by Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz Ph.D.
Congregation B'nai Israel, Bridgeport, CA
Excerpted from Dr. Gurevitz's keynote address at the Union's Shabbat Symposium, January 2007
I have realized that there are a number of things that I bring to my work or the things that I hope to do in my work as a rabbi that have been in direct response to negative experiences that I had as a lay member of a community sometime in the past. And Shabbat is actually one of those things.

I want to start off with a little bit of that lay experience: Back in 1996, I was a member of a Reform synagogue in London. I wrote a two-sided proposal that I sent to both rabbis. It was called Yom Shabbat. And what I was highlighting was that I was conscious as a young adult, single, that congregants would come to services--in the UK, more Reform congregants do come for a community service on Shabbat morning, and that is partly because we have a different history. The bar/bat mitzvah never sort of took over the service in the same way that it has done here.

But we would come to services and then that would be it and people would go their separate ways. Nothing else happened at the synagogue, and I had no idea whether or not other people did Shabbat things, whether the rabbis did Shabbat-related things--I had no idea. I just knew that I was basically by myself.

So I made the suggestion that maybe every now and again, we could have people share lunch together at the synagogue and maybe engage in some Torah studies, some discussion. Maybe some people would want to get together and take a walk on the nearby Hampstead Heath. Maybe they would like to show up a little bit later in the day and do something cultural together and close off with Havdalah. We know this program: Some synagogues are doing it; sometimes they use the label Synaplex. There are places that do things like this these days in this country. But back then, I never got a response from either rabbi to the proposal.

There are so many different ways...that we could be coming at this subject. So it has been difficult for me to try to focus on one area. But I do want to start with the top, with the leaders. We [think about] how we can encourage our congregants to engage with a day of Shabbat and the fact that in our society and in our communities "because Torah tells us to" doesn't by itself work. So one of the important things we must think about when we talk about how to communicate with others is the question of "Why" or, to put it another way, "What is the question to which Shabbat might be a compelling answer?"

Those of us who are leaders of all kinds, whether we be clergy or educators or lay leaders, I think we have to start by thinking back to our own experiences and looking at ourselves: How do we observe Shabbat? Why do we observe Shabbat? And if we actually feel enriched and nourished by what we do on Shabbat, then we shouldn't be keeping that a top secret. We have to share that gift with others in as many different ways as we can.

And I think that how we, as leaders of different kinds, give explicit and implicit messages to our congregations is very important. I have heard that we have to recognize that giving more and more work to the professional leadership sometimes feels like it is taking away from their personal time, from family time. But I am going to put that aside for just now because we do have to think what message we give as leaders. The message that I got from those two rabbis in the UK--and, by the way, I changed synagogues about three months later--was that they had no interest whatsoever in celebrating Shabbat with their community once the services were over. I had no idea whether or not in fact outside of leading a service, those individuals observed Shabbat in any shape or form whatsoever.

So when we as the leaders see our Shabbat as work, consisting of leading the services and doing the Torah study, and then we want absolutely no more part of Shabbat with our congregants, then I don't think we are providing much of a role model. If we are planning to take a walk, why not sometimes do that with our congregants? If we are planning to make Havdalah, why not sometimes do that with our congregants?

We have in our congregation a new program, once a month, called A Havdalah Happening. And it is very much in the line of what Carol was suggesting--the small group with the big questions; it was a lay initiative by one person who just wanted to be able to have that deeper kind of conversation with other people. He just kicks it off in a gentle way, starts off with a theme, and then the conversation just takes off of its own accord, with very little facilitation. We have about fifteen people who come. Everyone is deeply touched by it. I have been attending because I have to ask myself, If I feel I don't want to be there because it is my time off, then why should I expect anybody else to show up at the synagogue at four o'clock on Shabbat afternoon? If it doesn't enrich my Shabbat to share that conversation with people in my congregation, then why should it enrich anybody else's?

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