Shana Tova, Gmar chatimah tovah. I’m Rachel Rudman, I’m the Executive Director of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue. I’m honored to be in community with you all this Yom Kippur.
I want to start by taking a collective breath. We each scrambled to physically prepare for this day - made plans with family, prepared meals, bought clothes for the kids, managed time off from work or other responsibilities in order to allow us to show up. And here we are, physically. But what about being mentally or emotionally present? That’s so much harder. As a working parent of young children, days go by quickly and I’m aware I’m not always as mentally present as I’d like to be. While my mind is still occupied with logistics and tasks I need to remember to do, I am here surrounded by my community, on this holiest day of the year. So take a deep breath with me. [Breathe]. We each lead busy lives as individuals, but on this day, we slow down, we focus on community and God, and become the collective “we.”
In our Yom Kippur liturgy we say:
We have sinned against you…
…Forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement
We say:
We are your people, You are our God
We are your community, you are our portion
Our tradition teaches us that we need one another, that we need our community. Today we sing out loud that we are a single united people, and we stand in relationship with one another in order to stand in relationship with God.
That’s not only true on Yom Kippur. I believe the value of a synagogue community is in its ability to bring people together - people of different ages, races, and backgrounds - to be in holy relationship with one another, and in relationship with God. We can’t practice or carry on our traditions alone. We yearn for connection and to be held by our community, in our happiest and saddest moments.
In 2015 Justin and I moved from Southfield to Harbortown on the Detroit River. We were dabbling in a more observant Jewish life so we frequently walked to the Downtown Synagogue for Shabbat services. My friend Blair was teaching and gathering lay leaders, and I was intrigued by this community that had people my age in governance and ritual lay leadership roles. It made me want to learn to lead davening.
When Justin and I got married in May 2017, our extended family stayed in Greektown downtown. On Friday night, I walked to the Downtown Synagogue for Kabbalat Shabbat. Ironically I remember feeling a bit lonely, my family and friends preferred to explore the city over going to shul. But I was craving introspection and ritual so I went to shul instead, and shared a cozy meal with people I had just met. The next morning, my family gathered at Downtown Synagogue for our aufruf. We hosted a big kiddush lunch for the Downtown Synagogue community after services. I remember feeling like the people were warm and welcoming, and I loved how diverse the community was.
That weekend Justin and I got married right here in this sanctuary. Sixty years before that, Justin’s grandparents, Muriel and Seymour Posner, had been married in the exact same place. I’m drawn to Jewish community because I believe in the power of tradition, ritual, and wisdom that are passed down from generation to generation. I want to feel connected to something larger than myself.
The Downtown Synagogue was established in 1921, and for 100 years has served the Jews who live and work in the city of Detroit. We are guided by our values: action; humility; place-based; courage to learn and have dialogue; abundance; diversity & inclusion; kindness & compassion; and integrating ritual and action. We are committed to the city of Detroit and supporting its revitalization. We lift up and work to cultivate lay leadership across all areas of the synagogue. The Downtown Synagogue brings together people of all different ages, of different races and ethnicities, those who live in the city and those who live in the suburbs, Jews who grew up across the denominational spectrum and those who are exploring Judaism for the first time. Our active and dedicated Board reflects the diversity of the community. At a time when synagogues across the country are struggling and seeing decreased membership, the Downtown Synagogue continues to grow. A decade ago we had 150 member households including 10 children under the age of 18. Now we have 415 member households including more than 100 children. There is so much on the horizon for the Downtown Synagogue, including the current renovation and reimagining of our historic downtown building.
The Downtown Synagogue will become a more welcoming and accessible space as we trade our ground-floor brick walls for floor-to-ceiling glass windows and install a new ADA compliant elevator. We’re upgrading our Sanctuary, the first floor community space, and the kitchen. We’ll have a dedicated space for children, and plenty of flexible program and event space. We’re also creating a Jewish co-working space where partner organizations can collaborate, share resources, and build community under one roof. Partner organizations include Federation, JCC, the Reconstructionist Congregation of Detroit, Hazon, Repair the World, JCRC/AJC, Jewish Family Services and many others. This comprehensive renovation will center the Downtown Synagogue as the hub for Jewish life in the city of Detroit and ensure that we can serve the needs of our community for the next 100 years. So much gratitude to the Board members, lay leaders, community partners, and donors who are making this long-sought dream a reality. Construction is scheduled to be complete by spring 2023.
Just as we are renovating our building, we are growing our community and investing in relationships. You’ll notice more in-person programming, personal outreach, invitations to Shabbat meals in members’ homes, lay leadership opportunities, and ways to get involved. When we re-enter our brand new building in 2023, we want to do so with a strong and connected community.
We are dedicated to keeping our programs and services accessible to all, including providing free High Holiday services. Join my family and me in becoming Downtown Synagogue Sustainers and committing to a monthly donation that will allow us to serve our community and our mission more fully. This is not like other synagogue dues - there are not specific required amounts nor is this tied to membership. Rather, it is a monthly investment in a community - your community - that you believe should exist and thrive here in Detroit. You can sign up at downtownsyagogue.org/sustainer or grab a form in the lobby.
Every year during the High Holiday season, I reread a beautiful book called This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, by Rabbi Alan Lew. This year, one passage stuck out in his section about the Kol Nidre prayer on Yom Kippur.
“[Kol Nidre] is a prayer that calls the soul back to itself, a prayer that calls the soul to its real home, and that home is always in something larger than itself. We are incomplete and imperfect and cannot survive without a spiritual community that can make us whole - that can give us what we need, what we don’t have. And what we need most of all is to give. We need to give what we have and someone else does not. And that sense of wholeness, of completion, that we have been chasing after all of our lives - but that always eludes us as individuals - is something so deep it can only be found in a whole community, in that shifting composite of need and lack and gift we create when we come together to acknowledge that we need each other.”
This year let us invest in our relationships with one another - and may that fill up our souls, strengthen our community, and bring us closer to one another and to God.
Gmar chatimah tova.