still had after the conversation was over?
- still had after the conversation was over?
- What did you enjoy about the conversation?
- How do you think the talk could have been improved?
3) include one direct quote that the speaker said in the interview
All right, welcome, everyone. I’m so glad that you guys all could join us today. I really appreciate you all being here, students, faculty, staff members, as well as our speakers who are taking time out of their very busy schedules to talk to us today a bit about how the past year has been for them and what they what they see going forward with their religious communities, their religious traditions. So I’ll just introduce the topic very briefly and then I’ll introduce our speakers and then we’ll get started. So just first of all, of course, just to acknowledge that we’re all in the process of recovering from a truly horrible, truly horrific year like the pandemic affected all of us in in many different ways. Some of us got sick. Our loved ones got sick. We lost jobs. We changed jobs. We maybe had to quarantine by ourselves or we may be lost all semblance of personal space because of who we were quarantining with. So we’re hopefully in the process of recovery. Right. We’re hopefully on the road back to quote unquote, normal. We, of course, all hope that things continue to improve. That case numbers go down and, you know, society can be a safe place again, but it brings up for all of us. Right. All of us are in this place where we’re asking ourselves, what does it mean to go back to normal? Right. What should normal be? Should we go back to exactly the way things were? Or is it possible to sort of create a new normal. Right, a way of integrating everything that we’ve learned and experienced over this past year into what we want the future to be, what we want our lives to look like in the future? And religious communities have also been struggling with that right from the very beginning of the pandemic. You know, in California, all churches, mosques, temples, all religious houses of worship had to completely shut down and religious leaders had to transition just a host of services and activities and offerings immediately to an online environment, which was was difficult for all of us to do. And we have to remember that in religious communities, it’s these times of stress and crisis and trauma that people look to their religion even more. So they need that that sense of guidance, that counseling, that sense of community. So religious leaders had to not just transition, but find a way to serve an even deeper or deeper need of their community members of their congregation members. So we’re excited to hear from our our local religious leaders today on just how that went for them, what worked, what didn’t work, how they were able to respond to that immediate. And as we’re moving forward, right, this question of the new normal, both religious leaders and scholars of religion really are predicting that the pandemic may fundamentally change the way we do religion. It may change the way we practice religion. Even before the pandemic there, there was already this trend of people who identified as religious, identified as members of religious traditions, but maybe didn’t necessarily attend a house of worship, weren’t members of a house of worship or frequent visitors. And with the pandemic, with everything switching online, a lot of people are predicting that that trend may speed up. It may become a lot more widespread. So, you know, as I said, insiders and outsiders to the world of religion are we’re we’re so fascinated by what is going on and we’re so curious as to what is going to happen in the future. Is is the is virtual religion going to be the norm going forward or will there be sort of a mass return to in-person gatherings in person rituals? Because people have missed out so much? A lot of people are predicting that this is going to expand the virtual church, the virtual mosque or temple. And some people are excited by that. They think that this is going to help religious communities reach more people, reach a more diverse range of people. But some people are frankly horrified by this. They think that this is virtual religion is is not a good substitute for real in-person connection, connection with other people, connection with ritual practices and community. So it’s a big question mark. And that’s something else that we’ll have our speakers talk about today, just sort of where they see the role of technology in the future of their communities and and how they’re feeling about that. So that’s my little there’s my little spiel. I’ll be quiet in just a minute, but I want to introduce our speakers so you guys get to know a little bit about them. So we are. So I’ll give them their little intros and then we’ll launch into our questions. But we are very honored to be joined by, first of all, Rabbi Avi Libman of Yahoo! She’s asked to be called, has served as the associate rabbi at Congregation Bethel in La Hoya for the past 17 years. Rabbi Levine holds a master’s degree in business administration, Hebrew letters and ordination from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles. Rabbi Levine has served on the board of Directors for Jewish Family Services and as a mentor for graduating rabbinic students. We are also joined by Imam Taha Tomassoni. Imam Taha is currently serving as the imam or director of the Islamic Center of San Diego. He joined us in September two thousand four from the Colorado Muslim Youth Foundation, where he served as a youth instructor. Imam Taha graduated from the Islamic or sorry, the Institute of Islamic Studies at the University of Algiers in Algeria and has served as a high school teacher and imam there before coming to the United States. Imam Taha also holds a master’s degree of theology in Islamic studies from the Graduate Theological Foundation in South Bend, Indiana. And last but not least, we are joined by Reverend John Schultz. Reverend Schultz is serving at the Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church as their pastor of education and discipleship. He has been an adjunct assistant professor of religion here at Grossmont for twenty two years. And prior to serving at RBK, he was a church consultant for 10 years and he graduated from the Western Theological Seminary with a master of divinity degree and is ordained in the Reformed Church of America. That was quite, quite a mouthful. So thank you so much, you guys. I really appreciate all three of you being here to talk to us today to talk to my students about this past year and and what you see going forward. So we will just get into our first question. And Rabbi Levine, I’m going to have you go first for that one. So if you could share with us a little bit about what was the most difficult part of this past year about the transition online for your community for first of all, Dr. Burke, thank you for inviting me. It’s a privilege and an honor to be here. And Imam Taha and to Reverend Sharpton, it’s a pleasure to be able to dialogue and learn from both of you. I suspect a lot of what we’re going to say will overlap. I think for a lot of obvious reasons. I appreciate Dr. Bercu, each one of us go first or second or third for each of your questions. So I actually candidly and feel free to do The Gong Show. Dr.. It’s five minutes just kind of stopped me, I’m trying to keep my clock to be brief, but you can just stop me or someone stop me, please. I’m not offended. I think you’re really kind of couched it in your opening comments, to be perfectly honest with you, about what all of us are searching for and trying to find answers to. It’s my fundamental belief that as human beings, we are in search of in need of community and for myself and in Muntaha. And that means, obviously, a spiritual community. But people also look for communities whether that’s affiliated with sports or music or a book club or dance and so on and so on, or food groups, whatever. We fundamentally want to be in community. And I think one of the largest and obvious challenges this past year is that person, face to face community was really basically taken from us. And so like other
