Our next guest, Dr. Amy Sussna Klein, is a member at CKI. She is a early education consultant with a graduate degree from Tufts (my alma mater, too!) and University of Massachusetts, Amherst. We both love reading and participating in the CKI book group. She and I share something else in common too, we each have a daughter named Sarah Klein.

Over 20 years ago, I was helping a friend put together a conference, and the featured speaker was Larry Brendtro. Brendtro blew me away. He talked about meeting the needs of youth by endowing them with four key strengths:

(1) independence,

(2) mastery (a feeling of being able to do something well),

(3) generosity (basically, tzedakah), and

(4) a sense of belonging (i.e., being part of a community). I would argue this lists applies to adults as well as children, and will focus on the last of these strengths: community.

Community has been the emphasis for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. To become part of community and feel a sense of belonging, you need to get to know people in a particular group. Being part of a community is an essential component of human well-being, but how is a community formed? Sometimes, this happens through osmosis, for instance to the people who live in a small, tight-knit town where everybody knows everybody else. In today’s modern world, however, this is much less common than it used to be. We may not even know our next-door neighbors.

But there are other ways that communities can form. In particular, you can take steps to interact with others in ways that lead to the group forming a community (or which leads to you becoming part of a community that has already formed).

The key is this: The more you and others share experiences and goals and backgrounds, the more you will feel like a community.

Sometimes the initial part of joining a community may feel awkward. For example what if you have just moved to a new town? The first months in a new home, although you live in proximity to others in your neighborhood, you may not feel like part of their community. If you meet a neighbor while walking around the neighborhood, what would you say? “Nice weather, or “What a cute dog?”

But, CKI is determined to build community, and provided pathways that make these first few steps less awkward. The book club is one example. The awkwardness of finding a commonality (something to talk about is gone).

I have counted SEVEN ways that the book club helps to pull members into the CKI community:

1. Month after month, CKI members are invited to join.
2. Once you do joint it’s easier to interact with people you don’t know well or may not know at all, since you have all read the same book and you are all there to talk about that book!
3. The books chose each month relate to Judaism, so they relate to you!
4. The members of the book clubs share something in common with you ,as they are all either Jewish or have Jewish family members.
5. Furthermore, they are all members of CKI, so you have something else in common with them.
6. (I call this the “Cheers factor” – after the old sitcom by that name.) The book club meetings are a place you can go where “everybody knows your name.”
7. (I call this the “Energizer Bunny factor.”) Once you start getting involved with the book club, your further involvement with CKI keeps going and going and going….. That’s because the book club members are also involved in other important Jewish and CKI organizations, such as Sisterhood and Hadassah, and you’ll find yourself invited and welcomed into these. [Editor’s Note: This factor is not to be confused with The Energizer Rabbi!}

Amy Sussna Klein

Laugh. But this is a story of pomegranates and the power of social media. Another way to build community.

Last week a colleague of mine in Winnipeg was lamenting on Facebook he couldn’t find any pomegranates north of the border. Pomegranates are traditional during Rosh Hashanah in some communities. There are 613 seeds in a pomegranate, the same number of mitzvot. Trust me on this one. I sat in Jerusalem counting pomegranate seeds one Rosh Hashanah afternoon. Multiple pomegranates. They each had 613 seeds.

So like looking at tzitzit on the tallit, eating a pomegranate during Rosh Hashanah reminds us to do the mitzvot. If you haven’t eaten one in a while, it provides the opportunity to say shehechianu on a new fruit the second day.

I had been looking for a pomegranate as well and said that we in Elgin would race Winnipeg. People in Elgin and Winnipeg started saying where they had seen them. I had offers from friends to drive one from the North Shore. I found some at Jewel—even with perfect crowns. Two pomegranates showed up on my desk. Then another four.

In the middle of this race, something remarkable happened. A friend from Massachusetts, Sharon Finberg, saw the post on Facebook. She has a friend in California who grows pomegranates. My new Facebook friend, Anne Pilgrim, shipped me four exquisite pomegranates from her own tree. They are now sitting on my desk, with the others that appeared, making me smile each time I see them.

People often talk about the Internet as community. It can be. And the pomegranates are an example. I think, however, it is a tool to strengthen community. Dick Johnson wrote about the running community. I belong to several Facebook groups for running. Because of this I have met people I would not ordinarily meet living in Elgin. I have been encouraged by them to run further, faster, to keep up with my training. I even had the opportunity to run in Guatemala with someone I had met through Facebook. Friends of mine, scattered all over the country, actually the world, have a chance to remain friends by checking in on Facebook. People have described me as the original Rabbi without Borders.

My congregation has a Facebook presence. The Torah School has a group on Facebook as well. A closed group, here they share ideas and discuss things amongst themselves.

Facebook is not the only social media. Pinterest gives people the opportunity to share ideas. I am trying to pin more things to boards for each of the holidays. Some congregations stream services. What a great idea for shut-ins. We used a web conferencing program last winter when we had a minyan scheduled for a yahrzeit and I didn’t think it was safe to drive.

