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by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar
Our staff has been monitoring news coverage of the attack at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Temple Israel community. We have been notified by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia’s Community Security Director and the Secure Community Network (SCN) that there are no reports of any local threats to synagogues in Greater Philadelphia. They advise us to maintain our standard security protocols. If you have any questions, please contact Executive Director Sahar Oz.
In this season’s Kesher, our quarterly newsletter, Society Hill Synagogue President Lisa Eizen and I reflect on the responses we received in the comprehensive survey and focus groups we held earlier this year as we work together to help build a strong foundation for the next chapter of life at Society Hill Synagogue.
As a reminder, the process of checking in this extensively with our community was launched in response to the tremendous growth we’ve experienced over the last several years — from 250 households in 2015, to 306 in 2023, to 418 today. Alongside this, our Hebrew School enrollment has grown from a low of 65 students during the pandemic in 2021 to 115 today. In total, 50% of our members today have joined in the last five years. That is dramatic growth and a seismic shift.
On the whole, we see this as a tremendously good thing. Our vision for Society Hill Synagogue — as stated on our website and in our foundational documents — is that of an intergenerational, vibrant community in which we nourish our souls through prayer and tradition, care for one another, form new and lasting friendships, celebrate our joys together, deepen our minds through Torah and learning, and together help author the next chapter of Jewish life as we work to repair a broken world.
This vision statement is not merely a hoped-for future; it’s an actively lived-in reality. To have people join Society Hill Synagogue to participate in and strengthen this community as envisioned is inspiring. We celebrate it. We hope that we all are strengthened through this growth.
Still, it takes real intentionality to ensure that with this level of growth, the values that are so important to us in living out this vision are nurtured, attended to, and not forgotten.
This survey and focus group process was a process of ensuring that the needs, desires, and wishes of our community are taken into account as we work together to steward the life of the community.
We heard a number of things in these focus groups:
1. Deep appreciation for this community: For the ways in which the human beings who make up this community — members, volunteers, clergy, staff — roll up their sleeves and create a place where each week, and through the rhythm of the Jewish year, people have the opportunity to experience nourishment, connection, and Jewish enrichment.
2. Excitement about the growth… and some questions: There is deep pride in the growth this community has experienced over the last several years, and the recognition that that growth facilitates possibilities for Jewish community that are more difficult in a smaller community. Whether that is because it means more members who are available to attend a monthly activity like a Rosh Hodesh group, or sign up for a trip to Italy, or in other ways make the programs that we attend feel filled with life. The growth also contributes to the financial strength and sustainability of the community.
At the same time, it makes it more difficult to know everyone.
A clear takeaway for me from the survey responses and focus groups is to double down our investment in efforts that will facilitate more connections among our members so they can get to know each other better, for those who want that. Whether this is through programs directed toward social interactions (like our upcoming Summer Shabbat at Home series) or investing in staff efforts to facilitate connections among people, helping onboard new members, or in our Hebrew School Committee focusing on helping to connect new families who join, tending to relationships will absolutely continue to be a focus of ours going forward.
Another question consistently raised about our growth is, will it continue? And to what extent should we plan for that?
Leadership is inherently about working in the face of some degree of uncertainty: we can’t know for sure whether this growth will continue, or slow down, or accelerate. We can investigate the available data on trend lines of the Jewish population in our city, and the level of Jewish communal affiliation, and whether or not people are moving to the suburbs or staying in the city, and in fact, we are doing that. But the available data has limits: not all the data we’d want is available, and even if it were, it wouldn’t guarantee anything about the future.
So we are proceeding with caution — gathering as much information as we can, while recognizing that something good is happening at Society Hill Synagogue, and when we find something good in the world, we want to tend to it and ensure it is available to those who need it.
3. As we tend to the physical home of our growing community, we need to do so in alignment with our values: As we reflect on how this physical space can best support this growing community, one area where we see room for improvement is to better align certain spaces with our aspiration that this be as fully accessible a synagogue as is reasonably possible. The Sanctuary and the synagogue annex (the part of the building that houses our clergy offices and Beit Midrash/study room) stand out as two spaces where accessibility is deeply limited. As we aspire toward a future where the community we envision is fully realized, these are areas that could use our attention and investment.
As we continue our planning process and look toward the future, we will keep asking for your input, and if you have additional thoughts or dreams or questions already on any of these or other issues facing the synagogue, I urge you to reach out to Lisa, Sahar, me, or any of our leadership to connect. Thank you for helping to build this sacred community.
Next follows the D’var Torah (teaching of Torah) I delivered last Friday night:
On the one hand, Pesah, Passover, is my favorite holiday. Obviously, the primary ritual of Pesah is the Pesah Seder — Seder, a word which means “order.” Ever since I was little, I have loved how ordered and structured and clear the Seder is; how clear the Passover Haggadah is, the book which details the order of the Seder, the order of the order. There are 15 steps in the Passover Seder — kadesh, urhatz, karpas, yahatz, and so forth, each with its own unique instructions: first the blessing over the wine, said while standing, then you sit and drink the wine while reclining, then you wash your hands, first with no blessing, then you eat a vegetable dipped in saltwater, this time with a blessing, again, and so on.