other religions, we quickly tried to obviously move online to create and continue our community building. So to be very literal to for a moment, to the question of what was the most difficult aspect, I would just answer very literally. The most difficult aspect was just myself trying to master zoom, right? I mean, I’ve been around the block. I know computers pretty well, trying to get members and a lot of our members to actively participate in our 60s and 70s and 80s who did not grow up with computers. And, you know, maybe the facility of using them was different than our children or my teenager and my young child, my elementary school child or so forth. So really just getting them to put their faces on the camera, to be honest, because I was looking at a shoulder or whatever, that was really a challenge. And it’s funny, but I really it off to be funny and myself remembering to unmuted. So, you know, those kind of just very basic technical things were kind of very superficially a challenge. I’ll say that time flies. I’ll say that we got very lucky. And I mean and very seriously, in December of twenty nineteen, we made the decisions of before sort of the outbreak in the known reality, and that obviously to shut down our community made the decision to spend a decent amount of money, invest in a livestream set up. And so by January 5th or whatever of twenty twenty we had livestream working. The irony is we didn’t use it right away until March because we just wanted to practice and we wanted to be able to understand what this tool was for us, because we’re being very literal to the question and I’ll have more to say later and hear from the other speakers or respond to questions being very, kind of very literal for me. And I’ve been doing this for 17 plus years, talking in front of people. It’s a very different skill set. So our camera in my sanctuary is on the opposite end of the room where I stand. That’s just the nature of where the camera was set up. Go figure. Right. And so now when I have 100 people, 50 people, 200 people, the number is in front of me face to face. My interactions are different. I could walk around, I can walk over and shake it down. I can say hello to someone when someone is doing something. And when you’re on Zoom. Right. You can still do that, but you do it very differently. And since in the Jewish religion, what we are ritual and are programs and arts are the purpose of the religion, from my perspective, is about bringing people together in community for shared experiences. It’s not that you can’t see that on Zoom like we’re all experiencing now, but when it’s really mostly visual first and then auditory second versus the other way around when you’re in person, I think it has the ability to sort of shape a little bit or change maybe is a better word, people’s realities and them and their perspectives. So we quickly tried to pivot, just get comfortable myself into the rabbi with what it meant to stare at a camera the entire time. And what we did was our religious services. We try to make them participatory, where there’s more singing and sort of reading together. I have no clue what people are doing at home or that we found out later. And I’ll comment on that. A different question. We try to bring more spiritual intentions, if you will. So we did an incredible amount of writing and it was really hard. I was doing more writing than ever before. So rather than just singing a traditional song or song, since we still like you recite Psalms and our ritual service, we were explaining them more than we ever would do. And so I tried to find we talk a lot about authentic and relevant. And when you’re online for us, that equation, so to speak, change a little bit. What for us was authentic, was still providing the exact same service as if there were in person. But how to make it relevant was different since we had no clue what they were doing behind the camera. We took a chance and just started kind of explaining a lot more of the tradition of the ritual and the purpose of the liturgy. So I want to be mindful of time and respectful to the other speakers. I think I’ll stop there. I hope that answers the question from what we were doing. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Something I didn’t even think about before is just, you know, all of us put in extra work. But the idea that. Yeah. That religious leaders were writing so much more, writing longer pieces to fill that same time, that would be by so many other so many other activities during during a service. So thank you. Thank you for that. Sure. All right, then I’ll turn it over to to Imam Hazony What was the greatest challenge for you guys?
Thank you, Mr. Rahim, in the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful, I would like to thank you, Dr. Burke, for this invitation and giving me the chance to speak about our experience here at the Islamic center of San Diego, which applies to not only the other mosques, but almost everything. Rabbi Lieberman said applies on us as well, because we are very community oriented houses of worship and faith communities. Communal rituals and prayers is the core of of of my faith, of my religion. Yes, people can can practice individually, but it’s very essential to bring community members together at a house of worship and engage them in rituals and events that will help them to grow in their faith as as Muslims. So.
We didn’t have any any idea about what was happening, and I remember the first week of March coming back from a trip that I had to to Europe like three days after that, we started having kind of like serious messages from the government, from our state, from our county, that things are going in the wrong direction. And, you know, the shut down option is coming soon. I remember it was it was a Wednesday night, March, I think, 10th or 11, something like this, when we had the brief meeting with our board after the night prayer. As you may know, Muslims pray five times a day. So not only on Friday people come, but basically my congregation members come to the mosque every single day, five times a day. So after the night prayer, we decided to shut down to close the mosque. And we announced it right away after that. And we didn’t know what to do. So it was it was a challenge. Now, members of my community cannot come to the mosque, what should we do? So we were very fortunate to have a group of young people from my community who are in the in the software and I.T. technology. Many of them are engineers at Qualcomm. So we asked them, you know, to to help us find a way. So they came up a few days after that. They came up with a whole set up for to go virtual. So the camera, the you know, the network having people signed up, you know, to the group who will start receiving the notifications for everything. And in a matter of excuse me, in a matter of few days, we were ready to move completely from an in-person rituals and prayers and event to virtual prayers and rituals.
