USCJ Review - Spring 2005
Innovative Outreach Programs Bring Conservative Synagogues Closer to the African-American Community
As Passover approached two years ago, Pastor Lamont Settle decided it was time to explain the Jewish Holy Day to his flock. "I wanted people to understand... why it is so important that God reminds us of the experience of being in bondage and in being set free. And how important it is in the Jewish faith."
His Refuge Church, a 50-family, mostly African-American house of worship in the integrated suburb of Olney, MD, sits right across the street from Rabbi Philip Pohl's B'nai Shalom. Since the two clergy had, as the 53 year-old pastor puts it, "developed a cordial relationship over the years," it was only natural for Pastor Settle to call on Rabbi Pohl to help him out. As a result, the Rabbi and members of B'nai Shalom crossed the street to the Christian church and put on a Seder for its congregation, albeit in English, not Hebrew.
"We recognize our teaching comes out of the Torah," says Pastor Settles. "But I wanted them to understand it."
Jews and African-Americans -- among whom are Jews, of course -- share several historical experiences, including bondage followed by freedom, and a Diaspora. And although the relationship between the two communities in North America hasn't always been smooth, their analogous experiences and common desires for understanding and justice prompt them to occasionally seek each other out.
Often, the connections are forged by a universal language: music. For instance, Passover wasn't the first occasion on which the Refuge Church and congregation B'nai Shalom worshiped together. That honor took place on the 23rd of Tishrei, 5757. Sunday, October 6, 1996, dawned clear and fair -- a perfect day for B'nai Shalom to celebrate Simhat Torah. As usual, Rabbi Pohl planned to lead the celebrants outside for Hakafot, singing and dancing with the Torah scrolls. Then he got to thinking. It was Sunday. The folks at Refuge Church would be celebrating their Sabbath. Wouldn't it be nice to share this occasion with his friends across the street?
"I ran across the street and knocked on the door of the office. They were having services," the rabbi recalls. "I said to them, 'I'm Rabbi Pohl and I'd like to speak with him and get him this message: Could we come over? It's a special day when we rejoice in the reading of the Torah. We'd like to rejoice with them.' " Pastor Settles accepted his invitation, inviting Rabbi Pohl to bring over the congregation in 15 minutes. The Rabbi estimates that as many as 150 people filled the field by the church.
"People hugged each other at the end. It was eye-opening that we could worship together if we put a little effort into it." Pastor Settles agrees that for a time, there were no divisions. "I just saw rejoicing. I saw people who love the Lord."
The next time Simhat Torah fell on a Sunday, in 1999, the two congregations again rejoiced together. That year, the Refuge Church choir also sang at B'nai Shalom for Hanukkah, joined the congregation for a Hanukkah concert in Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center, and even gave a contribution toward the synagogue's expansion project.
Music also brings fellowship to a synagogue and an African-American church on opposite sides of the San Fernando Valley near California's coast. Each year for the past four years, Woodland Hills' Temple Aliyah invites Pacoima's New Christ Memorial Church of God over for a Friday night "Gospel Shabbat." The event was started by music director Neil Brostoff. According to Hazzan Mike Stein, Gospel Shabbat has been a big hit.
"We get 1,000 people here in the synagogue, including church members," he says. It may help that New Christ's gospel choir isn't just any group of singers. It is led by Grammy Award winner Andraè Crouch, the church's spiritual leader. Stein, himself nominated for two Grammies for children's albums, joins Temple Aliya's children and adult choirs with Crouch's singers. He is still amazed by the time the gospel choir sang a counter-melody to his chorus's rendition of Adon Olam.
As part of Gospel Shabbat, the congregation makes a Sunday appearance at the New Christ Memorial Church. The children share a dairy lunch and sing together at rehearsal. But the point of these events isn't just to make counterpoint, no matter how beautiful it may sound.
"The point is to create unity," says the Hazzan, whose wife of 26 years is an African-American Jew, "to understand the commonality of the liturgy in terms of the psalms and how it's approached from the church side, from the gospel side, and from our side."
Stein says the four-year experiment has inspired his 850-family congregation. He also credits these services with making the congregation more conscious of social action and diversity. Since the mutual worship began, the Temple has begun serving a boys lodge Christmas Dinner. Even more telling, says Stein, "The most amazing thing is our children feeling so comfortable with African American children their own age in an environment that is totally alien to them."
However, there have been unexpected side effects. After hearing Crouch shout "God is good!" and the congregation reply, as is customary in African-American churches, "All the time!", Rabbi Stewart Vogel and the Temple Aliya congregation picked up the call and response for a few weeks, Stein says.
Among Conservative congregations engaged in social action side by side with the African American community is the Germantown Jewish Centre in Philadelphia. As part of its work in the integrated urban community, the Centre hosts a community-wide Martin Luther King Day celebration, makes its sanctuary available for local, predominantly African-American elementary and middle school graduations, and works with other churches on voter registration drives.
But perhaps Germantown's most extraordinary feat is its commitment to hosting homeless families in its building, among 24 local congregations to do so. They belong to the Northwest Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network, for whom Germantown Jewish Centre president Rachel Falkove also serves as Executive Director.
"We are one of the few Conservative synagogues involved in the Network around the country," Falkove says, adding that the Centre has belonged to the organization since it was founded about 12 years ago. To be a host requires that for six weeks a year, the congregation turn six classrooms and meeting rooms into temporary sleeping quarters for up to five families. Each family bunks together. To help make the program possible, the congregation even built a shower, Falkove says.
The hosted families are not peoples' stereotype of homeless alcoholics or drug addicts or the mentally ill. On the contrary, they're what the synagogue's president refers to as the working poor. Falkove waxes most passionate when she describes their plight: victims of an economic climate in which a single parent with a minimum wage job would need to work an impossible 111 hours a week just to pay for a two-bedroom apartment. And they are not all black families, another stereotype.
"Most of the people who are homeless (that come to the GJC) are African-American," Falkove admits. "But I've also placed Jewish people who are not African-American in homeless shelters."
Hosting provides some measure of stability and hope to families while the organization helps find them permanent housing. It also gives them the sense that someone cares about their situation.
"Synagogue members cook and host as if it were their own home," she says. During the day, the parents go to work and the children go to school. If they are too young for school, they're attended by the synagogue's preschool program. At the end of their stay, the families move to another congregational shelter. But Falcove proudly points out that eventually two-thirds of the parents go on to attend college, and with the help provided by NPIHN, all of the families end up in permanent housing. And, as with other congregations who reach out, the synagogue is enriched.
"It is a very profound experience for Hebrew school students to come into their class and they know that their classroom is sheltering the family," she says. Falkove, like Pastor Settles of the Refuge Church, sees the social action performed by the Germantown Jewish Centre in the context of the Jewish theme of bondage and freedom.
"The (Torah) injunction to 'Remember you were a stranger in the land of Egypt' means something. These programs help remind us why we're here, why we're in the city, why it's important to continually put attention in our own community and to use the community as a springboard to make the world a better place."
Michael Jackman is a freelancer writer and radio essayist who lives in Louisville, KY. He can be contacted through his website, www.mjfreelancer.com.
