Shul shopping in Los Angeles
Jewish Community, Jewish Spirituality, Relationships April 30th, 2007
This past month Tamara and I began actively exploring what our (as a couple) Jewish community opportunities might be in Los Angeles. Tamara already belongs to a Chabad community which she has been participating in for over a year now. It’s a very nice, friendly community however unfortunately it’s not the best place for me as a non-Orthodox Jew by choice, who isn’t interested at this point in doing a halachick conversion. Besides that I don’t think either of us feel it’s the best fit in terms of an environment for raising our (G-D willing) children with the values and attitudes we feel are most important.
While I was down last fall we did spend time checking out several reform communities but to be honest they were just too big and seemed a little bit on the impersonal side of things.
We are looking for more than just a place to go on Saturdays or for the High Holidays. We are looking for a community and social network we can plug into. You know a group of people that aren’t necessarily identically like us but who share our values, interests and Jewish predilections. Anyhow the good news is that we found a couple of really promising communities and both of us are pretty excited about it.
The first community is called Ikar and it’s a new young and groovy kinda place made up of mostly 20 and 30 something’s. The community is led by Rabbi Sharon Brous who is JTS trained and has been named by foreword as one of 2006’s most distinguished Jewish leaders. From what I gather the community has something of a Reconstructionist/Renewal vibe to it but they are unaffiliated. At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about the unaffiliated status but the more I think about it the more I like it. That’s not to say that I’m against affiliation or anything but it’s nice to just be Jewish and community focused, without unnecessarily abiding by institutional party lines.
From what we’ve gathered they are a very progressive group of people who are interested in study, social action and community building. The only anticipated difficulty is going to be adjusting to their Shabbat services format. Although I’ve been told that they’re very traditional in terms of liturgy much of it is sung and they incorporate the use of drums and bells. Bottom line is if that’s our biggest problem we may have found a really great community.
Tamara got a chance to meet the Rabbi and seemed to be impressed with her. Although I obviously haven’t met her I did get a chance to watch a short video of her which was impressive.
This post seems to have grown a little larger in size than I had planned so I think I’ll save the second candidate for another post.
Anyhow if anyone reading this is a member or has experience with Ikar please feel free to share your thoughts with me.
Up Date: here is an interesting Radio Interview with Rabbi Sharon Brous. Part 1 begins about 8 minutes in and Part 2 begins about 40:30 minutes into the show.
Technorati tags: Ikar, Los Angeles, Doing Jewish in LA, Unaffiliated Shul’s, Jewish Community, Rabbi Sharon Brous
Listen to this podcast
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Hi Babe, I listened to the two talks tonight. Very good. I do like her and I like her line of thinking. I should definitely go do something more with them.
Thanks for sharing