Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann:	Joy is possibly the most important spiritual practice and commitment we can make, because we are not going to make it into the Promised Land if we don't have the joy that's going to fuel our steps. We need to taste it, and we need to feel it. We need to experience it because if we don't, we're going to give up.

Rabbi Deborah Waxman:	I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and I'm so happy to welcome you to Hashivenu, a podcast about Jewish teachings on resilience.
	My guest today is Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann. Lauren was the founding rabbi of Kol Tzedek, a vibrant and wonderful congregation in West Philadelphia. She established it along with a group of community leaders in 2004. She served there for 10 years before moving to New York City to become the rabbi of the SAJ. This is what was historically known as the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. It's Mordecai Kaplan's synagogue, the founding thinker of Reconstructionism, and is now known as Judaism that Stands for All. I'm just so pleased that you're with us here today, Lauren.

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann:	I'm so excited to be here.

Rabbi Deborah Waxman:	One of the reasons that I reached out to you is because we're just starting a new season of Hashivenu, and we're focusing in on community and community building and participating in community as a way of cultivating resilience. This is a core principle in Jewish life, in Jewish living and Jewish teaching. So much of religious Jewish life is organized around the principle of minyan, of a quorum of at least 10 people who have to be present in order to engage in certain essential practices. I think of you as a master community builder and I think of you because I watched in awe as you grew up a congregation from nowhere. West Philadelphia historically had a lot of Jews. In the postwar years, they mostly moved out to the suburbs, and you revitalized Jewish life in West Philadelphia and then brought many of the learnings and experiences from your time there into New York. I would just love to hear some of what we think is most essential, some of the wisdom that you have to offer about intentionally building community. So can I ask you to reflect a little bit about what it's like to establish a synagogue and about Kol Tzedek?

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann:	Sure. Thanks Deborah. When I was in rabbinical school, I had the incredible opportunity to be exposed to the West Philadelphia community and I soon came to realize that there was no active Jewish life. If people wanted to go to anything... synagogue or not, really anything - if they wanted to participate in Jewish life, the options were to go to a synagogue, either in the suburbs or in Center City or to maybe go to Penn Hillel, which really didn't cater to non-undergraduate students and maybe graduate students at the most. We just saw something potentially missing in this neighborhood and in this community, and it seemed like a great idea to try to start a havurah.
	So when I did that, this was pre-2004, and I started this havurah with two friends -- a couple I had met from Beit Ahavah, a very small gay/lesbian synagogue in Center City, and a couple I'd met that lived in West Philadelphia and they were absolutely like, "We want to build this with you." So a bunch of us got together and we started a havurah that had no obligation at all, just met once a month on a Friday. We had services. We varied rotation of leadership. We had potluck dinner and it was really beautiful. It was very vibrant, very fun. Again, I was just another member of a havurah. I was probably the leader of a havurah, but with no rabbinic position in particular.
	About a year and a half later, we realized that people were continually coming to this havurah, hungry for community. People wanted to be part of something, and so I decided with the support of a lot of teachers and friends that it would be a great opportunity while I was in rabbinical school to just try starting a synagogue. I had the time. I didn't have to find a job. It was an opportunity that landed on my lap. So I decided to give it a try and having had experience with community organizing, I just started by having a lot of one on ones and tracking of those conversations to find out what people were interested in, what kinds of things they were nervous about, what was going on for them.
	In the very beginning, it was really just about listening and finding out what people might be interested in, and over time, that continued and we started in 2004 with a Hanukkah party that launched a synagogue with about 100 or so people. We thought we really are tapping into something here and there was multigenerational people. There were some babies. There were older people. There were a lot of young adults. This was a signal for us to continue forward. And then we formed a steering committee and all the things you need to do to begin the process of starting a synagogue together. I really…

Rabbi Deborah Waxman:	What were some of the themes and some of the hungers that you were able to identify in the one-on-one interviews?

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann:	It was really clear there was a number of people who really wanted to connect to community, wanted to be part of something, but had a lot of baggage about their Jewish background. Not everyone, but a good number of people have felt alienated from their Jewish synagogues of childhood or maybe just from their backgrounds or family backgrounds, a lot of times because of systemic oppression. For example, there was a number of LGBTQ folks who came at the beginning and said, "You know, we were interested in this, but will there be a place for me?" People whose politics, just regular old politics, sort of stances on issues, felt like their communities of origin were not really in alignment with their values, that they were too conservative with a small-c. And then there was a portion of people for whom their Israel politics felt like questioning Israel at all, even just in the very basic manner that I think many of us take for granted nowadays, was something that was not accepted at their synagogue of origin.
	So what became really clear is that this congregation, which matched my approach in general, needed to be a radically inclusive community and that this needed to be a place where people could feel like they could show up fully as themselves and who they are and that their voices would be heard, and that they were going to only be interested in a synagogue or a Jewish community in general that both made a difference in their -- made them feel affirmed and also that was connected to those really strong values. So from the very beginning and again, this was a match of me and who I'm hearing. We really centered the concept of social justice in the congregation.

