Meet the suburban Philly rabbis providing Election Day pastoral care for anxious congregants
No one is looking for the rabbis to tell them what to do, Witkowsky said. It’s more of people just wanting to talk.
NEW YORK – It was obvious for Assistant Rabbi Lilli Shvartsmann that this election season, Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, needed to explicitly provide spaces for its congregants to process the intensity of where they live and the moment they’re living in.Wynnewood is nestled in Montgomery County, a critical electorate west of Philadelphia where the Jewish community’s vote could tip the scales of the election.Shvartsmann, who completed her rabbinical internship at Beth Hillel-Beth El and joined the staff full-time in July, said it’s part of her personal mission as a rabbi to care for people in every stage of their life.“I don’t want my congregants to feel like I’m just the rabbi on Shabbat or just at life cycle events,” Shvartsmann told The Jerusalem Post on the morning of Election Day.“Our lives are full of intersections, and so therefore, our world, and the elections, and the anxiety of elections are also a part of what rabbis can provide pastoral care for their congregants.”
Expectations and needs on Election Day
She also thought about what her congregants were expecting or needing from her on Tuesday morning when leading shacharit services.“Usually, we say a prayer for the State of Israel. And today, I also added a prayer for our country, because that felt like what I needed to pray for was the safety and well-being of our country,” Shvartsmann explained. “And I wondered, did people come to shacharit today because they wanted to channel some of whatever is going through their mind into prayer? It felt like the perfect opportunity for me to do so.”Schvartsmann and senior Rabbi Ethan Witkovsky have held intentional, open office hours in the days leading up to Election Day, and their doors are remaining open throughout the week.Witkovsky said that conversations with congregants about political concerns have usually happened just in passing.“Most of the time it’s, you know, can you pass the tuna fish at Kiddush? And oh, and by the way, I want to talk to you about this thing,” Witkovsky said, laughing.“And so we decided to make ourselves available.”No one is looking for the rabbis to tell them what to do, Witkowsky said. It’s more of people just wanting to talk.Shvartsmann said most of her conversations with congregants aren’t about political issues – they’re about people’s anxiety.She clarified the anxiety doesn’t stem from specific political issues, either.People are anxious because they live in a tough environment, in a tough county, in a tough state.“Tensions are high; vibes are sort of weird,” Shvartsmann said. “And that’s hard to handle.”In those conversations, Shvartsmann provides a lot of validation and understanding.She added that if she’s scheduling a Bar Mitzvah appointment with a congregant who expressed anxiety several weeks ago, it’s important to remember they’ve been feeling anxious over many weeks.Witkovsky said the clergy have tried over the last year to cultivate a community where people can bring their full selves and have conversations with each other about the things they care about.“And if that’s politics, it’s politics. If it’s religion, it is religion. If it’s the Phillies, it’s the Phillies,” he said. “But it’s a place where people can be together and talk and be as a community.”Witkowsky joked that his “rabbi sermon answer” is that the Jewish community knows “all too well what can happen when we are living in unfriendly waters.”“The fact that so many people… care deeply about what this country looks like is a testament to our desire to make this a better place, and to make this a place that’s safe, and make this a place that reflects our values,” he said.Shvartsmann said some of Judaism’s most basic texts teach that Jews have a civic duty and are participants in the world.“I really wanted to start my time here by leading by example, that we have to be Jews who are engaged,” she said.And the congregation got engaged by writing postcards encouraging Philadelphians to vote.“Even though we’re taking care of the larger Philadelphia community [and] making sure they vote, we also need to take care of ourselves,” Shvartsmann said, explaining how the congregants made over 200 calls to older members of the congregation to make sure they had rides to the polls.“That just felt really at the extreme core of my Jewish values,” she said. “It just seems so obvious to the Rabbinate that I want to build, that we’re both part of the world and our community.”Shvartsmann, who grew up in Los Angeles and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, has never experienced living in such a critical state during an election or in a less homogeneous community.She said she’ll never forget the air of Pennsylvania in 2024.Or, how it feels to provide pastoral care in such an intense period.“It’s really powerful to now live in a place where people have different opinions,” she said. “And how can we still pray under this roof, sit at each other’s shivas under the same roof, and celebrate each other’s baby namings under the same roof? That really has to start from the rabbis.”
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