Notes from a talk given by Prof. Steven M. Cohen at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, London, UK, December 2 2009.
There has been an efflorescence of independent, exciting and creative collective Jewish activity carried out by young people in their 20s and 30s in the United States over the past decade. See, for example, The Continuity of Discontinuity: How Young Jews Are Connecting, Creating, and Organizing Their Own Jewish Lives by Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman, Reboot, 2007. http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=327
The new endeavors fit mainly into five major domains of activity, as follows:
1. Independent spiritual communities These can be divided into two main categories: new independent minyanim (congregations led by volunteers); and rabbi-led ‘emergent communities’, (rabbis starting their own congregations), both of which are non-Orthodox by definition. Orthodox Jews have always created these types of minyanim; but for this to be happening outside of Orthodoxy is new. The quality of davening (prayer) within these new communities is often exceptionally powerful and moving, and most represent an effective fusion of prayer, learning and social justice across the different compartments of Jewish life. Two of the most interesting examples are Kehilat Hadar in New York, and Ikar in Los Angeles. See, for example, Emergent Jewish Communities and their Participants: Preliminary Findings from the 2007 National Spiritual Communities Study by Steven M. Cohen, J. Shawn Landres, Elie Kaunfer, Michelle Shain; S3K Synagogue Studies Institute and Mechon Hadar. http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=2828
It is striking that funding has grown so much that there may be a professional shortage in this area.
One of the major debates within the field has been whether social justice work in the Jewish community should have an ulterior motive or not, i.e., whether initiatives should be established partly as a means to deepen engagement in Jewish life on the part of the volunteers, or purely for their own sake. Probably the leading advocate of social justice work, Ruth Messinger, President of the American Jewish World Service, strongly supports the latter position. She has made clear that the guiding purpose must be to serve the beneficiary. Of course, in so doing, there will be additional Jewish educational and inspirational benefits for the participants. This emphasis on the primacy of purpose is another defining feature of much of the innovative work that is currently taking place.
3. Jewish culture
New Jewish magazines and record labels have been established which fuse together Jewish and non-Jewish culture in innovative and intriguing ways. Of particular note are Heeb Magazine and JDub Records, to name just two illustrative phenomena. For others and for an assessment of the impact of Jewish cultural events, see Cultural Events and Jewish Identities: Young Adult Jews in New York by Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman, UJA-Federation of New York, 2005. http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=2911
4. New media
The growth of Jewish culture may partly be attributed to the expansion of the Internet and the decline in production costs, spawning a "pro-am" movement in cultural endeavors of all sorts. The Internet has allowed new music, videos and films to be produced and distributed at almost no cost. Much of the recent Jewish innovation focuses on building websites, which typically empower Jews to create their own Jewish lives on their own terms. As the Internet has become a two-way communications device, online innovations often allow users to participate in interesting Jewish activities that are free of any controlling authority. Examples include online facilities that allow people to create their own siddurim (prayer books) or access midrashim (Biblical commentaries) in ways that enable Jews to discover traditional texts.
5. Learning Possibly the most significant learning initiative, which has had a huge impact on Jewish education in Britain, the US and across the Jewish world, is Limmud. Its defining characteristics are that it allows Jews to take control of their own learning and Jewish life. Any model of education that enables this age cohort to feel empowered in this way is likely to succeed. Divrei Torah are becoming increasingly common, both as a practice and as a way to open meetings.
The ‘ABCD’ of young American Jews
Young people are distancing themselves from aspects of the Judaism of their elders, and responding to what they see as its shortcomings. Embodied within the endeavors outlined above is both a widely held, albeit unevenly shared, critique of conventional Jewish life. The Jewishly engaged but institutionally unaffiliated harbor four objections to the commonly available opportunities for affiliation, objections that may be encapsulated in the mnemonic "ABCD.":
A = Alienating: The young people leading these initiatives feel alienated from the more conventional Jewish world, and wish to challenge many of its perceived norms by offering far more independence of thought and action.
B = Bland and Boring: This is how they view the Jewish lifestyle choices of the older generation. They see conventional leaders as too homogeneous, and disturbingly closed to diversity in social class and family status. The Judaism they seek is stimulating, upbeat, passionate and happy.
C = Coercive: The younger Jews find established Jewish institutions implicitly coercive - aiming to induce younger Jews to marry each other, to conceive Jewish babies and to support Israeli government policies of which they are ambivalent. By contrast, the initiatives they are creating are characterized by an emphasis on autonomy and the respect for individual growth.
D = Divisive: They find conventional Jewish institutions divisive, in that they are seen as dividing Jews from non-Jews, Jews from each other, Jewish turf from non-Jewish turf, and Jewish culture from putatively (and artificially defined) non-Jewish culture. In contrast, they seek diversity in people, culture, and geography. They tend toward the post-denominational. Similarly, they like to open up the boundaries between Jewish and non-Jewish, borrowing freely from non-Jewish culture to create new forms of Jewish culture, and demonstrating clear preferences for activities that happen in non-Jewish spaces, rather than exclusively Jewish ones.
Why is all this happening now?
1. Demography Half of all non-Orthodox American Jews in the 25-39 age group are unmarried, and this represents the largest population of young Jewish single adults ever. This demographic is ill-suited to most traditional Jewish institutions such as synagogues and JCCs which focus on in-married Jewish couples with Jewish children.
2. Growth in Jewish education The huge growth of Jewish education in the 1980s and 1990s - day schools, camps, Israel experience, etc - has created a vast pool of Jewish social and cultural capital. When the graduates of these experiences fail to find their niche within existing initiatives and organizations, it is unsurprising that they should seek to create their own.
3. Growth of Non-Governmental Organizations There has been a huge growth in NGOs and all kinds of self-initiated projects in the wider society in the past couple of decades, and one would expect this trend to be mirrored in the Jewish world.