When I was first in rabbinical school, I interned with the Jewish Appleseed Foundation as the Answer Rabbi. A Jewish apple is a pomegranate. The foundation’s mission was “to work with Jews and non-Jews who live away from the Jewish mainstream and were in need of mentoring and strategic planning.” The questions we were asked were interesting and varied. One question was a constant. “How can I become Jewish?” Many of those were people who were living in remote areas with no Jewish community near them. At the time, the director, would advise them that being Jewish is not something to be done alone. You need a community. It is a group process.

The world has changed some since 2007, There are now groups that will do online conversions. I still think people need a community and the support that they bring. Traditionally, a community needs a mikveh and a cemetery, even before building a synagogue or a school or buying a Torah. Or even hiring a rabbi.

I had an interesting conversation with Rabbi Ari Moffic, the Chicago director of Interfaith Family. She said that millenials are not looking for community. They think they have it on Facebook. There is a mom’s group of some 6000 people on the North Shore and you will see posts like, “Thank you to my community. I couldn’t have done x without you.” What they are looking for is a sense of belonging. I thought that was community.

I see that too in my running groups and with WeightWatchers. It is a place where you can be anonymous. Where you can share your hopes and dreams, frustrations and setbacks. But I am not sure it is community.

The tale of a pomegranate. The power of social media. One more tool to strengthen community. To build community. But not be community. Not yet.

Our next guest blogger, Sara Sitzer, is one of the cellists with the Elgin Symphony Orchestra. She and her husband recently bought a house in Elgin and are experiencing the joys of fixing it up. She is excited about becoming more involved with the Jewish community in Elgin and the wider community. And she understands community from playing in a orchestra and in chamber groups. She was inspired after Erev Rosh Hashanah services talking about Community and sent in this entry:

When people see me on the Metra with my cello, they ask, “do you play with the Chicago Symphony?” (these people being the ones who realize it’s not a guitar, that is) And when I kindly tell them, “alas, no,” their next question is, “oh, then what do you do for a living?”

Well, I make music for a living. I play in the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, I play with various other orchestras and small chamber ensembles in and around Chicago, I perform every July at a festival in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I founded a chamber music festival in St. Louis (my hometown), I founded a chamber music series right here in Elgin (chambermusiconthefox.org–check it out!), I write for music blogs, I coach chamber music–in short, I freelance, and yes, I make a living by it. So it might not surprise you to know that I am colleagues and likely friends with every classical musician who lives or plays in Elgin, as well as the majority of the musicians in the Chicagoland area. But in addition, there are probably only a couple of degrees of separation between me and any other professional classical musician in the country.

An example of this: after CKI’s Erev Rosh Hashanah services, I had a lovely conversation with a congregant who, upon hearing I was a cellist, proceeded to tell me about an old friend of hers who had passed away whose daughter is a violinist in the St. Louis Symphony. “Oh!” I said, “Debbie Bloom?” I was right.

The music world is tiny, and the sense of community within it is what inspired me to pursue it professionally. I first got a sense of this when I was 16 years old and was accepted to attend a small music camp in the hills of Vermont. It was an utterly magical summer: we were barefoot all day, we held hands singing madrigals every night before bed, we baked homemade bread in our free time, but we mostly soaked up the incredible experience of playing music together. Now, 16 years after that summer, I am still in touch with most of the musicians I met there, and I run into them constantly at gigs, at conferences, and online. We only become more interconnected as the years go by.

To play music together–particularly chamber music–is an intensely intimate experience, so it’s no surprise that musicians are a close-knit family. When you rehearse a piece of Beethoven or Schubert with colleagues, you experience an extreme range of human emotions together. And when you rehearse those pieces for hours upon hours at a time, you get a chance to learn more about your colleagues’ personalities than you ever thought you might. As they say, playing chamber music is more intimate than a marriage–just without the sex.

Because the music world at large is the community that I feel absolutely closest to, some of my best friends live thousands of miles away, yet we still feel utterly close. Because this community is the one I have always felt most at home with, I ended up marrying another cellist. And because this is the community that I know the best and feel the most comfortable in, it is my means of connection to other communities: I started the chamber music series in Elgin as a way of connecting to the Elgin community, I reached out to Rabbi Frisch Klein about Kol Nidrei music as a way of connecting to the Jewish community, and I use every performance I play as a way of connecting to anyone who is there to listen.

Our next guest, Suzy Zemel, is the Sisterhood president at Congregation Kneseth Israel. She spends many volunteer hours making CKI a better place and knows the value of community. These words she spoke on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. 

Almost 28 years ago, I was extremely unenthused about attending my first Sisterhood function. However, I felt obligated to attend. That and Marc’s nudging, I thought, I’ll go but I AM NOT joining. At the end of this function I joined Sisterhood. Why? The women were friendly. I realized my check would show my support of Sisterhood. I joined Sisterhood not expecting to become active, and certainly with no intention of becoming Sisterhood president. Later I started volunteering. One of my favorite memories was helping set tables for a holiday event. My youngest toddled around the social hall while I worked with someone with grown children. I enjoyed meeting her and working together. So here are a few more points about our community: people assist by  volunteering, aiding financially, and demonstrate support by becoming members, and attending various functions. I continued attending functions, enjoying the company of these women, the activities, and working together. So another point about community is we work for the common good of our synagogue and people.

