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Friday, October 5, 1984
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
‘
1
BELONG?
On the eve of Yom Kippur,
a rabbi's open letter to
unaffiliated Jews
suggests that being part of
a synagogue means being
part of the Jewish people.
BY RABBI JACK RIEMER
Special to The Jewish News
Dear Friend:
I am sorry that I have to write this
open letter to you, but I don't know any
other way of reaching you. I don't
know your name or address, but I have
seen you on occasion. You come into
my synagogue once in awhile for a Bar
or Bat Mitzvah that you are invited to,
or for a wedding.
I nod politely when I see you.
Sometimes our eyes meet and for a
moment, I sense a look of hesitation,
perhaps of temptation in them, as
though you would like to say some-
thing to me but are not sure you can.
Then you turn away. Perhaps it is my
imagination. I do not know.
I have been told that you used to
belong to the synagogue but you drop-
ped out. And I have been told you are
not alone, that three-quarters of the
Jews in our country do not belong to a
synagogue. That is a mind-boggling
statistic for me. Most of the people I
come in contact with belong to a syna-
gogue, some even belong to two.
So I don't know many people like
you. But I wish I did. I wish I could talk
to you and tell you how I feel about
you. And I wish you could talk to me
and tell me how you feel about me.
Let me start a conversation -
through this open letter. Perhaps you
will respond, telling me if what I say
makes sense. I was told that when you
dropped out, someone from the syna-
gogue called to ask why and you gave
two answers.
you said it was too expensive to
belong, and that you no longer needed
the synagogue now that your children
were through with their religious
schooling. Others, I am told, don't join
a synagogue until their children are
old enough for religious school.
There is no use denying that, like
the cost of everything else in this
world, the cost of maintaining syna-
gogues has skyrocketed. For people
who are fighting the war against infla-
tion and losing, synagogues have re-
duced rates which we give without
embarrassment. Still, it is expensive
to belong. What can I say in response
to that?
Only this. If you have a limited
amount of money and an unlimited
number of things to spend it on, you
have to make choices. These choices
have to be made on the basis of
priorities.
If you cannot afford_both a new car
and a trip overseas, then you must de-
cide which means more to you. And if
you cannot afford the synagogue and
something else, what you are really
saying when you choose the other is
that the synagogue is not your top
priority.
I understand that. I am pained by
it, but I respect it. Everyone has the
right to set his own priorities. Just
know that this is what you are doing.
The second thing you said pained
me more. You said you do not need
synagogue because your children have
graduated. That made me feel as
though the synagogue were a gas sta-
tion. When you need it, you make use
of it; when you don't, you drive past it.
You feel no deeper relationship to it
than that, no greater responsibility for
it than that.
That pained me because it is not
what the synagogue is supposed to be.
Let me tell you what the synagogue
means to me, and what it ought to
mean to you.
I want to be part of the synagogue
because I want to be part of the Jewish
people and there is no other institution
that unites the Jews as well, across the
centuries and across the borders. This
is the only institution we have that the
Jew from Cairo and the Jew from
Casablanca, the Jew of the Third Cen-
tury and the Jew of the Thirteenth .
Century can walk into and recognize
'and feel at home in.
When you are part of a synagogue,
you are part of a fellowship and a sis-
tership with all those who have been
part of it before you, all those who built
and maintained it before you, and all
those who have been part of syna-
gogues like it down through the cen-
turies.
You open a prayerbook and the
generations that went into you come
alive within you. You say the same
words they said, and you know that
you belong to the ages and that the
ages belong to you. You are not here
today and gone tomorrow but are part
of your people's history. That is one
reason to belong to a synagogue.
There is a second reason. The syn-
agogue is not only a bond to my past. It
is also a bond to the Jewish people of
the present, the ones with whom I live.
During the week I may bump into
them somwhere, as a neighbor, a
friend, a client, a co-worker, even a
competitor. But when we meet in this
place, we meet as partners. We stand
with a sense of being connected to each
other, and of being responsible for each
other.
Have you ever had this experi-
ence? You walk into a daily minyan
because you are a mourner. Your
shoulders are stooped and your eyes
still red with the pain and grief of your
loss. You feel awkward, and so ab-
sorbed in your sorrow that you can
hardly lift your head.
Then you look around and see how
many others are there for the same
reason, how many others are going
through precisely what you are going
through. And you realize tha you are a
member of the same fraternity as they,
the fraternity that everyone joins
sooner or later, the fraternity of mour-
ners.
For the first few weeks they show
you the ropes, give you the cues for
Kaddish and make you feel at home.
After awhile, you are one of the group;
soon, you are the one who says a word
of welcome, and helps show the ropes
to those who come after you.
That experience, of being con-
nected in the time of your greatest iso-
lation, your greatest loneliness and
bewilderment, is a healing thing. To
be part of a community that cares
helps you to recover.
If that sense of community was
always needed, it is needed even more
in our time. We live in such a transient
society. If you want to. move up, you
have to move out. So people move
every few years, and we pay an enor-
mous psychic price. We pay in that we
have so little sense of roots, of family.
Who lives near a cousin anymore?
Who lives in the same state as his par-
ents or his children anymore?
In this kind of mobile world ; some-
thing has to stay the same, something
has to stand still. In this transient
society, there has to be someplace
where people care about me; not just as
a customer or a client or a competitor,
but as a person and as a Jew.
I will tell you a secret. If you don't
already know it, you can get a rabbi
and you can rent a synagogue for all of
the rites of passage from baby nam-
ing to burial — without belonging.
People call us all the time and ask: Are
you a rabbi? How much do you charge
for an unveiling? Would you officiate
at a funeral for us? Some rabbis will do
these things for you, out of kindness,
even if you don't belong.
But isn't it dehumanizing to have
a stranger sum up your life at the end?
Isn't it humiliating to have someone
who never met you recite cliches at
such a time? It is bad enough if you are
a number at work or a stranger to your