Bring Home the Magic: United Synagogue’s 2007 International Biennial Convention

by Joanne Palmer

The world, we are taught in Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, depends on three things: the study of Torah, the service of God, and acts of selfless goodness (or of lovingkindness, as many translations gloriously have it).

There are many ways to define those three things, of course, and they tend to merge into each other around the edges, but we hold on to that understanding of the world and our place in it.

United Synagogue’s 2007 international biennial convention, which will be held from November 29 through December 3 in Orlando, Florida, will offer opportunities for study, prayer, and social action work; we will learn theory and put the theory into action during those five days. Sections of the convention will consider the practicalities of synagogue life as it is now; other parts will be devoted to imagining and reinventing that life as it could be in the near future.

Nuts-and-bolts programs include sessions on synagogue finances, technology, fund-raising, and hospitality, and programs on outreach to intermarried families and to new members; and workshops aimed specifically at problems faced by small, midsized, and large congregations. We will also look at our new initiative, the hekhsher tzedek, which says that true kashrut mandates both observance of halakhah and an extra level of care for the workers who produce the food we eat.

Dr. Arnold Eisen, who will have become chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan in September, is scheduled to deliver the opening speech on Thursday night.

After Shabbat, participants will be able to learn, among many other things, about social action from Rabbi Jill Jacobs of the Jewish Funds for Justice, about the spiritual of welcome from Dr. Ron Wolfson of Synagogue 3000, and about conflict resolution from Rabbi Amy Eilberg of the Yedidya Center for Spiritual Direction.

On Sunday night, we will honor those synagogues and educators whose outstanding work has won them Solomon Schechter Awards for Synagogue Excellence and Framework for Excellence awards. We will also acknowledge young leaders through a special recognition program. To temper the seriousness, comedian Joel Chasnoff, who grew up in the Conservative movement and knows exactly how to joke about it, will perform.

Throughout the convention, we offer learning sessions, both lectures and the traditional partnered hevruta learning presented by faculty from the Conservative Yeshiva. The sessions are meant to appeal not only to synagogue leaders but to those convention-goers who are not yet or no longer directly involved in runninga shul. The yeshiva, part of United Synagogue’s Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center, offers Torah lishma, text-based learning for its own sake, in Israel, and will offer it in Orlando as well. For convention-goers who are more comfortable in a more formal setting, Dr. Richard Freund, a rabbi and professor at the University of Hartford who specializes in ancient Middle Eastern archeology, will lecture about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the rediscovered city of Bethsaida, King David’s city.

We also offer ongoing social-justice work and training. A room will be devoted to that purpose; we invite everyone to drop in and learn.

It is perhaps on Shabbat, though, that we as Conservative Jews will be able to show our strength as a movement. We are pluralists and we are one people; we will come together and we will separate, and then we will come together again.

The entire group will welcome the Shabbat Queen together, joining for Kabbalat Shabbat services. After dinner, panelists will talk about how best to maintain ties to people who grow up in the movement as they move from Kadimah to USY and Ramah to Nativ to Koach and then out into the world. The panelists all have traveled that road themselves and the discussion will be both optimistic and real.

The next morning, convention-goers will have a wide range of Shabbat services from which to choose. “We’re offering alternative services, so all the delegates can be comfortable and all of them can bring back something new to their own congregations,” said Carole Korowitz, chair of the convention committee. Choices include a service with musical instruments and one with traditional hazzanaut; a non-egalitarian service will be available as well.

Amichai Lau-Lavie, the brilliant, intense, and original Jewish thinker who is the force behind Storahtelling (www.storahtelling.org), will conduct the Torah reading in one of the minyanim. For years, he has been refining the model he now calls Maven, a modern version of the biblical translator first mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah. Because throughout most of Jewish history the Torah has been read only in Hebrew – a language that was not the vernacular – much of the meaning has been lost on most of the people. Storahtelling – at the convention represented by Mr. Lau-Lavie and his colleague Jonathan Ross, who grew up in the Conservative movement and knows it intimately – goes back to early Jewish history to provide traditional layning accompanied by a sentence-by-sentence translation, out loud, from the bimah, based on much study but unscripted, lively, thoughtprovoking, never exactly the same.

“What’s happening at the shul will change your translation just a bit,” Mr. Lau-Lavie said. “You do it one way on a Shabbat where there is a bar or bat mitzvah, or the congregation is older, or it’s with USY kids. It’s a basic concept that be adjusted for the kahal. And it can easily be replicated. The model is cost-effective, flexible, and user-friendly. It can help fulfill the Torah service’s original mandate, and turn the synagogue into a hub of literacy and interaction.”

On Saturday afternoon people will be able to choose among many study sessions, including one where Mr. Lau-Lavie and Mr. Ross describe the theory seen in action that morning. Of course convention-goers can default to the traditional Shabbat afternoon pastime and take a nap. The hotel housing the convention, the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort, is brand-new, huge, and luxurious; strolling the grounds is another attractive option.

Next year is Israel’s 60th birthday; we will celebrate that still-amazing fact after havdallah. Our many vendors and their wide range of products will rearrange themselves in a shuk; we will eat Israeli food and listen to Israeli music; Israeli dancers will perform and teach.

In keeping with the social-action theme that ties all of the convention together, our Committee on Public Policy and Social Action has put together Tzohar Orlando, which offers conventiongoers two options should they choose to come to the convention a day before it starts.

Give Kids the World, the first option, is a 70-acre nonprofit resort reserved for children suffering serious illness (www.gktw.org). Our volunteers would work with visitors there. The other, the Gleaning Project, is run through the Catholic church’s Farm Worker Ministry. Volunteers will work alongside migrant workers to learn something of what it is that the workers experience, and then talk with them.

“It adds dimension to the experience of the convention, and people can bring back what they learned, and the enthusiasm they felt, to their own synagogues,” said Richard Skolnik, United Synagogue’s vice president for public relations.

To learn more about the convention, or to register, click on the convention icon at the right or call Barry Mael at 646 519-9330.