Our own CKI Family supports, respects, and accepts that we come to CKI with different needs and desires. Community is about the day-to-day living, as well as life cycle events. We are there through illnesses and the loss of loved ones. We share happiness at each other’s simchas, joyous occasions, and celebrate with great joy, pride and happiness. This occurs because friendships have bloomed into beautiful bouquets. So another aspect to community is sharing happiness and laughter as well as support of each other during hard times. Community includes establishing relationships along with developing roots to this organizations.

So where does this leave us? Clearly community involves people. For me, CKI is a place I cherish and value. If you haven’t felt that you are plant of this community, it isn’t too late to start developing your roots. Try something new here at CKI. Share your ideas for our betterment. For those of you that are firmly set within this community, thank you for working together for the betterment of this wonderful place we fondly call CKI.

Our next guest blogger is Barbara Simon Njus, a retired literature professor, who is a life-long resident of Elgin and lifelong member of Congregation Kneseth Israel. She is one of several people who spoke on the topic of What is Community over the High Holidays at CKI. She is a very deep thinker which I appreciate and she is extraordinarily kind doing things behind the scenes to help the wider community. But she is extremely modest too, so while she appears as an angel, I can’t say more.

Community is belonging.   Our community is like an extended family.   We gain strength and comfort from our togetherness. From this comfort, we renew ourselves. From this strength, we help others.

We are a Jewish Community.   In its most basic form, this is the minion. Our Jewish identity is unique, but also universal, as we share our humanity with all people.

Our community is modern and ancient. The Torah is our guide, our source, our wisdom. There is the old adage: For generations, the Jews have kept Shabbat, but Shabbat has kept the Jews. Sabbath by Sabbath, High Holidays by High Holidays, we reaffirm our faith and our togetherness.

As a Jewish Community, we are also part of the greater Elgin community. While we help ourselves, we also help others, through projects and partnerships with other houses of worship and other community groups like the Crisis Center, PADS, and Food for Greater Elgin.  We Feed Greater Elgin, too, with the Sisterhood annual corned beef lunch.

Imaginative Bar and Bat Mitzvah projects: collecting art supplies for children at the Crisis Center, playing baseball to raise money for Alzheimer’s research, walking to raise money to fight ALS – – these projects show our young members learn the mitzvah of ,, tikkun olam, to repair and heal the world, at the same time as they assume their responsibilities as adults in our Jewish Community.

Some of you may remember The Jewish Catalogue from 1973, a “do-it-yourself “ guide to Judaism.   Towards the end, there’s chapter entitled, “How to bring Mashiah [the Messiah].”

May we strive to bring Mashiah by all we do, as individuals, and as a community. In all we do together, day by day, deed by deed, mitzvah by mitzvah, may we go from strength to strength for our next hundred and twenty years.

“The Tsanzer Rebbe was asked by one of the Hasidim: ‘What does the Rebbe do before praying?’ ‘I pray,’ said he, ‘that I may be able to pray properly.’”

I suffer from BHG Syndrome. That’s Better Homes and Garden Syndrome. Not in the DSM, the mental health manual, it is a quest for perfection for the holidays. It starts with all the photos of Thanksgiving in Better Homes and Gardens. I want the house to look just so. There should be flowers. Big pots of mums. There should be a pot of simmering matzah ball soup. There should be honey glazed carrot coins and brisket. Or apple and honey chiecken or better—both! There should be round challah—and mine should have raisins. There should be a new outfit for the second night and a pomegranate so we can say Shehechianu. And the house should be sparking. Gleaming. Clutterless.

That is how I prepare for my family. And if the pieces are missing, I feel off and holiday does not feel complete. Most holidays I don’t get there.

There is preparation at the synagogue too. Look around you. White linens. Special prayer books. Extra chairs. Silver polished. This year there is new landscaping, a new side walk, new railings. And since last Rosh Hashanah a new accessible bathroom. This is hard physical labor. And it is necessary. None of this happens by itself. All of it takes community.

We began a series of meetings: Paul, Stew, Stephanie, me. In various combinations. Back in May. The congregation and I have been talking about topics since July. People were approached to write and speak and many of you rose to the occasion. The choir began rehearsing in June. Stephanie and I rehearsed. Honors were distributed and accepted. New Year’s Cards and Memorial Books designed. All of these build community too.

And I started preparing. I read books on community. Jewish and otherwise. I started to write. I selected extra readings. And then BHG Syndrome struck.

I want the words to be perfect. The sermons and the readings. I want them to be inspiring. To be meaningful. To be life-changing. To help all of us understand what teshuvah is. To help all of us do teshuvah.

