregants listened, a passive audience enjoying words and music with little effort at participation...
...One for each of them and the third that neither of them would attend...
...There had been arguments about rabbis, about board decisions and about whether money should be spent on repairing the organ that some people felt made the service magnificent and others wished would disappear altogether...
...But I do not believe the separation would have occurred had it not been for the impulse among those separating toward fundamental and lasting change in the nature of their religious service, and it is that impulse that I regard as adding to, rather than detracting from, the life of our community...
...Having been in on the ground floor (so to speak—we still don't have a building or even a synagogue floor of our own) of the creation of our institution, I see the process as nothing less than a boon to Jewish life...
...Doing away with rabbis and cantors, these prayer and study groups encouraged women as well as men to lead services and teaching sessions...
...Answer: Many venerable American synagogues had their beginnings in such rented spaces...
...I hope that by the year 2009, there will be a new synagogue on the block that will have broken from ours, benefiting the community, itself and us with its blend of new and old ideas and forms...
...We've organized services in our rented spaces around a central bitnah, as in early days, and, like the chavurot, include women and men equally in leading the worship...
...my dinner partner says with a slight smirk, "that's the 'breakaway' synagogue on Manhattan's Upper East Side, isn't it...
...Instead of a cantor and choir, we wished for prayers led by congregants themselves...
...That label, breakaway, was stuck on us from the moment we had our first service, in January 1989, and will remain, I'm convinced, long after the dinner of 2009, long after I am no longer around to attend dinners and hear the joke retold...
...Even the parent synagogue has benefited: Since our departure (and because of it), it has created a monthly chavurah service, attracting a new constituency looking for alternatives to its formal service...
...Our small band of breakaways has expanded gready, encompassing now people who had never before joined any religious institution...
...They are educated women and men, some of them members of Jewish study groups in law firms or hospitals, delighted to be able to participate in discussions, to learn— growing numbers of them—how to chant a haftarah (prophetic reading) or read a portion from the Torah scrolls...
...Oh, yeah...
...For us, the founders, the boon has come from the exhilaration of creation and of endless challenges...
...Her book, Voices of Wisdom—Jewish Ideals and Ethics for Everyday Living (David Godine, 1990), was recently published in softcover...
...For many centuries and in many lands, for example, synagogues had a central bimah (platform where services are led and the Torah is read) around which congregants sat, allowing for easy participation (I'm speaking of male congregants and male participation...
...So what synagogue do you attend...
...The chavurah (Jewish fellowship group) movement of the 1960s and 1970s rebelled against the passivity of these congregations and emphasized at the same time the egalitarianism that had become a hallmark of this period...
...A group of us, members of a large, formal, wealthy synagogue, decided we wanted a different kind of service— small, intimate and informal...
...But we've kept the basic structure of a synagogue, headed by a rabbi, and with plans for permanency that include a school, adult education courses and other accoutrements of synagogue life (including—God help us—a building fund...
...8» Journalist Francine Hagsbrun writes and lectures on such Jewish issues as Jamily, social change, ethics and feminism...
Vol. 16 • August 1991 • No. 4
