By Laurance Kaufman
My rabbi used to tease me about being a Litvak.  Having read Y. L. Peretz, I knew this was not an ethnic pigeon-holing; it was a character assessment.  It was Peretz's Litvak who scoffed when the townspeople explained the rebbe's mysterious disappearance early each Elul morning by saying he was visiting Heaven. 

Only a Litvak would have followed the rebbe to see where he really went.  And perhaps only a Litvak,  discovering that the rebbe was disguising himself as a peasant and  gathering firewood to see an impoverished elderly widow through the winter, would have commented the next time the townspeople talked about the rebbe going to Heaven, "If not higher."

My rabbi was recognizing my skepticism -- cynicism may be a better word -- about most matters of faith and spirituality.  After all, I'm the guy who comes to shul to talk to Ginsburg, when Ginsburg comes to talk to God.  When the synagogue management mavens told the temple board that we needed a mission statement, I could be counted on to say that bet tefila, bet midrash, bet knesset (house of prayer, house of study, house of assembly) had been good enough for my ancestors and it was good enough for me.  When the membership and outreach gurus told us the success secrets of the mega-churches, I could be counted on to say that we didn't need a full house, all we needed was a minyan.

Thus I was part of the claque for Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf when he participated at the San Diego Biennial with Rabbis Lawrence Kushner and Zoe Klein, to provide a counterpoint to their spiritual-mystical approach to the synagogue.  Covenant and sacred obligation speak more loudly to me than do spirituality and Kabbalah.  Having said that, it was a quip from Rabbi Klein that set me on the road to my major Biennial take-home:  As the kabbalist said to the hot-dog vendor, make me one with everything.

Make me one with everything.  Shma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.  One God, one people, at one with everything.

Flash forward to the panel discussion with Pastor Rick Warren, Professor Ron Wolfson, and Rabbis Laura Geller and David Wolpe, with an overarching theme being the need to welcome people into the congregation, to recognize them as seekers, and to turn them into doers, to give everyone an individual ministry that furthers the mission and transforms the institution into a community.

As I  heard the voices from the platform urging us to fit square pegs into round holes,  the Litvak in me  surfaced, and  I thought of our other great triad, Torah, Avodah, Gemilut Hasadim - a different formulation for bet t'filah, bet midrash, bet knesset. Some come to the synagogue for study, others for worship or for social action.  Different strokes for different folks.  A department store, not a boutique. 

When we have to cater to so many different ages, types, interests, backgrounds - how do we make the synagogue one with everything?  In the months since the Biennial, I have nurtured the sparks that were lit in San Diego - and have now recognized that when a synagogue is successful (success measured in terms of meeting the  multiple and varying needs of its congregants), it is because it is a bet midrash, bet t'filah, bet knesset - but those are not three things, they are one thing.  Prayer is fused with study and community, the community learns as it gathers to do God's work, and study even of the most secular material relates to sacred Jewish values.

It was once fashionable for Reform temples to proclaim, "My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples."  Today we all know that we have to be more than houses of prayers, but must also be houses of study and human connection.  Some of the humans who come to connect will be seekers, and some will be Litvaks.  But when we make the three things one, the seekers, the students, and even the Litvaks can be one with one another.

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