DN's mission, vision and aspiration statement

Mission Statement  

Darchei Noam exists in order to contribute to the perpetuation of Jewish identity and peoplehood through our expression of progressive Jewish community based on Reconstructionist principles.

Vision Statement  

A vibrant, multigenerational Jewish community connected by shared Reconstructionist values, love of Judaism and commitment to one another.

Aspiration Statement  

At Congregation Darchei Noam we create Jewish futures for our members, the larger Jewish community, while striving to positively impact the world around us. We want Jews to experience Jewish life not as finished and complete but as a work-in-progress to which every generation makes a contribution. As we understand it, Jewish life and community is a work of imagination, courage, and devotion that changes over time while preserving its unique wisdom and teaching about life as a blessing. It is a religious teaching that, like others, contributes to the human enterprise.  We want to equip Jews with the intellectual, ethical, and spiritual resources to engage in lifelong Jewish learning, community involvement, and commitment to the tasks of Jewish life. We want them to find our congregation’s diversity a source of blessing and inspiration. We have inherited religious, spiritual, and cultural practices and values that sustain us as they did our ancestors, but that also challenge us to find new meaning and thereby renew them. We preserve and change what we have received based on experience and thought rooted in the best that we have learned from historic Judaism and contemporary world civilizations. We contribute our efforts to the evolving, open Jewish religious civilization as envisioned in the teachings of the Jewish Reconstructionist movement, which is committed to Jewish peoplehood, God, and the teachings of Torah as a guide to ethical living. We are part of the world and part of the hearts and minds of our fellow Jews. Our goal is to make a significant difference in each other’s lives through the community we build and the work we do for everyone’s sake.