4. Social acceptance
Greater Jewish integration into wider society and the decline of Jewish vulnerability are particularly important phenomena. Being Jewish used to be a given, while being American was open to question. Today, being American is the given, while being Jewish is increasingly open to question. Jewish exclusivity is regarded by the younger generation as increasingly problematic, and many within this demographic are reluctant to participate in Jewish communal activity if their non-Jewish partner is unwelcome. Part of the wide appeal of Barack Obama to non-Orthodox Jews amongst this group was because of his stand against exclusivism and judgmentalism, and his desire to break down barriers between black and white, Republican and Democrat, etc.
Warning
The community may well need to ‘change or die’. The change agenda requires three components: a ‘wedge’ - a critical image of contemporary reality, a ‘magnet’ - a vision of how things could look, and a ‘bridge’ - a means by which to move towards that vision.
Steven M Cohen, Director of Research for S3K, discussed the new age of social innovation in American Jewish life at a seminar for Jewish community professionals in December. The seminar was organized jointly by JPR and JHub, the London-based Jewish Social Action and Innovation Hub. The original reflection can be found at http://www.jpr.org.uk/news/detail.php?id=141
It is somewhat surprising that researchers have paid so little attention to how people experience divorce in congregations. Studies that do address the relationship between religion and divorce are largely quantitative, measuring divorce numbers. Rarely do these reports consider the personal impact and how (or if) communities support those affected by divorce. Do synagogues know how to handle end of relationship issues?
From 2005 to 2009, author Kathleen E. Jenkins conducted sixty interviews with divorced individuals (eleven Jewish) active in a variety of religious communities. Jenkins interviewed forty clergy (twelve rabbis) and lay leaders. Three of the rabbis had been divorced.
Jenkins includes anecdotes from her interviews that may surprise many in the synagogue community while not surprise others at all. The report concludes with some simple, practical suggestions for synagogues to better serve this distinct community.
This S3K Report on "BJ," features three fascinating pieces. Professors Ayala Fader and Mark Kligman undertook a very rich and revealing ethnography of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (BJ) on New York’s Upper West Side, back in 1998 under the auspices of then Synagogue 2000 and BJ itself. Ten years later, they present a reflection now, of BJ, then. "The New Jewish Spirituality and Prayer: Take BJ, For Instance" discerns the elements of BJ’s synagogue culture in a truly insightful and valuable fashion.
Then, B’nai Jeshurun’s three spiritual leaders - Rabbis J. Rolando Matalon, Marcelo R. Bronstein and Felicia L. Sol - offer their fascinating perspective on the distinctive BJ experience in, "Take BJ from its Rabbis’ Point of View."
S3K cofounder Rabbi Larry Hoffman and S3K Director of Research Professor Steven M. Cohen introduce the companion pieces, adding their views and insights to the mix. These three pieces, compiled into one report, then, combine the perspectives of outsiders and insiders, as well as rabbis and social scientists, upon one of the most intriguing developments in Jewish congregational life in North America today.
This winter, my husband and I quit the Conservative shul that we belonged to for nearly ten years. While the saying – "winners never quit and quitters never win" – resonates in my head, I realize that sometimes leaders need to assess circumstances, cut losses, learn from their experience, and move on.
Our decision to leave our congregation has been part of a larger journey that began prior to my affiliation with the Wexner Heritage Program and intensified over the last year. Raised in a Conservative Jewish home, I turned to Conservative Judaism as an adult more out of reflex than reflection when we decided to join a congregation in the suburbs.
The rabbi at the congregation we just left is lovely – a young, fun, and thoughtful person. Most of the congregants are really nice people who are trying their best to build a community through faith. We had no clash of wills with the rabbi, administration, or congregants. Instead, we found that we simply did not adhere to the belief system that anchors the Conservative Movement.
After years of attending services, I knew we were not Conservative Jews and had no aspiration to become Conservative Jews. Like so many, I suspect, we were simply paying our dues out of inertia. Our son’s bar mitzvah was looming on the horizon. I didn’t have the strength or will to explore other options. The only other congregation in easy commuting distance from our home is a Reform temple that we tried years earlier and did not find particularly welcoming. And, yes, there was a good dose of Jewish guilt thrown in, too. Good Jews affiliated with a congregation; Bad Jews chose not to affiliate. I did not want to be a Bad Jew. So I settled for being a Disconnected Jew.
My first Wexner Summer Institute in Aspen opened my eyes to meaningful prayer options. At first, I wanted to skip the optional morning prayer sessions. Why not catch some extra sleep at the luxurious St. Regis? I didn’t attend morning minyan at home, I reasoned, so why start now? I’m so glad I didn’t take the lazy route. I woke up early, grabbed coffee, and tried the liberal minyan. Coffee is allowed at morning prayers at Wexner, which got me thinking about designing cup holders for pews, but I digress. A-ha! It is possible to gather together, pray, contemplate, and discuss torah in a meaningful way. It is possible for me to engage in ritual that does not feel stale or forced. It is possible to feel a sense of community.
I came to understand that I could connect congregationally, but that my choices back home were not suiting my needs. When I made this observation to a mentor of mine, his response was, "work to change it from within." Easier said than done. Ever petition a synagogue Ritual Committee? Death Row inmates get more due process. Ever try to change a Religious School curriculum or hire a Religious School director? Try wading into that muck for a few weeks.
After a year of soul-searching, I concluded that I cannot (and should not) change the Conservative Movement or my synagogue in particular. In the words of Gandhi, I need to "be the change I want to see in the world." And in this instance, I needed to step away graciously. I am now comfortable in the Land of the Unaffiliated. It may be my permanent residence, but I hope that my family finds the congregational connection we need. First, though, we will engage in a period of denominational palate-cleansing that will renew our focus on home rituals. We’ll research, read, and talk together. Then we are going to explore our options with open hearts and open minds.
I’m proud to say it: I’m a quitter. But I’m taking steps to lead myself toward finding meaning and joy in my Judaism.
