The Smallest Acts Have the Most Impact

by Rabbi Clifford M. Kulwin

At Temple B'nai Abraham, like all congregations, we agonize a lot over how we communicate with our members and with the world at large.

Does our website captivate? Is it attractive? Does it have enough information? Too much? Do we e-blast our congregants enough? Not enough? Should we rely more on print materials, even though they are so 20th century but are perhaps more likely to get read? And what about Twitter? Do Temple B'nai Abraham members really want me to tweet them — just writing that makes me blush — and how often do I have to come up with something meaningful and worthwhile and pithy in just 140 characters?

And Facebook...isn't that something my teenagers use?

As the ways we communicate increase arithmetically, the intensity and quantity of the discussions about those ways increases geometrically. And despite a more than slightly humorous side to all this, communication is serious business. We want to be effective, moving, and positive in how we are in contact. We want to be present but not pushy, exciting but not silly. To achieve all of this successfully takes a lot of work, and I am grateful to the staff and volunteers of our congregation who, I think, make Temple B'nai Abraham pretty good in this sphere of activity (as well as many others).

And yet. Every once in a while I cannot suppress a thought from a kinder, gentler age...and I don't just mean the era of the monthly bulletin, whose back page activity calendar was magnetically affixed to refrigerator doors all over town. I am thinking of something different.

I have been lucky enough to have delivered sermons that prompted temple members to compliment me for being thought provoking, moving, or insightful. My occasional op-ed pieces in the Star Ledger always elicit a response, and on occasion even a bulletin article has generated a thoughtful comment. But the key moments — the big moments — that result in a congregant responding to something I have communicated — those come not from big and public scenarios, but from smaller, more intimate, more personal ones.

A eulogy that captures the essence of a just-passed love one. Words of jubilation that focus a wedding on what makes these particular two people unique. A pastoral visit to a hospital or nursing home, even something as simple as a phone call to check in with someone I have not seen in a while, writing letters to kids at camp, sending postcards to school families while in Israel. Sometimes, maybe most of the time, it is the smallest acts that have the most impact...and strangely enough, that makes perfect sense.

All of us — every synagogue, every agency, every organization in our community — must make every effort to use the medley of media at our disposal to fulfill our various missions as best we can. But we must remember as well that the latest communication tools are a means to an end.

The websites, the Facebook pages, even (G-d help me) the tweets, are great because used properly they foster the environment where the really important stuff gets done. They help make possible the individual expressions — person to person — of concern and caring and love, the ways we show one another that we truly matter to one another.

So if the Holy One Blessed Be He ordains some day that Rabbi Kulwin, thou shalt Tweet! (it will actually be our Communications Committee), I shall do so with good humor. Because any tool that any of us can use in our work to bring us even a tiny bit closer together is a valuable tool indeed.

Rabbi Clifford M. Kulwin is rabbi of Temple B'nai Abraham in Livingston.

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