This is where the most important preparation comes. And I am failing. No reading seems appropriate. No sermon is perfect. There must be better words than mine.

In the middle of a panic attack—this is not uncommon for rabbis at this season—it struck me. There are no perfect words. What is meaningful to me this year may not be next year. What is meaningful to you may not be meaningful to me at all. Who am I to choose the readings for you? It is a humbling moment.

One grand lesson of Rosh Hashanah is not that we have to be perfect, but that we are, and

can continue to be, very good. It is sufficient if we strive to achieve our potential. It is only when we fail to be the fullness of who we are that we are held accountable. Rabbi Zusya said: “In the world to come, they will not ask me, “Why were you not Moses?” They will ask me, “Why were you not Zusya?” Talmud

In many native art forms, Intuit, Navaho, Mayan, Turkish and Persian, artists deliberately leave something imperfect. Only G-d is perfect. An intentional flaw is woven in or a bead left out. This is true in Japanese Buddhist temples as well, a friend excitedly informed me.

We have this tradition too. We know this because on Shabbat, the Psalm for the Sabbath ends, My Rock in whom there is no flaw.

There is a story of a king. This king once had a prized jewel, a perfect diamond. So perfect he kept it under wraps and locked away. One day it would be part of his royal crown but not the setting could be achieved with equal perfection. Every morning he would check the diamond to make sure it was still perfect. One morning the king awoke, and in his morning ritual to check the perfection that glinted from every luminous facet, he found a single think crack descending down one facet. His precious diamond was ruined. It was no longer perfect.

He called in all the best jewelers of the entire kingdom, hoping someone could fix it. Nothing could be done. The crack was so deep that any effort to remove it would make it worse. But one craftsman, from a neighboring kingdom thought he could save the diamond. The king laughed. Everyone else had said it was not possible. How could this simple man hope to save it? However, seeing that there was nothing else that could be done, nothing else that could be lost, the king said that the jeweler could spend a single night with the diamond. If he succeeded in fixing the diamond, there would be a great reward. If not, he would be put to death.

The jeweler took the diamond and locked in his room, examined the diamond carefully. It was beautiful, sparkling like the fire of the sun on the surface of the water. But the crack, even though as thin as hair, could not be removed without destroying the diamond further. What could he do? He worked all night and emerged in the morning with the diamond and a look of triumph on his face. The entire royal court, the king, the queen, the ministers, even the jester, gasped. The scratch had not been removed. Instead it had become the stem of a beautiful rose, etched into the diamond, making the diamond even more unique and beautiful. The king embraced the simple jeweler. “Now I have my crown jewel. The diamond was magnificent until now. The best. The most perfect. But it was no different than the other stones. Now I have a unique treasure.”

And then I realize. It is good enough. That much of what the holiday is about is being together in community. This community. Right here. Right now. For better or worse.

Because no community is perfect either. Utopia does not exist. The Puritans tried in Plymouth and their children didn’t quite buy-in. That’s why there is the town of Duxbury. It was a town established for the children of the original settlers. Those children who didn’t quite have the vision of their parents. Didn’t quite have their parents; religious zeal. Needed to sign what was called the Half Way Covenant.

Think of books you have loved. Lord of the Flies proved that Utopian societies don’t last. To Kill a Mockingbird was a great book—and showed us what the unflinching leadership of one man could do. But it looks like there might not be perfection in the newly released prequel, Go Set a Watchman. People’s disappointment in this second, or is the first book has been palpable. We want our heroes to be good. We want our leaders to be good. We want G-d to be good too. It is part of how we make sense of the world.

This is true of our community leaders as well. Rabbi Teutsch who I quoted on Erev Rosh Hashanah teaches:

“Love flows outward. As each person is touched by it, the person passes it on to others in countless little ways and the community benefits. Like a family, a community thrives on love. When love is withheld by a person in authority—a parent or a community leader—all sorts of problems develop, such as interpersonal conflict, jealousy, competition and soul-sapping ennui…..Love expressed by others, while comforting, who doesn’t love you enough….The love of a congregational leader for his or her community members takes many forms: careful listening, a phone call when someone hasn’t been around for a while, drawing somebody in by encouraging her to contribute a particular talent or skill, rearranging a schedule to squeeze in a person with a problem….that doesn’t mean that a community guided by loving leaders will have no problems. Deep disagreements about the direction of a community’s programs, boundaries, its finances or its management will be painful no matter what… but caring commitment can lessen the pain and make reconciliation possible.”

So how do we work to solve issues in the community? By emulating G-d. We are told how to do this in the 13 Attributes of the Divine which we chant as the beautiful words of the Selichot prayers. G-d is merciful and gracious, patient, slow to anger, full of lovingkindness and truth, extending that lovingkindness to the 1000^th generation, forgiving transgression, iniquity and sin. So that’s what we need to do. Act slowly, patiently, without rancor. We need to THINK before we speak. That’s an acronym for Think, Is it true? Is it Helpful? Is it Inspiring? Is it Necessary? Is it Kind? It has to be all of those.