So it didn’t take a long time for us, and of course, not everyone in the community was ready for that. So for them, it took a few other days to to know how to connect, to know how to use Zoom and all that stuff. The other thing that, you know, we did right after that is to convince and to remind my community members about the nature of our worship, the nature of the rituals. We do that as we can practice as a congregation, as a team, as a group. We can also practice as individuals. And I remember I started focusing more on the family oriented rituals. Like families coming together, and one of the things that we promoted was show me your sanctuary at home. And people engaging their kids, they started decorating a corner, a room in their home and make it make it looks like a mosque and Islamic center with the prayer rugs on the ground, like the facing Altobello, which is the direction to the to the city of Mecca, where there is the holy mosque. So my community members started showing pictures on social media. This is my place of worship, you know, and it created a very nice sentiment amongst especially amongst the youth that they have their own place of worship. And I started telling my community, hey, you have been coming and praying behind me in the congregation prayer. Now, I would like you to be the imam at home. So designate your imam at home and start leading your own prayer. And people started doing this and having kind of like fun doing it. You know, the other thing that helped us to kind of face the challenge of shutting down was coming up with the theological support. That is the nature of our worship is very simple and very easy. Yes, it is very important to attend a house of worship to join your congregation members. But you can do it as an individual. You can do it as a family. And we can worship God whatever we want on this earth. Actually, there is a saying of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him saying that the entire Earth was given to me as a place of worship. So you can have your mosque wherever you want. So this is something that started helping my community members to feel a little bit confortable. Having their worship at their home, but in the same time for the Friday sermon or the Friday service, which is equivalent to the Sunday service in the church or Saturday service in the synagogue. So in our Friday service, of course, people cannot do it like as individuals. This is where we brought the community together. So they started watching live the sermon on our YouTube channel and our XDA, which is the Islamic Center of San Diego Facebook page. And this is how we could bring back the community members together. So I can tell you that in a matter of few weeks, we kind of shifted completely virtual and we started giving daily lectures virtually from the Islamic center and also convinced our community members to feel good about what they were doing at home individually and as well as a family. And things started becoming like the new normal, you know, and this is how we kind of passed the very first stage of of this period of time. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. It’s really interesting. You have a shared, shared experience of, well, where we’re actually teaching a lot more because we’re not you know, we’re not doing the the normal, you know, just sort of gathering and sharing and chatting and that there can be an opportunity for a lot more education. And I love I love the idea of the little mosque in your house, the corner of your of your room that becomes the sacred place. That’s wonderful. All right. Well, thank you. And now now I’ll ask Reverend Shaltiel as well. What was what was the biggest challenge for your community this year? Yeah, and thank you for inviting me on the panel. And it’s so great to see so many students here. And it’s always exciting and interesting that. So thanks for doing. And I know we’re coming at the end of the semester, so I’m for exams and everything, so it’s really cool to see everybody here. So, yeah, I think you know what I mean. Yeah, there’s a commonality with everything that’s been said. We experience that too. You know, our nation was blessed with having a production department, you know, so we had all the cameras in the, you know, the lighting and the sound system and all that. So that switchover wasn’t difficult. I think the difficult part for us, again, was our congregation understanding how to access information, you know, where they’re going to find all this stuff. And in a lot of our congregation, which, you know, at least the older part of our congregation, again, you know, we’re not well versed in multimedia. And so there was a big time of planning. We were helping them learn, learn, zoom, learn how to get to our website and find where, you know, this information is or where our Facebook pages or YouTube channel or, you know, how to how to get into Twitter or anything that we were doing because they had never been involved in that. But we were a little bit late to do that because we thought at the very beginning that this is only going to be a couple of months. You know, we were told it was going to be flattening the curve. That was what we had heard. And so, OK, you know, no problemo. You know, it’ll all be over in two months. We didn’t expect that it would be that long. So, you know, once we began to realize, whoa, this is this is going to be a lot longer, then we almost had to kind of catch up with our congregation to help them, you know, really digest what we were trying to get out there. We could get it out there, but we were just a little late and helping them understand how to receive it. So so there was a yeah, a little bit of a disconnect between our leadership in the congregation there simply by the fact that we thought this is going to blow over quickly. But it didn’t. So, you know, but it. They caught on I mean, I have a gentleman who teaches a class for us and we follow kind of the same thing like Grossmont, you know, we go semesters, we have a fall semester, spring semester, summer semester of adult education courses. And then he’s like 80 years old and loves to teach former teacher, retired, was administrator, all that stuff. And so he’s teaching a class for us. And you had to learn, you know, zoom and how to teach and zoom. And so I spent a lot of time with him, but he got it. And now he’s teaching. No problem. You know, he’s got it down. But it took time. So all of a sudden, your time for ministry, that is a lot of times used maybe to help people in their journey. Their spiritual journey is taken out not so much with dealing with spiritual journey kind of stuff, but more technical stuff just to get them to the point where they can engage with us. And that was that was kind of challenging. The thing that I found that was interesting. And I think I can remember one of our speakers kind of alluded to it was, you know, when you’re gathering, you can see how many people are participating. Right. So, you know, when we worship all I could see two or three hundred people or whatever here today, you kind of naturally run into people so you can touch base with them that you wanted to see and everything. But when we went online, I felt like I felt like there were blinders on, you know? I mean, I could see, OK, there’s right now there’s one hundred and fifty people watching us or something, but who are they? And in each one that watches us could be a whole family sitting in their living room watching. But how do we know? You know, so I really felt disconnected from from that part of it. That is such an important part of my interaction with the congregation. And and so and I’m kind of a relational kind of you know, I do ministry relational wise. So I love to visit. I love to be with people. I love to grab a cup of coffee and, you know, go go talk to people. And and all of a sudden I realized, hey, I can’t do that. And and that was really hard because I minister by my relationship. And now if I wanted to meet with somebody, I had to set up a meeting. And, you know, all this stuff, it wasn’t it was wasn’t natural. So that took me a while to adjust to in ministry in that way rather than the way that I’ve done it before. So so that was kind of challenging for us.
