10:30am Shabbat Service Start Times (mostly) & Social Action Opportunities
by Rabbi David J. Cooper
New Saturday Service Start Times
Our Spiritual Leaders and our Spiritual Life Practices Committee have decided that most of our Shabbat morning services will start later, at 10:30am, and finish at the same time. (The exceptions: Our Chai Shabbat and Bar/Bat Mitzvah services, which will continue to start at 10am.)
The idea here is to turn our regular services into an incubator of new approaches to worship. With the discipline of a one-and-a-half to one-and-three-quarter hours, service leaders will experiment with their time in different ways. But this also enables us to meet the needs of people who would rather sleep later on Shabbat and who would not bother coming if they knew they were missing a large segment of the service. Now they can do both. But more than that, we want this to be an opportunity to bring in a wider variety and a larger number of people to be in community on a Shabbat morning.
Also, we want everyone to be aware that the Kiddush time after services is open to everybody, whether or not they attended the service. Social time is sacred time too. Schmoozing is davening but interpersonal. Just remember that you are encouraged to bring veggy finger food to share.
Better Access to Kehilla Social Action
From now on, I will endeavor to make sure that at least once every two weeks an email will go out to our membership and Kehilla followers called “Social Action Opportunities.” In a recent conversation I had with our Economic Justice Committee, people expressed to me that even though we have publicized many activities of that committee and other social action opportunities, that we hear back from folks that they were unaware of these. I figure this is because these notices get buried within other announcements and emails. So we will have a periodic dedicated email to let people know of these. Not all will be activities that Kehilla endorses; the criteria is whether I think it is something that some Kehilla folks might want to know about. If you or your committee know of something I should consider for the email, please let me know. You can contact me at rabbidavid@kehillasynagogue.org, or (510) 547-2424 x103.