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Chavurah Masarti Lynchburg, Virginia Founded on 2, Cheshvan 5766
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| How Did We Come Up With Our Name? | ||
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As indicated on the "Why Do We Meet Page", a chavurah is a small group of friends who gather in a less formal manner than a standard congregation. Since we are not a formal synagogue, we thought that the word 'chavurah' best describes our structure and function. That was the easy part. The harder part was to find an adjective to describe our chavurah. We wanted a word that indicates that we are committed to understanding and engaging in Jewish tradition, although we did not want to indicate a particular theological approach. The Hebrew adjective 'traditional' is מָסָרְתִּי 'masarti' and it is related to the Hebrew noun 'tradition', מָסֹרֶת 'masoret'. Interestingly, this word is also related to the Hebrew verb למסור 'leemsor', 'to transmit'. The Hebrew word for tradition has been adopted by the Conservative Movement which is known internationally as "Masorti Judaism". We wanted to identify with tradition, but not indicate that we are part of the masorti movement. Therefore, we adopted the adjectival version of the word for our own chavurah, but spelled the transliteration differently. One could argue that 'masorti' is a better transliteration than 'masarti', but in actuality, neither is perfect. The vowel sound in the second syllable is neither an 'ah' nor and 'oh', but somewhere in between. Perhaps the best transliteration might be 'masoarti'. Nevertheless, we thought that 'masarti' sufficiently describes us without linking us to a movement, so it feels comfortable. |