Speculation by Reuven Goldfarb
Here’s another hypothetical situation. Let’s suppose your renewal community is the first one of its kind to put down roots in your bustling metropolitan community. Many spiritually hungry Jews are drawn into your collective embrace by your ecstatic services. Over time, some kind of governing structure is developed to schedule and organize events, keep track of funds, and make policy decisions. Eventually, the volunteers begin to feel over-extended, and so they hire a coordinator from among their ranks and begin paying a spiritual leader who can conduct services and offer classes. Just at this point another group forms, one with similar vibes but a slightly different agenda – perhaps more political or musical or meditative. This group requests that you not schedule your weekly Kabbalat Shabbat on one Friday a month, for just a few months, to help them get rolling. They rapidly acquire a strong following; in fact, many of your members start going to their services. The omitted Friday night becomes a permanent feature on your schedule.
Lo and behold, another group forms. This one also wants to borrow one of your Friday nights. By now you’ve wised up and ask them to hold their events in a neighboring town, where they already have a base, rather than compete in the same territory. Although these terms, “territory” and “compete,” are foreign to your notion of renewal, you have to look at the reality of the situation. Your numbers are stagnating and your program committee is hesitant to schedule events when the other groups are having theirs, fearing a low turnout. Furthermore, this new group has money and is actually offering some of your key leaders tempting sums to come and take starring roles in their services. The band you have hired every year to play on Purim or Simchat Torah is offered double the money to play in the neighboring town. You are beginning to feel treated like a banana republic, even though the leader of the rival group is the biggest anti-capitalist around and preaches compassion and cooperation. Finally he begins scheduling events in your backyard anyway, but you suppose that his constituency does not overlap yours, at least not significantly. You’re also infuriated by his group’s advertising, which makes frequent slighting references to your style of renewal.
What else? Both groups are using your carefully crafted innovative liturgy with scant acknowledgement, slicing and dicing it to meet their perceived needs. You publicize their events at your events, but they won’t publicize yours. Meanwhile, there is trouble at home – infighting in your chevra. Ego struggles, personality conflicts, rhetorical battles, and old grievances threaten to tear your community apart. But the neighboring communities, with their founders in control, seem immune to internal bickering. Members who don’t like the hierarchical structure and its policies just leave. Your organization seems to have lost focus amid its wounds and resentments. What do you do now? If this were a board game, you could choose 1) go back to your roots; 2) go on the offensive; 3) call on a higher authority to intervene; 4) dissolve; 5) convene a sulha.
If this were an essay contest, I’d say, best reply wins a prize. Since I don’t know what prize would be suitable and affordable, I’ll offer a bracha and a chance to put the pilot plan into operation as a consultant. This honor can be declined, of course. But I would like some advice for this fictional community and its newly-elected Council, the situation of which, like it or not, might pre-figure the future of renewal.
[This open letter, which I originally composed on May 13, 2003, was never sent to anyone, nor has it been previously posted anywhere. What we did: found an excellent facilitator and worked on our internal inter-personal issues, especially those that interfered with our collective decision-making process. It took many years and many challenging sessions to begin to correct our dysfunctional relationships. However, good progress was made and greater stability achieved. Occasionally there has been some backsliding, but a general commitment to the good of the community has enabled it to cohere, to develop new programs and approaches, to attract new leaders, and, despite a steady turnover in membership, to maintain its viability.
Reuven Goldfarb, Shomer Emeritus, Aquarian Minyan]
