To everything a season

Austin's Congregation Kol Halev, which we attended briefly, will likely not exist in its current form past its June 21 annual general meeting. (What braniac set that meeting for Father's Day?) In 49 years of being around shuls, I've never known a 125-family congregation (what's that, 300+ people?) to collapse so suddenly.

As I process details that have dribbled out since last week, at least three things stand out:

• No one accepts or will even share responsibility for the collapse. Various phone, email, and snail mail communications, both official and unofficial, point fingers at others, and never at the writer or caller.
  
• While not priced as highly as some shprawntzier (fancier) institutions, membership was not cheap for a shul meeting in a school's general purpose room, that has no cantor, requires significant volunteering, provides no real early childhood programming, pays no movement fees, and...well you get the point. Moreover, Kol Halev maintains substantial class B+ office space and hires staff to do the work clergy does in other small congregations. Perhaps money saved on office space and employees might have paid for a modest but more permanent and welcoming sanctuary?
  
• Reading between the lines of at least one communication (sent to us as recent non-members), I sense more at play. I sense that some—including those who've now volunteered for lay leadership positions, both executive and clerical—"anticipated" Rabbi Kerry Baker's resignation and the organization's demise with a view to helping "lead a re-invented Kol Halev, if the membership so votes." So they might, let's say, rebuild in their own image.

Whatever the causes and ramifications, a 12-year old shul is dead or dying, and several hundred Jews now have to congregation shop in a city of 15,000+ Jews notable for its paucity of synagogue choice. In many ways, that's sad. In others, it creates the chance—the space—for new inspiration to take root, for new shoots to spring.

To everything a season; a time to every delight under the heavens. (Ecclesiastes 3:1)