Neil Blumofe serves as the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Agudas Achim in Austin, Texas. He has smicha from JTS and the Academy for Jewish Religion - Los Angeles, and cantorial investiture from JTS. He is a deft improviser, schooled in the dynamics of jazz performance. In his studies, he is interested in how music informs our cultural, national, and religious identities.
As your community transitioned online, did you try unique things? What worked? What did you learn?
We did a full pivot because we hadn’t been doing anything online, certainly not recording or filming our Sabbath services, so it was all unexplored territory. We really tried to have an engaging service, using the chat in a way that would help people feel that they were a part of the service in real time. It was a challenge encouraging people that this [shift] was okay and was something that they could successfully do. Sustaining it over months in terms of Zoom fatigue, especially as the worst of the pandemic lifted. It’s hard to maintain a relevance that feels exciting to people. We’re doing the best we can as we start slowly gathering in person. Everything has been layers of discovery.
In what ways did you see your community be resourceful and creative in meeting needs? In what way did their faith rise to the occasion?
One way has been with inreach work; helping see each other and responding, whether that means addressing loneliness or something specific like food or a job or getting a vaccine. We created small support groups that get together to provide support to each other. God has moved in this way. People feel that their needs are being taken seriously by those around them. That is something we had always talked about but never done, that’s been really great.
This has also been an opportunity to imagine what comes next and how to get there. Trusting that resources will arise as opposed to putting all your eggs in one basket. I feel that has been one thing about this period that’s important.
Are there any unexpected lessons your community or you as a faith leader learned?
We can’t take our community for granted. There are a lot of forces working on us to pull us apart, antagonize us against each other, politically and otherwise. When people are scared and alone they may try to connect the dots in a way that may not be rational to someone else. The ability that we as faith leaders have to be an absolute good in people’s lives is something that I don’t take for granted and has become more clear to me.
What do you think people of faith need to be especially mindful of as we emerge from the pandemic?
That people are in very different places. I’ve seen it said that we’re all in the same storm but in different boats. I preached on that back in April and I feel that acutely. We don't really know what is going on with people as they adjust. There has been damage and casualties; people don't know how to talk to each other; others may have excuses why they don't come anymore. We’ll gingerly explore how to reclaim the joys of sacred community.
I hope that as we emerge, we would continue to notice when we are going a hundred miles a minute. That we slow down and take time to check in about those radical concerns that people have, to lift each other up, to have patience with someone who is in a different place and struggling. I hope we retain these best practices that we’ve begun to develop.
What do you hope that your faith community will remember about this season in five or ten years?
The opportunity to do better, to prioritize our lives in terms of what we do. To reflect on “who I am” and “what do I need in my life;” to consider what causes joy or contentment and connection as opposed to “I need to make my money.” I think there’s a real opportunity to dial that back a little. And, ironically, not to rely on the internet so much, in order to live a more fulfilling and flourishing life. I hope the patterns will have been interrupted.
Just curious, how did the forced isolation affect your personal spiritual life or your relationship with God or yourself?
I’ll tell you, my kids were home and my wife, so we had lots of activity. All of our schedules overlap various parts of the day; we have a new puppy along with our dog. I wasn’t lonely, I was actually fatigued. There were a lot of interruptions working there, so I spent a lot of time at the synagogue, working to take care of the needs within the community as they arose.
Trying to find the balance of caring for myself and others allowed me to see how fragile everything really is. To try to do things not by quantity but rather to make genuine connections with people. I realized I was pushing myself at a pace that was too much. So I took a month off that was really needed because I felt depleted. There is still a lot to be done before everything is solved and I wanted to be as fresh as possible. Demands on me as a faith leader were exponentially greater during the pandemic than prior to it. We built a technological base from scratch; helping people negotiate their various situations; the vast number of zoom meetings and presentations I didn’t want to miss. I’m shifting some of that this year in light of self-preservation.
You didn’t ask, but what did I do for that month? I put my tent in my car and camped as many places as I could between here and Washington state. Just me by myself. My family understood that I needed to reset, to not have a schedule. It felt like a spiritual recharge, both for myself but also as a model for people in my community. Whatever boat we’re in, we have to make it the best boat possible.