The opportunity to have an in-depth conversation with Rabbi Rim was just too tantalizing to pass up. I just needed a focus. Being the procrastinator that I am, I never answered the call. Until… one day… I joined the Caring Committee.

At the first meeting I attended, we brainstormed about effective ways of getting our message out to the congregation. Among them was doing a “Rapping with Rim” column. Aha! — this was bashert! Immediately, I signed up. Now, all I had to do to prepare for the force of nature that is Rim.

I began our conversation by asking Rim what makes caring so central to Judaism. Rim said that he didn’t know of another domain of life that put together so many of the different dimensions of caring as the cycle of life. He explained that in rites of passage, the community’s role is to gather and support. A person can self heal through music or art, but that’s not the same as a ritual act shared in community. Rim believes that the community gets caught up in the connections between people, and in the ritual, when, for example, a child is reading Torah at a Bar Mitzvah, and doing something that others all over the world are doing at the same time. (Maybe, I think, there is also a deep connection with the past, and our ancestors who said the same words, and engaged in the same ritual, thousands of years ago.)

We talked about how there are all kinds of ways of caring and ritual, of which the rites of passage are a subset. Shiva, bar mitzvah, and visiting the sick are all up in the top echelon. But when I asked Rim what he thought was the fullest expression of religious caring, he responded that it was communal expression that is unique to Judaism. To Rim, when a community gathers for a ritual event, or otherwise participates in a caring way, it has great power.

As luck would have it, Rim had just returned from a rabbinic conference when we met. As usual, he was assimilating information he had learned at breakneck speed. He went through an organizational pyramid that moved from certainty (at the bottom) to discovery and intimacy (at the top). Mea culpa for forgetting a fourth category. No doubt we will learn of it in the future! Much of the rest of our conversation centered around this chart.

I was curious about how Rim has worked to help build and nurture the caring community that we have at Shir Tikvah. I’ve been struck by how warm and enveloping this congregation is. What did Rim see as his part in this as a spiritual leader/facilitator?

Rim felt that he has helped facilitate our community’s shift from an organism to an organization. When Rim first came, there were 250 families, but the community operated as though it were 85. He told me that the Caring Committee used to be two people who wanted to make sure nobody fell between the cracks in times of need. However, when a community grows, it needs organization to implement the same values of caring, concern, intimacy, and discovery. Organization can almost seem “countercaring” — the more organized you get, the more you have to do — calling the right people, coordinating rides, shiva visits, meals — but that these things are crucial to extending caring to a larger community. A coordinator must jump immediately into discovery and intimacy.

Using the chart, Rim explained that people work in different modes. One of the things he did in his first two years was to move from “certainty” (not interactive) to “discovery” (interactive, questioning, information seeking). Rim believes that the overarching tone at Shir Tikvah is one of discovery, from which intimacy may flow. It is hard to create intimacy with 340 families — it’s not something that can be done in 30 minutes. (As an aside, Rim related that studies about groups have shown that the most natural forming tribes consist of about 250 people.) But, he said, discovery is doable in a short time period.

Although we realized that we had veered from a strict discussion about caring, we both felt strongly that our discussion had much to do with how to create and nurture a caring community. We thought about the small groups that Rim often uses in Yizkor services, and the Dine ‘n Daven Shabbat services. I thought about how Rim thanks each person who shares a name during the Mishebeirach or Mourner’s Kaddish, and what intimacy that creates.

As with any conversation with Rim, I walked away with more questions than answers, and a long reading list. Our interview over, I left to wonder at my good fortune in knowing Rim and being part of this rich and caring community.