If you aim to serve people, change is necessary — because people change

Like many others, I was sad when I noticed that the Agudah convention was quietly morphing from a Shabbos get-together into a weekday action summit (at least for this year).

There are two components to every frum convention: the actual get-things-done, policy-discussion, action-items part; and the more informal, less-scripted portion, that which happens in corridors and lobbies, at a late-night oneg Shabbos, after davening, or during the Shabbos seudah — the “hock” of a convention. Agudah was announcing that they were taking away the second part and leaving the first.

For people like me, not that into policy or getting things done, that’s like having a musical Havdalah on Motzaei Yom Kippur. Let me out of here.

First it made me sad — a glorious chapter coming to a close. The Agudah convention was a staple of American Orthodox life for decades, and it was something beautiful. As Reb Yechiel Benzion Fishoff, one of the great aristocrats of the frum world, would often say, the convention gave people like him their whole identity.

Many of his friends had come to this country without parents or siblings, forced to define themselves while also trying to learn a new language, get married, and make a living. Yes, sure, they would keep Shabbos and wear tefillin — but beyond that, Mr. Fishoff told me, all bets were off. Would they send their sons to yeshivos or day schools? Would their wives cover their hair? Would they give of their own income to build Torah institutions?

And then someone — a friend, cousin or neighbor — convinced them to come to a convention, just for Shabbos, somewhere upstate. The food will be good. You’ll meet new people. There’s a swimming pool. Try it.

So they packed a suitcase, left the kinderlach with friends, and went to the Pioneer Country Club or the Rye Town Hilton, maybe taking the bus from Port Authority to get there.

And what they found was family.

In the lobby, they saw people whose names were familiar, beheld the faces of Rav Moshe Feinstein or Rav Aharon Kotler, the Rebbes of Bluzhev or Boyan.

If these were the generals, they would be the army — happily!

(And the food was good —before sushi was invented, before boba tea, before artisanal donuts, when the fancy dessert was a fruit cocktail or marble cake!)

They left feeling buoyant, even if they did not know why. It wasn’t a single moment, but several of them — a story someone told at the table, a chance meeting with an old friend, the tears of a speaker that made others cry, or the radiance of the Rosh Yeshivah that seared itself onto their souls — that created a sense of shared purpose and shared mission. You didn’t have to listen to every speech to feel the warmth that comes with being part of something bigger, and you didn’t have to study the data to feel optimism about the future.

Fragile, dispersed people, on the run for too long, feeling like they belonged.

And what they belonged to was something enduring, a movement — led by gedolei Torah — that stood for responsibility to the klal and for commitment to chinuch. They went home feeling proud, having a clearer sense of who they were, so that when they had to make decisions for their families — What sort of shul do we attend? Which caterer do we use for our son’s bar mitzvah? Which causes will our family support? — the answer was much more obvious.

That was then.

Today, life is one long convention.

If you play your cards right, you should be able to spend an average of three nights a year in a major-league sports stadium, jumping as Meir Adler does that thing where he turns his keyboard into a jackhammer and wakes up that part of you that knows, with conviction, that Ashreinu, mah tov chelkeinu, and this is the team you want to be on.

The sense of belonging is pretty accessible.

You can go on Torah Anytime and bring the clarity of Rav Elya or the encouraging passion of Rabbi Joey into your own home

The once-a-year Shabbos getaway is less essential when, with a few smart choices, you can join your shul siyum in Morocco, your Avos U’banim trip to Kerestir, or the Yarchei Kallah for people in your Hataras Nedarim group. At each of these events, you can choose whom you want to be seated with (and, if you’ve mastered the art of intimation and inference, you can also choose whom you don’t want to be seated with without having to say a word) and find Zanvil singing “Shaarei Shamayim” with a choir around him every time you step into the elevator.

Rabbi Sherer, we’re so inspired, we stopped feeling altogether.

Agudah shifting directions isn’t sad, it’s happy!

Sad is when an organization is too timid or weak to change, clinging rigidly to that which is most familiar. Happy is when an organization isn’t afraid to assess reality and to evolve, if necessary, knowing that if you aim to serve people, change is necessary — because people change.

Happy is when the people who are already doing get together to do it better. When people who care about Klal Yisrael — shadchanim, therapists, educators, and askanim — give each other chizuk and advice.

And to my friends at Agudah, if you ever feel that the generation needs a convention focused more on conversations in the hallway and stairwell, and less on people with furrowed brows leaning forward and clearing their throats because they have something important to say, hit me up.

There’s nothing I won’t do for Klal Yisrael.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1091)