Temple Beth-El is part of a much larger community which is hard to imagine within the confines of our own con- gregational building. I have attended all of the biennial con- ventions beginning with 1987. The sheer number of attendees always has impressed me. Nothing in the Jewish communal world has matched, for me, the sound of 5000 people singing the Shema at the Friday evening service or revisiting popular Jewish songs and worship tunes at the song session later the same night.
The large number of attendees does prevent a partici- pant from seeing people he or she knows. One delegate from Bellingham, Washington, who lived in Las Cruces some 30 years ago (we met quite randomly at the 2011 biennial), saw me on Thursday and said to me, “Why did it take us a full day to see each other?” One of the first people I saw this year was a member of my youth group and a fellow student at my high school. I had a chance to reconnect with two col- lege contemporaries who sang in the Hillel Foundation choir I helped to direct. On the last night, I passed by the delega- tion from my home Temple where I grew up, trying to take a photo by the “leaf” with their congregation’s name. I offered to be the photographer, and then I met the youngest member of the delegation, a college student whose mom and grandparents I knew. That was yet another demonstration of “from generation to generation to generation.” I saw congregants from the Temple I served in Dayton, Ohio, who knew both Rhonda and me as young Jewish professionals. The Karol delegation was completed by our niece Samantha Tananbaum, who works in social media Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Many of my rabbinic and Jewish music colleagues were there as well.
With every conversation I had, TBE Las Cruces found its way onto the American Jewish map for my fellow delegates.
The sessions I attended conveyed many pearls of wisdom. Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, author of Pirkei Avot: A Social Justice Commentary, lamented how empathy has lost its place as an important value, and encouraged us to uphold respect and to stand for what we believe in an authentic way. Rabbi Ariel Burger, author of Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom, noted that Elie Wiesel taught that education, coupled with memory, can enable people to stop themselves from committing atrocities of the likes that Wiesel saw during his lifetime. On Shabbat afternoon, I attended a session with Marc Freedman, author of How to Live Forever, and Laura Geller, co-author (with her late husband Richard Siegel) of Getting Good at Getting Older. Marc Freedman noted that loneliness is the single greatest threat to our well-being, at any age. Laura Geller encouraged us to LIVE a legacy, rather than just think about leaving a legacy. In an address to the convention gathering on Saturday night, Professor Deborah Lipstadt gave an excellent talk on how we should not let anti-Semitism define us, urging us to be the subjects of our Jewish identity, in control of our expression, rather than seeing ourselves as objects of scorn and hatred.
In other words, our Judaism should be about JOY and not OY.
I had the opportunity to hear many enjoyable performances of Jewish music, including Julie Silver (who visited us this past May), Dan Freelander and Jeff Klepper (creators of the “Shalom Rav” melody we sing), and many others. I heard many of the melodies we sing at Temple Beth-El dur-ing worship and other programs throughout the biennial.
Delegates had a chance to visit famous Chicago sites on organized tours (my choice was Wrigley Field), which offered an opportunity for us to explore common interests beyond our commitment to sustaining our congregations back home.
The URJ biennial has the potential to strengthen the foundation of our wisdom about Jewish life and to foster connections with the greater Jewish world. One of my music colleagues who attended for the first time said that there was no convention she had attended quite like this one. I urge Temple Beth-El members to consider participating in this gathering so that you too, can bring back home the special spirit of the URJ community.
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