And, you know, again, as I said, it was challenging for the congregation to find things, to find information. And we have a rather larger congregation. So, you know, we were worshipping before the pandemic 700, 800 people. And it’s with that size congregation. I found that it was very easy in this whole pandemic thing to have people fall through the cracks, you know, like a couple of months and all of a sudden, you know, somebody would say something or a person would pop in my mind and I go, oh, man, you know, either I haven’t I haven’t talked to that gal or the guy for a long time. I wonder, what are they doing? You know, and I have to specifically call them and, you know, some of our parishioners who don’t have any I mean, they might not even have a computer. I know it sounds crazy in this day and age, but they’re out in the wilderness, you know, and you’ve got to hunt them down, you know, and you can easily forget that they’re out there without any connection whatsoever. So all of a sudden we became aware, oh, man, we really got to, you know, buckle down to find these people and make sure they know that we care about them and if they can be a part of our community. So so it was it was a process of learning and, you know, getting the rules to turn in the new way to to meet this new need. And so that was kind of the difficult part of it. Thank you. Yeah, it’s definitely something I didn’t I didn’t necessarily think about beforehand, I guess a very important part of religious leadership is to reach out and connect with those people. And when you can see people’s faces and their body language on a regular basis, you you can get an idea of, is this person doing OK? Do I need to check in with this person? But we assume it’s it’s just not it’s not as possible. And, yes, some similar challenges to teaching. You realize all of a sudden, I haven’t heard from the student in a long time. I need to do some extra outreach. I need to make sure that they are still out there and they know that we’re thinking about them. So. So thank you. Thank you guys for for your responses to that. Very similar similar challenges for sure as we all transitioned online. So my next question will hopefully be a little bit more positive. But I asked our speakers to think about what are some of the unexpected surprises? What were some of the successes, things that that worked well or that maybe even worked better in a virtual environment? So what were some maybe some some silver linings of this pandemic? So, Imam Hussein, I’ll start with you and what you’ve already mentioned, the very cool mosque in the corner. But what other successes or surprises came about for you and your congregation?
Thank you so.
Without, again, having an idea to which world we are heading, which type of ritual services we are going to provide, then we’re some some good news and good things and things that really surprised us. I would say the first one was being creative. And thinking out of the box, out of the ordinary, so we have spent our entire life doing our rituals and our worship, our teachings, the religious teachings in a specific way, which is impersonal. And we have at least I have never thought about any other way to do it.
And thinking that this is the only option I have, I have I have to urge people to attend, if I have a small crowd, it means that, you know, it’s not really successful. I have to be to have big crowd in person at the Islamic center. But the the surprising thing is that by being creative, actually, we can reach out to more people in the community. So creativity is something that we really, really learned during this time of the pandemic. The second surprising good thing is that through our virtual services, we were able to reach out to many more people in the community, those who, for whatever reason, could not attend the mosque, whether for the daily prayers or the Friday sermon, for example, the Friday service or the daily teachings we have. And they could not for whatever reason. Now it’s a it’s a click on on their smartphone tablet computer. And they are with us. You know, we can we can see them through the screen and it help us to reach out to so many people more than those who used to regularly attend our services and our our rituals. The other thing is the convenience people found it very, very convenient just to relax on their coach in the comfort of their living room and just watching. And sometimes, you know, some people, they they keep their camera on while we have these teachings or their a sermon or whatever. And you can see them carrying their tablet and their smartphone and going wherever they want to go at home or going outside in the patio or the backyard and just relaxing and listening, you know, and sometimes somebody just literally laying down on their bed and just, you know, watching. So I found it like kind of like funny, but that’s OK. That’s OK. If this is the way people feel comfortable connecting with the community, with the Islamic center, with the house of worship, with with the services that we provide, then that’s fine to the point that. When we started opening for Indore, now indoor services with, of course, the capacity and the distancing and the masks and everyone has to bring his or her own prayer rug, some people emailed me asking Emam, can can we have both in person and virtual? So they found it something convenient. So they wanted to continue the virtual services. So they will be there, will be included. So I would say the convenience and having people or offering people this option to to join even virtually is is something is something good. So this way, no one will be left behind. Everyone can connect. Everyone can benefit. Everyone can join. The other thing that was really surprising to me is the fundraising. You know, we are non-profit organizations. We survive on the donations of our community members. And one of the things that we thought about right at the beginning of the pandemic, now nobody will be coming to the mosque. And by the way, you know, Pusser slutty. I agree with you that at the very beginning we started hearing this, you know, flattening the curve. It’s just, you know, about two months or three months. Oh, by the way, by the beginning of summer, you know, with the heat, the virus will disappear, you know, and the administration at that time was saying, oh, you know, by by Easter it will be gone, if you remember. Right. And we were we were kind of hanging there, you know, waiting for that. And then we realized that, no, no, no, it’s going to stay for a long time. It’s going to stay for a long time. So. Now. March by April, the end of April last year, the beginning of the month of Ramadan. Which is the most the busiest time within the Islamic center and the Muslim community, our mosques are packed in Ramadan. People enjoy coming and having communal breaking the fast at sunset. And and we have night prayers here. You know, mosques are packed and no one is the major season to raise funds for the Islamic center. This is this is when we will raise our funds. And we were thinking nobody’s here, just myself and the other imam and two or three brothers helping us with the I.T. work. And that’s it. So how are we going to raise these funds? Nobody comes to the mosque. So, again, we. Swished virtually, and guess what, it was the most successful ever fundraising we have done at the Islamic center of San Diego, at least since 2004, the time I came to iciest.
