Yeah. So I can't remember when this happened, but in maybe the early 2000s, there was a separation from the more traditional conservative community in the larger Jewish community here. And I think it depends on who you ask. What were the reasons? From what I understand, it had to do with who could be buried in our Jewish cemetery. We have our cemetery and in Hebrew Kadisha, and everything like that. And I think there was a question of, you know, non-Jewish spouses, can they be buried within the gates of our cemetery? And the more traditional members, you know, said, no. And the majority of people, I think, probably said, Um. One second. The door is open on the left. Sorry. And I think that the larger, majority was probably thinking. You guys are out of your mind. Look at our demographics. You know what? This is a non-issue. Like, the more conservative people held their ground and said, well, we're going to start our own community. We're going to splinter off. And so they started what's called a time. And they found some space, and they had services. They brought in rabbis from Vancouver from different places, and then my predecessor, Rabbi Cindy Enger became the rabbi, and she worked hard in bringing the two groups back together. Um, and so she did that, which is amazing that she did that. So that was one huge issue. There have been other issues in the past, I think, that they had to deal with, who can vote, which members can vote when it comes to congregational votes. And some people said, Look, anyone who's a member can vote. And some people said, only the Jewish members can vote. And the compromise was that every household gets one vote. So there has to be, you know, a compromise within a household. And, so that's how they dealt with that one. But in my time here, the biggest issue that I've dealt with, and I would say it's my biggest, I don't know if I would call it a triumph, but, something I feel really good about was that when I got here, when I was interviewing, I was told that I would not be allowed to officiate at interfaith marriages. and it wasn't that, was a policy from the synagogue, but that was just written into my rabbinic contract, which is unusual because in most synagogues, it's a policy that the rabbi, you know, has freedom of the the pulpit, and it's up to them how what they want to do. And if there are multiple clergy, the senior rabbi will say, Look, this is what we're all doing as a team, or this is what I'm doing. You can do what you want to do. That's certainly how it was in my last synagogue that I worked at. You could choose how you wanted to do it, and people would respect that. So it wasn't a policy, but it was kind of like this unwritten policy. But they kind of put it in my contract. And so I knew right away that was something I was going to have to deal with. Even though I started rabbinical school thinking I would never officiate at interfaith marriages, I had come to understand that, no, this is something I must do as a rabbi. And so, I would bring it up often every time there was a contract negotiation. And it was always kind of like a non-starter. And then, you know, at some point, I was working with one of the presidents here who was just really wonderful. And I said, look, I'm going to do some research, and I want to present it to the board, and so I did kind of some demographic research of our community and showed how the vast majority of, you know, our members don't identify as conservative or traditional. But reform. And that's pretty much the practice, you know, throughout the reform world. And the practice of most reform rabbis is that they have the freedom to decide what they want to do. And I also found out that over 50% of our families were, in fact, in interfaith relationships. So what does that say when, you know, I wouldn't be allowed to say, renew their vows in our synagogue on our Bima. We also had our youth group advisors, who were a couple that were planning on getting married. And they, I mean, reinvigorated our youth group. One is Jewish and the other is not Jewish, but living as Jews. And, you know, an argument I had was how could I possibly tell them that they can't get married here by their rabbi? And what does that say to all of our youth as well? And so I went to our ritual team ritual committee and talked. We had multiple discussions about it, and I said, I think we need to create a policy that allows clergy to officiate at interfaith marriages for all these reasons, and so they signed off on it and kind of created this policy that I helped write, and sent it to the board for discussion, and then the board, you know, had a lot of talks about it and finally adopted it, which is wonderful, but there were a few people who are more conservative who were upset about this, thinking that, okay, if you do this, then what now? Are we going to start serving pork at, you know, own eggs, you know, nonsensical kind of leaps? And I try to say, well, you don't have to go to those weddings if you don't want to go, especially if you're not invited, but one thing that they wanted was to have a congregational discussion about it. Like, everyone's kind of sitting in a huge circle, and people can express their thoughts about it. And at first, I was really against it because I said, you know what? If you know, in this discussion, they want to change it or something like that. When I've worked so hard, I ultimately felt it was my decision anyway. It's not it's not theirs. And I was fearful that the more conservative folks would kind of band together and do something. I didn't want to give them that offer, that opportunity, but it turned out to be an incredible experience where people who supported me and supported what we did just showed up in force and shared their experiences of either being turned away at a younger age, because of, being part of a community where the rabbi didn't accept interfaith marriage or what have you. And so it was incredible. And some people say, look, we wouldn't even be members here if it wasn't for, you know, the rabbi and how the community is made up, you know, and we're very active. And so that was just a really powerful experience. And it's been wonderful since then. And, I tried to tell some of the more conservative members that nothing is changing; we've started a lay-led conservative minyan, monthly minyan, and other things as well. So I feel like we've even become more conservative and more traditional. We didn't use to have Saturday morning services and Services. Now we have them like four times a month. So it's just this one thing that changed, and I haven't heard anything since it's been going well, but that's, you know, something that could have been a huge issue. But I'm grateful that we were able to stick together through it.