When conflicts arise in a congregation, and they will, it is usually because people think they are not being taken seriously enough. We have to find ways to listen more carefully, more patiently. We need to listen to everyone’s ideas, without pigeon holing or stereotyping certain members. Because as last week’s Torah portion confirmed, “We are all in this together—with our whole heart and our whole soul. It is my job as the leader, according to Teutsch, to bolster the community’s collective ego to the point where it achieves that feeling of security, where everyone knows that there is enough love to go around. Such a community exudes strength and attracts people who feel comfortable in a stable, noncompetitive environment. It has the courage to face itself honestly and make things still better.

We’re getting there, but we are not quite there yet. I’m getting there, but I am not quite there yet.

I admit it. I confess. I don’t always think before I speak. So if I have offended anyone, for that I am sorry. The poem a Women of Valor, Ayshet Chayil, says the law of kindness is on her tongue and every week I say, “Still working on that one.” But I try, I do honestly try. So if I have offended, I am sorry.

Every year I find I need to reread a book. How Good Do We Have to Be by Rabbi Harold Kushner. The same Kushner who wrote When Bad Things Happen to Good People. In it he says, “When religion teaches s that one mistake is enough to define us as sinners and put us at risk of losing G-d’s love, as happened to Adam and Eve in the traditional understanding of the story, when religion teaches us that even angry and lustful thoughts are sinful, then we all come to think of ourselves as sinner, because by that definition every one of us does something wrong, probably daily. If nothing short of perfection will permit us to stand before God, then none of us will, because none of us is perfect…..but when religion teaches us that God loves the wounded soul, the chastised soul that has learned something of its own fallibility and its own limitations…then we can come to see our mistakes not as emblems or our unworthiness but as experiences we can learn from.

He talks about baseball. No one expects a hitter to hit 1000 percent. Hitters who are over .300 are considered great. No one expects a team to win all 165 games in a season. But good teams win more than they lose. I have a friend, an Episcopal priest who would say G-d would never allow Cubs-Red Sox World Series because someone would have to win and that would be the end of the world. I think he had it close, but not quite right. I think there could never be a Cubs-WHITE Sox World Series. Because what this rivalry is supposed to teach us is that there is enough love to go around. In this place, in this sacred community, be a Cubs fan, or be a White Sox fan. There is enough love to go around.

Kushner concludes this book saying, “what G-d asked Abraham was not “Be perfect” or “don’t ever make a mistake.” But “Be whole. To be whole before God means to stand before Him with all of our faults as well as all of our virtues and to hear the message of our acceptability. To be whole means to rise beyond the need to be pretend that we are perfect, to rise above the fear that will be rejected for not being perfect.

The message for Rosh Hashanah is simply this. No person is perfect. No community is perfect. We don’t have to be Zusiya. We just have to be the best we can be. Because, only G-d is perfect.

For thirty days, with another 10 to go, I have been writing, thinking, talking about building community. For much longer than that actually. It is one of our four vision pillars. What is community? Well, like much of Judaism, it is different things to different people. The conversation has been rich and varied.

There were times I threatened to say…I was going to write a Rosh Hashanah sermon but I was out of the office. I was sitting in a coffee shop meeting a new congregant. I was at the Martin Luther King Commission, the U46 Community Alliance Meeting, the CERL meeting. I was studying the Avodah service that we use next week. I was teaching Hebrew School. I was at the hospital visiting an older congregant. I was watering the new landscaping. I waited with the appliance men. I was picking up trash at Lord’s Park as part of Judaism Rocks and Tashlich. I was even bouncing on a bus in Guatemala. And all along the way, I found community. Or maybe communities.

In truth, I belong to lots of communities. We all do. The synagogue. Sisterhood. Men’s Club. That’s part of why we are here tonight. Our kids’ school. Our college alumni association. A Weight Watchers group. An AA group. A choir. A band or orchestra. Team in Training. A sports team. A health club. A book group. A Girl Scout troop. The neighborhood association. The PTO. The founder of Starbucks, Howard Schulz, says that he is not in the coffee business, he is in the community business. Their mission is to inspire and nurture the human spirit—one person, one cup one neighborhood at a time. Celebrating coffee, rich tradition and bringing a feeling of connection.

It is that feeling of connection is what community is all about.

Rabbi David Teutsch, the former president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College says that “when communities are functioning well, they take care of their members.”

What people seem to really want is to be in communion with others. To know that they are loved and that others care. So that when there is a tragedy, or a loss, or an illness, friends show up and they know they are not alone. At any given time in our synagogue about 30% of the congregation are going through one of the top five stressors—a medical issue, a job loss, a death of a spouse, parent or child, a divorce, a move. People need the strength of community to navigate these waters and not feel isolated.

