I admit it. I am a Coen brothers fan. I love that, in America, two Jewish brothers have managed to make a successful career out of producing films that have an underlying comic sublimity like Fargo and the Big Lebowski in which a character can proclaim the cinematically immortal words “I don’t roll on Shabbes!”

I have to acknowledge that when I viewed their latest film, “A Serious Man,” at a special free screening for Seattle Jewry, I was at first not impressed. As one who is normally open to comic and dramatic critique of American Jewish life, I was a bit taken aback by just how vacuous the rabbis in the film seemed to be. But as the messages of the movie began to sink in, I did appreciate and find humor in their critique of 1960’s American Jewry’s foray into suburbia; I realized that perhaps the rabbis did have something meaningful to say, as the Serious Man tried to figure out how to make sense of his life.

That the synagogue could be a significant source of meaning and connection is one of the assumptions of organized Judaism. When the majority of today’s American Jews arrived here at the turn of the last century, it was not so clear that this would be the case. Many chose to create shtiebels, small store-front like houses of worship, where the men would go to pray. They sent their children, like my mother, to the Uptown Talmud Torah, an afternoon Hebrew school that was not connected to a religious center. With the mass move to the suburbs, the synagogue or Temple, as we know it today, began to take form. Large sanctuaries were constructed next to religious school classroom wings and a social hall, with the greatest emphasis placed on being gathering centers both for the High Holidays and for Bar/Bat Mitzvah.

My generation of rabbis, most of whom are second generation American Jews, was very influenced by the period just after the end of the movie, the late 1960’s. We went into the rabbinate to help the Jewish community move beyond religious centers that connect people only one time a year or that exists primarily for B’nai Mitzvah. We sought to make the synagogue a center of dynamic Jewish community. Our goal is to make the shul a place where people could turn to the Jewish tradition and grow spiritually, feel free to experiment with Jewish ritual as a means of enriching their lives, where the arts and beauty of Jewish culture would be celebrated, and where Jews would organize around the prophetic call to help each other be God’s partner and improve the world by engaging in Tikkun Olam.

Mordecai Kaplan promoted Judaism not as a religion, but as a religious civilization, for it has religious, communal, and cultural elements. Rabbi Beth and I were greatly influenced by Kaplan and have spent our careers trying to make Beth Am such a center. As I have learned more, I have discovered that this was not just a Kaplanistic innovation, but that great centers of Jewish life in the past have also been so organized. In Vilna, the Jews created a school, meeting areas, gathering places for philosophers and rabbis, even a water well, surrounding the synagogue courtyard, making the shul the focus of Jewish communal life.

It is amazing how much of this work we already do with relatively little money, from the adult-ed programs to our Tikkun Olam work and the sense of the village that supports each member. I know that there are those who think we try to do too much but to truly flourish and live up to our potential as an essential center of Jewish life, we need to keep pushing and trying more. This is our generation’s opportunity to enhance Jewish life.

So let us dream about how we can together enhance Jewish life. Maybe we will build a beautiful new kind of Jewish library at the front of our building filled with books, works of art and a coffee shop that could help make more of a salon environment as you enter Beth Am. That could solve our space problem for now. Maybe we will turn one of our rentals into an artist-in-residence cottage. Who knows? But if you don’t dream, you won’t make the hope of the future real.

Enjoy your summer, put some Jewish books on your list, and maybe even see a Coen brothers’ flick, and wherever you travel, make the minyan in the city where you are on Shabbat. Most importantly come and be engaged with this community. You will help us make a serious Jewish difference.

L’shalom,

Rabbi Jonathan L. Singer