Rabbi Deborah Waxman:	Let's explain the name - for our listeners - Kol Tzedek. When did the name emerge? At what point in the process?

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann:	We had a very interesting and fun democratic process for this. It's so funny because the technology we take for granted, in 2004 or 2005 was still not developed. So we didn't really have Facebook. Actually looking back, I just can't believe that I organized Kol Tzedek without Facebook. It's pretty remarkable. There wasn't - like Signup Genius - all these amazing technologies that we can use for community today. So any case, we decided to do a poll, and I think we did like an online poll of some kind combined with a poll when you came to services, there was a little - not checkbox, but some sticker. There were like five names and ultimately, the name Kol Tzedek, which means "voice of justice" was chosen.
	At the very beginning, we're like a little scrappy synagogue of maybe 40 people. I was like, "What are we going to do? Like how are we going to fulfill this name? It's a great idea, but how are we going to fulfill it?" So in the beginning, it really meant just that what we talked about, what we learned about, what we were engaged with, the values, those concepts,, those ideas were centered, to what it was about and the commitment to inclusivity. The commitment to radical inclusivity was a manifestation of that sense of justice.

Rabbi Deborah Waxman:	I think one of the things that was always moving to me and this is something that was true when you were the rabbi and continues to this day is that you were actively involved in conversions because there were so many people who were born Jewish, who found a home there and many times they brought along partners who weren't Jewish, who found a home there. Can you speak a little bit to what was going on there? I remember we wrote an article about how actively involved in conversion process you are.

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann:	One thing I would say is just to [express] caution that for one minute, and just say from the very beginning we affirmed interfaith families and there was zero pressure in any context for anyone to convert to Judaism. I want to make sure that that's really importantly clearly stated and that's one of the things that we did at the very beginning, which was a request of a family that joined one of our founding families, was to start an interfaith havurah that met -- a havurah being a small group within the congregation -- to my knowledge, they met once a month up until I left. I don't think --there was almost no months that they missed - where people could come and talk about issues and just have fun and get to know each other and talk about -- if things came up they had a group of people to talk to. So I just want to name that and state that we really honor and respect our interfaith households.

And, because this was a community where people were like you said, bringing friends and experiencing Judaism for the first time, at one point, I decided to start a Judaism 101 class and that in combination with the good work we were doing in the synagogue generated a fair number of conversions. I actually think that that number is up from what I've heard from Rabbi Ari Lev, who's now currently taking the post of the synagogue. But we had anywhere from 6 to 10 per year, which is significant for a small congregation and unusual for many congregations. So it was an amazing experience of people - often mostly not partners, just people who wanted to come and be part of the community.

Rabbi Deborah Waxman:	And so I think living in Philadelphia, I have the pleasure of seeing sometimes close up and sometimes from afar that thank God Kol Tzedek survived your departure. There are sometimes congregations or any organizations founded by someone sometimes the founder doesn't let go and sometimes when the founder does let go, the organization flounders and I'm really happy to say that Kol Tzedek continues to thrive with the gorgeous roots that you planted for them and also in different directions. You made the leap to move to the oldest Reconstructionist congregation there is, the very first one. So from a start up to a really established institution in the heart of Jewish life, what is it like community building in a legacy organization?

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann:	So it's interesting I came to SAJ because SAJ was in a place where they had a very healthy foundation. They had survived actually a very difficult period where [there was] a huge amount of membership attrition based on dynamics that are beyond the scope of this podcast. Anyhow, it was a congregation that had a strong foundation but needed an influx of vitality and enthusiasm and a movement towards something that could sustain them in the 21st century, because I think a for a lot of people in the synagogue and a lot of the people who had been there for 40 or 50 years. SAJ is just going to continue because it's just going to continue. But we know nowadays, whether in the Upper West Side or whether in Kansas, no Jewish institution needs to survive for survival's sake anymore. We're in a different era of Judaism. People get to choose the kind of Judaism they want to be part of. They get to choose whether they want to affiliate at all. That sense of obligation is not the same as it used to be however many years ago that was, and we weren't going to necessarily survive just for the sake of survival. We had to give up that idea that we could survive for the sake of survival and we had to really intentionally build our community so that it would be vital, exciting, joyful, a wonderful place for people to come and to draw from and then bring out into the rest of their lives and into their work. And we had to make it a place where people might choose to participate because like you said, the competition in the Upper West Side, it's not even really competition. The number of options is beyond belief because beyond synagogues, of which there are many lovely wonderful synagogues, really fantastic places, there are also JCCs and other institutions that are serving the needs of the Jewish community and so you really have to not just stand out but to matter.
	So I think for me, it's been an amazing experience of trying to figure out what the seeds are of this community in combination with what my passions and skillsets are and to bring forward a vision of a joyful, justice-oriented community that can move into this next generation and can meet the needs of younger people who have very different needs than the generation two, three or four generations ago.

