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A year ago there was no congregation here. There was an idea, a rabbi and his wife, a room that had to be booked, and the particular quiet of a first Shabbat where nobody yet knows whether anyone else is coming.
On Saturday, August 1 we marked twelve months of Upper Room NYC during our usual Shabbat Morning gathering. The morning ran the way every Shabbat morning runs — Hebrew liturgy, modern worship, the Torah reading, teaching — with time set aside to say thank you.
What a first year actually consists of
Not the things you would put in an announcement. A first year is mostly logistics and faithfulness in roughly equal measure: working out where people park, discovering which prayers the room already knows, learning that the heating is unreliable in one corner, finding out who will still be there in February.
It is also a year of firsts that only happen once. The first time the shofar was blown here. The first Yom Kippur. The first time somebody came back a second week without being asked. The first immersion.
A congregation is not founded on the day it first meets. It is founded on the day people start turning up without being invited.
What we have become in that time
A Messianic Jewish congregation in Manhattan, gathering Friday evening and Saturday morning, keeping the biblical feasts and the weekly Torah cycle, reading the New Testament alongside the Hebrew Scriptures, and singing modern songs over an ancient rhythm.
That last part is not a compromise between two things. It is one thing. The tagline we chose for the anniversary — Connected, Creative, Commissioned — is less a slogan than a description of what the year demanded.
Who is here
Jewish people and people from the nations, which is what a Messianic congregation is supposed to look like. Some arrived knowing exactly what they were looking for. Rather more arrived not knowing what to call it — people who had felt for years that the Jewish roots of their faith were not decorative, and had no idea there was a room in this city where that was simply assumed.
We are not large. We are not trying to describe ourselves as larger than we are.
The year ahead
The High Holy Days come first — Rosh Hashanah in September, then Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Simchat Torah, and Hanukkah in December. For a young congregation, the second time round the calendar is different from the first. You are no longer improvising. You are keeping something.
If you have been meaning to visit and have not yet, the feasts are the easiest place to start. Everything gets explained as it happens, because much of the room is learning too.
Come and see for yourself
Shabbat Night is Friday at 7:00 PM and Shabbat Morning is Saturday at 11:00 AM, in person at 250 E 61st St, New York, NY 10065. No registration, and nothing you need to know beforehand — everything is explained as we go.
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