Last night I was honored to attend a Kumzitz gathering in our community. The term is taken from the Yiddish “come sit”, and traditionally, these gatherings were an opportunity to informally gather to sing, share stories and of course to eat. In our community, for many years the kumzitz was a regularly scheduled gathering where new and old members could share their stories; how they came to Dorshei Emet, and a bit about their childhood, background and Jewish life. The program had taken a long break, and this was the first kumzitz in many years.
What an experience this was! I often tell people that the strength of a community can often be found in both what we share and how we are different, and this definitely shined through in this little gathering. This was diversity at its best, and by listening to everyone’s story, I gained a new understanding what it means to be in a such an open and accepting community.
Sitting in the circle were lifelong Montrealers, ambivalent American expats, and a young Armenain Jew who shared her story of a journey to Canada through, Syria and France. There were people who grew up in religious families, a few devout atheists and cultural Jews, and a strong willed non-Supernatural God believing Reconstructionist. Their stories were fascinating, and many laughs were shared. Yet what was most amazing for me was how even with so many different stories, so many different paths into Jewish life, what everyone found was a deep sense of personal connection and meaning as we listened to each other tell our stories. As we sat together, it was clear that in some powerful way, even through our difference, we all felt we belonged.
Mordechai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist movement famously said that there are three important values involved in being part of a religious community, Believing, Behaving, and Belonging. He explained that in the western world, we understand religious identity primarily through the Christian lens, where religious identity is primarily based on belief. People live out these beliefs through religious “practices” ie. through prayer and ritual, going to a religious service, a church, synagogue, mosque or temple. Through this lens, if you have a certain belief, and your practices express these beliefs, then you belong to a religious community.
Yet for Jews, Kaplan said that the value of belonging comes first. What has held us together as community for so many centuries, and what is able to move us forward is a sense of being part of a group of people with a shared history and system of values, and a deep understanding that our story is able to become part of the greater Jewish story. Even in a more traditional framework, where there is more of a focus on the middle “B”, behavior (prayer, ritual and an adherence to halachah-Jewish law), and belief, these values are not the top of the mountain.
Beyond the common statement that Jews “believe in the one God” I am confident that most Jews would most likely have trouble listing too many other core theological beliefs. (In fact, when I asked myself this question, my core Jewish “beliefs” tended to immediately steer towards ethical behavior, practice and social justice–my sense of godliness is inherently a part of all of this, but not necessarily a separate “belief”). For Jews, how we act, how we live out our values and beliefs is far more important than the beliefs themselves.
When people tell me they don’t believe in God, or that they are not “religious” Jews–and believe me, this happens often–I am not phased, and frankly I don’t really care. I enjoy teaching about creative theology, and exploring Jewish spirituality, ritual and practice. Yet I also know that no matter how fascinating and relevant I can make faith and practice, it simply is not for everyone. What I do care about is that everyone if able to feel a connection with their culture and heritage and with each other, a connection with is relevant and useful for their lives. Belief and practice can be part of this, but it does not necessarily need to be. The Judaism I believe in has so many open doors that everyone should be able to find a path in that works for them, and we should all feel that our path is as authentic and real as any other
It is this sense of belonging that most of us are striving for. We want to be part of a community where we not only have something in common with those around us, but ideally we also have some sort of deeper connection; a shared history, and possible also a shared world view or system of values. For Jews, even if we believe different things, even if we have truly diverse stories of our “Jewish journeys”, we can still sit around a circle and find comfort in our shared heritage and through the strength we gain from being together. Through gathering together, we become more than strangers with a similar background, we become a true Jewish family.
As I listened to the stories of people at the kumzits, I heard and I saw diversity. In upbringing, in belief and in practice no one person’s story was the same. But I also could feel the sense of comfort as people shared, each one of us knowing that through our differences, through listening and learning from each other, we also ended up learning about ourselves.