Rabbi Deborah Waxman:	That's so beautiful. So how do you do that? How do you intentionally construct joy? We spoke a little bit about justice from Kol Tzedek. So let's imagine that you carried some of that over where appropriate. If we can shift over to focus in on the intentional construction of joy, that would be so interesting.

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann:	Well, let me give you a picture of what a Saturday looks like at our congregation. Not every Saturday is this full, but I'll give you a little bit of a picture. So on Saturday mornings at 9:00 a.m., a group of people come, anywhere from 10 to 30 people, come to do learning that's led by a lay leader, and that learning is on any topic of Jewish interest that that person creates in construction. They always spend a lot of time and do excellent presentations, and they get a really intellectually stimulating conversation -- that predates my time at SAJ, absolutely, that program.
	And then at 10:00 a.m., services begin. At 10:15, Hebrew school families are starting to shuffle into the building. And then parents have the option of going to a class led by a rabbinic intern;  going to services; going to Starbucks is also an option, that's fine too. And now we're starting a few other things like a running club for the parents who are going running in the park. Let's just do it together so people can be in community together, because it's happening anyway. So let's just do that because they have this time and then starting at 12:00 once a month and other times we have other special things, the entire community comes together into the sanctuary, close to 80 children usually, or more, their parents, the entire regulars of the synagogue.
	And we do what is called a community shir, which is a community sing-along, and we just sing songs. We sing songs the kids are learning in class so it's familiar to them. We sing the songs we want the parents to know. If it's a holiday coming up, we'll integrate that. And then everyone is on their feet. The people who are 80 years old are clapping their hands, jumping up and down. Maybe not jumping up and down, but  swaying their hands and then at 12:30, we say the Kiddush and Motzi in the sanctuary, and everyone goes on upstairs and we have lunch together.
	I forgot to say that we also have a pre-K program that's happening at the same time as all of this. So zero through 4-year-olds are also participating. Parents sometimes stay in the balcony to listen into services -- you can listen in, but you can be with your little kids. The little kids can also be in the sanctuary. So it's just 100% multigenerational, multiaccess point, joyful, uplifting experience. It is just an entire day of access points and just utter joy and connection.

Rabbi Deborah Waxman:	So I have to do two things. One is I just have to say that I would think that Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, who famously talked about wanting to establish a shul with a pool, that the synagogue should function as a Jewish node, a Jewish community center, that he would be beaming upon what you just described.

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann:	Thank you. That means so much to me.

Rabbi Deborah Waxman:	Oh my God. The SAJ is such a hive of activity and entry points and part of the thing about --  this is not necessarily about a podcast about Reconstructionism but you and I are both Reconstructionist-trained rabbis and we talk about Judaism as the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people and all of those different modalities from prayer to running to education to activism.
	I think I want to focus in on one moment and your energy was the highest -- even as you were incredibly enthusiastic as you were talking about this incredibly rich Shabbat experience, but the energy that you brought when you talked about the community shir and that's just so amazing.
	Two years ago on the podcast, I interviewed Rabbi Dr. Jeff Summit. He's just stepped down his 40 years as the Hillel director at Tufts Hillel. He's also an ethnomusicologist and we talked about the power of communal singing and what happens when you come together. That moment when our voices are joined together, it's such a breaking down of isolation and our own individualized playlists on Spotify, here, everybody all together. That's just so extraordinary.

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann:	It really is my favorite time. It's my favorite time of the month. It's a beautiful thing to see people of all ages really join together and break through those barriers. And the faces lighting up of these elders who didn't know if SAJ had a future and then to have all these folks, young people, these kids, they come -- we don't really have a bimah, it's all on the same plane, but the kids come up, they lead,  they sing with me, they hold my hand, we dance together. It's just an amazing moment.
	And the thing I want to say about intentionally bringing joy is that in the world in which we're living, in this moment in which we're living, joy, to me, is possibly the most important spiritual practice and commitment we can make because we are not going to make it into the Promised Land if we don't have the joy that's going to fuel our steps, we're going to burn out, be drained, be exhausted, and we need that. We need that taste of redemption.
	We talkabout Shabbat as 1/60th of the world redeemed, and we need to taste it and we need to feel it and we need to experience it because if we don't, we're going to give up. We're going to become cynical or we're going to feel like we don't matter, and we need that. That is what fuels us and that is what takes us...
	And I think what's so significant about both Kol Tzedek and, I think, especially with the work I'm doing at SAJ is that we know that the world is painful and broken, and we do not hide from it. We talk about it. We engage with it. We do social activism and that's a pretty profound way where talking about Torah connects to it. But we also know that if we don't fill our hearts and our souls and our bodies with that sense of joy, we're not going to be able to be effective agents of changing the world.

