By Janis Siegel, Jewish Sound Correspondent
Temple De Hirsch Sinai took a programming risk with Rosh Hashanah this year and it paid off — big time.
On the second night of 5775, nearly 100 Jews in their 20s and 30s showed up at Sole Repair Shop, an event space in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, for an unconventional service sponsored by TDHS’s young adult group, The Tribe.
“We will start 5775 as the people we want to be,” read the invitation. “We will be doing, not sitting. We will be with community, not feeling isolated from it.”
“It was packed,” Rabbi Jaclyn Cohen told The Jewish Sound. “It was mostly people who were unaffiliated in the city and transplants that came here for professional reasons. We had 80 RSVP’s and people who walked in off of the street.”
Refresh 5775 was paid for with an $11,000 grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, which covered all event expenses. Publicity for the free event came from posters and announcements on public radio station KUOW and the Pandora online music service.
“The people responded to something that’s different,” said Cohen. “There are incredible things happening in the Jewish community of Seattle. This has left me incredibly excited about what’s possible — not just for The Tribe.”
Once inside, guests were treated to wines and hors d’oeuvres before walking through four individual spiritual “work” stations at their own pace. One of the activities included a private Tashlich room, where visitors could create a personal and private Rosh Hashanah ritual.
“When I sit through a regular Rosh Hashanah service I go through the motions,” said Seattleite Nick Barrat, 33, who liked being surrounded by his peers as well as the interactive liturgy. “Prayer is not always about routine and repetition. True prayer is about expression of appreciation for all our blessings and having had the chance to have some personal reflection.”
Cohen also created a take-home combination prayer book and personal writing journal.
“I write the sermons that I would want to hear,” said Cohen, “and I plan events that I would want to go to. Hopefully, it will give all of us a chance to hit refresh on our own lives.”
Other activities gave participants the chance to answer 10 Jewish New Year-related questions from their smartphones and to write a letter to themselves with their hopes and intentions for the New Year. Cohen will hang on to the letters and send them back to each participant next year. In another activity, guests were encouraged to write a holiday thought on a strip of colored paper that was strung across a wall during the evening.
Izzy Sederbaum, 27, originally from the East Coast, found the laid back Seattle jeans-and-prayer environment much less formal than the services he’s used to, but he quickly felt at home.
“Everyone knew most of the liturgy, and as a result, the evening had a very familiar feeling, like revisiting a place you hadn’t been since childhood,” Sederbaum said. “I really think it was the Refresh event that really solidified my feeling that with the beginning of 5775 I was ‘coming back’ to the Judaism I had left behind.”
TDHS membership concierge and marketing director Lisa Flora Meyers wrote a dramatic monologue about the Rosh Hashanah Torah story, “The Binding of Isaac” — but from the perspective of the matriarch Sarah. That took the audience by surprise.
“It was unexpected and it caught people off guard, which was absolutely my intent,” Meyers, who holds a master’s degree in playwrighting, told The Jewish Sound. “Rabbi Cohen essentially challenged me to take the text and transform it, and view it with a critical, interrogative eye.”
Later, small groups gathered and shared their impressions.
“I — cannot love my husband quite as much anymore,” spoke Sarah, played by Seattle actress and JTNews writer Erin Pike. “I know that he was doing what was right by God…I was not there but it haunts me…the image of it cycles through my mind….”
“I became really excited about telling Sarah’s story and getting deep into her heart and her pain,” said Meyers. “I wanted people to feel what Sarah was feeling, and for that to spark questions about Abraham’s choice and about the nature of God and God’s actions.”
Cohen’s plan is for the Tribe, which meets at local brewpubs and holds appletini parties at Rosh Hashanah and sangria in the sukkah, to build on the energy from this event and plan more gatherings to keep this demographic engaged.
“How am I going to take it to the next level?” asked Cohen, accepting the challenge. “I’m just happy that people are seeking out a Jewish life for themselves.”