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by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar
Dear Friends,
This is a vital time in the life of our synagogue community, and that is because it is synagogue membership season.
For some, the notion of synagogue membership is an old hat, a standard element of Jewish communal life. For others, it’s something of a novel construct — why become a member of a synagogue? I was asked this week, “Isn’t God free?” Why should one pay to be part of a synagogue community?
Indeed, God is very much free, accessible anywhere and everywhere — m’lo khol ha’aretz k’vodo, “the whole earth is filled with the presence of the Divine,” the prophet Isaiah tells us (6:3). No barrier should prevent anyone, no matter where or who they are, from fostering a relationship with the Divine, to the extent they feel called. We can always open up a siddur (prayer book) and pray, or speak from the heart, or crack open any sacred Jewish text; there should be no barrier to that.
Paired with that understanding, from the earliest moments of Jewish life, is the notion that forging Jewish community—creating and sustaining a community that can respond to our moments of need, lift us up in times of celebration, and help us mark time, the rhythms of the Jewish year cycle, and the Jewish life cycle. It also requires holding space for communal gatherings and educating the next generation to take the torch from us. This work requires all of us to give something of ourselves, to invest in creating the structures that hold community.
In the early days of Jewish life, this was done through bringing sacrificial offerings. This supported, first, a tabernacle, a portable structure that traveled with us in our wilderness wanderings around which we would orient ourselves as a community, and then a temple, a rooted structure to which we would make pilgrimage multiple times per year. Then, throughout exile and the diaspora, we found ourselves in kehillot, semi-autonomous Jewish communities, in which we experienced some modicum of self government and organized ourselves through, in a sense, self-taxation, to ensure our communal needs were provided for. Today, as the Jewish people are more assimilated than we have ever been in the nations of which we are also citizens, it takes even more initiative and conscientiousness than ever to ensure that structures that can hold space for Jewish community in this way are supported.
So, in short, I encourage all who are reading this to become a member of a local synagogue community. I am biased, of course, and believe that Society Hill Synagogue is an excellent exemplar of what Jewish communal life in a synagogue context can look and feel like; the good it can advance. So I encourage you to join Society Hill Synagogue in particular. But I also genuinely believe that investing in structures that will undergird Jewish communal life in the long term — especially synagogues, which foster the rhythms of Jewish life on a weekly (Shabbat), yearly (the hagim/holidays), and life-long (birth celebrations, b’nai mitzvah, weddings, and funerals) basis — is vital no matter which synagogue you choose.
Synagogue membership, and the responses to High Holiday and Hanukkah appeals that we make each year, ensure we have the physical structures that house our gatherings large and small, the staffing structures that ensure there is ongoing planning, logistical, and spiritual support to organize our gatherings; clergy who are available when we need them, with whom we have had the chance to nurture relationships; and so many other features — food, music, additional guest teachers and lecturers — who enrich our experience of community and deepen our understanding of Jewish life.
We are grateful to everyone who becomes a member of, and contributes to, synagogue life, sustaining this and the next generation of Jewish community.
If you have questions about becoming a part of, or affording (no one is ever turned away for financial reasons), the Society Hill Synagogue community, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our Executive Director, Sahar Oz; our Manager of Community Engagement and Communications, Alexis Rosen; or me. We would love to hear from you.
Wishing you a beautiful summer,
Rabbi K.
P.S. If there is anyone in your life who you think might be interested in, of benefit from, becoming a part of the Society Hill Synagogue community, or who might like to reflect on synagogue life, please forward them this message. Thank you.