Rabbi Deborah Waxman:	I think that that's exactly right, and I think that's actually a huge premise of this podcast is that we can draw on Jewish wisdom. We can draw on Jewish practice to nurture us to do the work that we have to do. But it's a bit of a balance.
	I heard this unbelievable anecdote from a colleague of ours and I'll try to tell it in a way that doesn't identify anyone but he was talking about joining with a mohel to officiate at a brit milah. It was a circumcision and with the officiant who does the actual circumcision. And [with] the parents of this little boy, he said, "Do you want to talk about the sources behind the name?" And they said, "No, we want to talk about antisemitism."
	And they talked about how each of the parents descended from families who had encountered persecution both in Europe and the Holocaust and one side was from Morocco, so from post-1948 persecution and that their hope had been that this child would live in a world without rising antisemitism but that's not the case.
	I carried that story with me for a week or two with so much sadness. I think part of what we learned from is that brit milah is an opportunity to celebrate so that we can then boost ourselves and that Shabbat is a refuge so that we can go out into the world on the six days of creation to do the repair work that we have to do. And sometimes it's on Shabbats as well, but that we have the privilege, the joy so that the suffering doesn't overtake us.

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann:	Yes. It's a really powerful story. And I think that it goes back to the point you've been making about community because the other part of this is: we can feel joyous on our own. We can have a moment of joy. And that's good. That's a good thing. We should, God willing, be able to cultivate that in our lives. But when we come together, we realize we're not alone and we realize that we are way more powerful than our individual selves can be.
	And I want to think that piece about antisemitism is so important, but it's so important in this era also to be mindful about how antisemitism is being played to keep us away from other communities and manipulated so that Jews are afraid and are isolated, and that is so dangerous, both for our literal safety as a community and also for our psyche. We must be continually reaching out to those other marginalized communities, other people affected by white supremacy and racism because we're all in the same boat.
	And yes, we are going to also have to stand up to antisemitism that occurs in every pocket, not just on the right, but it's really important that we do it in community, both strengthening our own Jewish community and also strengthening our interfaith community because that is a critical component, I think, of being in this world, in this moment and being resilient.

Rabbi Deborah Waxman:	I think I'm going to wind us down but is there a core teaching you have that summarizes singing and intentional joy?

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann:	So I often look to the Song of the Sea and the moments coming up before and going through the sea as an inspiration for me personally, something I think about a lot, and one of the things that I think is so amazing is how we have so many multiple interpretations in our tradition that we can find meaning in those interpretations. So there's a question from our ancestors about whether the Israelites crossed the sea --  when they crossed the sea, did they sing the Song of the Sea, did they sing a song of redemption after they got to the end of the sea, after their journey, or during the process itself? And some commentators say it was actually during the walk on the way. And that has so much resonance for me.
	We cannot save up our songs and our joy and our triumphs for just when we arrived. We must, must, must sing on the way and find that strength and find that hope and find that faith as we cultivate as we journey along.

Rabbi Deborah Waxman:	I want to raise up that community shir again because that's also a place in interfaith gatherings where even if our liturgical practices might be different or our Shabbat observance might be different, we really can just genuinely join our voices together. And so I know that when I've been in multifaith gatherings, sometimes it's when we find something to sing together, that you hear, that the sound is so loud and you're both amplified but also lost in the best possible way within it.
	Lauren, what a rich conversation. Thank you so much. It's such a joy to be doing this work with you and to be learning from you and to watch Kol Tzedek continue to flourish and to watch SAJ gain more and more energy and more and more vision for how to be relevant and how to be transformative in people's lives at this moment in time. Thank you so much.

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann:	Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Rabbi Deborah Waxman:	Great pleasure. So I want to thank my guest, Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann for our wonderful conversation on community building and we'll add resources to a lot of the links to both SAJ and Kol Tzedek and some of the other things that we've discussed over the course of this conversation onto our website. You can find that at hashivenu.fireside.fm. I am Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and you've been listening to Hashivenu -- Jewish teachings on resilience.