- Jews in Rosh Hashanah on Aleksander Gierymski’s picture “Święto trąbek I”
Confession: I’m writing this on Sunday. It won’t be posted until Monday, but sometimes I feel particularly motivated, and I write these things. Why am I writing now? Because Yom Kippur is still on my mind, as big days in the Jewish calendar often are, even after they’ve passed.
I’m thinking about it more this year because I’m home–in a quiet suburb outside of Baltimore. Usually, I would be in Pittsburgh, but with the holiday falling on a Saturday this year (and a lot of friends leaving town), I thought what better time to go home? (And, to be honest, pacify my mother, although she’s not Jewish, she just misses me). On the drive home on Friday, I was thinking about Saturday morning. Read more…
My dad and I went to a service at Bet Aviv, a Reform Jewish congregation in Columbia, Md., whose tag line is “Adult. Active. Affordable.” This is the second year that my dad has purchased High Holiday tickets from Bet Aviv, where you don’t have to be a member necessarily. The short story is this: the dues at the synagogue I grew up in continued to escalate, and with my brother two years shy of graduating high school, my parents left our synagogue.
Enter Bet Aviv, a warm congregation that programs for its adults: there is no Hebrew school, no pre-school, and (apparently) ample volunteer and social action opportunities. This was my first real exposure to the congregation. They meet in a bunker-like room in an interfaith meeting house in Columbia and the turn-out for the Saturday morning service was immense–I’d estimate 350-450 people. Rabbi Marc Lee Raphael delivered an interesting sermon called “Outreach, Inreach, Upreach” that hinted at the ideas of community that I love to think (and write) so much about. (Side note: he also blogs, although not too frequently, it appears.)
While it was a lovely experience to sit with my dad and participate in the service, I left feeling a bit cynical. The Rabbi’s sermon touched on reaching within the community of Bet Aviv to welcome new and prospective members and reaching out to the greater Columbia community in need. He invented the word ‘upreach’ but this is where I started to lose him: it seems like it would be incredibly difficult to form a community among a group of people that only meet once or twice a month for Shabbat (and a few other times for social/action activities). The Rabbi himself is not always in attendance at these services (he is also a professor at American University).
Granted, I only saw the congregation at a glance, and I am far from their target audience. I didn’t come back for services later in the day and perhaps they would have been more intimate. I admire this Reform congregation for being what a lot of congregations are not: affordable. And this is increasingly important in the era of the Great Recession.
The title of this post may seem misleading, but really, I’m interested in what other college students do on the most holy day of the Jewish calendar. Did you go out on Friday night? Saturday night? Did you fast? Did you attend a break-the-fast, even if you didn’t go without food? Did you see friends? Family? Seclude yourself? Go home?
These questions lead to a greater one: what do we keep, what do we pass on, in terms of traditions and holidays? What do we do when we are far from home, with not much community or support system? I’d love to hear your answers.