People also want community when they have joys to share—a birth of a child or grandchild, a promotion, a wedding, an anniversary or just the little moments day by day by day. I learned an important lesson one year. My soon-to-be-husband and I had just gotten engaged. We yearned to share our excitement. But we weren’t sure. My parents were vocal in their disappointment. He was 20 years my senior. Would we be accepted? Was there a non-judgmental voice in the community? We went to tell our good friends, Alyn and Nancy. Nancy was busy digging in the yard, putting in fall mums. She didn’t miss a beat or get up from her kneepad, when she commanded, “Alyn, go get the champagne.” From that I learned you should always have a bottle of bubbly, alcoholic or non-alcoholic, in your refrigerator, for the big moments and the little ones. That it is important to celebrate with community. And that it is important to create a safe place that is welcoming and accepting.

According to Rabbi David Teutsch, “Underlying the drive for community are several disparate yet complementary desires. Some people are looking for close friends; others hope to find a permanent companion to love and share life with. Some come to community to overcome loneliness; others come for a shared cultural, social or spiritual life; still others are seeking support. Some come knowing that they have much to give.”

“But community transforms everyone, often in unexpected ways. Teachers become students; students turn into teachers. Those poised to give of themselves often find they derive more from community membership than they give. In community we find strength in what we give, receive and share. And in a strong community, we hare a great deal—life rhythms, values and a way of living. That kind of sharing infuses life with meaning and richness not found in any other way.

Meaning—another of our pillars. We will talk more about how meaningful observance and prayer enriches our community tomorrow. But that is another reason we are here tonight. To begin to answer the question, why am I here? That’s the big question. What meaning does my life have? And then why am I specifically here, tonight, sitting in these chairs? How does CKI add meaning to my life? Because if it does not, we should fold up our tents and go home.

Why is this so important—and why is it important here. Because in 2015, we in America live in a fractured society. The bonds of family and community have been shattered. “Autonomy and individual choice—the hallmarks of modern society—have brought unprecedented personal freedom, yet have struck a blow to community building.”

Those results have been feelings of isolation, loneliness, depression. But I hope, I pray, not here. Not at CKI. What people, all people, seem to want—really need—is what the word religion itself promises. From the Latin, religion means to tie back up into. We want to have bonds with other people. We want to have deep roots and tradition.

Community, also from the Latin communitas, is to be in communion with others. That is what we do here.

Community is built on shared experience. We have that when we cheer at a football game, or at Kol Nidre, or when we share a lifecycle event. We do that when we play mini-golf or watch football or make Latkes with the Men’s Club, help with break-the-fast with Sisterhood, read a book with the book group, build a house with Habitat for Humanity. All of those deepen the conversation and the community.

Community is built on Trust and caring, Lawrence Hoffman, a professor of liturgy at Hebrew Union College describes minimum liability and maximum liability institutions. Minimum liability institutions, people join for specific benefits but have no obligations beyond those required to gain the sought after benefits. Country clubs, Boy Scout troops and some congregations, he lists as examples. Israeli kibbutzim were examples of maximum liability communities. Ken Hillman talked about what he learned from his Hebrew School teacher many years ago. If you make enough deposits, you can make a withdrawal. In that case it was about skipping Hebrew School homework. What does that look like here? I hear echoes of Kennedy. Ask not what the shul can do for you, but what you can do for the synagogue.

Community is built on citizenship. Perhaps as Gretchen Vapner suggested, it having friends in the community is not the goal, although that is nice and makes the work more fun. Perhaps it is engaging in working on shared goals. Moving the organization forward. Working towards something together. That’s citizenship. She worries about citizenship frequently, and wonders if anyone cares anymore.

Community is built on shared responsibility.

Visiting the sick isn’t just for rabbis. It is a mitzvah incumbent upon all of us. But too often we are uncomfortable and these things have become professionalized.

But we all have a shared responsibility. It does not fall to me, as the rabbi alone.

These are the obligations without measure, their fruit we eat now, their essence remains for us in the world to come:
To honor father and mother;
To perform acts of love and kindness
To attend the house of study daily
To welcome the stranger
To visit the sick
To rejoice with the bride and groom
To console the bereaved
To pray with sincerity
To make peace where there is strife.

And the study of Torah is equal to them all because it leads to them all. Talmud, Shabbat 127a

We each have our tasks here. Some of us have our unique roles. No one blows shofar better than Ken. That is one of his contributions. No bakes pineapple upside down cake better than Nancy. Each one of us has a special place here and a contribution to make. That is part of how we create community.

Community needs to be built on hope. What does a roasting pan say? It says hope. When Denise Tracy’s family home was flooded out, a woman gave her mother a roasting pan. “You’ll need this for Thanksgiving.” That pan came to represent hope. That there would be a home. That there would be a Thanksgiving. And there was. And every year when she makes the turkey in that very roasting pan that sense of hope is there. And gratitude. What are the concrete signs of hope here at CKI? Yes—this year they are even concrete. I invite you to explore the new entryway, the stairs, the sidewalk, the landscaping, the accessible bathroom, the community garden. And yes, the new oven delivered just this past Friday.

