The synagogue of my childhood was a Young Israel congregation, in a suburb of Montreal. I loved going to shul on Shabbat. I did not love going to shul on the High Holidays.

I DID love the prayer services, and was attracted to the prayer book and the language and sound of prayer. As soon as I was old enough, I would sit through the lengthy service, often on my own, in the women's section. And as the years went on, I became increasingly aware of the tenor of the rabbi's High Holiday messages. They captured my attention mainly through … volume, and tone, achieved without the aid of amplification.

Simply put, the rabbi would yell at us. We were there, yet we were harangued for not being there – more often. We were praying, yet we were exhorted to pray - with more fervor. We were members, yet we were berated for not offering more of our resources to the community.

Along with the shouting, there was banging on the pulpit, and a general mood of abasement and shame. I admit that these recollections are filtered through many years, and the outlook of a child, and I do retain many fond shul memories, but these stand out with clarity.

I also have childhood memories of visiting Baltimore. At first, we would only spend time in the homes of our relatives. In later years, there was new place to visit – the Inner Harbor. Suddenly, there was this lovely public space to stroll. I remember the Bicentennial tour of the tall ships docked there in 1976, and visiting a glorious Scandinavian vessel with my cousin Darlene.

When I moved to Baltimore four summers ago, I found it confusing that in a city of neighborhoods there were so few public spaces where we could just be, you know, just walk around, hang out, perhaps alone, or with the children, and see other folks, not tourists, but others who just lived here. I paid keen interest to the dates and sites of the many summer festivals; with their stalls and tables, booths and open-air dining areas, craft activities, concert stages, and other presentations, they seemed to offer the opportunity that I was craving just to show that I BELONGED, that I lived here. I wanted to hang out, BEHAVE as others did here, to demonstrate my faith, to show that I too could BELIEVE the city of Baltimore, my new home, was a whole and wholesome environment, in which I could be a part of a greater community.

Today, our municipal authorities are conducting a unique citywide campaign that seems to be calling us to consciousness about at least one of those very issues. A single word is appearing everywhere. I'm referring, of course, to the Baltimore BELIEVE campaign.

BELIEVE. The word is plastered all over the city, on bumper stickers, on the sides of city trucks, in banners and on billboards, just the single word.

The word began appearing before the campaign was formally launched, reminding me of various advertising campaigns with their disturbingly elusive teasers. Just what is that little purple pill for? What is the message behind this single word?

Believe is obviously a core faith word, connected to most, if not all, of the world's religions. In the words of the web site:
Baltimore Believe is an advertising, community-centered campaign aimed at reducing drug trafficking, drug violence, and drug use in the City.

We can also read there:
The Baltimore Believe Campaign … is supported by the people of Baltimore, who are lending their support to the vital cause of freeing Baltimore's neighborhoods from the scourge of drugs and reclaiming the glory of this once proud and beautiful City.

This leaves me disquieted. Beyond the worthy stated intentions, the use of a faith-based vocabulary word for a secular, civic-oriented project makes me suspicious. We are living in a time when faith-based initiatives have already encroached on the civil rights of those whose are otherwise qualified and motivated to serve their communities. Citizens have been dismissed from social service positions supported through public funding for not being adherents to the grant-holder's particular religious values.

What can we glean from a civic authority appropriating a faith word? Their own explanation still begs the questions: believe in what?

Well, perhaps it is nothing more complicated that this: people should believe that GOOD is possible. The mayor's intention must be to invite us to all to believe in possibility, in change, in transformation, in improvement, in ourselves. The city can be better AND you can live lives of meaning.

My doubts do not stem from a need to ensure that there is an equal balance in the faith-based resonance of such a project, for then we immediately get trapped by: which faith tradition? the presumptive American religion, the Judeo-Christian one, with the disturbing suggestion of syncretism that terms provokes? Just Christianity? Which Christianity? Which Judaism? Which Islam? Are all to believe in some values? Some in all?

No, my suspicious are related to the issue the city raises in its own message - precisely what "glory" are we seeking to recapture? What were we "once proud of"? Was there once an equitable distribution of our glories that is just NOW proving inequitable? Or have the endemic inequities and injustices simply proven too big to be contained in the private and hence invisible domain, rendering them too visible, and thus too demanding of the equanimity of our more comfortable citizens?