Authors Alex Sinclair and Esti Moskovitz-Kalman discuss the new conversation needed in American synagogues regarding Israel. "Israel engagement" has meant lending political and philanthropic support to the beleaguered Jewish State. Today it must in mean something different, something more personal. Add you voice to the conversation!
Rabbi Michael Wasserman
The New Shul, Scottsdale, AZ
Perhaps the most important message to come out of Synagogue 3000 is its call for synagogues to break with the consumer paradigm. As Lawrence Hoffman has put it, “Whatever authentic Jewish spirituality is, it can find its way into synagogues only if synagogues cease being communities that people join as consumers, buying services with dues” (Rethinking Synagogues, p. 131).
When we put a price tag on synagogue membership, we in effect define membership as a purchase, which turns members into customers. Having made that equation, we cannot blame members for expecting synagogues to organize themselves around the “sovereign self.” When we “buy” something, we value it according to how well it meets our personal needs. The customer is always right. We should not be surprised that members apply that logic to the synagogue, if the synagogue itself frames its work in market terms.
The vocabulary of consumerism is so deeply ingrained in American synagogue life that we often take it for granted. How often do synagogue leaders speak, without irony, of their programs and services as their “product,” and their outreach as “marketing?” But that vocabulary undermines attempts to make the synagogue a place of deeper meaning. To the extent that synagogues embrace the language of the marketplace – i.e. of private benefit – they find it difficult to speak with credibility of mitzvah. If we wish to revitalize the synagogue, to cultivate a sense of meaning and belonging deeper than a vendor/customer relationship, we must use a different vocabulary.
The call by S3K to move beyond the consumer paradigm resonates very deeply with me, as co-founder (with my wife Rabbi Elana Kanter) of a synagogue that has done that at a very literal level, by eliminating membership dues. When we launched The New Shul in Scottsdale Arizona in 2002, one of our core principles was that membership would not be for sale, and hence all giving would be voluntary. The New Shul’s message on membership was, and is, that financial support is not the price of belonging, but an expression of belonging, part of a broader sense of shared commitment that defines participation in a spiritual community. Our alternative – and we believe the only real alternative – to spiritual consumerism is a culture of mutual responsibility, or, in a word, community. For the past seven years, our members have supported the shul (complete with payroll and building mortgage) entirely on voluntary pledges. Because membership is not a purchase, no one asks “What am I getting for my money?”
We have found that moving beyond the vocabulary of the market is tremendously validating to those who have the greatest potential to revitalize non-orthodox Judaism, those who are searching for religious meaning in commitments that transcend the self – or, to put it another way, who understand that their deepest need is to be needed. Their sensibility can be called “post-liberal” in that they take their personal autonomy for granted, and hence feel no need to hoard their freedom, to resist commitment. Their autonomy has evolved from freedom from to freedom for. This post-liberalsensibility, in which voluntary obligation is not an oxymoron, is at the heart of the neo-traditionalism that informs many of the new emergent communities that Synagogue 3000 has studied (see Emergent Jewish Communities and Their Participants, Steven M. Cohen et al, 2007).
To be sure, post-liberal Jews inhabit mainstream synagogues as well. Often, they are the heart and soul of those institutions. But ironically, even as they strengthen mainstream synagogues with their energies, they often find themselves out of sync with those institutions’ public vocabulary. The language of the market, which their synagogues rely on so heavily, does not describe their own involvement. They pay their dues like everyone else, but they do not think – or at least do not wish to think – of the money as payment for services rendered. They hunger for a language that can give voice to a deeper sense of mitzvah.
Restructuring our synagogues so that they speak the language that those Jews truly wish to speak, that use the vocabulary of shared responsibility, ought to be a priority for us. So I say amen to the call by Synagogue 3000 to transcend the consumer paradigm.
The picture gets more complicated, however, in that many of the practical prescriptions coming out of SK3 – ostensibly designed to meet that goal – seem to be at odds with that vision. Much of the S3K literature calls for customizing synagogue experiences to individual tastes, and marketing programs to specific interest groups, drawing on the retail and entertainment industries for inspiration. Lawrence Hoffman, in his model of the non-orthodox “Experience Synagogue,” forgoes any notion of shared commitment (at least as far as worship and/or learning are concerned), and emphasizes personalization instead. He envisions people taking advantage of a wide menu of synagogue offerings according to their individual tastes, much as they shop for clothes (Rethinking Synagogues, pp. 174-175).
If we ask for no sense of shared responsibility, then aren’t we treating people, in essence, as spiritual consumers? Aren’t we inviting them, in effect, to “buy” spiritual experiences? How does this differ from the paradigm that we are attempting to break with?
I am not suggesting that models like the “Experience Synagogue” have no place. To the contrary, there is clearly value in upgrading the existing consumer paradigm, in offering more attractive programs and services to the tentative and uncommitted. Religious consumerism will be with us for a long time, and, as long as it is, we need to do a better job of – yes, marketing what are in essence spiritual products. My point is not that we should reject that work. It is that, even as we support that work, we must recognize that it is very different from the other task that we have set for ourselves, the task of creating communities that move beyond consumerism. Enhancing the consumer model, figuring out how to do it better, is not the same thing as transcending it.
It seems to me that there is a tension in the Synagogue 3000 literature between means and ends, which calls for clarification.
Choice Does Not Always Mean Consumer Choice
Rabbi Alan Brill
Seton Hall University
On Sunday nights, I am glued to my TV watching the hit show Mad Men The show ostensively focuses on an ad agency in 1962 portraying the rise of advertising and consumer culture in America. But the real story is the sense of falling and anxiety that occurred when the certainties of the nineteen fifties gave way to the individualism of the 1960’s. I find that this post “ Beyond Spiritual Consumerism. . . Or Not” confuses the plot with the real story.
