Rabbi Steve Segar's message in Havurah Happenings
The newsletter of the Reconstructionist Havurah of Cleveland   January 2003

Embracing our religious diversity in practical ways.

A couple of months ago, I suggested in this column that it would be helpful within our community if we could be careful about how we interact with one another at Shabbat and holiday services. More specifically, I argued that we go out of our way to check with another Havurah member before we ask a question or make a comment related to that member's area of responsibility within the Havurah, so as to avoid the possibility of undermining in any way a member's cultivation of "Shabbat consciousness." This month I would like to push that argument a little further.

One of the great strengths of Reconstructionism as a movement has been its openness to a wide variety of observance patterns among its membership. There are places in the Jewish world where one is looked down upon for not adhering to a certain level of observance. Then again, there are other places in the Jewish world where one is looked down upon if one is seen as being too committed to traditional practice. In contrast to these positions, the standard in most Reconstructionist communities has always been to see our relationship with Jewish practice as part of our life's journey and to expect that different people will be in a variety of places at any given moment, and that an individual's own patterns will change over time. Moreover, those changes may not always be heading in the same direction. For example, some people may become more observant of Shabbat, while at the same time becoming less observant of Kashrut.

There is a story told by a member that is a beautiful illustration of this orientation towards the acceptance of observance diversity within our movement. A few years back, this member was an attendee at a biennial JRF convention. While at the convention she befriended another attendee from another Reconstructionist community and they decided to get together on a Shabbat afternoon. Without missing a beat, this woman asked the woman from our Havurah if she took phone calls on Shabbat. There was no judgment in the question. The answer was much less important than the fact that the first woman had been sensitive and respectful enough to ask the question.

This model is one that is currently somewhat in use in our Havurah, and it is my hope that we will further increase our collective ability to. Whenever we are dealing with an issue that has potential Jewish ritual implications, and this is applies both in official Havurah settings as well as in the informal networks of friendships and invitations to one another's homes, our automatic first response should ideally be to check with one another about the status of our current practice vis a vis that particular issue. For instance, when it comes to Kashrut observance, some people eat all kinds of meat, some people eat only meat that comes from animals that are permitted according to the Torah (e.g. beef, lamb) some people only eat meat from permitted animals that has also been slaughtered and prepared according to traditional standards of kashrut, some people don't eat any red meat at all, but do eat chicken and fish, some people are lacto-ovo vegetarians and some people eat nothing that has come from an animal. The same range of variation of Kashrut observance could also be described with regard to Shabbat.

With all of these variations, it is clear how important it is that we communicate with one another about our personal and/or family practice. As we become more accustomed to inquiring about these issues with one another, not only will we maximize the level of comfort for everyone in our community, but we will learn much from each other as well.

Rabbi Steve