People you know, when we did our fundraising, we did it virtual. And people from all over the world were able to connect with us. There were some community members who used to live here in San Diego and they moved to other states. They connected with us and they donated even from overseas. Somebody who used to live here, moved back to Bangladesh, donated online. So donations were not, you know, just you have to come here and drop off your check or something. No, just on the screen where you are seeing me right now. Here’s the button. Click on the button. You would have the information, submit your information. We got the money, you see. So it was the most successful fundraising campaign ever. Wow, this is very surprising, you know. So these are the good things and surprising things that we have witnessed during the Bendek. Yeah, well, that’s I honestly didn’t even really think about fundraising when I was was thinking about the challenges and successes, because I know so, so many houses of worship are really concerned about their financial future. So that’s great that you’re your community also felt that concern and wanted to make sure that you guys are here for the long term and that you don’t suffer financially from this time. So. So, yeah, that’s that’s wonderful. That’s wonderful that you guys have done that amazing fundraising year. So thank you. All right. And then we’ll for this one, we’ll turn it over to Reverend Schultz. What were some some successes or surprises, hidden gems along the way for you guys. But mine just gave me an idea. I’m writing that down. We’re going to have to try something, you know, talking about ritual and part of our service and and, you know, in our worship service, part of our liturgy is that after the passion of the word, we have a response. The congregation responds, and part of the response is an offering. And and we we pass an offering plate, but of course, drinkable. But even in this in this return now where we’re starting to partially open up and so people are worshipping with us again, we can’t pass a plate, obviously. So we had to really discuss, you know, how are we going to do that? And there was all kinds of ideas. Right now. What we do is we have a few people in the back and they hold the plate and people as they walk out, they they give. But it it really and we’re still really discussing how do we keep it is an act of worship. You know, the giving is an act of worship. And how do we keep it within the worship experience, you know, and that was something we’re still kind of kind of working on. But I don’t think we talked about it in the old middle age ages. Some of the folks from their humanities classes probably went over this where they used to have those bags on a really long pole and they’d go down the aisle and, you know, go in front of people. But we just felt like that was a little aggressive. So we better not do that. But anyway, so but yeah, I think one of the things
that that took place for us was people could attend meetings without having to drive somewhere, you know, or go to the campus or something. They love to do it, you know, at home. And matter of fact, I’m sure there going to be some meetings that we’re going to continue to conduct as a zoom, although I got to say, I had my way. They call it Zoome exhaustion. After a while it was like, oh, man, I don’t want to get on another flight, but a lot of people loved that they could be right in there in their kitchens. I don’t know. Are you in your kitchen? Looks like you’re in your kitchen. I know. And so, you know, people just love it. And so we’ll we’ll probably keep that that aspect. But that was that was something of a surprising that came out of that, that people enjoyed that. And then I think we we also tried to make a connection, even with our online worship, by having people send in, let’s say, like videos or pictures, you know, that we would add that to our worship. So we would say something like, well, next week, you know, send us pictures of what you’re doing in the pandemic, you know, and then they would send or, you know, or something special that happened. You send it in and then we would use it in worship and people really enjoyed it. And we got a lot of videos and a lot of pictures and things like that. So that was kind of fun. That was the success that came out of it. That was that, I think really brought the congregation together even as we were doing it online. So those were and then, of course, I you know, I just follow with what the man said, you know, we had those same experiences. So that was kind of great.
Thank you. Yeah, I know one of that one of the reasons that I started thinking about all this is because John and I have talked about this already, but my own mother, who attends a church up in northern California, is absolutely loved going to church, loved that experience of seeing people she knew. And, you know, the community aspect of it came to love sitting in her garden on the back patio, just listening to the sermons. And she, you know, she absolutely loved that experience and is sure that she’s probably not going to go as often in person in the future. You know, these things can all change, of course, over the course of time. But, yeah, the convenience aspect of it that you guys both mentioned, this is real for for some people, whether it’s they have young kids, they have families, they’re mobility impaired. There are a lot of reasons that it’s hard for some people to physically make it there, that. Yeah, that that virtual offerings helps to overcome. So thank you. All right. And then, Rabbi Levine, what what were what were some successes for you guys? Sure. So after three in a second. But I really I want to be involved. And the reverend said that by way of context. So the synagogue in which I’m privileged to work is right near UCSD. We’re technically in La Hoya, right off the five. It’s right near UCSD. And we are what I call on an afternoon of the week and the afternoon activity on Friday nights. We’re like in the center of traffic. Right. So getting to us is not so simple. And we are not a neighborhood synagogue as many either churches or synagogues or mosques may or may not be. I can comment on other ones. I just know where I work. We are not. And as an example of the roughly one hundred and fifty kindergarten through seventh grade children in our supplementary religious school, there are 27 different zip codes. Was that again? Twenty seven different zip codes. And so I just share that with you to to kind of give you a sense of exactly what was already said. The first and obvious answer for us is the literally exponential number of people being able to watch by the end of the first month because we have assumed that others, other institutions, due to a pretty sophisticated system, to at least track how many people are with us on Live Stream and Facebook and also on Zoome. We use all three platforms, although we’re going to quickly move down to two and then quickly down to one is literally run from, I don’t know, an average Friday night, 50 to 70 people on average without a celebration. Saturday morning, about one hundred, we’ll just call it for now, exponential five nights. We had 500 people watching us on Saturday mornings. We could have had as much as 750, which for us is just unheard of. We’re a community of about 650 families, so roughly two thousand people. I don’t know what that equates to unheard numbers, but but specifically so that this is a shared experience with the mom and the reverend that in your communities, I imagine all religious institutions are just three successes that we’re particularly proud of. I said in the first response, and you’ll hear me say if you spend time with me all day long, we tried to create like the mom and also the Reverend Wright, authentic and relevant experiences all the time. And we want to make sure that we still could touch people beyond the moment online. And so there’s three things that that I’m particularly proud of. We did more, but something that worked as well. But I sure thing that worked because that was the positive question Dr. Byrd gave us. And the first one is there were three points during the year. One was passed over. The other one was Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, our sort of big holiday season. And there was a third one. But we actually did a drive through and we weren’t sure we were doing until the day before, given all the cozad realities and everything was changing literally day to day. So the nature of our campus is on the way scenic. You can drive down and it’s you’re going to drive down a hill. And when you got to the bottom, at least along the way, there were pit stops and you would get different items that we gave to our members from a prayer book because everything was online and we quickly put our prayer book online. So we gave them a physical copy so we’d have to scroll through a 700 page prayer book, you know, and we’re going pretty quickly, right? We haven’t got a prayer book. And we gave them ritual religious objects and items that many of them had in their home. However, the touch from your religious institution makes a difference. So, for example, on Passover, right, we gave everyone a box of matzo and a small finger grape juice and just that moment that touch the two other times during the year. And we had incredible feedback from that. Just allow them to see our. Faces behind the mask, right, and do one particular item that I’ll share, some of you may be familiar with this, and if not, it’s OK. During the holiday season, which is in September, roughly October, September, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement, there is a particular instrument that we use. It’s a ram’s horn. It’s called a shofar, but