In the 1950’s people learned to accept culturally constructed institutions and model ideal attitudes whose expectations might not have been experienced privately. In the 1960’s people started to seek their own individual directions and overcome the split between the institutional and the personal. They moved from dwelling to seeking. By the 1980’s and 1990’s this individualism became the norm.
Jews aspired to a collective idea of peoplehood and accepted institutional attitudes toward Judaism, family life, and society. Mordechai Kaplan’s important re-evaluation of Judaism was based on the descriptive ideas of Durkheim in which individuals express themselves in collectives. But what comes after Durkheim, and the evident decline in self-definition through Jewish institutions?
Charles Taylor in his recent work A Secular Age points out that Durkheim’s approach — in which individuals expressed themselves in collectives and institutions — no longer holds true in its original meaning. Religion today, Taylor argues, can be found in “the continuing multiplication of new options, religious, spiritual, and anti-religious, which individuals seize on in order to make sense of their lives.” Taylor stresses the complex ways in which religion is now even more a part of our daily lives, and the importance of a multiplicity of practices and interpretations to deal with this variety.
In the post –Durkheim reality described by Taylor, we need to reframe the issue away from peoplehood to individual meanings and smaller social units, in short, religion in the human life. We need to think in terms of changes based on the small changes of meanings and moral orders.
Take, for example, the variety of religious experiences and moral orders that could be found among the pews in a single congregation on Yom Kippur 2009. We will find people from whom Judaism is of varying importance in their daily lives, but for whom the content of that Judaism is different and varying. There will be those who adhere to old-time theology, those for whom Judaism is about being a politically conservative ADL supporter, those who are progressive, another who stresses social action, another who understands reality using 12-step language, and another who eclectically combines Chabad, feng shui, and Buddhist spirituality, those who are uplifted through art, and even moral majority Jews who embrace Judaism for its strong “family values.” There are dozens of other Jewish moral orders, no congregation has even half of them. People choose to obligate themselves to these diverse meanings because they help make sense of their lives.
Recently, many analysts of the Jewish community have picked up the phrase “spiritual marketplace” (first used a generation ago) and proceed to compare the Jewish choices made by today’s Jew to the choice of a “grande soy latte” in Starbucks – a simile implying a degree of pampering and meaningless luxuries. Viewing Jews making life decisions as Starbucks customers, their policy proposals emphasize the need to reach younger Jews through better marketing. However, religious choices, as Robert Wuthnow has stressed, reflect an attempt to create meaningful lives and a structure of moral orders. Multiple choices do not lead to the banal market pluralism, but to a variety of constructed finite religious identities.
When entering the contemporary spiritual landscape, the contemporary Jew experiences not three or four denominations, but dozens of flavors. Synagogues and Jewish organization become specialized into single products for specialized audiences. So of course, people enjoy the Synaplex model because it gives them a possibility, a chance, to experience what they find meaningful. If they are lucky, they can find their personal vision validated.
To return to the original issue of equating choice with consumer choice, we need to look at moral orders and meanings created.
Seekers, as Wuthnow categorized them, are not a single category but are many approaches and many moral orders. While some still seek naturalism, other seekers embrace traditional concepts of God. The literature in the field of spirituality divides spirituality into anywhere between four to ten different types. Many of the books from Alban Institute place the number at four.
Rabbis need to know that these different types of spirituality are not interchangeable and that congregants are not choosing them just for consumerist variety. Some congregants seeking certain forms of spirituality are actually repelled by some of the others. No one congregation can attempt all of the current varieties of spirituality. No Rabbi can offer all of them. But there is shopping because there in fact several different unique types of spirituality, each with their own sense of meaning, not because they have internalized the marketplace values.
The blog post asked “If we ask for no sense of shared responsibility, then aren’t we treating people, in essence, as spiritual consumers?”
The answer is no! Judaism is capacious and has the possibility of many meanings constructed and many moral orders formed. That is, unless, the vision is to return the community to the 1950’s. We watch Mad Men to remind ourselves how much we have changed.
I put on my hiking boots and followed the Adventure Rabbi onto a trail through the wildflowers. I expected a beautiful hike into one of Boulder’s canyons… but I didn’t realize that as I was taking in the Rocky Mountains, I’d also gain a new insight into my generation’s quest for meaningful Judaism.
Rabbi Jamie Korngold is the Adventure Rabbi. An avid skier and lover of the outdoors, she created the Adventure Rabbi program with her husband, Jeff Finkelstein - a mountain climber and expert skier with many years’ experience on ski patrol. (There are Jews on ski patrol?? Who knew?) The Adventure Rabbi Program: A Synagogue Without Walls is a community for Jews who "like to do Jewish" outside. They celebrate Shabbat and holidays skiing, hiking, camping and learning Jewish texts and values off the beaten track. The Adventure Rabbi Program is a Jewish community without walls, in which the participants take seriously their responsibility to welcome new people, to learn about each other, to celebrate together, and to study Judaism. It is a community that brings together all kinds of Jews– the in-married, the out-married and the non-married; men, women, kids; real athletes and some urban folks who don’t mind getting a little shmutzy. This is a real Jewish community– the kind I would want to join! And most interestingly, it is a community where lots of folks who usually feel unwelcome in synagogues - single 25-45 year old women and men (hello??!! anybody seen these guys in a synagogue recently?) want to learn, share, participate, and help build a Jewish community.
How on earth did an urban rabbi such as myself stumble upon these outdoor Jews? Rabbi Korngold was invited to participate in S3K’s Emergent network - a group of innovative rabbis building unusual Jewish communities.
