random urj biennial ramblings

I'm in DC for the URJs 71st Biennial. Just me and 6000 other Jews praying, singing, talking with and listening to each other. It's my third national Biennial- I was in Houston in 2005 and San Diego in 2007. This one has surpassed them for me for many reasons.

In 2005, I travelled with a large contingent from my congregation, we had a new rabbi and I was thrilled with everything but stayed pretty close to my comfort zone. In 2007, I was a bit overwhelmed by the venue, which was a little difficult for me to navigate, although I loved that Biennial and treasure that I was able to purchase my daughter's beautiful tallit there which she wore to her Bat Mitzva a few months later.

So here we are in 2011, 9 of us, this time with our interim rabbi as we are in a search year. We manage to find each other for plenaries and dinner but mostly all go off to our various areas of interest and debrief later. Now, rather than envy all the folks who seem to know each other and shout greetings in the halls- I have a sizable group of people outside my congregation that I know and connect with.

What's the difference? Social media. There is absolutely no question in my mind that Facebook and Twitter have helped make and maintain Jewish connections in the intervening years since my last Biennial. I am able to "speak" with any number of fellow Reform Jews on a wide variety of issues that concern me and I am able to share in their joys and struggles, personal and professional. There is a knitting social media site called Ravelry and I have connected with fellow Jews there and some of them are here and, really, how freaking cool is that?! I posted a semi-humorous comment on FB about how I knit during sessions and have been stopped in the halls and asked what knitting I brought by people I've never met! These small conversations, often lead to larger ones, conversations about our movement and our congregations and suddenly this group of 6000 people seems very small and intimate and not so impersonal.

I've heard great speakers, prayed with joy and experienced awesome music these past couple of days and there's more to come. The best part though are the conversations I have. I've spoken with others about issues in our movement that mean a lot to me in a place where others "get it" even if we may not agree at all times.

I have an intense desire to see our movement and it's member congregations continue to move forward and recognize the true diversity of its members. I want our congregants of color, GBLTQ congregants, congregants with physical, developmental and social challenges and more-I simply want ALL our congregants to be welcome in ALL our shuls. I don't think we do enough, which isn't the same as saying we don't do anything. I'm proud of how much we have done and proud the movement has folks working to push this issue along, but I want *us*, you know, those of us slogging along in our home congregations, to recognize that we can do more. That letting people know you are truly a welcoming congregation is ok. In one of the discussions about diversity I attended a participant speculated that perhaps some are reluctant to be more "obvious" about being welcoming because of a fear they will ( in this instance) get so many members that were GBLT that they would be known as a "gay" synagogue. I think she was spot on. I think that this is a fear people have, if we let to many of "them" in we won't be ourselves. In that particular discussion we all chuckled at the likelihood that such a thing would happen ( really, with so many synagogues struggling to grow membership one should be so lucky) but later I felt uncomfortable.

My kids aren't Caucasian, but they are absolutely Jewish. My Chinese-American daughter is president of our youth group and is a madricha in our religious school. My Cambodian-American son is in our Chai School and expects to be confirmed in a few years when he is in 10th grade. I work in our shul as well as chair our Ritual committee and my kids have been members as long as they can remember. They are accepted and loved there. So why did that conversation in the diversity discussion bother me a little later? Let me ask another question: Would it be wrong for my kids to look around their synagogue and see more people who looked like them? Would it be wrong for them to see most people look like them? If I went home to my congregation and told the board we should call ourselves a white congregation they would think I was crazy, but if the logic is you are what the majority of your congregation is then maybe we need to rethink the labels.

My congregation has people of color, people that come under the GBLTQ umbrella, people with challenges of various kinds , but maybe that's the wrong way to think. Regardless of what majority or minority any one congregant might be a part of, our congregation is overwhelmingly a congregation of young families with children in the the religious school. You could argue that the minority in our shul are empty nesters, seniors , young adults and those who choose to not parent.

I have no idea where I want to go with these thoughts, most of which are still jumbled, but the cool thing about biennial is I will get to talk, face to face, with others about them. Later, I can continue the conversation with new FB friends, on twitter and in email. I am being reminded that just like my own congregation, all of us believe ourselves to be welcoming and we kind of all are but because myself and many others come from a place of privilege we can be blind to the inadvertent messages we send or don't send to our congregants and to the unaffiliated Jews who might be looking for a Jewish home. It's a work and a conversation in progress and here I get to geek about it and discuss it in a safe place with like minded folks.

Switching directions. Worship here is truly moving and there are always moments I am almost moved to tears because it's so great to be part of this with so many other like minded folks. Some worship styles work better than others ( in my humble opinion, your mileage may vary) but all are heartfelt and open and joyous and it's pretty infectious.

Wow. I've done enough babbling. Time to get back into it and today will be pretty intense ( can't wait to hear President Obama speak!) and then Shabbat will arrive and after evening services I will join my fellow congregants and have an intimate dinner with those 6000 others I mentioned.

Shabbat Shalom.

Comments

[DDA]

And if your congregation ends up being primarily non-white, will you work as hard to make it more "white-friendly?"

Why does it matter what the distribution is if the point is for it not to matter what the skin color or sexual preference or such of a person is?

[amysue]

Dave: The assumption was that in addition to more traditional newspapers, one would also advertise in mainstream papers and possibly papers that serve other communities that may also have unaffiliated Jews.

One of my points though was if you actually look at the natural distribution of our suburban community you end up with mostly families with young kids. This is why we have 400 families and 400 kids in religious school (an unusual statistic, there are many congregations with twice as many member families with smaller religious schools. Some of our families are multi racial, many are interfaith and of course some are also LBGT but those labels are kind of besides the point-what most have in common is young children.

In the end, advertising in more areas for unaffiliated Jews, whereever they may be will still bring you a membership that looks liek the community you live in. Northhampton, MA may have a large number of households with gay moms but they are not driving to Westborough to join a shul. However, those interfaith, GBLT, multi-racial, caucasian, hispanic, african-american etc families who are in our area might not know we are here and might not know we welcome them.

Happy Chanukah by the way..go chill and eat a jelly donut (sufganiyot).