We asked our readers to tell us what they love about their congregations. The first-person responses came from all around the bay, from affiliated synagogues and independent — and all sang the praises of their unique spiritual experiences in the Bay Area.
Shared divinity
“Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad,” recited Rav Av, as Rabbi Avram Davis likes to be called.
At Chochmat HaLev in Berkeley, at this celebratory Kabbalat Shabbat service in the dark of the most recent enduring winter, Rav Av continued. The Sh’ma represents the most quintessential, fundamental Jewish teaching of the Oneness of humanity. In many ways, the rest is commentary.
That Shabbat eve, surrounded by a mass of swaying bodies, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting, but mostly dancing ecstatically to welcome the Shabbat bride, I felt the loving arms of my heritage encircle me once more. Far from the synagogue and the Jewish community of my youth, in the world of Chochmat HaLev, I found the kavanah (connection with prayer) and devekut (connection with God) for which I didn’t know I yearned.
At Chochmat HaLev, being Jewish is a constant celebration. Rabbi Avram Davis believes that Torah is the tool that will heal the world. He asks his community to embrace this fact, to drink in the sweetness, the terror, the glory and the catastrophe of Jewish history, and to share with anyone who will listen.
There is no one way to look, act, pray or acknowledge. We are all b’tselem elohim — made in God’s image. I am reminded of that shared divinity each time I find myself on the grounds of Chochmat HaLev.
Heidi Basch | Oakland
The perfect shul
Last night I dreamed about the perfect shul — Rabbi Hillel was the spiritual leader, Mel Torme the chazzan and Irving Berlin the music director. The food had the feeing of my grandmother’s but was prepared by a four-star chef. All my friends were kibitzing and noshing. And everyone knew everyone. It must have been the jolt of realizing all of this came with no dues that woke me up.
While no shul could be so heavenly, it did remind me of why I joined Congregation Beth Sholom about nine years ago. The clergy were inspiring, the people were down-to-earth, and in so many ways the shul felt like the one where I was a child.
I grew up in a small town outside of Pittsburgh, Pa., where my father was on the board of our small shul. My mother contributed to Sisterhood, Hadassah and B’nai Brith. Today at Beth Sholom I serve on the board because of my parents and for my kids. My parents modeled service and the reality that communities require our investment to prosper. And for my kids, I want to help grow the community and education so that all our children understand and feel that being Jewish is a heritage that has value in life.
I love contributing to the progress of our community and doing so with such a tremendous group of people.
Max Perr | San Francisco
A welcoming community
I love Kehilla Community Synagogue because:
• It’s participatory — you are engaged the entire time, whether it’s singing, chanting, meditating, or “davening” in English to your own trope. Time flies by.
• It’s inclusive — everyone is welcome and accommodated. Young and old, all orientations and genders, able or disabled; everyone feels at home and respected.
• It’s Jewish Renewal — taking Spirit into your own heart, however that makes sense to you, in forms ranging from traditional to Chassidic to ultra-modern to shamanic. When Torah is read, the passages are framed in terms of a personal psycho-spiritual journey, and everyone who identifies with a particular passage comes up to the bimah to be part of the aliyah. At High Holy Day services, this can mean hundreds of people are gathered around the Torah.
• The music is beautiful, and the prayers are easy to learn — many traditional prayers are sung as short, repeating chants; for example, “Modeh Ani” is only six words, repeated over and over.
• It’s still young, and you can make a difference. Only 22 years old, Kehilla is open to new spiritual practices (e.g. Group Spiritual Direction), educational approaches (small classes, b’nai mitzvah students paired in dyads with their tutor), and organizational challenges (we just bought a building).
• It’s dedicated to a spiritual approach to tikkun olam — fixing the world, one step at a time, with fairness to all, is a driving theme of Kehilla.
I can’t imagine going anywhere else.
Joel Schipper | San Francisco
The key
As a child growing up in a small farming community in northern Maine, the Aroostook Hebrew Community Center was the place to be for the High Holy Days. Our congregation consisted of about 60 families from the surrounding area, including students and faculty from the University of Maine campus nearby, and Air Force families from Loring Air Force Base.
My grandfather, an Orthodox Jew, was one of the founders of the synagogue and our family never missed a service. As each child in the community reached the age of bar or bat mitzvah, they received a key to the front door of the synagogue as a symbol of their responsibility to care for their Jewish home. I still have mine, and it still works.
I moved to Marin County with my daughter, who was 6 years old, in 2002. As a single parent I felt welcomed at Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon, and was pleased to see the attention given by the synagogue to the education program for children in the congregation.
What I did not expect was the love and attention shown to my daughter by both Rabbi Lavey Derby and Rabbi Chai Levy. Both were warm and welcoming to me, for sure, but what impressed me deeply then, and remains so to this day, is their ability to meet the children of the synagogue at their own level, and instill in them that this is their community — even if they don’t hand out keys to the front door.
Toby Adelman | San Rafael
A spiritual home
In July 1972, our daughter, Michele, celebrated her bat mitzvah at our congregation, Sherith Israel.
During the service our beloved Rabbi Emeritus Martin Weiner announced the fact that he had performed hundreds of bar mitzvahs, but this was his very first bat mitzvah. We were thrilled, honored and very surprised!
We are still members of Sherith Israel. Michele is grown up now and has shared in her nephews’ and nieces’ bar/bat mitzvahs.
I still have Michele’s bat mitzvah dress. You should have seen the expression on her niece Angel’s face when I (jokingly) offered her the dress in 1999, 27 years later!
We’ll try it again for niece Sarah’s bat mitzvah in 2012. Forty years later!
I love Sherith Israel because it is my spiritual home. We have had three rabbis since we joined in 1965. I couldn’t imagine celebrating lifecycle events and High Holy Days anywhere else.
Tasia R. Melvin | San Francisco
Faith and time
Through personal experience I believe that one’s faith becomes justified over time. As I’ve gotten older, my faith has tended to be more aligned with Conservative.
I enjoy the honor of participating at Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco and learning from people versed in Torah and halachic traditions, an egalitarian community, a deep bench of daveners. Plus, every Shabbat they put on a nice Kiddush.
Eric J. Silverman | San Francisco
One meeting
It started with a phone call in June 2005. Howard Wexler, a member of the Board of Trustees at Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco, asked me to serve on the congregation’s Strategic Planning Committee.
After 15 to 20 minutes trying to decline, I very reluctantly agreed to attend one meeting. One meeting, and only one. I attended the first Strategic Planning Committee meeting, and found myself interested in the challenge and embraced by the warmth and spirit of Sherith Israel. I signed on.
Until then, to say I was simply a secular Jew was an understatement. I went to services almost exclusively on the High Holy Days. Yet I always had strong feelings about my Jewish heritage, and have served on boards for various organizations, including Jewish community centers and Jewish Vocational Service. But previously my moments in temple were very limited.
In January, I traveled to Israel on a New Israel Fund study tour. I was fortunate to find Sherith Israel’s senior rabbi, Larry Raphael, on the same trip. That experience added to my increased involvement in Sherith Israel to foster a dramatic change in my interest in Judaism, adding a rewarding and major dimension to my life.
Today I attend services and take classes at Sherith Israel in everything from Talmud studies to the meaning of the Kaddish prayer to beginning Hebrew. I am honored to have begun serving on the temple’s Board of Trustees. And it began because Howard Wexler wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Lynn Sedway | San Francisco