The annual community seder, hosted by the Rabbinical Association of Greater Kansas City, will be held virtually this year. According to Rabbi Javier Cattapan, president of the rabbinical association, most of the association’s rabbis will participate by recording pieces of the service in advance. In years past, just one or two rabbis led the seder.
More information and a link to access the seder will be made available to the community this month. To receive a link to the seder, please register at (https://forms.gle/JxAUxhwXAhM6sV7h8).
Rabbi Cattapan shared information about the seder during a virtual conversation (as excerpted below) with Helene Lotman, Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City president and CEO. The conversation was the seventh in Federation’s Community Conversation series
Rabbi Cattapan said being able to include multiple rabbis in the seder is a small silver lining of the changes the Rabbinical Association and our community have had to make because of the pandemic.
Exploring news ways of conducting services, such as virtual and outdoor services and drive-through events, has allowed congregations to not only safely bring their congregations together, but also reach a wider audience. Rabbi Cattapan himself has had people he grew up with in his home country of Argentina watch virtually as he conducts services at Congregation Beth Torah, where he serves as senior rabbi. It was the first time they had been able to see him lead a service.
He doesn’t see these new ways of doing things going away completely when the pandemic passes.
“(The pandemic) showed that we can come together in many ways…” he said. “This has brought us together in a different way and I think will help us. I think a crisis makes you more creative sometimes, and that is always good. When you have challenges, you respond creatively to them and you learn something new.”
The pandemic affected the way congregations and rabbis did everything: services, bar and bat mitzvahs, confirmation classes, etc. As things moved online, the Zoom learning curve created a lot of anxiety among congregation members and among congregation leaders, Rabbi Cattapan said.
“I think that everybody in pandemic went through a traumatic experience, including the leaders because — at least for me — we had gone to school and we’d been trained in doing things one way, and we value relationships and we value personal relationships, and then this whole Zoom thing came about and there was no other way of doing it,” he said.
One thing that stemmed from this, which Rabbi Cattapan said he thinks strengthened the Rabbinical Association, is that after the congregations closed last spring, the association’s members began meeting virtually every week instead of the usual monthly meeting. The sessions were more like a support group than a business meeting.
“This was really important for the rabbis to come together to share ideas and share thoughts, and also share some of the anxiety. And again, because we had the organization, because we had the relationships before, we were able to do that,” he said.
Rabbi Cattapan hopes congregants will be able to come together for the High Holidays but acknowledges that might be unreasonable. His biggest hope for the future is that the community will retain the goodwill and togetherness brought about by these difficult times.
“I hope we realize how wonderful it is to be together…,” he said. “When we get back to those days (of gathering in person), I want to remind everyone to remember this is not a given that we are here together doing what we’re doing.”
To see the full Community Conversations between Rabbi Javier Cattapan and Helene Lotman click here.
