Report from Hadar's Community Meeting

We are excited to report on our community meeting held on Sunday February 11, attended by more than 40 people. It was exciting and inspiring to hear from members of the community about their vision for Hadar's continued growth.

This meeting was the most recent in a series of community meetings Kehilat Hadar has held over the years. These meetings are an important way for the Hadar community to provide direction and vision for the upcoming years. (To read the minutes from the last meeting, held in January 2005, please click here). We have achieved many of the goals from this last meeting, including receiving a community Torah, increasing the frequency of meetings from two per month, and developing a range of community building initiatives. With your help, we hope to realize many of the goals articulated in this month's meeting.

We brainstormed dozens of topics to explore and narrowed down our discussion to six topics of particular interest: Israel; volunteer and leadership opportunities; Hadar potentially becoming a more full-service institution; fundraising; community-building; and family programming. While we didn't reach definite decisions in most of the areas, the meeting was an important step in moving forward and starting ongoing conversations on these topics.

Below is a summary of the discussions that occurred at the meeting and opportunities for you to get involved in achieving our communal goals.

Israel: This group discussed Hadar's relationship with Israel both philosophically and programmatically. Philosophically, the group wondered whether Israel programming fits within the three existing areas of Hadar's mission - prayer, learning, and social action - or whether it should constitute a separate category. Programmatically, the group talked about the range of options for Israel programming, including educational, political, social, and religious. Specifically, the group recommended offering a class on the role of Israel in the liturgy, developing a way to recognize community members leaving for or returning from Israel, exploring the possibility of a Hadar trip to Israel, and creating support systems and community forums that could be launched to respond to crisis situations in Israel. The possibility of partnering with a Hadar-like community in Israel or supporting the development of traditional egalitarian Jewish communities in Israel was also discussed.

Follow-up: Hadar has already begun to organize an Israel task force based on interest expressed at our recent community conversation on Israel. This task force will continue both to explore the nature of Hadar's relationship to Israel as well as develop Israel programming for the Hadar community. If you are interested in joining, please email Lisa Exler at israel@kehilathadar.org.

Volunteer and Leadership Opportunities: People are excited to volunteer at Hadar and are looking for different opportunities to volunteer in ways that make a difference. This group explored methods for identifying and recruiting volunteers as well as better publicizing volunteer opportunities at Hadar. The group made many recommendations, including: facilitating volunteer sign-up through the website; creating a volunteer survey that would link to the website; publicizing the roles of the gabbaim and leadership team members; combining volunteering with social activities; and publicizing that Hadar is a community of volunteers.

Follow-up: We will begin implementing some of the group's recommendations immediately, particularly those related to greater use of the website to inform people about volunteer activities. In addition, we will organize a task force to develop strategies for publicizing volunteer opportunities and identifying and engaging volunteers. If you are interested in joining, please email Tammy Arnow at egalminyan@hotmail.com.

Question of Becoming a More Full-Service Community: As Hadar has become the primary Jewish community for more and more people, we are faced with the challenge of whether and how we can provide many of the services that "full-service" synagogues have typically provided: rabbinic counseling, Hebrew school, adult education, support for lifecycle events, more regular davening, etc. The group felt that while Hadar can work to meet some of these needs, we neither can nor should be trying to fill all of them at this point. The group agreed that it's important for Hadar to focus primarily on what we do best: providing high-quality traditional egalitarian davening, along with education and social justice programming. Nevertheless, people agreed that there is some room for growth in these and other areas. There was also some discussion of expanding from our current three-times-per-month schedule, although people expressed concerns about the effect this change would have on the quality of the davening, the overall Hadar "experience," and whether the current organizational structure is equipped to handle this change.

Follow-up: We will create a task force to explore the question of how Hadar should be developing its programming to best meet the community's needs. We believe that to tackle this question, we will need to hear from a wide cross-section of the community. If you are interested in joining this task force to help assess the community's goals in this area, please email Adam Levine at egalminyan@hotmail.com.

Fundraising: This conversation noted that before Hadar can embark on serious fundraising efforts, we must decide what project(s) we aim to fund and define our goals. Once Hadar's objectives and goals have been articulated, the group thought it important to cultivate donors from within the Hadar community and to continue to look to outside foundations for support, as Hadar currently does. Some suggested creating membership to the Hadar community based around the contribution of money and/or volunteer hours, and developing a way to give recognition to those who donate financially and with their time.

Follow-up: We will convene a Fundraising Interest Team that will consider various approaches to raising funds, depending on the financial needs of the community. If you would like to join this team, please email Charlie Schwartz at egalminyan@hotmail.com.

Community-Building: This group discussed ways to help more people to feel at home at Hadar, with the ultimate goal of building a sustainable, welcoming, open community. Suggestions included identifying specific individuals during announcements whom people can approach for more information about an upcoming event; encouraging people to invite other people to their meals if they have space at their tables; exploring ways for Hadar programs to be more welcoming to those who might to be new to the community. The group also expressed the hope that everyone feel invested in and responsible for making Hadar more welcoming for all of us.

Follow-up: We will begin implementing some of this group's recommendations immediately, particularly related to in-shul announcements and efforts to encourage meal hosting. In addition, we will work to make Hadar more welcoming through a task force devoted to these issues. Please email Farell Diamond at egaliminyan@hotmail.com if you would like to be involved in this effort.

Family Programming: This group explored the possibility of adding programming that would make Hadar more welcoming to families with children, expressing a concern that people who have children "age out" of the community because it does not currently provide family programming. Specific suggestions for ways to determine the needs of the community included: developing a survey that assesses current and future needs; exploring the possibility of using other rooms in our current space for programming and babysitting; investigating how other independent minyanim have introduced this type of programming; and beginning the process with programming that meets current needs but can grow as families do.

Follow-up: We will convene a task force on family programming to assess the needs and interests of the community. Please email Farell Diamond at egalminyan@hotmail.com if you would like to be part of this conversation.

Thanks so much to those of you who attended the meeting! If you were unable to attend, we would love to hear from you. Feel free to email egalminyan@hotmail.com with any thoughts you have about Hadar's growth.