Coming Home For The Holidays
So where do 27-year-old Conservative Jews go for the High Holidays?
For many, of course, that’s not even a question. Many people that age are married, with children; many others are well established in careers. Most of those people have joined synagogues, and some even have begun to climb up the volunteer ladder there.
But many other people that age – and some a good deal older – have not settled down by then. They’re still dating, they’re just finishing professional school, they’re moving to new cities, they’re taking new jobs. They’re experimenting.
They’re Conservative Jews, but they are not synagogue members. They want to go to a Conservative synagogue for the holidays, but they can’t arrange the time to go back to their parents’ congregations.
What do they do?
Gabriel Taraday, who is 27 years old and a lifelong Conservative Jew – in fact he’s a poster child for the movement – found a place to go through United Synagogue’s Project Reconnect.
Gabe is a software engineer who grew up as a member of the United Synagogue-affiliated Congregation of Moses in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and was on USY’s international board. He spent a year in Israel on Nativ, he worked at Camp Ramah Wisconsin, he was a regional site manager for USY’s Crusy region. As a student at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland he belonged to Bnai Jeshurun in Pepper Pike, Ohio; he was a USY adviser and taught in Bnai Jeshunrun’s after school religious school.
His religious identity is so important to him that he moved to Washington, DC, a year ago to be near more Jews his age. He was looking for community.
“I was looking at what options were available for the holidays, and I don’t know where I would have gone if I hadn’t found Home for the Holidays,” he said. He heard about Project Reconnect, and through the project he was given tickets to Adas Israel Congregation. “Once I was there, I saw the number of young people there, and the enthusiasm that was really there. There was definitely a demographic of people there just like me.” Gabe also went to a lunch on the first day of Rosh Hashanah that was organized by the synagogue’s executive director, Glenn Easton, who is also president of NAASE, the North American Association of Synagogue Executives.
Gabe was so interested in Project Reconnect itself that he has been doing volunteer work for it.
Gabe manages to be at one time a symbol of both the Conservative movement’s weakness and of its great strength. He has not yet joined Adas Israel; “I will join when I settle down, probably when I get married,” he said. “But absolutely I see myself as joining a Conservative shul. I’m definitely a Conservative Jew.”
But going to services at Adas Israel gave him an idea. Partnering with the synagogue, he has started an alternative minyan there. The Ruach Minyan is lay-led and attracts people Gabe’s age.
Home for the Holidays, Project Reconnect, and his work with Adas Israel “keep my connection to the movement strong,” Gabe said. It’s a vibrant connection, and Gabe and people like him are our future.
