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

Thinking about Shabbat.

Ideally, as we come out of the Tishri holiday season, we are reenergized — and ready to focus on goals towards which we hope to make headway in the coming year. This is true for individuals and it is also true for groups such as our Havurah community. One of the new paths that we are starting down as a community over the course of this year and the next is the path of learning about and reflecting on the core ideas and meanings that underlie our tradition's emphasis on the importance of "The Seventh Day" or the day of Shabbat.

Shabbat has been historically, and continues to be today, a (if not the) central institution in Jewish life. As such, it serves for many of us as a critical source of spiritual inspiration and a component of spiritual practice as we make our way on our respective Jewish journeys. For that reason alone, it would be justified for us to engage in a major study of this tradition. However, Shabbat functions not only on the level of the individual Jewish seeker, but it also happens to be one of the most significant ways in which we come together as a community. And, like so many other dimensions of our communal life, our membership represents a broad spectrum of belief and practice with regard to this ancient and somewhat mysterious institution.

One of the things that communities and other kinds of collectives do over time is to define themselves, their values, and their vision ever more clearly. Some groups go through this kind of process in a top-down way, with those in official leadership positions more or less dictating to the rest of the group what it is that everyone is supposed to believe in and support. Others choose an approach that is more inclusive and democratic—an approach more likely to result in communal values and practices that are truly reflective of the individuals who collectively constitute the particular group.

Our Havurah, not surprisingly, has always operated according to the latter model. We have, over time, developed participation guidelines for the non-Jewish members of our community, Kashrut guidelines for types of foods at communal meals, guidelines for the creation of a professional rabbinic position, and guidelines for the celebration of Bar and Bat Mitzvah ceremonies. The development of these guidelines has been important, in part, because they say something about who we are and what we value collectively.

At the same time, at least as important as the creation of the guidelines themselves, has been the process through which we were able to discuss various issues and perspectives with one another. The particular end result has been less important than the fact that we have openly and consciously considered—and yes, even argued about—the issues that have been placed on the table. The hallmark of true community is grappling with these significant issues rather than avoiding engagement with them. Ideally, when we do this, we deepen our sense of connection to one another as well as to the question under discussion.

I am personally very excited about the various elements that are now being put in place to contribute to our communal discussion of Shabbat. The first part of this process is a mini-course that will take place at the end of this month and the beginning of the next. We are calling it Reconstructionism 201, because, instead of covering the basic history and content of the Reconstructionist approach, it looks at the contemporary Reconstructionist process of "Values-Based Decision- Making" (VBDM), by which many Reconstructionist communities come to a collective agreement on questions of importance to them. This mini-course will be followed later in the year by another that will look specifically at the history and development of Shabbat as an institution. These in turn will be followed most probably next year by several parlor meetings whose purpose will be the identification of the core values of our own communal Shabbat observance—and then, ideally, by the drafting of communal Shabbat guidelines of which the entire membership can be proud. I hope we will see during this process the same kind of significant member participation from which we benefited in the previous examples described earlier. I look forward to an energetic and enlightening series of conversations.

Rabbi Steve

To read Rabbi Steve's June 2004 message on Shabbat, click here.