|
|
October 23, 2009
OJC makes it official
Community joins URJ and installs a rabbi.
BASYA LAYE
It can be a daunting challenge to build a community from the ground up. While longtime centres of Jewish life, like Vancouver, can count on long-established networks and focus on the internal lives of its members, newer communities must build basic infrastructure and establish a community mandate, as well as minister to the basic lifecycle events and spiritual needs of a growing membership. Kelowna's Okanagan Jewish Community (OJC) and its Beth Shalom Congregation have managed to do just that.
As a community of 50-75 formally affiliated families, the OJC has taken on the additional responsibilities of installing a permanent rabbi, as well as officially affiliating with a Jewish movement – and they celebrated both on a single day.
Nearly 100 people joined Rabbi Lindsey bat Joseph as she led Kabbalat Shabbat services on Oct. 16. During the celebration, the OJC and Beth Shalom were welcomed into the Union for Reform Judaism (UJR) by Brian Schuster, president of the Pacific Northwest Council, who traveled from Seattle for the occasion.
In an interview with the Independent, bat Joseph shared her enthusiasm for her newly official role. In recent years the community has been served by visiting and student rabbis and bat Joseph credits Templ Sholom's Rabbi Philip Bregman for making the original connection.
"Rabbi Phil Bregman from Temple Sholom has some connections in the Jewish community there and so he mentioned to one of the community leaders that I had moved out into Burnaby a couple years back and would be available to do some rabbinic work. They had me come out for a visit one weekend and a few weeks later offered me a contract ... to serve as a High Holy Days rabbi and once a month thereafter last year and, so, in the spring of this year when we were negotiating a renewal of my contract, the president at the time said, is there anything specific that you want? And I said, 'If I'm going to serve the community on a long-term basis, I'd like to be officially installed in the community.' And she said, 'We've never done that before but that sounds really wonderful. Let's do that,' so here we are."
There was a growing desire in the community to experience greater consistency in its Jewish life. Bat Joseph has witnessed this growth and admitted that she is pleased to offer a greater sense of continuity in her rabbinic service.
"The community is growing and Kelowna is growing in general; there are new people moving into the Kelowna area all the time and, as we both know, the mathematics of demographics is, if you've got an increasing populations some of them are going to be Jewish."
Alongside this growth, an interest in affiliation with a formal movement within Judaism developed.
Bat Joseph explained, "[The OJC was] in the process of moving toward affiliation with the URJ before I became connected to the community. At the time when I first went out to see them, it was kind of on hold. They were sort of in a holding pattern, and I said that was fine. I was still prepared to come out and visit with them, but I said, 'You do understand, that as a Reform rabbi, I do believe very strongly in this movement, and I'll continue to encourage the community to affiliate'.... They said that was fine ... they really wanted to go ahead with the affiliation and then they did. So, when we were talking about my installation I said, 'Well look, we're finally officially joining the URJ this year, so why don't we combine this and make it a really nice celebration and celebrate our affiliation ... and we can go from there.' "
Aside from the families that are formally affiliated, bat Joseph said, "There are probably about 100 more families in the region that aren't connected yet.... Now that there's been a little bit of press about installing a rabbi, some people in the community who didn't know we were there might come check us out and become an active part of the community."
Bat Joseph continued, "After rabbinical school, I served full time as the Reform rabbi in Edmonton. I was there for 11 years before moving out here two years ago. One of my friends here jokes, she calls me the 'itinerant rabbi.' I'm always schlepping from hither and yon ... but I actually quite enjoy it! You know, I loved being a full-time rabbi, it's a very different rabbinical experience for me, but I really enjoy variety and to have the option to work with a number of different communities in different capacities. Sometimes I'm simply a teacher, sometimes I'm also a service leader and, so, I get to do a lot different things and explore all these facets of the rabbinate. At the same time, I'm also helping some of these smaller communities and, in some cases, fledgling communities, to grow. The opportunity to be a builder is really quite exciting."
She is prepared for the challenges of leading and growing a young community.
"When you're a small community ... Jewishly, it's very easy to feel quite isolated because you feel you're sort of out of the mainstream. The really nice thing about affiliating with any movement is that you do have that connection with the broader Jewish community and you have a connection to Jews who are like-minded, who share a similar philosophy in how they approach these things.
"I'm living in Burnaby currently, one of the other things I'm doing these days, is I'm in a master's program at Simon Fraser University, studying moral philosophy.... I'm doing some teaching and rabbinic work for other Jewish organizations in the Greater Vancouver area and go to Kelowna on a once-a-month basis, but I anticipate they're going to have me coming out more often because the community will grow and they'll simply need services more frequently.
"I think one of the nice things about [the OJC], Jewishly speaking, it's a relatively young community.... This is a dynamic group of families that wants to create a very warm, welcoming and nurturing place for themselves, but also they're looking towards the future in wanting that warm, nurturing, welcoming place to be there for other Jews and their children and their children's children. So, there's a lot of potential for growth and they're aware of that potential, they really are aware of their potential and I think there's a sense of energy and excitement in the community and wanting to take advantage, to make full use, of that potential."
Bat Joseph said the OJC is planning to expand their current home in the next few years. "The sanctuary isn't going to be large enough to fit our needs for much longer. It's really incredible. The current location is already a beautiful little building and I've seen the design for the expansion and it's really going to be quite extraordinary. So, that's what I say about really being future-minded. Really seeing the potential. Let's not sit on it and wait until we're bursting at the seams, let's embrace this potential and make the most of it."
As Jews settles in more diverse areas of the province, bat Joseph believes that the communities will become increasingly connected.
"My experience is that I've met people who belong to one synagogue but they frequently show up at different synagogues ... which I think is wonderful. Rabbi Bregman and Arthur Guttman, who used to be the cantorial soloist, he retired this past year, have certainly done some outreach with the Kelowna community.... There's actually a really wonderful connection between the Vancouver and Kelowna synagogues."
^TOP
|
|
