Seekers
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T'CHIYAH:
A Downtown Jewish Renaissance
What makes
Reconstructionists
different is home
rituals.
I
t's difficult to evaluate
the success of Recon-
structionism as a
denomination because the
leaders of the movement re-
ject the usual criteria used
for measuring success. Size,
for example, is not a high
priority of the movement.
"We're consciously small-
er because we place a high
premium on informality and
intimacy, and those kinds of
things can get lost when you
become a mass movement
with huge congregations,"
Rabbi Gluck says. "Of
course the down side of that
is that it's much harder for
us to get the financial sup-
port we need for some of our
more ambitious projects."
In terms of membership,
number of congregations
and special projects, the past
10 years have been a period
of great growth for the move-
ment. FRCH has grown to
30
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1991
70 congregations and
havurot across the United
States and Canada, up from
25 in 1980. The RRC, which
had its first graduate in
1973, now boasts 120 alum-
ni. And in last year's
American Jewish Council
Yearbook, 2 percent of all
American Jews said they
consider themselves Recon-
structionists — the first
time the movement has
charted in a national survey.
In recent years, the Recon-
structionist movement has
instituted a series of sum-
mer family camps, which
have proven to be successful.
1989 saw the publication of
Kol Ha-Nishama, a Friday
night prayer book. This, the
first Reconstructionist
prayer book since Kaplan's
1945 Sabbath Prayer Book is
soon to be followed by
Shirim U-V'rachot (a home-
use prayer book), and within
the next two years a Shab-
bat morning and holiday
prayer book is expected.
Considering that Rabbi
Kaplan strongly resisted in-
stitutionalization, however,
perhaps these are not the
right criteria by which to
judge the success of the
movement.
"Kaplan gauged the suc-
cess of Reconstructionism by
the extent to which its ideas
Were accepted by other Jews.
In that regard, he was wild-
ly successful," Rabbi Liebl-
ing says.
"Everybody accepts today
the idea that Judaism is a
civilization, with a culture
that goes far beyond liturgy
"Modern American Juda-
ism is just full of Kaplan's
ideas — the whole Jewish
center movement comes out
of Kaplan's ideas," he says.
"You could make the argu-
ment that the whole federa-
tion structure comes from
Kaplan's ideas about
organic Jewish com-
munities. Kaplan invented
the bat mitzvah and an
equal role for women in
services.
"Mordecai Kaplan is the
seminal American Jewish
thinker of the 20th century,
and most American Jews
are Reconstructionists with-
out knowing it."
❑
I
his week, like every
week, between five
and 15 people will
gather in a small
synagogue downtown
for Shabbat services. No rab-
bi will give a sermon; no can-
tor will lead the prayer; no
choir will provide operatic ac-
companiment. Instead, one
member of the congregation
will lead a discussion on the
weekly Torah portion, two con-
gregants (chosen on a rotating
basis) will lead the service,
and everyone — everyone —
will sing out.
Located in the heart of
Greektown, T'chiyah ("Renais-
sance") is the metropolitan
Detroit area's only Recon-
structionist congregation. And
although T'chiyah is one of
the smallest Reconstructionist
congregations in the United
States, in many ways it comes
closer to the Reconstructionist
ideal than any other.
T'chiyah's origins began in
the early 1970s when Judy
Harris, a native of metro
Detroit, returned to her home-
town from New York.
"I wrote an article for the
Monitor, a local paper, inviting
anyone who was interested in
starting a group in the down-
town area to get in touch with
me," she recalls. "We had a
meeting, and out of that we
put together a group that met
once a month, on Friday
nights, in people's homes. We
didn't call ourselves a havurah
— I don't think any of us knew
the word — but that's really
what we were."
The group would probably
have never gotten much big-
ger or more formal than that,
were it not for the efforts of
Carl Levin, then president of
the Detroit City Council, and
Toby Citrin. The two con-
tacted her in 1976, interested
in establishing a more formal
Jewish presence in Detroit.
"This was just as the
Renaissance Center was open-
ing up in downtown Detroit,
and it was our hope that
T'chiyah would be part of the
rebirth of a Jewish presence in
the downtown area," adds
Sandy Hansell, T'chiyah's cur-
rent president and one of the
founders of the congregation.
Over a period of several
months, the founders of Con-
gregation T'chiyah worked out
a set of guiding principles and'
bylaws, found a space for rent
in the St. Mary's Community
Center, and acquired interior
furnishings from a congrega-
Betty and Alan Schenk:
"What we had been doing all along fit in
comfortably with Reconstructionism."
Photo by G len n Triest
being a hierarchy, with Or-
thodox at the top, Conser-
vative in the middle, and
Reform at the bottom. If you
can't observe all the rules at
one level, then you drop
down to the next one. But
Reconstructionism doesn't
really fit into the structure,"
she says.
"Great-Grandpa Mark
was totally observant; my
family is still very obser-
vant. Remember that Kap-
lan thought of Reconstruc-
tionism not as a fourth
denomination, but as a
philosophy that could com-
pliment any of the other
three movements.
"In that sense, my family
is still Reconstructionist,
even though we no longer
belong to a Reconstruc-
tionist congregation!"
tion that had previously ex-
isted downtown.
T'chiyah was not founded as
a Reconstructionist congrega-
tion; in fact, during its first
five years of operation, it was
not affiliated with any of the
four major denominations.
Nevertheless, from its early
days T'chiyah's founders had a
clear idea of what they wanted
to create.
"We knew from the beginn-
ing that we were never going
to have a rabbi who would
lead services," Mr. Hansell
recalls. "Instead, we always
lead our own services, and try
to create services which can
be growth experiences for all
of our members!'
"We wanted to create an at-
mosphere that was family
oriented," adds Alan Schenk,
a T'Chiyah founder. "At the
suburban congregations, the
kids were usually in a dif-
ferent room. It was very im-
portant to us that our kids feel
like part of the service!'
Like the Reconstructionist
movement at large, T'chiyah
has found that staying small
both limits the congregation
and creates new opportunities.
"We can't have a daily mi-
nyan. We can't open our doors
on the High Holidays to just
anybody who wants to buy a
ticket and come in. We don't
have the resources for that,
and that's not our goal," Ms.
Harris says.