14 December 1997
House of God-Crown of Israel
Reprinted by permission of the author
By Sarah Beller
A current of cars, trucks, and motorcycles rush before us. My family and I wait until the traffic ebbs and parts, leaving a safe path of pavement for us to cross. We walk together over the white striped crosswalk towards the big white building ahead, Congregation Beth El-Keser Israel -- BEKI, our synagogue.
Every Saturday and holiday morning we traverse this faceless bustle of Whalley Avenue to pray to God and meet with our community. My family and I have attended this synagogue (or shul, using the Yiddish word) nearly every week since I was four years old. The double name Beth El- Keser Israel, meaning "House of God-Crown of Israel" in Hebrew, results from a merger of two shuls; since it is cumbersome, we call the shul BEKI. Together at this Conservative synagogue we celebrate Shabbat (the Jewish day of rest) and holidays, endure somber fast days, and share in life-cycle events, both joyous and sorrowful. "It's more than a shared space," my dad says. "It's a shared way of living, a shared commitment."
One Shabbat morning, Hadassah and Yaffa Holmes, seventh grade twins, celebrate their Bnot Mitzvah, the ceremony which marks their entrance into the adult Jewish community. The gargantuan sanctuary is bubbling with people: not only the "regulars," but also dozens of people from the nearby Orthodox Synagogue, guests from out of town, and the girls' classmates (who squeeze into one row, sitting on each other's laps when there were no more seats so no one would be left out). Family and community members ascend to the bimah, the platform at the front of the sanctuary, to bless the Torah, including an Orthodox woman who has never had this honor before a mixed congregation. Yaffa and Hadassah take turns leading prayers and chanting from the Torah, and each gives a speech about the Torah portion. They relate to each other with an occasional giggle or nudge. Peering through the dense crowd, I can see the huge smile on their mother's face. Following the not-so-age-old tradition, we throw candy towards the bimah and little kids run to collect it. At the festive lunch afterwards I feel warmer than ever amongst my community.
The next morning my mom and I return to shul, which is eerily quiet and empty after yesterday's festivities. It is just past nine a.m. and I'm still a little bit groggy-eyed as I take a seat in the little chapel where eight or so other congregants have already begun the service. I realize that my mom and I helped complete the minyan, a group of ten or more Jewish adults which constitutes a significant body of people, a community. In the absence of a minyan, worshippers cannot say all the prayers, so it is good that we came. As the minyan chants the ancient words inscribed in Hebrew and English in our prayer books, our voices weave in and out; distinct strands meld into near unison, a communal incantation, then disentangle into individual voices, splaying like the threads of my tzitzit. Tzitzit, ritual fringes, hang from the four corners of my homemade prayer shawl. I knotted them over three years ago using the same pattern Jews have used for thousands of years. Like knotting tzitzit, much of what we do in synagogue has been done almost exactly the same way for thousands of years: prayers, many melodies, readings from the Torah, structure of the service. These key points of Jewish worship have transcended the centuries, but compared to the grandfather traditions one aspect is just a baby: egalitarianism.
At BEKI, women not only count in the minyan (they never did until this century and still don't at Orthodox synagogues), but participate as much or more than men. "Many synagogues are egalitarian according to their bylaws," says Miriam Benson, the wife of our rabbi Jon-Jay Tilsen, but "you wouldn't see on a regular basis women participating." The shul, Rabbi Tilsen agrees, is "already non-self-consciously egalitarian." At BEKI, Miriam jokes, a boy might grow up wondering if men are allowed to read Torah.
Compared to most egalitarian synagogue members, BEKI's members follow Jewish law -- diet, holiday and Shabbat observance, for example -- more intensely. "The level of observance makes me feel less like a Martian," Miriam says. According to the rabbi, about half the families have kosher homes. An uncannily high percentage of the members come to services on Shabbat: "our turnout," Rabbi Tilsen says, "is typical of a congregation four to eight times the size." Why do so many people come every week to BEKI?