So, as I followed Jamie onto the trail through the wildflowers, we talked about Jewish prayer. Judaism has done a lousy job over the years of creating a prayer language that feels accessible. Think about it, our images of God from our liturgy are not images most of us can identify with: Who is this God on high who took us out from slavery with an outstretched arm?… And what does that even mean? Now we’re faced with the reality that going to shul and sitting through services is not meaningful to many people either because they have no personal internal prayer life at all or because they do, but they’d rather be somewhere other than a synagogue to pray. Synagogue membership is down. Young people, in general, are not joining synagogues– especially not the unmarried ones– and very especially not the guys. BUT, we so want community, we want to celebrate Shabbat together, we want to learn about Judaism, we want to build meaningful Jewish identities - and we crave the relationships both bein adam l’chavero - between people - and bein adam l’makom - between us and God - that Jewish communities can help us build.
What does this have to do with the Rocky Mountains? I’ll tell you. Here’s what Jamie and I talked about on our hike: The wilderness allows people to use vocabulary that would feel cheesy, sappy or otherwise overly poetic anywhere else. In nature, we’re allowed to use words of awe. It’s the only place where that vocabulary is widely accepted and can be used by "in," "out" and "non"-marrieds and by women AND men. Exclamations of wonder and awe are easy to say and hear when standing next to a hanging glacier or a tiny purple wildflower growing up from the parched desert. People get used to using vocabulary that expresses gratitude, awareness, searching when we’re surrounded by nature. And once those words enter our vocabulary and we feel safe using them… they can be used in a Jewish context, too. How easy it is to be thankful for beauty that we see, to raise questions about the inexplicable, to ask for help climbing over a huge boulder when we’ve all agreed that awe-language is appropriate.
And not only that. Once it’s ok to share the beauty, the questions, the scale of things, we realize that we’re a part of it - tiny in some ways, mighty in others - and all dependent on each other. Walking up what seemed like a vertical wall of slickrock in Moab, I looked up to find a hand waiting to help me, before I ever had to ask.
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Now that the earthly trial of Bernard Madoff has come to an end with a sentence of 150 years in prison, he will await his next trial — the heavenly one.
Although eschatology is not emphasized in Judaism, there is a recurring metaphor in rabbinic literature of a “heavenly tribunal,” an accounting of one’s actions on earth. For 2,000 years, rabbis have imagined what questions might be asked at such a trial. Astonishingly, one sage, Rava, imagines the very first question you are asked in heaven is: “Were you honest in your business dealings?”
In the months since the Madoff story broke, clergy have weighed in on the lessons of the scandal in hundreds of sermons. Some have focused on the pain of the victims, others on the greed of the perpetrator. Most conclude with exhortations regarding the importance of business ethics. Priests and rabbis, imams and pastors, have used the Madoff case as an opportunity to remind their congregants that trust and accountability are the bedrock values of business.
Why on earth — or rather, why in heaven’s name — would the first question one is asked in heaven be about business? Because it’s not just about business. The question is about honesty, integrity, faithfulness. If you are not honest in your business dealings, can you be trusted to be honest in other relationships? If you are not honest with others, can you be honest with yourself? If you are not faithful with others, can your faith in God be trusted?
The idea that those entrusted with other people’s money have a fiduciary responsibility to safeguard and account for it dates back to the Bible itself. When the Israelites receive the Ten Commandments, God instructs Moses to solicit gifts from “every person whose heart so moves him.” These gifts are then to be used for building a Tabernacle, an elaborate sanctuary fashioned from precious metals, stones and wood.
It is quite the construction project, requiring significant contributions of treasure from the people. When it is completed, Moses gives a detailed public accounting of the expenditures.
Why? Wouldn’t the people have trusted their great leader?
Some commentators imagine that the people did not trust Moses. Others suggest that Moses anticipated the accusations, taking upon himself a process of accountability in order to pre-empt the suspicions of others. In either case, the clear lesson is that leaders of a community must avoid any hint of personal aggrandizement when entrusted with public funds.
Madoff committed another offense, in addition to stealing: He brought shame upon the Jewish people. Many of the charities and nonprofit organizations losing hundreds of millions of dollars served the Jewish community, including the foundation of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel.
Since the Madoff confession, the Jewish community has gone through much anguish and soul searching. How could a Jew perpetrate this devastating fraud on fellow Jews, including major foundations and institutions that have been obliterated in one fell swoop? Madoff made a mockery of the notion that all Jews are responsible for each other.
These are some of the questions Bernard Madoff will be contemplating in prison as he serves out his sentence. Although we may not witness his next trial, the one before the heavenly court, it is not difficult to imagine what his sentence will be.
Why?” we ask, when people act outrageously, “Why in the world would you do that?”
The answer almost always is, “Because….” And that answer is usually wrong.
“Because,” translates into, “Here is the cause.” But people rarely do things on account of causes. More often they act on account of reasons. We do well to note the difference.
In this week’s Torah portion, Korach and Company rise up against Moses with the plaint, “Enough already! The entire congregation is holy…. Who are you to lord yourself over the congregation of God?” The dispute arises when Moses hands over the priesthood to one family rather than another. Enough was enough for Korach; Moses had gone too far.
The priesthood decision was the cause of the rebellion. It was not, however, the reason behind it.
A cause is some objective event, something that happens, a decision made to resolve a crisis. A reason is the subjective baggage people bring to the cause. The cause is singular. Reasons are multiple; they vary from person to person; and they are not always healthy. Healthy reasons address the cause and its likelihood of solving the crisis; unhealthy reasons reflect deep-seated fears and insecurities. Korach’s claim “The entire congregation is holy” is a healthy reason; “Who are you to Lord yourself over the congregation” is not.
Unhealthy reasoning dissipates any chance of coalescing around reasonable positions. Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer gets it right: “It doesn’t say ‘Korach and the others separated themselves,’ but ‘Korach [singular] separated himself.’ That is because each rebel had a different interest in the matter.” That, add most commentators, is why it was not “an argument for the sake of heaven.” The “cause” was just the excuse for prompting old animosities, prior agendas, and personal insecurities: all of them unhealthy reasons, not healthy ones.