Community is built on mutual respect with a way to handle conflicts. Sometimes, communities don’t always agree. There are sometimes deep divides and fights. Everyone believes they are right. No one wants to cede any territory. We will talk more about this one on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. But for tonight, know that in Judaism, we embrace the diversity of opinion. We certainly do here at CKI. It is based on the Talmud which teaches, “A controversy for the sake of Heaven will have lasting value, but a controversy not for the sake of Heaven will not endure.” Then there are two stories about Hillel and Shammai. Their arguments were for the sake of heaven. The Rebellion of Korach was not. (Mishnah Avot, 5:17). Hillel and SHammai fought a lot. Sometimes about issues of ritual purity. For three years this debate raged on. These said, “The law is according to our position,” and these said, “The law is according to our position.” A divine voice came and said, “These and these are the words of the living God.” BT Eruvin 13b

Community is built on coffee. You laugh. But perhaps my favorite memory of the year might just be a Facebook message I received from Kathleen Kenney-Mau. She is the owner of Blue Box Café. She realized she hadn’t seen me in a while. She knew my name, took the time to find me and said, “I haven’t seen you in a while. Is everything OK? Can I bring you a Magic Bar Latte?” Ok, I was fine and it wasn’t chicken soup but think about what that says about customer service. But it is more than that. It is being warm and welcoming. It is about hospitality. It is about community. And you bet, the very first place when I got back to town was Blue Box. They now have a loyal customer. Because Kathleen took the time to care—and continues to take care of me.

Community needs to be built on vision. Here at CKI we are lucky because we have s vision—Building community, life long learning, meaningful observance and embracing diversity. It all works together to…build community. But Teutsch is right. “That vision should lay the groundwork for a statement of beliefs and values as well as a program of cultural, religious, educational, and social justice programs the community will undertake. People who dream find time and energy they didn’t know they had to make their dreams a reality.” Or as Herzl said it, “If you will it, it is no dream.” Or as Lennon said, and we were reminded of by the first NGO AJWS visited with in Guatemala, Standing in a circle, with our hands clasped, we shouted out, “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” Turns out it is a Lennon quote. Sounds like a Herzl quote. “If you will it, it is no dream.” Come dream with me.

Community is a way to find meaning. That is why we are here tonight. To pray, to wrestle to find our highest selves, to celebrate with friends, to cry if we need to. That’s what a synagogue provides. It is an intentional, intrinsic relational community. It meets people where they are—in the pews or in a classroom, a hospital room, or a coffee shop.

We at Congregation Kneseth Israel are lucky. We have a community. It is because we are intentional in our community building.

Nori Odoi wrote about the importance of food earlier in this project. But I want to underscore what it means for a community of Jews. OK, you can cue the jokes here. But seriously. Sandy Kilstein, the Dean of Placement and I once had a conversation about an aging congregation in Massachusetts. That congregation was amazed. They thought they were dying, as many aging congregations think. And they put out forks. And called the food after Saturday morning services a Kiddush Luncheon. Suddenly people stayed. And schmoozed, talked. And stayed longer. And shared their lives. That’s community.

And it is true. In Ron Wolfson’s book about Spiritually Welcoming, he comments on Oneg Shabbat and Kiddush. One of the Synagogue 2000 congregations even does appetizers before and Oneg Shababt after. Maybe this would eliminate the problem that so many congregations have about timing on Friday night. If you give them a little nosh before hand, wine, cheese and crackers, it might just work.

At Congregation Kneseth Israel, I pushed to have more than coffee cake. At first there was resistance. There wasn’t budget. I persisted. We have many people who are gluten free or diabetic and this just wasn’t quite the right food. At most events we now offer veggies and hummus, fruit, and more things clearly labels gluten free. We sometimes schedule a discussion or a class after Kiddush. And the amazing thing is, like the congregation with the forks, people are staying!

This weekend we had a sponsored Oneg Shabbat. These are a little more substantial and really do help the budget. This one was in honor of the new table cloth. This congregation has a tradition of making a table cloth that everyone signs every decade or so. These are complicated labors of love, lovingly embroidered and stitched together by hand. Many times I saw women sitting sewing together. This newest one was started the year we celebrated our 120^th anniversary in 2012 and revealed this week. It is gorgeous. And people gathered around to see everyone’s name. It is a real piece of history and the congregation will love using it for decades to come.

At services I spoke about the passage from Numbers that is the third paragraph of the V’ahavata. You shall put fringes on your garments in a certain shade of blue. A blue we no longer use since we don’t really know what “techeleh” is. Although recently there was an archeological find that we now might be able to make new techeleh. Our new table cloth is blue and white. Like a traditional tallit. Like the Israeli flag. And I think it is like the tallit. Those fringes are to remind us of G-d and G-d’s mitzvots, commandments. They beg us to be a good person. When my daughter was young and she would sit in services and yes, was bored, she would braid the strains of my tallit. So when I where one that she has lovingly braided, I remember G-d, the mitzvoth and her. When I sew, and it is not often enough, it slows me down enough to feel the link in the chain of the generations. I remember all the women before me that sewed. My mother, who made every Halloween costume and my confirmation dress. My grandmother who sewed for the Women’s Exchange in Saint Louis. My great grandmother whose quilts I own. I think we will do that with the table clothes as well as we remember the generations that came before.

