Rosh Hashanah–Day 2
“Commitment, Spirituality and Community”
 Congregation Agudas Achim - Sept. 20, 2009
Rabbi Melissa Crespy

This is a year of major change for many, perhaps all of us, in this room.  You have your first new rabbi in 4 years, and she is a woman, and I have left New York and New Jersey after living there for 28 + years and serving four Conservative congregations.  These great changes have caused me to think quite a lot, and I know they have done the same for many of you in this room who worked diligently to find the best rabbi for your congregation.  Your thoughts have focused on “what is a rabbi?” and “what do we want from our rabbi?”  I have thought a lot about those questions, and two more of my own, and they are “What is a synagogue?”  and “What do I want from our synagogue?”  In thinking about these questions, I find myself waxing nostalgic, and thinking about my past, and especially a very special Jewish community which nourished me to become the Jew I am today.  I’d like to tell you about this community, because in doing so I share my vision of the type of community I would love for us to build together here at Agudas Achim.

In 1982, I became a regular davener at Minyan Hamakif, a minyan - a prayer group, a community - of about 50 people which davened together every Shabbat in the corner of a large room at Congregation Ansche Chesed.   Ansche Chesed, a Conservative synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was, at the time, in a state of great disrepair.  Once a big, thriving synagogue, its numbers had dwindled and its building had deteriorated.  In the 1970s, a few groups of young people had begun to rent space in the building in order to daven together on Shabbat.  Minyan Hamakif was one of 3 minyanim meeting in that building in 1982.

I don’t remember how I heard of the minyan - probably through a friend - but almost as soon as I started attending, I felt very comfortable there.  It was a very warm, very friendly group of people.  Many of us were in our twenties or thirties, working in all different kinds of occupations or still in school - or both.  Some of us were very Jewishly knowledgeable, and some of us had a lot to learn.  There were a number of rabbinical students from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a professor or two, but no official rabbi and no official cantor.  Each one of us, at different times, would share parts of the service and the running of the minyan.  If you didn’t daven Shaharit, maybe you read Torah.  If you didn’t read Torah, perhaps you chanted the haftarah, or led Musaf, or Pezukei D’Zimra.  There were a number of us - including me - who didn’t know how to do any of those things, but gradually, we learned - because someone took us under their wing and taught us, or because we got up our guts to learn on our own.  Every week, a different person gave a d’var torah - a word of Torah, a mini-sermon on the Torah portion.  There were some really inspiring ones - and some not-so-great ones - but we all tried.

We were an egalitarian group - egalitarian in that men and women were able to lead all different parts of the service, and egalitarian in that there was no hierarchy among us.  There was a lot of camaraderie, and a sense of community.  Each month, or couple of months, someone would be assigned to coordinate the davening, Torah reading and divrei Torah - and of course, the kiddushes!  For what would a Jewish davening group be without some food after services!

I look back very warmly on the years I spent with that minyan.  Some of my closest friends to this day are people I met and came to know there.  I learned how to lead Shaharit and Musaf in that minyan.  I learned how to give a d’var Torah in that minyan.  Though I had been a shul-going person since I was a child, it was in that minyan that I found myself most warmly welcomed and most fully empowered to be a participating Jew.  It was in that minyan that I first began to consider the possibility of becoming a rabbi.

I ask myself today what made Minyan Hamakif so special.  What was it about this community that inspired so many people?  As I begin to articulate the answers, it occurs to me that we didn’t really spell them out - we just acted on them.  But, I think, in forming a vision for who we want Agudas Achim to be, it makes sense to distill these values.  In a nutshell, Minyan Hamakif worked because we had commitment, spirituality and community.

First, we had commitment; we had commitment to traditional Judaism with all its richness and its commandments.   We were committed to Shabbat; we loved Shabbat.  It was at the center of our lives.  It was a time when we came together, prayed together, sang together and discussed deep issues in our lives.  Shabbat’s restrictions of not working, not spending money, and not cooking were liberating for us - because they freed us to focus on the important personal, spiritual and intellectual issues in our lives.  When we planned Friday night dinners, or potluck lunches, or our weekly kiddush, it was just taken for granted that everything served would be kosher.  We were traditional Jews and we cared deeply for the tradition; we saw Jewish law as a binding force for us, a force which gave us a sense of the sacredness of our mission, and which bound us together as a community.  Our commitment to tradition, to Jewish law formulated by the rabbis long ago and renewed in our time - tied us to each other and to our history.  This was our commitment - and it was powerful.

Second, we were a religious and a spiritual group.  Though we never took a poll, I’m sure if you had asked any of the members of the minyan if they believed in God, the answer would have been an unequivocal “yes”.  We were a believing community, who understood the power of prayer.  We made that prayer as aesthetically pleasing as possible; we sang our lungs out; we harmonized, we learned new melodies, we dug into the depths of our souls and opened them to whatever God, Judaism and our community might give us.  Our davening was musical, beautiful and soulful. There was, I remember, one marvelous Torah reader who would chant the parashah using different voices for the different characters in the Torah’s stories.  There was a woman who davened Musaf so beautifully you just wanted to cry.  And we approached our study of Torah with the same fervor.   The people who gave the divrei Torah were almost all very well prepared, even if they weren’t professional scholars.  You always learned something from them.  And it was exciting!  For Shavuot, we held an all-night Tikkun - where we studied Torah all night long in someone’s apartment, and then davened together just as sunlight was peaking over the horizon.  We loved learning together, and davening together, and each one of us - when our turn came, was committed to doing our part - to learning the Torah reading, or the davening, or preparing the d’var Torah, or organizing any of the above.  We were a believing and a spiritual community - and our Torah learning and our prayers were very meaningful to all of us.

