Rabbi's Week in Review Blog

I write this week’s blog while spending some time away, celebrating my mother-in-law's 85th birthday in the mountains of Utah. While providing some needed downtime, it has also provided some time for deeper reading and reflection.  

Coupled with this is my work with the Clergy Leadership Incubator fellowship. I will write about this work from time to time, specifically how, through the program, our vision for Kol Ami as a very different kind of synagogue community will develop and grow.  

The deeper reading and reflection have given me a renewed sense of how we benefit from seeking out different voices to inform who we are. This is certainly true in growing our Kol Ami community. It is also true in virtually everything we do. It is particularly true in how we approach conflict. There is always something about those with whom we have deep-seated disagreement that we have not considered — a different way forward we have yet to explore.

This is the essence of the Jewish concept of machloket l’shem shamayim, argument for the sake of heaven. It is the willingness to have our most embedded ideas challenged, and to allow ourselves to be uncomfortable in order to grow. As Jews, it is a key to our survival, and will be a hallmark of our Kol Ami principles.