I knelt down in a bed of poison ivy last week to help push a pick up truck out of the mud. My friend Izak was in the cab, gunning the engine and trying to get some traction and failing miserably. I’m a rabbi, so Izak, who is 60-something, was embarrassed to be cursing in front of me, and I’m a rabbi, so I was embarrassed to be cursing in front of him, but between the two of us, we sounded like McNulty and Bunk at a crime scene.

I was covered with mud and paint and sweat and was sort of miserable and also sort of thrilled to be part of this community. I had spent the week with incredible people who had come out and given serious chunks of the time to help build an office at Beacon Hebrew Alliance, the synagogue where, as of July 1, I’m going to be rabbi. The room we were working on had been a makeshift bedroom for a succession of student rabbinic interns, and since I have my own bed and shower in town, we were turning it into an office where I could work and meet with people in some privacy. (For folks who have been following these developments, I still plan to work in coffee shops because its fun. However, after some guy sitting next to me at Bank Square Coffee commented on the a phone conversation I had regarding someone’s mourning needs, I thought, perhaps an office would be a good thing. But I digress.)

We live in a world in which virtually everything is commodified, that is, turned into something that can be bought or sold, and participation in a community is certainly one of those things. The vaunted Park Slope Food Coop has had troubles with people paying their nannies to cover their shifts, and in the context of a synagogue, the far more common thing would have been for me to meet with donors, raise money and then spend that money to buy the services of a professional contractor and some new furniture. There would have been some benefits there – my new couch wouldn’t have been pre-clawed by a cat, professional contractors would (presumably) know not to park the (borrowed) pick up in the mud, and they would have gotten the seam where the blue and white paint touch to be somewhat crisper than we did. And there are things – lots of things – that only money can buy. I’m writing this on a computer that the synagogue needed money to buy and I’m posting in online via internet access that Verizon does not give away for free.

But something else comes from the amateur, the communal. It was a little bit like an old-school barn raising, and I have a different connection with Izak Breslauer, Mike Arginsky, Dan Fisherman, Ori Alon, Yaakov Weintraub, Molly Strauss, Elaine and Bruce Hofstetter and Ellen Gersh than I would have had they sent their money and not their arms to do the work. They, like lots of other people in this town, were looking out for what the community needed. One of the major rabbis of the Talmud. named Reish Laquish, gets at this in his interpretation of Psalm 50:23, which reads, “To him that sets right the way will I show the salvation of the Holy” to mean that salvation comes from those who light lamps for others. For Reish Laquish, who perhaps significantly was a highwayman before he was a scholar, salvation comes, at least to a degree, from looking out for others, looking out for the commonweal. (and for the text geeks out there, the reference is Vayikra Rabba 9:2. Holler for the geeks!)

As this community grows and develops, I’m thinking a lot about how people might best contribute their time, money and skills to build a nourishing community. One model of growth for a community involves more people giving more money to get more things. That’s not the one I want to lead with. Without a doubt, this community will need more money than it currently has in order to make things happen – serious things we might want will not happen without funds and some effort will have to be put to raising them. But I wonder what other models of community building we could use here. What would it mean to run a synagogue like a co-op? would people volunteer not only for occasional things like event set up and clean up (which are hugely important) but commit to certain positions, like teaching at a high level in a Hebrew School? leading creative High Holiday kids services? What about dues? Should there be a fixed amount for everyone? A sliding scale? A fixed percentage of income?

I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about what a “right sized” institution looks like. I know that if something is too small, nothing meaningful can get done, without burning some core people out; if its too large, it becomes an impersonal corporate entity. I’m not sure where the sweet spot is, but I know that’s where I hope the Beacon Hebrew Alliance will reside in coming years. I don’t know what’s possible, or even desirable, but I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts and see what models are out there.