Unplugging Expectations
I am not your typical Jewschooler. True, I am liberal and Jewish, but I proudly work in corporate America, enjoy the occasional trefa banquet and, perhaps most egregiously, I am a member of a Reform Temple on the Upper East Side of New York City.
Please don’t take away my blogging privileges before you hear me out.
In September of 2008, I left the warm embrace of the professional Jewish world to enter the for-profit sector. It became clear that I needed a place for the High Holidays and to call my own Jewishly. In that my work environment would no longer be Jewish in content, I needed a Jewish home to learn, celebrate and work for the community.
I live on the Upper East Side, so I found a congregation on the Upper East Side. Not going to lie here, the $18/year under 30 memberships did help matters. So, with my wife, I joined Temple Shaaray Tefila just in time for some High Holiday action.
After the beginning of the year, I started getting invited to this Shabbat Unplugged service, catering to the 20s-30s set in the congregation. Always an open minded person,* I began to go to these cohort-specific services to see what was happening. I was married, so I didn’t need a meat market, and I have a strong Jewish identity, so I didn’t need a line-by-line explanation, both real concerns with traditional outreach to this community with in the Reform Movement.
But I was pleasantly surprise to find a prayerful and intentional community of committed Reform Jews of my generation engaged in a local congregation. More »
