Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Googlebombing the progressives, part 2: now this is funny

To my yet greater jubilation and amusement, it turns out that, buried yet deeper in Googlespace is another progressive Jewish congregation in Basel. This one I only found out about because when I emailed Ofek to register for Yom Kippur services they wrote back to say "what are you doing for Rosh Hashanah? Have you checked out Migvan?"

And while Ofek is a kind of committee of the main synagogue which meets occasionally, it looks like Migvan has its own premises, kid-oriented services, and a Hebrew school -- and comes out and says things like "the integration of non-Jewish spouses and children is for Migvan a high priority," which is awfully nice to hear. (Though it still doesn't have, like, services every Friday. But then, we wouldn't go to services every Friday, who are we kidding here?)

In America both Migvan and Ofek would fall, liturgically at least, and probably in other regards, in the Conservative rather than the Reform movement, but in Basel that's still pretty radical, and Migvan seems to take particular pains to be pluralistic, with even what surely must be a coded welcome to gays, viz., for membership purposes family "includes two individuals living together in a partnered relationship." And frankly, on a musical level, I prefer the Conservative liturgy anyway.

So perhaps while I'm googlebombing, those links to liberal jews Basel, progressive chavurah Basel, liberale Juden Basel, jüdische Progressiven in Basel, conservative Jews in Basel, and so on, should actually go to Migvan....