Kadima Membership Information
Thank you for your interest in Kadima! Your membership supports the existence and flourishing of this active and progressive community. Membership is required to register youth in Kadima School.
Kadima is a progressive Reconstructionist community integrating alternatives in Jewish learning for all ages, celebration and work for social justice. Kadima is a premier progressive Jewish organization in the Pacific Northwest with members who live in and out of the region. A trailblazer on many social fronts, Kadima was founded to fight racism and antisemitism, promote and live gender liberation, and work to create peace and justice in Israel/Palestine and the region. Since, Kadima has evolved around all these issues as well as developing work for disability justice, indigenous sovereignty, homelessness, and labor justice. Kadima makes a strong connection between social activism and Jewish spiritual traditions, ethics, culture and history. We stive to operate using these evolving derech eretz/community guidelines.
As a Reconstructionist community, Kadima uses metaphor, poetry and a relevant, accessible liturgy to welcome members whose beliefs and practices span a spectrum from theistic to humanistic. We are a Jewish community for Jews, friends and family of Jews, people who are Jew-proximate, people who are Jew-curious, people who have Jewish heritage, and people who are none of the above but are Jew-positive.
Multicultural households are welcome, including non-Jewish partners and family members. Everyone is encouraged to celebrate and learn more about progressive Judaism.
Kadima seeks to integrate a wide range of Jewish experience into its priorities and practices. It is committed to making its programs and community accessible to its members and to those searching for a Jewish home.
As challenging and complex issues arise in the Jewish and general communities, Kadima aspires to function as your progressive Jewish salon, where it's safe to discuss and debate issues, including on Israel, the work of achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace, spirituality, Jewish identity, and arts and culture.
Your membership is not merely a ticket to activities--our doors are open to all every day already. Rather, it is a way to support our Jewish community and participate in the service of doing, communing, collectivizing, and probing, wrestling, commemorating, and celebrating. It is being a part of the mitzvah* of helping to create and sustain Jewish life for those who want it, need it, and are enriched by it.
*Mitzvah literally translates to "thing that is obligated or commanded" though R' David offers context that today we might translate mitzvah as "the acts we ask of one another to make this community work for everyone in it." If there is a some way in which Kadima is not working for you, asking us to do something about it is a mitzvah and gives us the chance to do a mitzvah.
Kadima is a progressive Reconstructionist community integrating alternatives in Jewish learning for all ages, celebration and work for social justice. Kadima is a premier progressive Jewish organization in the Pacific Northwest with members who live in and out of the region. A trailblazer on many social fronts, Kadima was founded to fight racism and antisemitism, promote and live gender liberation, and work to create peace and justice in Israel/Palestine and the region. Since, Kadima has evolved around all these issues as well as developing work for disability justice, indigenous sovereignty, homelessness, and labor justice. Kadima makes a strong connection between social activism and Jewish spiritual traditions, ethics, culture and history. We stive to operate using these evolving derech eretz/community guidelines.
As a Reconstructionist community, Kadima uses metaphor, poetry and a relevant, accessible liturgy to welcome members whose beliefs and practices span a spectrum from theistic to humanistic. We are a Jewish community for Jews, friends and family of Jews, people who are Jew-proximate, people who are Jew-curious, people who have Jewish heritage, and people who are none of the above but are Jew-positive.
Multicultural households are welcome, including non-Jewish partners and family members. Everyone is encouraged to celebrate and learn more about progressive Judaism.
Kadima seeks to integrate a wide range of Jewish experience into its priorities and practices. It is committed to making its programs and community accessible to its members and to those searching for a Jewish home.
As challenging and complex issues arise in the Jewish and general communities, Kadima aspires to function as your progressive Jewish salon, where it's safe to discuss and debate issues, including on Israel, the work of achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace, spirituality, Jewish identity, and arts and culture.
Your membership is not merely a ticket to activities--our doors are open to all every day already. Rather, it is a way to support our Jewish community and participate in the service of doing, communing, collectivizing, and probing, wrestling, commemorating, and celebrating. It is being a part of the mitzvah* of helping to create and sustain Jewish life for those who want it, need it, and are enriched by it.
*Mitzvah literally translates to "thing that is obligated or commanded" though R' David offers context that today we might translate mitzvah as "the acts we ask of one another to make this community work for everyone in it." If there is a some way in which Kadima is not working for you, asking us to do something about it is a mitzvah and gives us the chance to do a mitzvah.
Kadima Membership Structure and Commitments
Membership in Kadima has three parts:
- Each adult (post-b'mitzvah age of 12 or 13) in the household is asked to give starting at $36 per year for membership. $36/adult cannot sustain the financial needs of the community, which include space rental, paying high quality teachers, employing a rabbi and other staff to create and run excellent programming, and other infrastructure costs. This is where Nadiv Lev comes in.
- Each individual or household is asked to thoughtfully contribute Nadiv Lev: a sustainable and sustaining gift above their membership fee. There is no paperwork or verification -- you decide what the right amount for your family is. As a starting place, imagine what 1.5% of your income would look like, and contribute more or less as you are able, typically on a monthly schedule. Monthly Nadiv Lev payments range from $0 to $1000 monthly, and all amounts are equally welcomed. The chart below shows one possible distribution of suggested giving that would allow us to meet our Nadiv Lev goal for the 2023-2024 Fiscal Year. We invite you to identify the level that is possible for you, or to select another amount that is not listed. If more households give in the higher levels (or amounts higher than the maximum listed) it will allow us to live into our values of tikkun olam and communal responsibility by ensuring our community is accessible to all, regardless of wealth or financial capacity.
- The third part of membership is community engagement. We ask that each member expect to contribute a minimum of 10 hours to the community per year. This could include cleaning up after services, doing data entry, organizing a Kadima contingent at rallies, becoming a Board Member, showing up to help make a minyan (a quorum of 10 of us) which enables us to say a mourner's kaddish - the prayer for mourning and honoring the dead -- and anything that helps Kadima function and thrive.
Notes:
*Biographies for your radical Nadiv Lev namesakes are here: https://tinyurl.com/nadivlev-bios
**Levels are purely suggested! You may give more than the highest level, and anywhere in between levels. When more households that give higher amounts each month, we have more flexibility to accommodate households at the Kehilah level.
***We suggest giving at about 1.5%-2% of your household income, but we invite you to calculate your dues amount however works best for you.
*Biographies for your radical Nadiv Lev namesakes are here: https://tinyurl.com/nadivlev-bios
**Levels are purely suggested! You may give more than the highest level, and anywhere in between levels. When more households that give higher amounts each month, we have more flexibility to accommodate households at the Kehilah level.
***We suggest giving at about 1.5%-2% of your household income, but we invite you to calculate your dues amount however works best for you.