Keruv

Dr. Bob Spector

Shalom Chaverim, With summer upon us, I hope you are able to safely have more quality time with your family and friends. As many of you know I was asked and have accepted the opportunity and immense privilege to be our next CBS President beginning July 1, 2021. I am both anxiously and enthusiastically looking forward to supporting a remarkably talented and profoundly dedicated group of staff members and lay leaders. As I become more aware of the time I need to commit to this new role in our community, I realize that I may have to pull back a bit on some of my current activities that are very dear to me. One of those, sadly (at least for me) is the frequency of writing my Keruv column. As this may be my last column for a while, I have been reflecting on how our Keruv Initiative has impacted our community since my first column in September, 2010. About three years ago, I attended a conference sponsored by USCJ called ‘Expanding our Embrace: Creating Space for Interfaith Families in our Kehillot.’ This was a wonderful opportunity to bring together representatives from many synagogues throughout the Midwest to discuss how to create a more welcoming environment for interfaith married couples. As you may recall, our Keruv Initiative evolved through the leadership of the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs. However, over the years USCJ has recognized the need to provide support and outreach to Conservative synagogues to a Iddress this particularly important challenge. As I listened to the stories the participants shared (some were quite painful) once again became so appreciative of the response Congregation Beth Shalom has made for over a decade in welcoming so many diverse Jewish families to our synagogue family. Over the years, I have come to realize that being welcoming and being inclusive are not necessarily one and the same. A family/community cannot be inclusive without being welcoming but being welcoming does not necessarily guarantee creating an atmosphere of inclusion. Over the last decade our Keruv/Interfaith Marriage Initiative has worked with the Board of Trustees to address language in our by-laws (including gender neutrality) that was not consistent with our aspiration to be an inclusive community. I have been asked over the years why I thought it was important to change a document that well over 90% of our members never looked at or even knew existed. While we had become welcoming of our interfaith families for many years, there were by-laws that included statements of exclusion that I am proud to say that our Board of Trustees removed. Gender specific language has also been changed to gender neutral language to be inclusionary of our same sex couples. Our by-laws are not only rules of order for us to follow, but the words we use to articulate these rules are also a statement of our and our leaders’ inclusionary values as a community. What I have learned over the years is that not all synagogues have even begun to address exclusionary language in their by-laws with their Board leadership. Until they do, these synagogues may be very welcoming, but they are not inclusive. I have also learned that within the Conservative Movement only 19% of these synagogues include interfaith family welcoming statements on their websites, only 20% have an outreach committee, and only 12% have offered an interfaith family program. I want to give a BIG SHOUT-OUT to our lay and professional leadership to have both the wisdom and courage to be a national leader in becoming a community of inclusion. I suspect that 50 years ago our Congregation Beth Shalom leadership, like our country, was not thinking about phrases such as diversity, inclusion, equity, and interfaith family welcoming. CBS’s growth and richness is directly related to its commitment to evolve as a community. Have we completed this evolution? Not possible, but I truly believe that we will continue to maintain this commitment to our many wonderful initiatives that represent our value to be inclusive. I will continue to have a column in the bulletin every month and I pledge to comment on the many things we do so well, as well as on our aspirations to grow (literally and metaphorically) and evolve as a community to meet the needs of our diverse Jewish community. As always, I can be reached at cbskeruv@gmail.com. B’Shalom, Bob 16 CONGREGATION BETH SHALOM • NORTHBROOK, ILLINOIS • 847-498-4100 • WWW.BETHSHALOMNB.ORG