BERKELEY, Calif. (RNS) — Like many fast-growing organizations, Chochmat HaLev tracks new relationships using customer relations management software. Brittany Berman, Chochmat’s “community weaver,” logs newcomers’ interests and schedules digitally generated follow-ups. After meeting someone in person for coffee, Berman connects them to at least one other person at Chochmat.
“If someone meets you and asks you to reflect on your experience, then there’s a chance to make meaning,” said Berman. “And once meaning is made, then there’s more buy-in.”
The process is essential for sustainable growth, said Chochmat’s board president, Estee Solomon Gray, who spent years working in the tech world.
One of the keys to Berman’s work, too, is the small-group meetups she organizes, as well as events such as intergenerational Shabbat dinners. While it has a wide constituency among its tech-world neighbors, with more than a few non-Jewish members, Chochmat HaLev is a Jewish Renewal synagogue.
At a time when loneliness has been described as an epidemic — not least, some say, because of how our tech isolates us — Chochmat HaLev has been using technology’s approach to making connections between people to build community.
“This building is infrastructure,” said Solomon Gray, gesturing around her in the courtyard of Chochmat, a former Baptist church in the tiled-roof Spanish colonial style. “But there’s another whole kind of infrastructure that is the relational infrastructure,” she adds, “which is a …