About Our Brit / Covenant

The Congregation Bet Haverim Community Covenant/Brit is a document that contains our deeply held and respected values. We hope to cultivate these values in our synagogue so that we are informed by thoughtful and meaningful experiences. We believe that these values are a key to enriching the experience of being a part of this community. Biblical Scholar Daniel Elazar notes that in Torah, "[t]hrough covenants, humans and their institutions are enabled to enter into dialogue and are given (or themselves create) a framework for dialogue." Indeed, we intend to use this covenant as a tool for dialogue and a guide for leadership in making key choices that face our community.

This document has been shaped by many voices and by years of collective process that has led us to an overarching communal commitment to striving to perpetually better ourselves and this synagogue. It is also an attempt to clarify and project our beliefs to those who visit us and those who may wish to join us. It will also inform us regarding both the content and the process of how we engage in synagogue business and how we conduct ourselves amongst each other.

The Jewish concept of covenant/brit is demonstrated numerous times in Torah: God's covenant with humanity after the flood, God with Abraham and Sarah and their descendents, between Ruth and Naomi and David and Jonathan, etc. It is also the basis of contemporary relationships as found between life partners and parent and child. In examining all of these covenants the essential purpose is to create a rubric for growth and development. By upholding values important to the relationship, all sides of the covenant end up growing and changing. Even God in our text is given the ability to grow in relationship. Thus, we let go of perfection as a day-to-day experience, while seeing the ideals as an ever guiding compass.

The main purpose of this document is to uphold the ideals that we wish ourselves and others to live up to in the midst of this community; however, it is not a disciplinary tool. It is to inspire both a godliness and a humanistic approach to our behavior as an institution and as individuals. This covenant/brit is of spiritual nature not of binding law. Thus, the objective is a document that inspires growth collectively and individually, spelling out what is ideal behavior with the recognition that anyone of us is in a different place on a spectrum at any given point. Simply, it is hopeful with the knowledge that though we are not yet our best selves, we have the potential to be so.