it’s a ram’s horn. Right. And it gets blown and it makes a certain noise in it. And the noises represent values of the Jewish people. I don’t know. Many people actually know how to blow that. It’s not simple to do. And so was there as they were coming through on that particular day, myself and the other rabbi would actually blow the ram’s horn, got the sound they only hear and we only use three days a year. So it’s a very powerful, religious, authentic experience in a very different kind of way. And we were very proud. A lot of time and resources went into that and we were very proud of those those three touches where people could come on campus. The second one as including as recently as last night, I was at the office until about eight thirty, helping people within a couple of phone banks. We did it before people in person in a huge room that fits a thousand. And we had some people at home doing the same thing throughout the year. It’s not just hearing from me. You’re seeing my video. We’re hearing me speak about what’s on my mind. It’s also hearing from your fellow parishioners or from your fellow congregants is the word that we use in Judaism. And so we did phone banks throughout the year where people would call every single one of the six hundred and fifty roughly household members or units, I should say, because it could be a family of six. It could be a.. An individual and or or whatever. And so that allowed us to get some really important data. The first piece of data was most people don’t pick up the phone. If they don’t recognize the numbers, that’s it doesn’t matter. Right. Let’s be honest about that. That’s fine. But many people did because people were using their own private cell phones and so many people did. And we got a lot of data about really what was question number one or question number two. Right. What is successful? What are people looking for? What would people need? Because as the reverend said, without that personal touch, it’s just so hard those things fall through the cracks. I could not agree with that statement anymore. So that was another success that we did every couple of months was not easy to organize, but we did it. And then the last sort of subset three, which was personal for me because I’ve been very, very near and dear to my heart is well, normally we would have a young Friday night family Shabbat experience in person. It’s every month, the first Friday of every month. The online opportunity allowed us to do it every week. And so for fifteen, twenty minutes, almost like a taste of Shabbat. And I’m I’m able to get on there every week and see these kids. And most of them are having dinner because it’s the time when I can do it before the traditional service starts. When I’m available 545 roughly, I’m able to be there with them every single week. And so that consistency of touching and seeing faces and them seeing me is so important, even though, yes, there is a guitar player and a singer. That’s not my skill set. Trust me, you don’t want me singing, but being there and seeing them every week as opposed to once a month made a huge difference. And then there’s sort of a sister piece to that is we spent a lot of time. We were very worried. Our community, I’m sure other all communities were about our teenagers. This is very hard on our children. And so we had a weekly Thursday night, Zoome check in for our teenagers. And although my son is part of that group, I would join for the first ten, fifteen minutes, answer questions, just kind of talk or whatever. And then because my son is part of that group, I should have let that be a safe space for him and the other staff member take over. I can see his eyes. Come on Dad. Logoff already. Right. So the constant check in with our teenagers and our families was for us, for me, utmost importance. And so we lost some children, meaning not, God forbid, something serious. Just the online world was not for them. I get it as far as numbers, but it’s not about numbers anymore. And so those regular touch is allowed again for that community building and the consistency of them seeing their friends, because, let’s face it, there were all online. So that was really just three things that we did this year I’m particularly proud of, all because I love the idea of the phone bank. That’s a great idea to have that. Yeah, I’ve got that personal checking, I’m learning things for my teaching, too. Those are good just to even I’m sure even the people that didn’t pick up, if they left a voice message and just hear that personal voice message, this person was calling me specifically and just checking on me. And if I didn’t know sorry, you have to apologize. If I made the reverend and the mom Tushar that we have in Judaism have a very different model of financial support, where at the beginning of the calendar year, people make a pledge and they make a pledge to kind of a charism for the entire year. And so this happens to be that season. And so that touch is really important. Yeah, it’s not about that, obviously, but it’s for those who don’t answer. Let’s be honest. The three of us in our institutions run based on the generosity of our members. Yeah. Yeah. You have to still find a way to encourage members to to make sure they’re still supporting their house of worship, to make sure that it also survives the pandemic. And it’s going to be there when when we’re ready to go back. So thank you. Thank you, guys. Those were really, really interesting successes. And yeah, I just wanted to give you guys an opportunity to share some of the joys and hidden gems along the way of, you know, as we all sort of navigate this new world there. Of course, things that have been joyous and have been wonderful and have really been moments of connection, but we wouldn’t have had before. So thank you. Thank you, guys. So then we’ll just we’ll move to our last question that I have for our speakers, which was just for them to talk a little bit about what does the Post pandemic future look like at your house of worship? How are you? You know, how are you returning to normal? How are you creating a new normal? And how are you feeling about virtual religion, about the expansion of virtual religion? Yet are there what are the positives, the negatives as as you view it going forward in your community? And so, Reverend Shaltiel, we’ll start with you for for this last one. So I’d love to hear what you what you guys and vision for the future. Well, you know, I think I think we’ll always, from now on, have the virtual peace be there in. And, you know, as the other speakers said to all other houses of worship, how important that had become, particularly to people who cannot get to the campus or facility or worship. So it gives them an opportunity to participate in the fellowship, which I think is important. So we’ll always have that, I think for us as we look at it in our community of faith, you know, our scripture is written to a community of presence, you know, where people are there together or we’re it’s a letter or something written to an individual. It was an individual that was leading a group of people, you know, that was in fellowship and together. So we we want to really work even in our virtual world, to lead them back into fellowship. You know, I mean, a prison fellowship. But we always have a you know, a presence online, too. But we we’re going to really push to to keep and maintain the actual fellowship of everyone coming together. I think that’s pretty important for us, too. So that’s going to be a priority now because we’re you know, we’re waiting for June 15th when we heard that the governor may say at that point in time that we’re lifting everything and you’re free to go. And hopefully that will be the case. And then, you know, we’ll we’ll be able to open up and and not be, you know, a certain percentage can only be in worship and all that kind of stuff. And we can have for the choir back and all those kinds of things. But we’ll be moving into back into the fellowship and community of believers that gathers together. We think that’s a pretty important piece to what we’re all about. But we’ll hold on to the virtual stuff. Yeah, no, no, no. They’re saying experts in the churches are not. It may be the same for, you know, for the Islamic center and maybe for the synagogues. I’m not sure, but I love to learn more about that. But they’re saying, at least for the churches, that your return may be running right around 20 to 30 percent of who was with you prior to the pandemic. And now we are running about that. We’re right about 30 percent now, you know, maybe by the fifteenth of June and also the. More people get vaccinated, that that census may rise and we’re hoping it does, but whatever the case, I think we’re going to be in a rebuilding mode. And, you know, for us in our size church, yes, it will it will be challenging. But but we have the resources to be able to give us some time to rebuild, which is great. However, I think churches that are smaller and we you know, across the country, most churches, the average about one hundred and thirty people in worship. And that’s the normal size of a congregation. And I think those churches, if they only get 20 or 30 percent of their congregation back, are going to be a burden. And we may see in a landscape of the country that a lot of those churches are going to close their doors. I hope not. And I hope that they can rebuild. But that will be the challenge of the church. And we may see even larger churches that, you know, these churches will close, but they’re going to these parishioners that congregants are going to have to go somewhere and they’ll go to other larger churches. So so there may be a kind of a change in the fabric that we see in churches across the United States.
