Plugging Into the Jewish Community After a PCS

Rabbi Ruth Adar, the “Coffee Shop Rabbi,” recently wrote up a fantastic guide to integrating with one’s synagogue community. In ten succinct tips, she maps out a route for getting connected with your congregation while avoiding pitfalls that can leave you feeling like a perpetual outsider. So strongly did her list resonate with me that I immediately filed it away for the next time my husband comes home with the news that the Navy is uprooting us again.

"Everyone wants to feel they have a place at the table," explains Rabbi Adar. (Image licensed under Creative Commons, by FoodMayhem.com)

“Everyone wants to feel they have a place at the table,” explains Rabbi Adar.

We military families face the task of fitting in with a new congregation more often than the average bear, perhaps every two or three years (or even more frequently, as in the case of rapid-fire PCS moves during periods of training). If we don’t make a place for ourselves in the community quickly, it might not happen at all. When we do succeed in finding a spiritual “home,” a place where we feel welcome and invested and connected, the next set of orders seems to come all too soon. Off we go to start the process at a brand-new duty station, to be the “new kids” yet again.

Although the challenge of finding a new synagogue, church, or other group exists for all military families who desire participation in a communal religious setting, I imagine that the process can look pretty different for people of other faiths and denominations. My neighbor, a Navy wife and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told me1  the other day that one of the things she appreciates about her religious community is that its strong centralized authority and organization means that by the time her family arrives at a new duty station, all of their church records have been automatically transferred and a place in their new ward has been prepared for them. Since their ward is assigned based on geographic location, the notion of “shul shopping” or “church hopping” to find a congregation at a new duty station is foreign to them.

My neighbor’s experience is nothing like ours. She was surprised to learn that Judaism doesn’t have an equivalent to the LDS Prophet/President or the Catholic Pope or any single head of the religion. In her church, centralized authority ensures a consistency in each local Mormon ward that she finds comforting. In our religion, every synagogue has its own unique flavor or vibe, even within the same movement. I love that variation, and I feel that each synagogue’s harmony contributes to the joyful sound of the greater Jewish community. Even if a particular shul is not the place that winds up being “home” for us, I still hear the music it contributes the whole.

We don’t always have a wide choice when it comes to local Jewish congregations, though. We’re positively giddy when the Navy sends us someplace where there is more than one synagogue within an hour’s drive. We have some Jewish Air Force friends whose current duty station doesn’t have any kind of Jewish community within hundreds of miles, so we consider ourselves extremely lucky when we have any kind of Jewish communal life available to us. When we happen to find that the available local community is a good fit, it’s truly a bonus worth celebrating.

Join the discussion on Facebook: If you’re part of a military family, how do you go about finding your spiritual home at a new duty station?

Is it as simple for you as it is for my neighbor, or do you (when you are lucky enough to have the option) visit a number of different congregations before you settle on one? Do you think Rabbi Adar’s tips are relevant for your own “congregation integration” process?


1. If I’m getting any of the details wrong, I apologize. I am not an LDS expert, and any mistakes are the result of my own misunderstanding. [back]
Image licensed under Creative Commons, by FoodMayhem.com.


To the Nth is married to an active duty Naval Aviator. She has blogged about Judaism, Navy life, and various nerdy things at ToTheNth.net since 2009.