Community Constraints

I went to a retreat this past weekend with a group called "Jews in the Woods." The political structure of Jews in the Woods is something resembling small-scale communism. There is no official leadership. The people who run a given shabbaton are volunteers called "comfy chairs," and the responsibilities of food/housing/transportation/learning etc. are all given to different members of the "community." These responsibilities shift every time Jews in the Woods meet.
There is no set location for Jews in the Woods. This past weekend, we were at a nature preservation center, but my impression is that they move around to different locations every time.
Everything they served was vegetarian. There were gendered male and female sleeping spaces and bathrooms, and there were also non gendered sleeping spaces and bathrooms. The shul had two mechitzas-- the non-gendered section was in between the men and the women sections.
The shabbat began with a meditative ice-breaker, where everyone said what she wanted to bring into shabbat, and what she wanted to leave outside of the sacred space that we were entering. We sung and danced kabbalat shabbat and ma'ariv, and sat on the floor for dinner-- there were not enough tables and chairs for everyone-- and anyway, that would have been altogether too conventional.
The plates were bio-degradable, made from processed sugar cane. We all brought our own cups, and there were no disposable utensils. The environmental consciousness is the trademark of Jews in the Woods, it seems.
On Friday night after dinner, there was a learning session on the Ishbitzer's philosophy in his mei hashiloach. The group was very receptive to it, and not altogether too shocked by his drastic positions about God's will. The Ishbitzer apparently held that there is G-d's will that is pure and changes depending on circumstances, but since we cannot always be surrounded by the "clouds of glory" that served as divine inspiration to the people of Israel in the desert, we need a system of laws that are Halacha. Otherwise, people would basically be able to intuit, through their own clear thinking, how to behave. He likened the principles that govern Halacha to idols that we make for ourselves to worship.
Now, the population at Jews in the Woods, it seemed was mostly very serious young Jewish people who currently associate themselves with Conservative communities around the country. This philosophy didn't seem to surprise them much, since their norm is to trust their moral intuitions about egalitarianism, homosexuality, etc. One eloquent student at JTS commented in the class, "well of course, we all know that categories are bad, and that bad things happen when we make categories." Everyone sitting in the room (including me!) agreed. I reconsidered a moment later whether I actually think that, but when anyone (especially someone as eloquent as he) starts a sentence with, "well, everyone knows that..." the person has primed the room for brainwashing. But I digress. It occurs to me that while categories do limit possibilities, they also enable much to be. I think that while it would be nice to have the ability to intuit God's will, in order to be part of a community, conformity to community standards is sometimes at hand. Granted, I don't encourage all of one's decisions to be based on those limitations. But I do think that we would be lacking as a community if we were always thinking about being as individualistic as we could be.
On Friday night, I had this incredibly Community-Rabbi moment. There wasn't just one chazzan for all of kabbalat shabbat. Every paragraph was led by another member of the community. In the middle of Lecha Dodi, the person who had chosen the first tune was supposed to switch to another tune, but he went blank, and couldn't come up with the tune that he had come up with. He was sure it had been brilliant, and stood there, silently for 5 minutes, trying to remember what the tune was. He finally remembered some of it, I think, and it came out half-baked. During the silence, I felt the leadership in the community lacking. No community Rabbi would have allowed such a silence to last for that long for no good reason. There was Kavod Hatzibur to consider, as well as the embarrassment of the chazzan himself, that seemed to be growing. I pointed this out to my friend, and he said, "that's the whole point of this community! Individuality and personal expression are much more important than the community as a whole." Now, I'm not the one claiming to be communist, but I know that the community is worth more than it was granted, waiting for five minutes for a single person to recall the tune to the second half of lecha dodi. This occurs to me as truly lacking in a community like that. How ironic. When the individual is the only concern, communism is only a mask for the Korach-like effort to make each individual the center of attention. I think that people can shine within a community, and I don't really object to women participating in services (everyone coming to the first Migdal Or service tonight-- I hope to be there!), but I don't think that that is licence to forget a hierarchy of values and priorities.
I've been very negative about the weekend until now, so I'd like to now present some highlights. On Motz"ash, we had a drumming group while most of the group danced around freely to our rhythms. There were a couple of people on African hand drums, I grabbed a washing cup, and a few other people took pitchers and and aluminum pans. The music was fun, and people really enjoyed it. During kriat HaTorah on shabbat, the Sefer Torah was found to be passul (rendered invalid to read-- one letter was missing half of itself), so we had to read out of a chumash instead of the scroll. Instead of simply reading from the chumash as they would have from the Torah, the Jews in the Woods saw this as an opportunity to be creative. One aliya, a person sang the English translation every verse with the cantillation that the hebrew had. The next aliya, every pasuk, someone read the targum unkelus (traditional translation into aramaic). Then, someone who knows Yiddish fluently was laining one aliya, and he translated every verse into yiddish. Simultaneously, someone else signed the verses is ASL.
The creativity was amazing and free. There was a free spirit that was contagious and inspiring. This creativity does not exist in the conformist communities that we grew up in. I wonder if there is a way to strike a balance, or if this is a choice we make. I think that there must be a way. Ideas? Thoughts? Please share!