Yeah, it’ll be it’ll be really interesting to see sort of what what the return rate looks like at different houses of worship and or the rest of those people captured by the online offerings. Or is it. Yeah. Are they are they going they doing other things? Yeah. So it’s yeah. It’s a big question mark for the future of religious practice. I think losing two of the group in this pandemic is the whole, you know, those who count themselves as spiritual, being not affiliated with any, you know, any faith body. I think they may see a growth, too. You know, people who have now been on their own, doing their own thing and say or even were part of a faith party, but decided, well, I think I don’t think I was so sweet as closely as they did before, but more my own personal spiritual growth in that as well. Yeah. Especially with, you know, we call it in religious studies, the, you know, the religious marketplace, that there are so many different options for people. And now not just that they can learn about other religions, but, you know, yeah, I might join a Shabbat service on Friday night and I might go to a Christian service on Sunday or watch that and and sort of. Yeah, this. Yeah, this the syncretism of different services and offerings that appeal to an individual that might find sort of their guidance from multiple different places. Yeah, I think you’re right that that that definitely has grown over the course of the pandemic. And yes, we’ll see in the future what where those individuals fall, where they where they land. So so thank you. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. It’s it’s so interesting to to think about what what the future of religion in America is going to look like. And then I will say, oh yeah. And then Rabbi Levine, how about you guys? What does the future look like at congregation. So I’d love to have a crystal ball because I would I would do a lot of great things about tomorrow, like as my dad was going to clean her room. But but but but literally my answer is ditto to what you just said. I mean, literally, Timothy. And so I’ll just share very briefly two things that we’re thinking about right now. Well, for starters, one is that only three weeks before, not sure ago, did we finally allow people back into the building with us, with myself, the other rabbi and our Cantor singer and just the three of us. That’s it. And one production guy. So we let people come back in. We were obviously going through all protocols and procedures based on CDC and the government will just make that assumption. We asked for reservations for people because we didn’t want too many people and we found exactly what the reverend just said, that we I mean, we got fifteen people back, right. That’s not even thirty 20 percent of what normally would be. And so we thought people would rush to come back and they’re just not. So that’s an interesting find. Not sure what to make of. It’s part of the crystal ball. I wish I’d have ideas but but but that’s trying to do things that we’re thinking about. The first one is to get direct points and I mean, zero offence to anyone when I make your statement. So please do not be offended by the terminology I’m going to use. It’s the way I my feeble mind can think about this. I think the world right now is what I call covid PTSD. Right. It’s been so long that we’ve been dealing with this that we’re traumatized by it right here. And I go vaccinated and I go out.
That is not important for this conversation. Take my kids to school or go to the supermarket. I’m still a year and a half later I’m thinking, well, don’t get too close to me. Right. And that’s the opposite of who I am as a person. Right. So I really sincerely and I used to serve in the military, so I don’t use up those four letters lightly, PTSD at all. But a trauma to our country, our city, our community, my community, the world has gone through. It’s going to take time. And so what we’re talking about is really the habits in the last year and a half have changed. Habits and patterns have changed. And so how do we as institutions of religion or Doctor Burke institution of education or whatever institution you work for or a part of? Right. What do you do differently to try and reshape patterns and habits so that there is a comfort level to go back to what something was? And I use that word something deliberately, because something I and the other rabbi spent a lot of time talking about is I don’t want to go back to the same breath out from December twenty nineteen. And before that, I don’t want to my spirit can’t handle it. My mind can’t handle it by killing. He deserves better than that, and so we are talking about what is congregation 2.0, right? How do we reinvent ourselves? How do we blend? Our lifestyle was never going away. And we’re two, three weeks away from telling participants, if you want to actively be a leader in our service, meaning have an active role, you can no longer do it online. You have to be in person. Right. But that plays into this what I’m pointing as a PTSD for covid. So we know there’s going to be ramifications where we’re right. So one inhabits another hand, how do we do something different? This is an opportunity, a very tragic one, of course, opportunity to come out of this looking different. And that meets the demands of the needs of this new reality combination online in person. I don’t know what that is. I can tell you I’m sure the reverend imam can tell you as well when you’re trying to talk to a camera, but you have people sitting right and left and up and down, have a two storey building and we have them spaced out for the obvious reasons. It’s hard. I’m exhausted. Before people came back services, the computer turned off. I want to say goodbye to my friend, but my co-worker walked in, my car went home. I go home. I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted. Right. So we’re talking about pattern changes that benefit anyone. Just how has this affected people? Maybe permanently. Right. The last word, a funny line I’ll I’ll share today is about a dollar. Every time a member said to me, you know, Rabbi, I got to watch you in pajamas, why should I come back and put clothing on but a dollar every time I pay for all of your education, I write your checks now because I could cover it. No problem. Right. And so it’s a habit. It’s a pattern. And so how do you get people comfortable again? Because I think the purpose of community building and a mosque in a church and the synagogue anywhere in education, you know, institution, it’s not just the individual, it’s how you’re building your community. We’re stronger when our community is together. The churches, the mosques are the education is right and worse. And then by default, I firmly believe we’re a stronger society when all of these little, little and all of these institutions come together, I think our city is better. Our society is better. Understanding is better than not being in isolation. So we’re I think my answer we’re thinking about two point. I don’t have an answer, to be honest. I have ideas, but I don’t have an answer. And really, how do you chisel away? And I mean, that’s I mean that