The "Other Synagogue"

I trust you all remember the joke (19th one down) about the Jew stranded on a desert island who, when finally rescued five years later, demands to show the captain of the boat bringing him home just what he managed to do during all that time and when the captain sees two identical buildings in a meadow asks, "What are those?", the reply is, "That one on the right is the schule I regularly daven in. The other one I wouldn't dare set foot in".
(even this Rabbi used it)

This came to mind reading about new synagogue practices in The Forward this week.

Lev Gorn knew that Kehilat Romemu wasn't a regular minyan when the Torah service began.

Rising from their chairs and meditation cushions, the roughly 100 people in attendance last month sang a lilting melody. There was guitar and Middle Eastern tabla drumming. The Torah was passed around from one cradling embrace to the next. When it was returned to the front of the room, Rabbi David Ingber announced that the first aliyah, or blessing on the Torah reading, was for all those who wanted to further their spiritual commitments. At least half the congregation, identifying with this, stood up to partake in the honor.

"I've tried Buddhism, which I like very much," said Gorn, a 35-year-old photographer, after the service. "But I wanted something that feels more like home. And I feel Jewish, but reading from the Torah in a rigid way doesn't work for me. This is closer to what I'm about — celebration."

The monthly Romemu minyan had its inaugural Sabbath runs in March and April at Makor, the Manhattan cultural center aimed at twenty- and thirty-somethings, attracting standing-room-only crowds for what Ingber, its charismatic founder, called "fully embodied, ecstatic and contemplative prayer."

"One reason people don't go to shul is because it's antiquated," said Ingber, 37, broad chested and goateed. "Young people are asking themselves, 'What does this all mean?' A service is like a restaurant. We're not trying to give people a book about eating; we're trying to give them a meal to eat. You know when you've had a great meal, and you know when you've been to a great prayer service. I want people to walk into this and feel alive."...

...He began to feel that certain forms of Orthodoxy contained patterns of dysfunction. "Unhappy sibling models and unhappy parental relationships are hardwired into the very nature of certain approaches to Judaism," he explained, "which leads to unhappy relationships to God and ourselves. It's a Judaism of 'never good enough-ness.'" At the age of 23, he left Judaism again.

Ingber spent most of the next decade pursuing practices that read like a menu of the contemporary holistic movement: yoga, tai chi, shiatsu, Reiki, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, gyrotonics, Zen meditation, martial arts, integrative body psychotherapy and postural integration. Inasmuch as his yeshiva education had taught Ingber that spiritual ascendance happened only in the mind, he came to believe that it happened also, if not more so, in the body...

..."I had to wait until I could teach a Judaism that was transformative and exciting and healing and courageous," he said. "A Judaism that isn't fear based. A Judaism that is unabashedly devoted to spirit."

Hey, different niggunim for different chassidim, to paraphrase something but, somehow, I can testify that with the introduction of Reb Shlomeleh Carlebach's tunes into the davening, (not to mention the annoying, to me, handclapping; the dancing I sit out), Orthodox schules are spiritual and exciting.

Of course, there's still a lot of work needed to hone the skills of the pulpit Rabbis and other guest Darshanim, with notable exceptions.

In any case, this item was important because it points out that many young people are still wanting to feel committed and to participate in vigorous Judaism.

So, there's hope.