Congregations Repair Themselves and the World
On February 13, 2007, the sanctuary at Congregation Shir Hadash, a Reform temple in Los Gatos, California, was packed. People of all ages, races, and religions were gathering for the community’s first “action,” a direct and unabashed encounter with government officials to demand universal healthcare in California.
The temple’s volunteer choir performed popular Jewish and Israeli folk tunes as participants found their seats. But the usual synagogue celebration soon gave way to a host of speakers sharing stories of personal tragedy caused by a lack of access to healthcare. State legislators sitting on the dais were asked to detail their commitment to bring quality healthcare to all citizens of California.
The action that night was based on a model called Congregation-based Community Organizing, used by both Jewish and non- Jewish groups as they work together to try to make the world a more livable place.
Abby Flam, who lives in Massachusetts, had gone across the United States to get to that action in Los Gatos. She was among the participants in a three-day conference sponsored by the Jewish Funds for Justice, which, among its other work, supports synagogues as they work with CBCO.
For the last three years, Ms. Flam has been co-chair of Hillel’s Call to Action, as the United Synagogue-affiliated Temple Emanuel of Newton Centre, Massachusetts, calls its social action committee. What she and other activists at Temple Emanuel have achieved goes well beyond the standard congregational social action program. Hundreds of Temple Emanuel congregants are engaged in a serious and ongoing commitment to addressing deep, structural social issues in the community. According to Ms Flam, 420 synagogue members assembled to endorse elder care and support its caregivers as a focus of congregational action. Two hundred people signed on to three action teams – external organizing, resources to recognize and support caregivers, and a hesed team that is undertaking a seniors’ asset survey to examine ways in which seniors can continue to contribute to the community.
But the real story here is not the action itself, but how Congregation-based Community Organizing allowed the congregation to involve many of its members in this long-term, volunteer-intensive tikkun olam project. Not only does CBCO provide an innovative way to engage members of synagogues in issues of social justice, it also may provide a new and promising way of organizing synagogue life.
Many of our efforts to connect members to their synagogues are based on marketing programs. Members are seen as customers. The job of leadership is to package and market the programs so they will be attractive to the members and the members will participate in the program. In other words, the customers will consume the product. CBCO looks at members as citizens who have values, interests, and passions. The citizen/member looks to the synagogue as a place where those values can be acted upon and realized.
The role of the synagogue, in this model, is to discover its members’ values, interests, and passions. Congregation-based Community Organizing does this through one-on-one encounters, where trained facilitators encourage members to share their personal life stories. Sometimes these encounters take place as small meetings in people’s homes. As people recount their stories, the facilitator guides the storyteller to identify the core concerns and values that underlie it. A story about a sick elderly parent uncovers concerns about healthcare and the value of bikkur holim, caring for the sick. A story about a child’s poor classroom experience reveals concerns about education and the need for quality schools. The facilitator records elements of the stories and the concerns and values that emerge from them.
According to Abby Flam, the one-on-one encounters and house meetings are followed by a serious analysis of the values and concerns that emerge. “In May 2006, 75 people came together to review the concerns that were identified from the personal stories and identify those that had depth and breadth and touched many of the congregation’s members’ lives,” she said. “A decision was then made to focus on elder care.”
Once the core issues are identified and the congregation organizes to address them, the next step is to discover allies within other community faith-based organizations. The congregation thus becomes part of a larger local network advocating for important communal concerns. This May, Temple Emanuel’s board voted to authorize the congregation to join the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, which had been instrumental in passing Massachusett’s universal healthcare initiative. GBIO is made up of 70 faith-based groups with some union participation. “Their next project is an Aging with Dignity campaign,” Ms. Flam said. “We will be working with them on that project in the greater Boston area.”
At Congregation Tifereth Israel in Columbus, Ohio, Cantor Jack Chomsky has translated his passion for social justice into congregational and community action using the CBCO model. During the last decade, Cantor Chomsky has encouraged Tifereth Israel’s involvement with a local organization called Building Responsibility, Equality And Dignity, which is allied with the national Direct Action and Training network.
“We became involved with BREAD as it was forming – along with about 40 other religious institutions,” he said. “Now we’ve got five synagogues on board with the organization’s 50 plus congregations! It has deepened our relationship with other area congregations, and enabled us to pool our moral resources to have a real impact on life in Columbus in a way that is consistent with eternal Jewish values.
“Our affordable housing initiatives have led to the creation of over 700 units of housing in 2007 alone,” he continued. “Our ongoing attention to access to health care has helped to serve 2,000 new patients through the East Central Health Center. The city of Columbus has earmarked $450,000 toward the model truancy reduction plan that grows directly out of last year’s historic meeting at Tifereth Israel. We have brought important attention to and initiated action against predatory payday lending through the recent Assembly. We have a lot for which to be proud.”
Two other United Synagogue congregations also are involved in CBCO – Kehilat Shalom in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon, California. Rabbi Mark Raphael of Kehilat Shalom and Rabbi Lavey Darby of Kol Shofar attended the February conference. United Synagogue’s participation in this project is small but growing. If the enthusiasm witnessed by those involved in CBCO is any indication, this may turn out to be a remarkable way to invigorate our congregations while repairing the world through Jewish values of social justice.
Richard Lederman, PhD, is director of United Synagogue’s Seaboard region and of its public affairs and public policy commission.