sensitively and sincerely to really create help help people reshape some habits that are very easy to fall into because, you know, I, I can roll out of bed, turn the computer on, listen for an hour, do dishes, watch a ballgame, walk the dog. And I’m and I’m in services. That’s a different experience than sitting together in a community. So how do we handle that? Again, back to what I said. When you ask the question, Dr. Burke, that’s the crystal ball. I’m not sure yet. I’m just not sure. Yeah, I know. It’s yeah, it’s it’s this crucial time. Right? We’re all trying. Yeah. What does. I love the 2.0. Right. What is our World 2.0 going to look like. What do we want it to look like. And yeah, I definitely agree that you know, we this is lasted so much longer than any of us thought that certain habits have set in place and we just have found things that we don’t ever want to go back to that we’re not ever going to be comfortable with. My my husband said the other night he was like, we’re done with, like dress codes at work. Right. Like, those are just can we just all agree that everybody can just be comfortable and wear what they want because nobody’s going to want to come back and and, you know, wear a tie and wear a blazer every day. And people are just not going to accept that anymore. So I think there are just things that we’ve decided as a people. We’re just not going to accept anymore because we we found things that made our life, our life better in some ways. So so, yeah, it’s this is very hard. I mean, we’re at Grossmont. We’re trying to figure it out to. Right. How does what is the future look like. And yeah, like you said, it’s it’s really difficult to talk to people in person and talk to a camera. It’s they’re two completely different skill sets. It’s two completely different ways of talking. So it’s you know, there’s got to be some other sort of better middle road to to combine the advantages of the in-person and online as well. So so thank you for sharing that. And then I’m I’m listening. I’ll give you the you get the last the last response here. What is the future of the Islamic center and and what role do you think technology is going to play in that? Thank you, so I’m not going to lie to you. There is no formal conversation, there is no clear vision about the future, you know, just thoughts. Everyone is having thoughts and suggestions, but combining them together and having a vision, it’s hard to have at this moment. It has been the case since the beginning of the pandemic. You know, a lot of unexpected things. We could not plan for long term. We were going day to day, week to week as faith leaders. We since the beginning of the pandemic, we had our meetings with the county health department oriented to to the to the clergy and faith leaders. And we were always waiting for the updates, you know, the new information so we can adjust, we can close, open, allow, prohibit everything according to what we have been receiving from from the CDC, from the state, from the county. So it’s hard to say how the future is going to be. But we have thought and the first thing that comes to my mind as an imam. Is to value lives, to value our good health, to value our community and never to take anything for granted, never. We miss each other in the community. You know, sometimes during the pandemic. I go to the grocery store bonds or whatever in our neighborhood and somebody from my community, like a couple married couple or somebody sees me over there and they come to me and they want to hug me and they tell me, Emam, we miss you so much, you know, even though, you know, it takes some time for me to recognize who is the person talking to me until they kind of like and cover their faces for a few seconds and cover back. So this has been the case. We have been taking a lot of things in our lives for granted, not any more. We have to value everything God has blessed us with, including our own community. Number two, what I can say is that we have learned a lot, we have learned a lot, and we have to always. Value what we have learned and and use every experience that we have went through for for for the betterment of our community, for the betterment of our house, of worship, you know, things that never came to our minds. We started practicing, then we started doing them. Now, how can I formalize that? How can I use it in a formal way to be part of the practice, the future practice of my job as an imam and the service I offer to my to my community. So I’m always learning from our own experiences. The other thing is.
You know about the future and everybody is talking about this date, June 15th, you know, it’s as if June 14th is totally different and June 15th is, you know, wow, I don’t know how to describe that. But for me, as as a faith leader, as an imam, June 15th will be. Will be. You know, like any other day. To be honest with you. And this decision.
That was made by the governor, you know, all of us. We know that it has like a political flavor, right? So for me, my highest priority is to keep the safety and the well-being of my congregation. Yes, I listen to my elected officials, I listen to the CDC, I listen to the state, to the county health department, and I value everything they give us, but it’s up to me. And my board to make the right decision, even though my community members are super excited to come back to or to go back to that boring normal that that we used to complain about all the time, you know, they are super excited to you know, I don’t know if you are familiar with the way we we as Muslims, when we stand in the prayer, we stand shoulder to shoulder, foot to foot. We are not supposed to keep distance between us when we pray. Right now, we have six feet, you know. So sometimes when I am about to lead the prayer, I turn back to see how people are standing. You know, I can’t understand that how we are praying this way. So my community members are super excited to go back to pray shoulder to shoulder, foot to foot.
And even though some of them are, you know, are not that excited, some of them, they are always saying that, you know, we have to wait a little bit. And by the way, we since the beginning of the pandemic, we had a team at the Islamic center, a team of experts and physicians from different
institutions with whom we consult about any decision we want to make. So they provide us with information, with their expertise on how to move safely serving our our community. So. This is this is the way I see it, so we’re not going to go fully to normal on June 15th, we’re going to keep caring about the safety and the well-being of my community and my congregation. We will move forward step by step, slowly to make sure that everybody who comes here is safe and everybody complies with the rules and regulations that, of course, we will get from our county and our state. But as far as people who have a responsibility on the community and the congregation, we have to to take our responsibility as well. So this is what I can what I can say about the future. And again, you know, in the next few days, the next few weeks, the next few month
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