BEKI is participatory, informal, supportive, and energized. Congregants lead almost all worship services, even high holiday services, for which we used to hire a cantor. The group is "very down to earth, not fancy," Miriam says. "People don't feel like they have to dress up," which is not the purpose of services. The sight of a girl in leggings and a tee shirt or a man in corduroys and a sweater is common. The bond of the community extends beyond joyous occasions: it has helped families through difficult and sad times. When a newborn baby was hospitalized because his heart had not fully developed, or when a five-year-old girl was treated for a tumor in her abdomen, congregants not only prayed for recovery, but also provided meals at the families' doorsteps. But when, heaven forbid, someone passes away, the community visits the mourning family and holds services there every morning and evening. The attributes of this core community have attracted new members: "There's a lot of positive energy which is really attractive to people," said Miriam. Such energy vibrates through the celebration of holidays like Simhat Torah, when we sing and dance with the Torah scrolls, or Purim, when we come in costume, make noise, and eat hamentaschen cookies. Miriam says the feeling she gets from the community is "excitement, energy, spirituality, and joy in doing Judaism."
The shul has not always enjoyed as bounteous a membership as it does now. Twelve years ago when my family first came here, my sister and I constituted two of the three small children who attended regularly. Shoshana, who started going before we did, has been a good friend through almost 12x52 Shabbat mornings together. At services when I was little, while my parents prayed, I played. My early memories of the synagogue include the brown hexagon pattern on the rug and how the shapes lined up differently depending on my perspective; the plastic plant in the lobby, which we kids realized was fake years before our parents did; shoe-flicking contests with Shoshana and Dina (who came when I was six) in the basement. Since far fewer children attended Shabbat services back then, no one organized children's activities: my friends and I resorted to activities like shoe-flicking. This entailed lining up at one wall of a room in the basement and kicking off our shoes for maximum distance, and whoever's shoe flew the farthest won. There were intricacies to the game too--some shoes flick better than others. If I was wearing lace-up sneakers, I naturally was at a disadvantage to Dina who wore slip-on shoes. The game could get out of hand at times, shoes crashing into the basement ceiling and thumping beneath the feet of the adults who we forgot were praying upstairs.
Since my shoe-flicking era, BEKI has changed. Now there are programs every Shabbat for all children under the age of Bar or Bat Mitzvah, so shoe-flicking is kept to a minimum -- at least as far as I know. A few years ago, when the Shabbat morning crowd was nearly breaking the seams of the little chapel, we made the transition to hold services each week in the sanctuary. Though at first the lofty ceiling and cinder block walls made the room feel vacant, we are now beginning to thicken. In the past months congregants have donated, in memory of family members, new carpeting and an improved sound system. The lobby, still spread with hexagons and fake plants, now boasts two recently-donated couches.
But the building is begging for repair. "The nicest way to put it," Rabbi Tilsen said as I noticed the gnarled pea-green carpet of his study, "would be that in the last 15 to 20 years this Congregation has directed more of its resources to education and programming than to the physical building." The crudest way to put it would be that the building is ugly and falling apart. The hexagon carpet has always fascinated me -- probably because it clashes with the people who walk on it, even with itself. The shapes line up in strict angles, yet the color is a neutral brown. The style barks of an era long gone, when sharp shapes and drab colors were all the rage. Considering this community, I would expect the carpet to be more harmonious, anything but gaudy. So why do we keep it? Mostly because of lack of money. We can stand it; as long as BEKI fills our spiritual needs, we're willing to delay our aesthetic needs.
But without a sturdy building, attractive or otherwise, the congregation cannot stand. "The building is in critical need of structural improvements," the rabbi said. The BEKI 2000 committee is toiling to prepare the synagogue for the next millennium. "This is a critical period for the synagogue," Rabbi Tilsen said. "The leadership has decided the synagogue will be here in the coming decades. This could grow to be a truly full-service spiritual and educational resource for the Westville community. If they were not to do some of these things, the synagogue would be transformed into a prayer group that meets on Saturday mornings in somebody's living room."
But for now the community thrives. "And may God shower you with blessings and let us say: Amen," Rabbi Tilsen pronounces to Hadassah and Yaffa. Little bags of candy spring from the crowd and shower the two new adult Jews. As we sing and clap, we are pieces within a whole, threads within a fringe. I watch as dozens of young kids bound onto the bimah to collect candy, gathering up the sweet blessings.