You can imagine, given how much I loved this, how fun a little kid I was. I was the kid — ahem, really still am this kid — who would insist on reading all of the instructions before playing a board game. No winging it, no “figure it out as we go.” The game is more fun if we follow the rules. So, too, with Legos: why build something on your own if there are carefully drawn up instructions, numbered step by step that detail exactly how the Legos are meant to turn out, down to having the little Lego figures stand in correspondence to where they are standing in the picture. Ah, the sacred act of following instructions. Very Jewish, right?
Only, there is a flip side to this. I’m not going to call it a down side, but a flip side. Yesterday I saw Pesah foods show up in their annual location at the end of aisle four in the Acme. There were the orange boxes of matzah and the cans of macaroons, the powdered matzah meal and the kosher for Passover grape juice. I saw those materials on March 5, a month before my favorite holiday, and a shiver went down my spine; my anxiety spiked. Why?
Because the same precision and meticulous execution that goes into the Passover Seder, that can feel so fun in that moment, also finds an outlet in, in my view, a far more arduous task, and that is cleaning for Passover, ridding the house of hametz, leaven. If you’re a perfectionist when it comes to carrying out a Seder, well, if you bring that same perfectionism to ensuring that the entire house is rid of hametz, all the crumbs out of the couch cushions, the residue out of the refrigerator, the oven, the cupboard drawers, the microwave, every room in the house where people have eaten — which, when you have a three-year-old and a six-year-old, can be extensive; if you’re a perfectionist for the fun part of the Seder, it’s hard to put that muscle away for the not-so-fun part, the cleaning, and you can get lost down a rabbit hole of compulsion.
It’s interesting how certain instincts of ours, certain impulses of ours, can be both that which makes us thrive and that which brings us pain.
My guess is that for many of us, the same instincts which make us successful in some parts of our lives — I’m naming the example of meticulous preparation, a desire for order — can also cause some suffering — a sense of hypervigilance, difficulty relaxing, difficulty letting go.
And yet, as always, the ancient rabbis seemed to understand this, understanding that the root of our pain can also be the source of our redemption.
This week, this Shabbat, we read two very special Torah portions, two special parshiyot. The first, Ki Tisa, is where we are as we make our way chronologically through the Torah. The Israelites have broken free from Egypt; they’ve made it to Mt. Sinai; God has revealed God’s self to Moses, declaring the ten commandments; God has given further instructions regarding the construction of the tabernacle, the portable center of worship for their journey in the wilderness; when all of a sudden, the narrative between God and Moses is interrupted.
The scene shifts to the Israelites’ campground, where, in their impatience and their fear and anxiety in waiting for Moses, they construct the golden calf; the symbol of a moment when everything went wrong in the Israelites’ journey, when they lost their moorings, their bearings, their principles, their connection to what was good and true, the source from which they flowed. One portion this week speaks to our downfall.
But there is a second Torah portion we read this week. There are a few special Shabbatot in anticipation of Passover where, in addition to reading where we are chronologically in the story, which, as we just said led us through the golden calf, we jump ahead to parts of the Torah which prepare us for Passover. This Shabbat is Shabbat Parah, and as a reminder to begin that process of cleansing our homes, cleansing ourselves in preparation for Passover, we read about an ancient purification ritual.
In ancient times, there was an understanding that if we were going to bring an offering to the temple or the tabernacle, we needed to be spiritually pure, spiritually integrated, and there was a very special way to make ourselves integrated, which we read about in the special reading this Shabbat.
If we had become impure, spiritually alienated, through, for example contact with death — contact with a dead body, contact with a gravesite, which in ancient times was understood to make us impure — if we became impure, alienated, we would undertake a ritual which involved having water sprinkled on us, water that was mixed with the ashes of a parah adumah, a red heifer, a reddish brown… cow.
So, the rabbis note, the same source of ultimate alienation, the golden calf, a young bull or cow, representative of death, the same source that alienates, is also the source that integrates us. The calf made us impure; the only way to become pure again… the calf’s mother, the parah adumah.
We’re invited to think about this in a broader context. The 19th century Hasidic rabbi, Zadok HaKohen of Lublin, teaches us that the source of our struggles and toils is also where we can find our capacity to raise ourselves up.
At the root of my anxiety about all the difficulties of Passover, that’s also where I find my capacity to plan ahead, to think things all the way through. The sources of our struggles, Jewish tradition teaches us, are often also the sources of our greatest strengths, and the challenge is how to translate one to the other.
At the end of our Passover preparations, when we’ve tried to find all the hametz, all the leavening in the house, but we recognize there is pretty much zero chance that has fully happened, there is a beautiful blessing, a magical Aramaic incantation: kol hamira v’hami’a d’ika virshuti — all hametz in my possession which I have not seen or removed, or of which I am unaware, livtil v’lehevei k’afra d’ara — is hereby nullified and ownerless as the dust of the earth.
We’re going to try — we’re going to try to translate the source of our struggles instead into support for our strengths. We’re going to understand that we don’t need to curse those parts but rather we’re going to extend them compassion and be curious about how they might be transformed into strengths. We’re going to try our best to do so, and with the remaining ounce that we weren’t able to transform, God blesses us to burn up that hametz and to let it go.
Ken yehi ratzon, may it be so.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi K.