If the cause were the only thing that mattered, a healthy conversation about it (citing healthy reasons only) would produce a solution. But unhealthy reasons get in the way, and they are harder to address because they go unspoken, and, usually, unrecognized, even by the parties themselves. When unhealthy reasons get the best of us, the healthy ones go on vacation. Some synagogue boards attract and reward “unhealthy reasoners,” and when they do, the healthy reasoners don’t run for office.
There are three variables, actually: “cause,” “reason” and “crisis.” The cause of the debate is an action someone takes (or threatens to take) to solve a crisis. The crisis here, say some of our commentators, was the golden calf, which prompted Moses to change the “organizational structure” of the Israelite camp by reassigning the priesthood. That decision would have solved the crisis, but when Moses mentioned it, people with unhealthy reasons made it into a cause. Knowing God would demolish his enemies in an earthquake, Moses had it easy. How do we handle controversy when — alas for the good guys – God has retired from the earthquake business?
Take the case of Congregation Nameless. The executive officers proposed solving the current economic crisis by cutting programs. A healthy board would have debated the proposal with healthy reasons, like the potential impact of the cuts on synagogue life.
But the debate included unhealthy reasons that got swept under the table rather than faced. A sure sign was the fact that people acted rudely toward each other, sometimes interrupting and even shouting. Rancorous debate carried over from the board meetings onto email and into shopping lines at the local grocery store.
The Education chair, for example, noted that a smaller budget meant less education, but said nothing about her underlying insecurity: her need for recognition. House Committee members stood firm in their plan to enlarge the sanctuary – if that got cut, their many hours spent would be in vain, and they would become irrelevant to the congregation’s immediate future.
That’s the way it works: from crisis to cause to reasons. Discussion on the cause can never allay the “reasonable” fears of the parties if the reasons running the discussion are unhealthy. And we all have unhealthy reasons. We just don’t always recognize them.
Torah calls our unhealthy reasons the yetser hara – “the evil inclination” that makes us human. Since we all have them, we should not be embarrassed by them. Being unembarrassed by them, we can admit them and put them aside. We can even chuckle a bit about them, when we see them acting up (and ourselves acting out). Banishing unhealthy reasons allows healthy ones to debate the actual cause and solve the crisis.
In Congregation Nameless, unhealthy reasons still go unchecked. It is a real place, incidentally. A year has gone by and it is still fighting. And I remember its name, come to think of it. It is Congregation B’nai Korach.
Before saying anything to the topic at hand, in the interests of full disclosure, let me share a few facts about myself. I have been the rabbi of The Forest Hills Jewish Center, a large, urban Conservative synagogue in Queens, NY, for the past twenty-eight years. But though I serve a Conservative congregation and was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary, my educational and experiential background is Orthodox. I grew up in an observant Orthodox family, attended Yeshiva Day School and High School, and graduated Yeshiva University before completing a masters degree in Bible at NYU, and rabbinical training at JTS.
And so it is that I straddle two worlds, both personally and professionally. Leaving Orthodoxy was a conscious decision for me. Years spent at Camp Ramah, and ultimately at JTS, convinced me that the religious world of my youth had become too confining, standing in the way of my religious growth instead of nurturing it. I was suffocating there, and needed to acknowledge that my horizons had broadened in a way that could never be reversed. But even as I migrated to the Conservative world, I retained my deeply rooted love of (and respect for) the regular and passionate practice of Jewish ritual as a whole, and particularly Jewish prayer. I never stopped attending synagogue or being observant, even as I embraced a different conceptual framework within which to observe.
Within Conservative Judaism, at least as it manifests itself in many Conservative congregations (as opposed to Orthodox ones, and the more homogeneous, self-selecting Havurot and prayer communities), that life-long love of regular Jewish practice has, not surprisingly, proved frustratingly difficult to satisfy. Actually, it’s not only Jewish practice that I grew up loving, but also the “given-ness” of that practice, if you will, rooted in the idea of hiyyuv… the sense that said practice is obligatory, and not a volitional act depending on the will (or lack thereof) of the individual Jew. The religious world that I minister to today, in the language of contemporary sociologists, is one wherein the “sovereign self” has almost completely trumped the “commanding presence” of God and its accompanying notion of obligation. Everything religious needs to be marketed, and to the degree that it is marketed well, or effectively, it stands a chance of becoming part of a religious routine. But there is precious little idea of obligation in the world of the sovereign self. Sovereign selves do not like to be told what to do, or what is expected of them.
It is from this vantage point that I approach the work of Synagogue 3000, STAR, and similar organizations dedicated to the re-creation and re-vitalization of the American synagogue. I understand the challenge at hand. I work with those “Jews in the pews” (or not in the pews!) every day, and know the deep sense of alienation that so many of them feel from traditional synagogue worship and ritual. They are profoundly disconnected from that world of Jewish practice that I live, breathe, and so value. But I have a nagging feeling that, though I understand the goals of organizations like Synagogue 3000 and appreciate what they are trying to accomplish, re-creating the synagogue and its worship is, at its core, a flawed enterprise. That’s why I’ve called this piece a “concurring dissent:” an oxymoron if ever there was one. I agree with the problem, but I’m uncomfortable with the solution. We are changing the davening to suit the daveners, and in so doing, we are losing something precious and irretrievable.
This discussion is not, to me at least, about egalitarianism, which I embrace, or the need to make our services more participatory and less of a spectator sport. I agree, wholeheartedly. It is, rather, about being able to appreciate the prayer experience from within, as opposed to critiquing it from without.
Whatever ambivalence I might have about my Orthodox education through my college years, one great blessing that it gifted me with was a remarkable comfort level with synagogue life and practice. The words of our prayers come easily and naturally to me, as do the melodies to which they are traditionally chanted. Those prayers are my spiritual comfort food. No matter what state of mind I bring to prayer, they are the mantra that enables me to access my spiritual self, regardless of setting. Setting helps, to be sure, but it does not determine whether or not I can have a spiritual experience. When I visit a synagogue that I’m not familiar with, even if it’s a place where I would never choose to daven, I can still talk to God there.
