So the Progressive group decided to make Succot into a big flagship event, as part of an initiative to launch themselves as an autonomous community rather than just a group of friends who get together from time to time. They had invited a guest speaker, a rabbinical student named Judith Edelman-Green. She, and the week's events, were wonderful.
The services for the shabbat at the beginning of succot were lovely. Yes, it's a community that is still finding its feet and with a lot of members who are unsure of the basics of Jewish knowledge. Yes, they pitch their liturgy with rather less of the formal structure than I'd ideally prefer. But they are such warm people, really caring about their Judaism and about eachother. Judith E-G is a real hippie; her approach is way out into the kind of tree-hugging warm fuzzy spirituality business that I would hate if anyone lesser were doing it. But her amazing personality makes it work, even for a cynic like me.
"Reciting" the Shema, the declaration of God's unity, in Hebrew sign language, and calling people up to read from the Torah by theme instead of as individuals, were two elements of her hippie, Renewal-ish liturgy that really appealed to me. (Linguistics geeky aside: Hebrew sign is fascinating, because it's at such an early stage of development that most of the signs are recognizable mimes rather than the more abstract symbols one expects from more mature sign languages. I'm sure this is partly exaggerated by the fact that we were being taught it by a non-proficient speaker, but it's still very cool.)
It wasn't exactly how I would have run services personally. But it was close enough to remind me very powerfully of the reasons why I love my Progressive tradition. I've spent a lot of time in the past decade fitting in to communities which are further to the right in the Jewish spectrum than my natural home. And recently I've been greatly inspired by
During the week there was a story-telling session, which was really out of this world. The GTKY intro involved going round the circle and having people tell stories about turning points in their Jewish lives. And it just turned into the most amazing deep dialogue. I think many of the community are as uncomfortable as I am with the touchy-feely emoting, but somehow Judith got people to open up and there were some really moving and personal stories. That intro more or less took over the whole session, but the planned stuff was excellent too. Judith told three stories from Jewish tradition: the well-known tale of Resh Lakish the highwayman turned rabbi; a fantastic comic vignette from the Talmud about Alexander the Great being outwitted by some Amazonian women; and a really dense midrash about arrogance from Rabbi Nathan's Ethics. What a storyteller!
The morning service (not Progressive) on Thursday was an interesting experience. There were a bunch of Jewish schoolchildren there, and Judith. I was rather late, and had somehow got it into my head that you're supposed to do tefillin on the middle days of festivals, and didn't notice that nobody else was because I was in a rush. Judith corrected my mistake in the kindest possible way; I really appreciated that, especially as I'm horribly sensitive about tefillin. And we got to do all the fun stuff with shaking the lulav. Then Judith gave a really lovely talk to the children, insisting on inviting me to join their lesson in the succah; I think some could follow her English better than others, but anyway, it moved me very deeply. She talked of her motivation for training as a rabbi being to make Judaism more inclusive to people from different backgrounds, especially those with special needs.
By the end of Succot both
The synagogue was very overcrowded, and there were no clear instructions about whether women were supposed to be taking an active part or not. It was only
The great thing about hanging out with a fellow blogger is that she writes up the events we attend together. And