Jewish Journey 2023
Dave Shlachter
Thanks Rabbi Paul for asking me to share my Jewish Journey.
It started like it did for half of us - with a VERY successful bris. I was off to a great start.
And then the standard suburban conservative experience:
- Hebrew school
- Summer camp
- Bar Mitzvah
- Youth group
- More Hebrew school
- I spent a lot of time in the principal’s office - I’m not going to lie. But I always loved becoming a Yid.
By the time I could drive, I knew a few things:
- I am a yid, and I believe in the way of the yid
- But most of my environment is not designed to accommodate the way of the Yid; it’s designed for the way of the American gentile. And the way of the American gentile is… PRETTY FANTASTIC! So, I wanted to PLAY in that sandbox.
But it comes at a cost.
You know a square peg through a round hole?
Well I was like a Jewish star shaped peg, and to fit in, sometimes I felt like I had to shave the beautiful tips off my star.
And then what’s left? Just a hexagon!
There came a time when I went to my parents and said, “ You know, I kinda want to grow my tips back.”
They said, “Oh! We heard about this boarding school in Israel - you should check it out!”
Off I went.
And that’s where I met the best teacher I have ever had: Yossi Katz. This dude. A Jew from Philly who made Aliyah, fought for the IDF, became Israel’s national boxing champion, and then dedicated the rest of his life to inspiring little pischers like me.
Every morning, we’d walk to his class, and he’d regale us with epic tales from our history, so many battles where we almost lost it all but somehow hung on by a thread, improbably surviving.
And in the afternoons, we’d drive out to the sites where these events took place: in a cave, or a battlefield, or some old ruins, schvitzing under the same sun as our ancestors, feeling the same soil in our Teva sandal cladded feet. And when you do this week after week, month after month — something changed in me. I MERGED with the story.
And let me tell you: I found my BYE. Big. Yiddishkeit. Energy.
I came back to the States and rolled up to my prestigious liberal arts college absolutely on fire. Built the Jewish Student Union. Organized torah studies. Threw fantastic parties! It was insane! But the headwinds were so intense and eventually my efforts fizzled.
Because right out in front of me, the whole time, is the Great Ocean of Goyishe.
And the waves are pumping!
I could just surf it. I could go deep sea diving right into it, pulling up all the treasures of the American gentile experience.
What do you do when confronted with such temptations?
You probably smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.
Wow. A whole decade. So much excitement. So much satisfaction.
But what about sustained joy? I found that joy doesn’t come from being somebody. And it definitely doesn’t come from having something. It comes from becoming. Becoming what you were always supposed to be. And for me, that was a yid.
But I had stopped becoming a yid. I was off the Derech. How do I get back on the Derech? Gotta do something. What do I do? I joined a shul. Which shul? The Kitchen, in San Francisco. 50 families. So small. So cute. Charismatic rabbi. No building. All good.
And from the moment I walked in, I felt like I belonged.
We quickly joined, then I joined the board, then became president, and we grew from 50 to 350 families.
How? Because we got the POWER of making people feel like they belong.
But by the time I termed off the board, I was asking a new question: is belonging the end goal? What if it’s just a foundation upon which we build the next thing?
I mean, we can have hundreds of people standing around, feeling like they belong, but they might not even know each other.
So what comes after belonging?
Connection.
How do we build it?
I don’t know! Who do you think I am?!
This was the question on my mind when I started Wexner - 2 years of intensive study designed to supercharge and inspire Jewish lay leaders to do something - anything - in their communities that advances Jewish life.
And out of the 20 people in our cohort, 2 of us were from Marin: me, and Greg Neichin, the tall handsome fella over there who just joined the Kol Shofar board - you’re lucky to have him!
And for years we carpooled down to SF and the South Bay together, asking ourselves the same question that the founders of Kol Shofar asked in the 1960s: what do we really want, Jewishly, in Marin County?
We had no shortage of ideas. But we kept coming back to community.
Did we know exactly what we meant? No.
But we knew what we didn’t mean! You know when you go into yoga class, and the yogi says, “Namaaaste - thank you for being part of this yoga community!” I’m like, “Say WHAT?! I just paid $38 to stretch for an hour. Looking around, I don’t know a single person in this room, and they don’t look like they know each other either, so where exactly is this community we’re talking about?”
We’re not talking about “community,” we’re talking about “COMMUNITY!” Showing up with a shared purpose, with kavannah, revealing ourselves fully, and getting together over and over again to grow into something.
So, we decided that we had to try some stuff.
Luckily, we’re both fathers, so our kids had eviscerated our egos long ago - there’s nothing left to lose. So we’re ok failing our way forward.
We got a group of couples together and we talked over dinner about community. What we heard was that parents of young kids, after 3,4,5,6 years of childrearing, were finally coming out of their little hidey holes, seeing the sunlight, and saying, “I swear we had all sorts of friends and community before kids, but, like, where’d everybody go!? We just realized that we’re kind of lonely!”
So everyone was psyched to get together again, and then the world melted down with COVID. Another headwind.
8 or 9 months later, we reconvened, this time on Zoom, with a Jewish educator, to study the torah of early childhood parenting (turns out there’s not that much torah on the topic, but it’s all good). It was just ok. If we tried to build something on this platform of belonging, it felt like a janky little sukkah, and it kind of fell down.
So we changed a few variables, slightly different people, new educator, not topic, and… it was MUCH better, but still not quite there.
So we tried again - for the FOURTH time - we said, what if we try it with just the dads, an amazing visiting scholar from Israel, committed to meet 10 times over the year to study Talmud, in person, under the redwoods, around a fire while drinking whiskey and eating Oren’s hummus.
Oh. THAT ONE WORKED!
We’re now going into our third year, and these guys have become some of my best friends in Marin.
So let me just close with an observation, and ask and an offer.
Do you feel that rumble in the room? It feels like Kol Shofar is a rocket ship. And it’s taking off.
- We’ve got Rabbi Paul at the helm
- Incredible new clergy and staff
- Tons of new energy on the board
- We brought the preschool in-house and it is thriving, and
- We have an unbelievable Executive Director starting in a few weeks.
If ever there were a time to get on this ship, it is NOW. I have been waiting for this moment for 12 years. It’s go time.
It’s the new year. Great time for a new year resolution. I’m looking out at this sea of Shayna punims, and I can feel the Big Yiddishkeit Energy in the room. Here’s what I’d like you to do, today: ask yourselves, in a very real and honest way, what do I want? What do I REALLY want, Jewishly, in Marin County? Or, what do I want to become?
When you have an answer, come find me or Greg, and we will open the kimono on everything we learned. We will help you shape your idea. And, like us, you may be absolutely blown away by what happens next.
Shana tova v’metukah. Love you guys.