And then there are the new ovens, one of which arrived Friday afternoon. Those are a symbol of hope and build community too. Since they are part of what enable us to feed community.

And then there is the liquor. The real stuff over which we say Kiddush. That is usually courtesy of the Men’s Club. So they have a place in this too. Not to mention their Scotch and Steak in the Sukkah, ice cream social for Simchat Torah and their latke lunch.

Yes, food and wine, build community.

So come enjoy Apples and Honey this evening after Erev Shabbat Services. Stay and schmooze and tell us about your summers.

So to the women of Sisterhood and especially Wanda and Elise, Barb and Lynn, Robin and Wendy and Wendy and Tina and Liza. And Helen. And to the Men of Men’s Club. Know that you have built community. Thank you.

Our next guest blogger is Rabbi Katy Allen. She is founder and rabbi of Ma’yan Tivken—A Wellspring of Hope, the facilitator of OneEarth Collaborative and the president of the Jewish Climate Action Network. Prior to that she was a chaplain at Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston. She studied with me at the Academy for Jewish Religion and we would commute together where we would celebrate dawn somewhere on the MassPike.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about community and covenant.

Rabbi Avi Olitzky defines community as “a circle to which you feel you belong that will miss your presence; it reaches out to you when you’re absent, and you long for it when you’re not there.”

Covenant, berit, is a promise, generally bilateral, requiring the participation of both parties that are bound by the covenant.

In the Torah, G!d enacts three covenants. First is G!d’s promise to all humanity after the Flood, never again to wreak such destruction. The sign of this covenant – actually a one-way agreement, because G!d promises, but humanity is not obligated – is the rainbow.

The second is G!’d’s covenant with Abraham, promising to make numerous his descendants and to give them the Land of Israel for their possession. (Gen. 17) Circumcision, brit milah, is the sign of Abraham’s acceptance of and loyalty to G!d.

The enactment of the third covenant takes place at Mt. Sinai, when G!d gives the Torah to the Israelites and outlines the terms of the covenant. Shabbat is the sign of this covenant.

Rabbi Katy Z. Allen

Atem Nitzavim Hayom… You stand, all of you. Second person plural. This portion is the ultimate community building portion. You stand here today. All of you, I saw a button  recently which said, “We are all in.” What does that mean? I think it means with your whole self–your heart, mind and might. Just like the V’ahavta says, which you will hear echoes of shortly. You are all in for G-d. You are about to sign this covenant.

You are all in. You are all standing: Your tribal heads, and your officials, all of the men of Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from your woodchopper to the water drawer.

Who are these wood choppers and water drawers?

The construction of the sentence suggests that they were foreigners, in the midst of the camp to do the menial labor, chop wood and draw water. They were the migrant farm workers, the construction laborers, the landscapers, the hotel cleaning crews of the day. The people who do the jobs we don’t seem to want to do. And by placing them squarely in the text they were not invisible. This could be the moment to discuss the growing refugee crisis. The stranger within our camp that needs to be welcomed.

Rabbi John Feigelson who runs an organization for college campuses called Ask Big Questions asked a really big one on Facebook this week. If our parents and grandparents could take in refugees in their tiny apartments, why can’t we open our homes, our large suburban homes? There is more on this, but I am saving it for Yom Kippur. Consider this the highlight reel of coming attractions.

But there are no accidental words in the Torah, the rabbis teach us. So the rabbis go further. Why wood choppers and water drawers? Why not camel drivers and butchers? The traditional explanations include that they were Canaanites who wanted to convert. Or the wood choppers were men and the water drawers were women.

Rabbi Bradley Shavit of the Zeigler School helps us understand at another level based on a teaching from Reb Shlomo Carlebach:

He understands woodcutters to be a metaphor for possible abuse in our interpersonal relationships. We cut down people, prove them wrong (guilty as charged!), or shape them into what we want them to be. It happens in our families, in our synagogues, in our work world and in our wider communities. “Instead of chipping away at the edges to see what is truly beneath a person’s exterior, we (often by accident) cut too much, creating scraps that are difficult to reassemble.” He reminds us that we do this with G-d as well.

He understands water drawers: as a metaphor for water drawers are a symbol of inspiration, “waiting for us to engage them, learn from them, be nourished and satiated by them, and to ultimately compliment one another. This suggests that our relationships go two ways. We give, and we receive (and the two are not always equal). There are limits, though. A well can dry up if one draws too much without replenishing it, offering something in return. But finding that balance is not so simple.”

We will hear these words again as we stand at Yom Kippur. All of us together. None of us perfect. Let’s remember that each of us have likely been water drawers and woodchoppers. According to Shavit, “Our job, like God’s during this time of year, is to find the inner strength, and the external help, to gently tilt ourselves to the latter.”