Coming from Orthodoxy to Conservative Judaism, I have always thought that we set the bar far too low for our laypeople in terms of expectations. Because so many of them are Hebraically challenged, we’ve added more and more English. Because quietly spoken words of prayer don’t resonate with meaning for so many, we emphasize singing and minimize opportunities for individual prayer (which was always the bulk of the traditional prayer service, but today brings people uncomfortably close to their linguistic and spiritual inadequacies). And perhaps most importantly- we have decided for them that they can’t deal with the traditional service because they’re not equipped to. So instead of raising them up to the bar of tradition, we tend to lower the bar to them. Again, the issue is not egalitarianism, or participation. The issue is prayer itself. Is it possible that Orthodox outreach efforts enjoy the success that they do because they try to change the daveners to suit the davening?
Just something to think about…
Ron Wolfson’s response…
Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik raises important issues in his posting: the notion of hiyyuv – obligation – as the primary motivation for observance, the challenge of making prayer meaningful and accessible to those who do not feel “obligated,” and the need for “synagogue transformation” initiatives.
The first – and most important – point to be made is that phenomenal congregational rabbis like Skolnik “toil in these vineyards” on a daily basis…and understand the challenges facing synagogue leadership better than anyone. In the past year alone, I have visited more than two dozen congregations – Conservative, Reform, Orthodox, Reconstructionist and Independent Minyanim – and most of them struggle with these critical issues.
For me, the great value in “synagogue transformation” efforts is to a) raise these questions and conduct research that reaches beyond anecdote to hard data for the purposes of illuminating the discussion, and 2) raise the bar of expectation in what a spiritual community can be – even for those “sovereign self” Jews who do not feel obligated in any way to participate and engage in synagogue life.
Why is it important to worry about the “sovereign self” Jews? First of all, there are far more of them in our community than “hiyyuv” Jews and I, for one, will not dismiss them, give up on them, or ignore them. Second, I have never bought into the “saving remnant” argument that the community ought to pour its resources into a tiny percentage of Jews who will “save” Judaism for the next generation. Third, in my opinion, we have done precious little to create a truly outreach-oriented, welcoming community in our synagogues. Since Synagogue 3000 “rang the bell” on this issue, some of our congregations have gotten better at creating a culture of welcome in our institutions…but, believe me, we have a long, long way to go.
As for what Synagogue 3000 “advocates,” particularly with regard to worship, let me make it clear that there is no one answer. We are blessed with staff and supporters from across the Jewish spectrum…and we embrace the diversity of goals and strategies that we have been privileged to bring to those interested in our work. What we share is a vision of the synagogue as a kehillah kedoshah, a sacred community of meaning and purpose. Our Number One challenge is to increase the level of engagement with such communities, even among the members we already have in our midst.
This brings me back to Rabbi Skolnik’s main point: should we alter the davenning or “alter” the davenners? Here too, there is some misunderstanding of what Synagogue 3000 advocates. We have never advocated “more English readings;” in fact, several of the most outstanding models of an engaging prayer experience are almost entirely conducted in Hebrew. Similarly, many of the “independent minyanim” that we have studied in the S3K Synagogue Studies Institute would certainly never think of “watering down” what they believe is an authentic Jewish prayer experience in order to reach more people.
Another “red herring” in this debate is the use of musical instruments on Shabbat. We have never suggested this as “the answer” to increasing the vitality of the worship experience. The issue is not instrumentation; it is what we used to call in our synagogue youth groups and camps “ruach” – spirit; a prayer experience that lifts up participants through a variety of means: participatory singing, serious text study, a challenging message, the warmth of a welcoming community, the celebration of lifecycle moments.
Personally, I wish more Jews felt a sense of “hiyyuv.” But, unless you are lucky enough to have grown up with this sense, I am convinced we need to continue to think of ways to invite the “sovereign self” Jews in, to ignite the spark of spirituality that I believe is just underneath the surface of most human beings, and to engage them in the life of the community in a much deeper way when they do decide to join our membership ranks. Otherwise, I fear we will see more and more empty seats in our pews, even on the High Holy Days (a phenomenon many rabbis report to us).
As for Synagogue 3000, we continue our research into synagogue life through the S3K Synagogue Studies Institute and welcome the debate, the dialogue and the heartfelt conversations that Rabbi Skolnik and others are good enough to stimulate.
Dr. Ron Wolfson
Larry Hoffman’s response…
Dear Rabbi Skolnik,
Many thanks for raising the issues you do. In his usual informative and sympathetic manner, Ron Wolfson has already provided our S3K position on them; and there is no point in restating what he has said — better, I expect, than I could have. I do, however, want to reiterate the fact that S3K has never mandated solutions for individual synagogues. As a transdenominational organization with enormous regard for congregations everywhere along the spectrum of practice and belief, we have emphasized new ways of thinking that congregations might or might not find useful (each in its own fashion). In the case of prayer, that has sometimes entailed drawing attention to areas of the service that were being overlooked and that could be attended to with equal ease by everyone — Ron’s best example is “welcoming.” Sometimes it has meant challenging denominational stereotypes that Jews in one movement have of another. Sometimes it has entailed initiating a conversation that was not likely to take place elsewhere.
With the last goal in mind, let me respond in a manner differently from Ron – using another hat I wear, that of a lifelong student of liturgy and prayer. How might we think differently?
I begin as you did: with personal candor. I am a Reform Jew who has arrived at these positions as part of the way I think my own movement ought to approach the issues of prayer. At the same time, I, like you, come from a positive childhood experience of traditional prayer. I learned to daven well before my bar mitzvah, and appreciate the traditional siddur, especially since I have the added benefit of studying it in such depth as an adult, whose scholarly field it is. On virtually every page I am tempted to stop and admire the story behind what I see; I love the different sounds of our musical tradition, and the psychological feel of the whole experience. This past Shabbat (second day of Shavuot) I attended an Orthodox shul where the davening took 4 ½ hours. The “regulars” apologized to me for its length. I, by contrast, enjoyed it from beginning to end.