I want to state clearly that I DO believe that faith in something beyond oneself is a necessary tool in confronting substance abuse and alcohol addiction. The notion I am challenging is the wisdom and efficacy of such a charge in the context of a civic culture whose faith is already so deeply rooted in individual rights, and is devoid of the cultivation of a shared notion of collective responsibility, never mind the absence of adequate public shared space for us to experience our identity as Baltimoreans together.

I also admit to being irked by the death-announcement, wanted poster overtones of the graphic. The font and the dimensions, the stark reverse lettering, evoke a perverse conflation of mourning and hectoring, the visual equivalent of my childhood rabbi's High Holiday sermon voice. I expect the follow-up campaign to be -- REPENT!
The symbol is already maligned and mocked; witness the B'LIEVE HON bumper stickers, and even BEHAVE!

To be honest, though, I wish I had been bold enough to recommend that we at Beit Tikvah do what a local Reform temple did in their fall advertising series: their quarter page ad featured the bold white lettering of the Believe posters and bumper stickers, but read instead: BELONG.

Yes, I thought, OUR version of such a campaign would be BELONG.

We can never have enough of belonging. There could never be such an abundance of signing on that we would say stop, no, that's too much for our own good, whether that belonging is to this congregation, to another, to a havurah, the JCC, a secular Jewish service or fraternal organization, a traditional landsmanschaft, a youth group, or any Jewish communal entity.

In that regard, I fear that our very own Charm City may well be missing the mark in its widely disseminated campaign for communal responsibility and repair. Again, the city's own words: "Baltimore Believe is an advertising, community-centered campaign aimed at reducing drug trafficking, drug violence, and drug use in the City."

The key words are "community-centered."

Is it belief that can transform a disparate group of people, joined by physical proximity, into a community, united by a single goal? IS a faith-based slogan likely to work?

It's possible, but better still is the word on that other ad, BELONG, for belonging, by its very definition, works.

Here's a paradox: belonging is something to Believe in.

And to add another B-word: You don't need to Believe to Belong or Behave!

Moreover, these three B's - Belonging, Behaving, Believing - are NOT mutually exclusive, but rather represent an experiential sequence.

According to our Reconstructionist understanding of the Jewish faith, the traditional tri-partite noun formulation of God-Torah-Israel can be renamed with these three verbs. God is the Believe-ing; Torah, through its evolution to the system of mitzvoth is Behave-ing; Israel, meaning the people, the entity, means to Belong.

One of my core beliefs as a Jew informed by Reconstructionist values and perspectives is that you don't need to BELIEVE in order to BELONG or BEHAVE Jewishly.

How much stronger would our people be, how much more able to contribute to the pressing challenges facing our neighborhoods, our cities, our country and our planet, were we solidly rooted in some larger-than-us, cohesive entity. Belonging brings connection and the cutting down of isolation, a key element of so many of our societal problems.

I have been studying these past two years in a program for rabbis led by several amazing teachers, including Rabbi Arthur Green, the former president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and the author of many fine teachings and commentaries in our mahzor. At the last session of our final retreat, we were given, uncharacteristically, this writing exercise. We had just learned about the tradition of hanhagot, practices or habits that a leader or rebbe might prescribe for his group of students or followers. Rabbi Green challenged us to consider what we might encourage our own Hasidim to learn, follow, do, observe.

Though I initially resisted the exercise, one of my hanhagot that just flowed out was worded as follows: Respond to injustice at the closest level to where you find it – your neighborhood if that's where it's happening, your workplace, the government, or business if you have – or have the vision or tools to create a vehicle for organizing. And know that the tools will surely emerge from a passionate vision.

Let me put it in the context of this very time and place, the context of engaging in teshuvah. To have others with whom one is acknowledging the wounds of life, whether spoken directly or refracted through the liturgy, has a healing power than may take the unfolding of the year, or many events and locations beyond, to be felt and accounted for. Yet it takes place, by definition, in community. Here and now, we call it a minyan. There are minyanim of all kinds, religious and secular, counting on us to be counted in.

Teshuvah of course can be engaged it without belonging, and yet it cannot be done without connection. Even the strongest and most self-sufficient among us has not learned anything in isolation.

(Continued)