And, third, we were a community for each other.   We looked forward to seeing each other; we looked forward to davening together.  We looked forward to the music we made together - and even the surprise of who might be davening or giving the d’var torah that day.    We were committed to Shabbat, to learning, to being there, to investing ourselves and our time into making the service meaningful and the community cohesive. We became friends.  We went out of our way to welcome newcomers.  We invited each other over for Shabbat dinner, Shabbat lunch, and Yuntiff meals as well.  We taught each other how to daven, how to read Torah, how to give a d’var Torah.  We lingered after services talking about the major issues in the news and in our lives.  We invited each other into our lives.  We were there for each other.

אבינו מלכנו כותבנו בספר חיים טובים - “Our Father, Our Sovereign, inscribe us in the book of good life.”  That’s what we pray for this morning.  אבינו מלכנו מלא ידינו מברכותך - “Our Father, Our Sovereign, fill our hands with your blessings.”  That’s also what we ask of God this morning.  And it seems to me, the good life, and the life of blessings we petition God for this morning - all of them were to be found in Minyan Hamakif.  The key elements to that minyan- commitment to traditional Judaism, spirituality, and community - are the elements, it seems to me, to a thriving, meaningful and beneficial Jewish congregation.  They are the elements which I would like to see grow and develop at Agudas Achim.  They are the ingredients which have nourished my Jewish life - and they are the ingredients which have nourished Jewish life throughout the centuries and in every land in which Jews have lived.

One of the things which attracted me to Agudas Achim was its sense of tradition.  A community which supports two daily minyanim, which counts among its members a number of Torah and haftarah chanters, as well as daveners, and scholars and students of Torah, and which contains a good number of kosher homes - these are signs of a community committed to tradition.  And, during the less than two months I have been here, I have been impressed with the sense of community a good number of the members have.  But I am also very aware that the circle of commitment needs to be widened.  My vision of this congregation - whose roots are solid and whose building is so inspiring - includes all its members participating in the community - young as well as old, parents as well as children.  We need you, all of you.  There is a richness and a depth to Judaism that is impossible to describe in detail here, but can only be experienced by study, by prayer and by involvement with the community on a regular basis.

And I know this is not easy to hear, but let me be clear in my message.  Religion is at the heart of the Jewish community - not fighting anti-Semitism, and not building Holocaust museums.  Communal prayer, study of sacred texts and ideas, observance of Shabbat and Festivals, Kashrut, and the keeping of moral and ethical norms which I spoke of yesterday  - these are the bread and butter of Judaism.  Study after study and conference after conference keeps telling us this, but we Jews, for some reason, just don’t want to accept it.  Gary Rosenblatt, a very savvy editor of the New York Jewish Week, wrote in the Rosh Hashanah edition a number of years ago: “The more conferences, forums, dialogues and plenaries I attend on the future of American Jewry, the more I am convinced that Jewish life as we know it will continue to decline without a renewed emphasis on Judaism, as in religion.  That’s a tough pill for many American Jews to swallow, I know.  Most of us define our Jewishness as sharing a common history, and perhaps destiny, rather than in religious terms of sharing a faith and a text - the Torah - and keeping covenantal obligations to be a holy people...What binds us, in the end, is our faith in a religion that teaches us to live by a covenant, to be a holy people.  That belief sustained Jews for thousands of years.  If it sounds too jarring or alien or “racist” today, woe unto us and our future.”

I agree wholeheartedly with Gary Rosenblatt, and I believe that ultimately, it is our religious mission which informs our ethics and also creates the sense of community, the sense of bonding that so many of us seek in our alienating world today.  If an emphasis on Jewish religion sounds too “orthodox” to you, I’d ask you take a careful look at Conservative Judaism’s expectations.  But for now, I invite you, I ask you, I urge you to help me create that wonderful, warm, involved community I was once part of - here at Agudas Achim.  Please come study and learn with me - formally and informally - on Shabbat and during the week.  Please come daven with us any day of the week, but especially on Shabbat and Hagim - when the President and I are working hard to create services which inspire your heart, your soul and your mind.  Please come and bring your children and grandchildren.  There are special places for them, too, on Shabbat and Hagim.

אבינו מלכנו כותבנו בספר חיים טובים – "Our Father, Our Sovereign - inscribe us in the book of good life.  אבינו מלכנו מלא ידינו מברכותך - “Our Father, Our Sovereign, fill our hands with your blessings.”  Dear God - on this Rosh Hashanah morning - so full of promise and potential, please help me be the good rabbi, the spiritual leader and teacher that this congregation has longed for and searched for so diligently.   And dear God, please help this congregation become the warm, caring, committed, spiritual community that you and I long for.  May these be the good life and blessings that you grant us this year.  Amen. 

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