On October 6th 1997,over 40 people crowded into a living room in the New Town
in response to an invitation from the Glasgow New Synagogue (GNS) to join an
Erev Shabbat service. The numbers and enthusiasm of the people attending were a
welcome surprise to GNS members in Edinburgh. The Glasgow New Synagogue
is the only Reform-affiliated synagogue in Scotland, and some of us Edinburgh
members had long felt that Glasgow should not have all the glory! Since that first
service we have been able to sustain regular activity in Edinburgh, and have
recently constituted ourselves formally into the Edinburgh Reform Jewish
Community. In this article we take up the kind invitation of the editor of the Star
to introduce ourselves to its readers.

The main impetus to get together in Edinburgh came from the practical and social
difficulties of belonging to a synagogue in a city 50 miles away. Having to travel
to Glasgow for every service and synagogue activity may not present us with
ethical problems, but the practical ones remain! Besides, we were aware that an
important part of our tradition lies in local community consciousness, and we
wanted to work within that. In this we have been successful - our events have a
very local, informal and (we hope) welcoming feel to them.

Under our formal constitution, we are an affiliated group of the Glasgow New
Synagogue, sharing its aim of giving Judaism renewed meaning for its present-day
adherents by seeking to balance ancient faith and tradition with modern wisdom
and understanding. Our membership rules are the same as for the GNS and the
Reform Movement generally, although we have two kinds of members - those who
belong only to the Edinburgh Community, and those who are also full members of
the GNS. Our membership numbers are still uncertain, because we only gave a
formal basis to the group a little while ago, and we are still contacting the many
people who have attended our events in the past. We expect though, to have over
50 members when the dust settles, drawn mainly from Edinburgh but including the
Lothians, the Borders, Fife and even the Highlands! The community encompasses
all age groups from the very young to the quite mature, with widely varied
backgrounds, and we hope that this helps us to create an atmosphere welcoming to
all. We value everyone, but we are expecially pleased to have the sustained
involvement of the children, many of whom also attend the weekly Religion School
at the GNS.

Community activity centres around services, of which the most regular and
important is an Erev Shabbat service, which we hold monthly. Often the Glasgow
synagogue spares our Rabbi, Pete Tobias, to lead the service in his inimitable style.
We hold it in very informal surroundings - for a while we used our members'
living rooms until we outgrew them - and the atmosphere has very much of a home
service about it. Usually 20 to 30 people attend. Recently we have started to
imitate a long-standing tradition in Glasgow of having a communal meal on some
Friday nights following the service. Our longest-standing festival tradition is that
of a communal Seder, which we have now had on three occasions. We use a room
at Inch House which can accommodate some 50 people, and we have never had
spare seats. A particular pleasure at the Seders is to be able to welcome the many
Reform Jews who are visiting Edinburgh at any one time, many of them
Americans working at the University.

During the course of the last year we have organised several events including an
'Open Shabbat' - a whole day of worship, study and food - and a Purim party,
which we took rather too seriously in the fancy dress aspect - the chairman of the
Community will not readily forget the unplanned experience of buying petrol from
a garage forecourt while dressed as Snow White, complete in too many details.
Other activities include a study group, which has met in preparation for important
festivals and currently is studying the Book of Genesis.Most recently we celebrated
the start of the High Holy Days with an Erev Rosh Hashanah service, which we
conducted ourselves. For the main Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services - as
for most others - we still travel to Glasgow. We are optimistic about developing
our own resources in Edinburgh, but we intend to walk before we run.

Why Reform? Because for the Reform movement, rooted in the religious concepts
of Jewish tradition, the application of these concepts is an evolving task. We look
for ways of making traditional values relevant in a very different world from the
one in which they developed. In a world which regards men and women as equal,
we offer families the opportunity to sit together and encourage the same
participation in services for men and women alike. In a society where Jews no
longer live in close proximity to places of worship, we believe that involvement in
worship overrides biblical and halachic concerns about travel on holy days. In a
community where Hebrew is in no way the dominant language, we give
congregants the opportunity to use English in prayer to enrich their understanding
and appreciation of our worship and our traditional teachings. Reform Judaism
continues to develop and grow as human knowledge and understanding continue to
grow; the two complement rather than oppose one another.

One welcome feature of our situation in Edinburgh is the good relations that exist
on a communal level between the Reform and Orthodox communities. Part of the
reason for this must be the Literary Society, which benefits from the enthusiasm of
many people from both communities. But the real responsibility lies with the
many people who have chosen to build on our areas of common understanding. In
this spirit we want to thank the Star for this opportunity to introduce the
Community, and to welcome interest in us and our interpretation of Jewish
tradition.

We welcome everyone who would like to know more about our community or
about Reform Judaism in general.