Founders Blog #7: How do you put a price on community?

A few weeks back I was meeting with someone from our Pittsburgh Intro to Judaism cohort - a regular kind-of spiritual guidance meeting. And she - let’s call her Allie -was saying to me how hard it was to find a community – that she would go to one service or synagogue and something just wouldn’t strike her the right way. And also that putting in the investment and the commitment to a place and saying ‘Right – this will be MY community’ – is incredibly hard. I told her ‘believe me, I know the feeling.’

We’re talking about something often referred to in the Jewish community as ‘shul shopping’. But that term is pretty reductive - it more or less assumes that the building, the prayerbook, and the rabbi (plus perhaps the dues) are the operational variables a person or a family makes in ‘picking a shul’.

But that’s wrong. You aren’t ‘picking a shul’. You’re ‘investing yourself in community.’

And for Allie, she was both uncertain and dissatisfied at the potential options, and afraid of putting time, money, and energy into something only to be disappointed.

I told her “Believe me Allie: I know the feeling.” For me, I’m at the opposite stage. I’m departing one community that is no longer the right fit for me, and then I’m going out and helping start a new community - or at least, booking a space that will facilitate many other communities, of which I hope to be a part.

That liminal moment where you haven’t quite yet found your community is a little scary. It’s the first day of school in a new city. Or a first date with someone where their OK Cupid profile is really great1, but you aren’t sure how much of it can be trusted – or whether that’s really their picture. It’s scary because of the uncertainty. But it’s also scary because its so very difficult to calibrate the amount of investment you want to make in return for what that community gives to you.

That all said, when you finally do find ‘your people’; the place where you fit in and feel comfortable; it feels great. I can honestly say that when I felt like I found the right friends, or the right grad school, or the right job, you feel like everything’s right with the world, and all of the cosmic tumblers to the universe have unlocked themselves just for you.

Financially, it’s hard to put a price on belonging. Membership organizations do it all the time, but it really is an etherial concept. And to be honest, belonging should transcend money. Everybody deserves to belong to a community that suits them.

That’s something I feel very strongly about creating at Shoresh. We want to be a community for learners – folks who want to grow and connect through classes and text. But we also want to be an experimental spiritual space for minyanim on Shabbat that want to try something different – a community for those who want to create their own new communities. And we want to be a third space to come and relax and grab a cup of coffee and a croissant or a sandwich.2 A community center, for the community.

Finding your perfect home in community is priceless, and yet we’ll do our best to put it at a price within reach for anyone that wants it. We will need to raise to money to make that vision happen; to pay the rent, to renovate it into a coffee shop, to staff it and run it well and to create the infrastructure for successful community. We’re planning for our big kickoff community fundraiser in August. We hope you’re onboard to invest in this new kind of community.