“At times, synagogue piety can sometimes feel like a group conspiracy, a family that covers everything up. But deep down I know shul is much more than that; change comes very slowly in a man’s heart—whether that man is a fellow congregant or a close relative. Sometimes people can redeem themselves. Even though the people in our families and in shul seem static, they may be following an invisible journey of sorts. They may have to do the same thing almost forever, commit the same sin, so to speak, until one day they have had enough and they stop. Even though it doesn’t always happen, it happens enough to prevent me from giving up. I may have to distance myself for a time, but I don’t walk away.
The divorced man knew he was wrong. Yet he minimized, denied all the years, he blamed his wife always, but one day in shul he told me that he had been reviewing his life and it had begun to sink in just how wrong he’d been. I could only guess at what precisely he was referring to, but it didn’t matter. There had been some kind of change.
I was surprised at this turn-around, but not completely. After all, shul’s dynamics are fluid. Slights, insults, and injuries can be forgiven just as they are in a family; disagreements, rows, even full-blown assaults are often metabolized. Amid the fragrance of idealism and sacredness and through the necessity of physical closeness, the day-in, day-out passage of years, even villains might became saints, and if not saints, then gruff and grating people can become at least tolerable. What is hard can be made to soften. I am reminded of Ezekiel the prophet who said in the name of God centuries ago, ‘I will remove the heart of stone from you and I will give you a heart of flesh.’”
— Simon Yisrael Feuerman, Congregation Can Be Like a Family—for Better, and for Worse
