By Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg, Congregation Kol Ami
For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. — Isaiah 56:7
For the past 15 years, Congregation Kol Ami in Woodinville has shared space with the Bear Creek United Methodist Church (BCMU) — at one time out of financial necessity for both congregations, now out of a true desire to share a spiritual home with another community. Kol Ami is my new congregation. I just started to serve this small Reform congregation this past summer after having served Temple B’nai Torah in Bellevue for over a decade. I made the trip north, less than 10 miles, but what I have entered into is a completely new paradigm for how growing urban and suburban Jewish communities can survive and thrive in the 21st century.
“You pray in a Church?”
We do not pray in a church. We pray, learn, celebrate, mourn and build community within a building that is a holy and spiritual place. The building has everything a small Jewish community could hope for — a huge kitchen, tons of parking, a youth room with a ping pong table and sofa, a preschool room, a beautiful sanctuary, and a garden and fire pit outside. Sometimes this building is used exclusively for Bear Creek worship and programming, like on Sunday mornings. Sometimes the building is used exclusively for Jewish program and services like on Friday for Shabbat evenings and Sunday afternoons for religious school. Most of the time the building is used by both groups for meetings and classes, pastoral counseling, and opportunities to use the kitchen to help those in need. The sanctuary transforms easily from Christian spiritual space to Jewish spiritual space with the use of built-in hanging tapestries that go up and down as needed and a portable ark and ner tamid. Our building, this spiritual home used by two faiths, is a true sukkat shalom — a shelter of peace.
A Shelter for All
At this season we build temporary structures outside our homes to remember the peace and shelter provided to our people as they wandered the dangerous, complicated and unpredictable path ahead of them toward the Promised Land. Our sukkot are open. Guests are welcome. We feel the true presence of shalom, peace, not because the roof or the wall will keep us safe but because of the love, warmth and friendship we experience inside. This has been my experience in my short time as the rabbi of congregation Kol Ami and my short time as spiritual space-mates with BCMU. The relationship is intentional. Both congregations know and understand that by coming together to share resources and to support each other we are creating tikkun — we are repairing something that has been broken in our world. We are living in mutual support, not in conflict with each other. Our world needs much more of this. The end goal is that the entire world is a sukkah shalom, that all of us live under the peace of the Divine Presence. Sharing a sacred space feels like an important step in that direction.
Practical and Progressive
We are not the only community who has made the conscience decision to co-house with other faith traditions. In Virginia, a Reform congregation shares its space with a Muslim community that required extra space during its Ramadan observances. In Germany, a recent crowd-funded design competition for one building to house Jewish, Christian and Muslim congregations, “The House of One,” is expected to be built by 2018. All over America, small- and medium-sized congregations have housed themselves in progressive churches to get their start.
Some, like Kol Ami, have decided that this relationship goes beyond the need for space. It has come to serve a much larger need:Tikkun olam, making our world a safer and more peaceful place for all.
When Jewish communities share space and build strong alliances with other faith communities, we are doing the very important work of ensuring that we have strong allies around us. Being increasingly interdependent on our non-Jewish friends and neighbors is one way we can help diminish the rising anti-Semitism all over the world. When our lives are intimately tied to those around us, and they know us and love us, we are safer from the hatred of those who do not know us and do not love us. We need allies in and among faith communities. We need righteous Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Baha’i, and the many other diverse faith communities who represent the majority in this nation to be in coalition with us against forces that seek to insult, damage and destroy our ancient community.
They paved paradise and put up a synagogue parking lot
And then of course, as we celebrate the harvest at this season and honor the many gifts we revive from the earth, let us remember and take responsibility for our impact. One of the things that makes me most proud of our decision to co-house with another faith tradition is that we have significantly reduced our imprint on this planet. Our shared space is used in the most efficient manner possible. We have one large parking lot and one medium-sized building that not only serves two faith communities, but is also used as a counseling center, for AA meetings, exercise classes, Cub Scouts groups, and a secular preschool open to all. The parking lot is also used a park-and-ride location. The beautiful thing about sacred spaces is that they can be made holy in many different ways.
Maybe someday our community will outgrow BCMU. Maybe someday we will fall on hard times (God forbid) and need extra support. Like our ancestors who wandered the desert looking for the promised land, we don’t know what the future will bring. But I know that with the partnership and love of our Christian brothers and sisters at Bear Creek, we will always know what it feel like to live in a sukkat shalom, a shelter of peace.
My hope and prayer for the entire people Israel at this season of our joy is that we strive to create space in our lives and communities to reach out and connect with good people of faith in our world. We have one planet, one house, and it is always enveloped in the wings of the shechina — God’s protective and peaceful presence. We can make this spiritual reality manifest itself in our world each and every day by connecting and building interdependent relationships with our fellow human beings. Only good can come from making everywhere we go a sukkat shalom.