The reunion

This was quite an extraordinary weekend. Just about one hundred people gathered to celebrate fifty years since the founding of Havurat Shalom in Somerville, Massachusetts.

It could be that you never heard of Havurat Shalom or that you never were part of that community or even attended services there. Even if that is true, it is awfully likely that if you have ever been in a synagogue in the past few decades you have experienced something that germinated in that house on College Avenue.

If you have ever sat through a service that included a nigun, a wordless tune, to help set a mood, or attend services where synagogue members share in the reading of the Torah or attend a service where a community member delivers the d'var Torah, the sermon, or attend an egalitarian synagogue where men and women have the same rights and responsibilities you have been touched by some of the experiments that began at Havurat Shalom. If you consult with a rabbah, have created a do it your self bar-mitzvah, or got a copy of The Jewish Catalog for your bar mitzvah, then your life was touched by Havurat Shalom.

Many of the people who were the earliest members of that community had gone to  Jewish camps, and so it was only fitting that this reunion took place in a retreat center that started out as a camp a century ago.

Our drive up was spectacular.

It was New England at it's most beautiful.  We stopped to let this pheasant and its many chicks cross the road. you can't see the chicks, but, trust me, they were scurrying across the road.

Over the course of the weekend, we experienced truly stellar Shabbat services.  My husband has been close to many of the people who attended since he was the age our youngest is now. Some have become family to us.

Like many Jewish camps,

there was a campfire on Saturday night.

The weather turned cold and damp.

I felt sorry for the people who had chosen to camp.

Our friends who in their twenties started a revolution in the organized Jewish world are the people who now head up Jewish organizations of various kinds. Many of them are professors of Jewish studies, Jewish educators, or clergy. They brought the creative energy of Havurat Shalom along with them in their professional lives.

Our friend Afie pointed out that while many people who started their adult Jewish lives in the yellow house on College Ave not all of them became Jewish professionals. For Alfie and for many others being Jewish was not their vocation, but their avocation. I think about how my husband has worked to create a life that is deeply Jewish as he earned his living doing public relations.

I came to know these people that helped to form and change my husband when the two of us met. When I first met them they were in their  30's. Now they are approaching 70-- or even older. It was a weekend of taking stock of lives that made a real difference in this world.