Groundbreaking for Building Dreams

Hi everyone.  Thank you for being here and thank you to everyone who has helped bring us to this moment!  Before we finish and go out to enjoy all the activities that have been planned, I want to take a few minutes to remind ourselves of what we are doing.  

Why are we undertaking this massive project and causing such a disruption in our communal life?

Let me begin by saying: Many of us love this place.

Partly because of the magnificent setting up here next to the mountains, but mainly because of the memories it holds for us. 

Memories of our kids when they were in preschool.  Or standing before the Ark at their Bat or Bar Mitzvah.  Or memories of being transported by the singing of the Cantor and the choir on High Holy Days.  Or sitting with friends and enjoying Sunday Morning Live and the awesome Kenny Gaynes Memorial Breakfast.  And this moment too, with these beautiful children with us here this morning!  Even new arrivals often remark to me what a wonderful community we have created here. We missed it during Covid, and it has felt so good to be back.  We have been reminded, over and over again, that this place has a healing power.

So it’s not easy getting ready to leave now, for a year and a half, or however long it’s going to take.  We had better have a good reason, for all this hassle.

I want to say as clearly as possible: We are not going to all this trouble, just to make this place more beautiful.  It is already beautiful.  We are disrupting our life so that this sacred place can undergo a metamorphosis.  The most important transformation of this home of ours since it was first built almost sixty years ago.  We are changing what it means to be a synagogue.

The vision for Building Dreams begins with recognizing how we have already changed since our building was built in the 1960’s.  Our physical home needs to change because we as a community have changed. 

First of all, and most obviously, our community has grown.  From 200 households to over 800.  This campus can only accommodate this dramatic growth by coming fully to life.  All day long, all week long.  After this rebuild, our brick-and-mortar footprint on the ground will be about the same, but the lived reality of this place will be completely different.  You will rarely see an empty parking lot.  This place will be full of people….kids, parents, young adults and the elderly.  Full of life all day long, all week long. That is a different way of being a synagogue.

Now, here’s another we have changed.  Even more profound than the growth of our membership, the meaning of our Judaism has changed.   For most of our community, religious services are no longer the primary expression of their Jewish identity.  In the 1960’s Jews came to Temple to pray, and Hebrew school was for learning the language of prayer.  Nowadays, for most of us, being Jewish means being part of a vibrant, creative, loving community.  Caring for and supporting each other when we are sick or bereaved. Celebrating together the profound moments of birth, coming of age and marriage.  Working together to raise kind and generous children, who know their heritage and are proud to be Jewish.  Responding together to immense challenges like the Coronavirus pandemic, the devastating Montecito Debris Flow, and heartbreaking political polarization.  Being Jewish means making music together.  Expressing our inner lives through art and food and stories.  Learning about our past through literature and film. 

In other words, for most of us, being Jewish is not a religious identity.  Most members of CBB would say “I am not religious, but I love this community, and I love this culture.”  For me as the rabbi, it has taken a long time to accept.  Our new Temple will reflect this profound change in what it means to be Jewish.  We are transforming this campus into a center for Jewish community and culture.

And one more thing about how we have changed.  In the old days, in the old country and after first coming to America, Jews lived together in physical proximity to each other.  When my parents grew up in Rochester New York, everyone they knew was Jewish.  And it was the same in Baltimore, and Boston, and New York, and Chicago and Cleveland and Detroit.  The Jews lived all together, and so they found community every time they stepped outside their front door.  That is not true anymore, at least not here.  There is no Jewish neighborhood in Santa Barbara.  So we are re-imagining this place, this campus, as our shared Jewish neighborhood.  A place to meet each other, and not just on holidays and special occasions. 

It will still be a house of prayer and a center to explore different forms of Jewish spirituality.  But also for discussions and concerts, dance classes and yoga, films and plays.  All of our generations, children and adults, teenagers and senior citizens will meet each other here, all week long.  Children side by side with elders, making art and music and cooking. Not only on special occasions.  It will be our community center.

Best of all, we will come here on Shabbat, and we might stay all day long. 

Perhaps to sing or to pray or to study, but often just to sit outside in the gardens on a warm Friday night, or to enjoy coffee and pastry with friends on a bright Saturday morning, or to share a Jerusalem style picnic lunch, or to listen to live music with a glass of wine late in the afternoon.   We might stay all day long.

And when three stars appear in the sky, whoever happens to be here will gather together to light a braided candle and to smell the spices of Havdalah, to sing together under the night sky and to wish each other a good week.

That is the dream. 

That’s why we are doing this. 

I cannot imagine a better reason.

Before I sit down, let me say one more thing.

We need to get busy.  Over the next 18 months, our architects and our builders will be transforming this physical campus.  But we also have work to do.  Let’s start now with creating seven days a week of Jewish life.  Art workshops, musical gatherings, cooking classes, Shabbat services, book groups, social action projects and film societies.  We are building a house to contain all of these activities, but we should begin now…in our homes, in borrowed spaces, in temporary, improvised quarters….we should begin now, so that as a community, we will be ready to bring this place, our new home, to life.  Starting now, we have about eighteen months.  It is going to fly by.