It's been almost two years now since I took my little "mini-sabbatical" and spent two heavenly months reading and thinking about community. And man, I had no idea what challenges the next two years would bring -- to our community or to anyone else's! Now, with the hope of a new year a-borning, I return to a simple and most basic truth that was obvious in my reading and is now more obvious than ever. We need each other.
One of the most provocative books I read during my sabbatical was called Counterfeit Community: The Exploitation of our Longings for Connectedness (by John F. Freie, 1998, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.) The author makes a basic distinction between "the feeling of community" and real community. Real community, he says, can be measured very simply by the number of different interactions between people. If people visit in each other's houses, shop in each other's stores, play on teams together, pray together, drink coffee together, volunteer together, this is real community. Because Americans in particular tend towards isolation for lots of reasons we all know, says Freie, we are vulnerable to being sold "simulacra" of community. And so there are chains of bars that call themselves "a real neighborhood bar," gated housing tracts that call themselves communities, drive-in churches and so on.
I remember thinking at the time that religious communities such as ours might tend a bit to confuse real community with simulacra. It's easy to say, "We are a community. After all, we have XYZ programs." No matter whether people really participate in those programs or not. But I figured that MCJC didn't need to worry. After all, it has always been so clear that our community is made up of lively, interconnected circles of friends. When people come together for a service, a movie or whatever, there has always been a great buzz of people happy to see each other. I certainly have always looked forward to seeing my own friends and neighbors at MCJC gatherings. Whatever else you might call our little community, it has always seemed quite real.
But slowly and surely some things have changed, many for the good, actually. Over the past several years there have been several demographic shifts in the Coast community which happily touch the Jewish community as well. We've had more older people move to the Coast, some parents of locals, others retirees who have realized a long-time dream of moving to this area. We also, joyfully, have a bit of an influx of new families moving here with small children. And there are a nice handful of other people who have more recently made the Coast their home as well, for all sorts of reasons. Some have come with partners, children, or parents -- others have bravely moved here on their own. For the most part, neither the elders nor the youngers who have come here more recently have quite the same sort of "back to the land" background that is shared by many (though not all) of the original MCJC-niks. We're a little more diverse now than the already-assorted pack of five or ten or twenty years ago.
----which is of course, wonderful, but also call for a bit of new energy to connect, to make new friends. And then there have come the cataclysms of the political world these past few years, which have frayed all our nerves and fractured the sense of ease with which many of us used to live. It's just been a sad and scary time in many ways out there in the world we are part of, even in our beautiful little corner. And at times when people are afraid and angry and short of hope, it is particularly hard to extend ourselves. Suddenly people I may have thought see the world like I do turn out to see it quite differently -- and, as for all these new folks, who even wants to ask??? Suddenly the different ways that people see things feel upsetting instead of interesting. Suddenly I just want to talk to people who feel like I do. Suddenly the mix of stories and personalities and ideas doesn't feel so safe and inviting anymore. It just feels like hard work. Maybe I just want to stay home. Or, if I do venture out, maybe I just want to talk to the little handful of people I know I am comfortable with. Even if I'm willing to say hello to someone I don't feel easy with, I may not really want to keep talking.
I've been hearing about loneliness in our Jewish community these days. If loneliness were an illness, I think we might be seeing not quite an epidemic but a notable increase in the number and the severity of local cases. I am sure that there have always been some lonely and isolated people in our community, people who are forgotten and neglected, or maybe alone by their own inclination. But somehow it seems to me like this loneliness has snuck up on us all a bit these past few years. And, while we may not be able to fix the larger world so easily, I do think that this local sense of isolation is something we really might be able to heal, for ourselves and for each other.
But there is no antibiotic to fix it in seven days. There is no program, no healer we can bring in from the outside. It's something we have to do for ourselves, for each other, in small increments, in specific moments. I think we need to begin by each asking ourselves some very direct questions: How happy are we personally with the quality of our interactions in the Jewish community? Do we look forward to Jewish occasions together? Do we feel loved, encouraged, respected when we are with each other? Do we feel like we are giving energy, of the kind and to the degree that we want to, to building closeness in the Jewish community? Have we made new freinds lately? Have we kept up our longer-term relationships? How much does connection and relationship with other Jewish people matter to us? (We might ask ourselves the same kinds of questions about our other circles of community -- our neighbors, volunteer projects, workplaces and so on. I wonder how similar the answers will be?)
If we are newer here, we might ask ourselves about what we hope for in our new Jewish community. Given that we ought to be welcomed by the people who are already here, how have we opened ourselves to being known? To what degree have we been able to overcome shyness to connect with people who seem to all already know each other? What could the existing community do to make it easier for us to connect?
I of course don't know all the walks taken, cups of tea drunk, friendly phone calls made, movies seen together, chats at Shabbat services engaged-in, e-mails sent, stores stopped-by, books lent, introductions made, help requested and offered, rides arranged, dinner invites extended and accepted amongst all the floating cast of MCJC-niks. I hope that they are legion, because I think that John F. Freie is absolutely right -- these are measure of real community. I hope that they extend between old- and new-timers, between people of different ages and different politics and different family situations and all the different different-nesses. Depth is wonderful, and hopefully depth of connection will always be growing among us. But to some extent it's about quantity too.
The new year is the perfect time to take a good look at where we are today as a community. "That which is broken can be fixed," said Rabbi Nachman. "That which is already intact can be strengthened," says Rabbi Margaret. I hope that I am overstating the case, that many of you are scratching your heads as you read these words, wondering how in the world anyone around here could possibly be lonely. But just in case I'm right in any measure at all, I look forward to a new year of expanding friendship and connection, both personally and among us all. See you soon!
© 2003 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Updated 09/09/2004 (rge)