February 2005
Our Village
When the hot water heater broke in the house of friends of mine in Los Angeles recently, my suggestion that they go next door for a shower was met with an expression of preposterousness. No one on their street ever asks for a cup of sugar, and there was no way my friends would feel comfortable asking for that type of favor. Rather than intimacy, or shared sense of purpose or care for one another, a “hey, we’re all neighbors on this street together” feeling, I sensed isolation, separation, distance. People are estranged from one another, and there is no personal connection between the inhabitants of one house and the next. It might be a neighborhood, but it’s not a community.
We should be the opposite. We should be a synagogue community, where people know one another and care for one another. While I was chatting with one of our long-time members recently, he told me that his greatest hope for Temple Sinai is “that we continue to be an intimate congregation, almost like a small village.” The phrase rings true. We at Temple Sinai may live in different towns, and come from a variety of backgrounds, represent the greatest range of diversity within the Jewish community, but we are like an intimate village. And that is perhaps one of the best parts of Temple Sinai. Our identity stems from our mission to be a spiritual home for our members. And we must always remember that mission: to be a place that nurtures Jewish learning and living, that supports our members in their Jewish journeys, that fosters care between one another as we grow Jewishly together, like a real heimish spiritual home.
Everything we do as a congregation should build up this good feeling. If you come to our first-ever (I’m told) Congregational Retreat, Friday, April 1st to Saturday, April 2nd, you’ll experience our congregation’s “small village” quality. We will go away together to the Wachusett Village Inn, to celebrate Shabbat through singing, study and rest, and to create a spiritual haven for ourselves. Among our goals for this retreat is to build enduring and real connections between one another, between those who are new to Temple Sinai and those who have been members for awhile, between older members and young families and everything in between. I hope you’ll participate and register and join us for this special community Shabbat retreat.
If we are a village, caring for one another, however, we cannot be cut off from the world around us. It is an essential part of Judaism to engage in Tikkun Olam, repairing our entire world, even well-beyond our village. Asia may seem like half the world away, but Jewish tradition teaches that we are connected to those in poverty and devastation there. If you have not yet contributed to the URJ Tsunami Relief Fund, I urge you to do so. (Send your tzedakah contribution to Union for Reform Judaism Asian Earthquake Disaster Relief Fund, 633 Third Ave. 7th Floor, New York, NY 10017.) The work of our Social Action Committee continues, with our “Mitzvah Day” – one day when we all do the mitzvah of tikkun olam – coming soon, on Sunday, March 6. And there are many different ways – whether participating in Family Table food collections, domestic violence awareness, the Ethiopian Jewry quarter campaign, and others – that make our synagogue community a caring “village” that is connected to the other needy places in the world. In this way, we continue to fulfill our mission as Temple Sinai. I invite you to consider that mission, as it expands and grows, as do we.
Rabbi Andy Vogel
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