But here is the rub: most Jews today do not know what I know, have not been brought up as I have, have different sensibilities than I do, and (as a consequence) think altogether differently about prayer in general. We have three options. 1. We can ignore or dismiss them as anything from ignorant to sinful. 2. We can alter the service – with English, let us say — so as to speak to them, but take a dim view of what we are doing: call it pandering (at worst), watering down (a bit better), or a temporary measure necessitated by the difficult times but intended to raise the ignorant to our own superior position of knowledgeable appreciation “for the real thing.” Or, finally (3), we can decide that there really is no such thing as the real thing; that we are not the first generation to claim the right to adapt the past to the present; and that there are many alternative criteria that we might adopt to guide the way we adapt.
Appropriately, as the committed Conservative Jew you are, your own view is determined by how you view halakhah, which, since the Middle Ages, has indeed codified certain practices as proper. I, by contrast, see halakhah as a richly textured testimony to the way Jews then had adapted Jewish prayer, but not necessarily how I should. The prayer book was codified in more ways than one – the ninth-century version of Rav Amram became probative, as it happens. But Amram and his scholarly colleagues regularly explain their custom by saying, “That is what how we do things here [in Babylonia],” knowing that theirs is not the only option. All of this is readily countered by a halakhic Jew who can easily find older, apparently more elemental, assumptions – “Rav Amram and his opponents at least agreed on the basics of the Talmud,” let us say. But as you know, the two Talmuds differ also on a great deal, and were you then to say that they both follow the Mishnah, I would contend that the Mishnah too has many alternatives. You know all this of course. You will agree with my facts but disagree with their implications. My whole line of thought may be irrelevant for someone committed to a traditional view of rabbinic authority as provided by the codes, and I do not argue it as a better way to think. I state it only to demonstrate that there is another way to think, and that depending on this bedrock starting point, one arrives at different criteria for what can or should be done today. Even if there were but one way to approach the question, I see no way to arrive at it without begging the question we want to approach.
To begin with, I do not concede your point that because of a sovereign self, people do not, as a rule, feel commanded (or even obliged) to pray. I prefer thinking that the sovereign self means simply that people are more apt to try on commandedness and obligation in their own personally idiosyncratic ways; that if they knew how, they would as readily seek out God’s will for us as did even the most pious Jews of the past; and that the problem is not them but us, the knowledgeable rabbis who want them to seek God “more conveniently,” meaning “the way we think we did.” My first point, then, is that those years are over; it is not just pointless but incorrect as well to mourn their passing; we need to appreciate what sovereign selves in fact do, insofar as they have any interest whatever in what might sometimes look to them like our own rabbinically arcane ways of thinking.
Second, I warn against setting ourselves up as curators of a Jewish museum. Insofar as we take the position that we must take care to guard the tradition against those who would dismiss it, trash it, or water it down, we are apt to lose perspective on what we are guarding. Sometimes even the greatest museums prune their holdings, putting some once-loved treasures in storage until, perhaps (but only perhaps), another generation reclaims them. Even as guardians, we ought to be wary of what needs guarding and what does not.
More troubling is the very image of ourselves as guardians. It presupposes adefensive response to Philistines at the gate, whereas I do not consider the sovereign selves in any way to be Philistines. I prefer thinking of ourselves not as guardians of art already finished, but an extension of the artists themselves – a chain in the Jewish People’s artistry. That is not the same as a chain in the Jewish People’s tradition, which might indeed presuppose a bedrock essence that is crystal clear to anyone who peers under the museum’s glass casing. If there is such a thing, except for truisms like Jewish monotheism, I do not know how we can arrive at it – and even there, what counts as appropriate expressions of that monotheism is not at all self-evident. That artists can go too far is clear to anyone who studies the history of art, but how we know just when the artist goes too far is harder to determine. At the very least, we know that the final say is available only after the fact, when history judges the work properly “artistic” or not. We know also that artists never work as fully sovereign selves – they create in response to traditional artistry with which they become familiar – so starting altogether de novo is not only wrongheaded but, in the case of serious Jewish artistry, even impossible. “Strong poets,” says literary critic Harold Bloom, are in agonistic struggle against with predecessors. New composers create variations on old ones. Standards of art can change – they do change, they must change — without debasing the excellence that defines the nature of art. The issue becomes the criteria for that excellence.
Now a fully halakhic Jew, in the sense in which I think you understand halakhah, would not have to deny my artistic analogy. At stake would be the criteria by which the art is measured, and here we return to our bedrock assumptions about the role of the law codes, the Talmud, and legal precedent. In their own ways, modern Orthodoxy and Conservatism too — no less than any other serious grappling with Jewish past — do not know what is right until after the fact. We are all in the same boat, or, at least, in parallel boats buffeted by the same waters. We stake our Jewish lives on different assumptions about the proper boat to get into, the criteria (that is) by which we will be measured; and where we agree on criteria (the continuation of the Jewish People, for example) we take bets on what the best strategy will be to attain our desired end.
With all of that in mind, I turn to just one real-life example from our time, the one you mention so prominently, the use of English. Let us posit the common goal of preserving Hebrew as the indispensible language of our people. We now must decide what strategy is most likely to attain that end. That some of us will continue to appreciate fully Hebrew services is likely. That is not at issue. What we wonder about is the growing number of people who do not appreciate Hebrew davening. That they even bother to attend prayer is, as I say, a sign of commendable adult search, a sign of openness, at least, to the possibility of Jewish meaning. If they find that in poetic English, the way our ancestors (or even you and I) find it in Hebrew, what is wrong with that? To be sure, the English liturgist may go too far, but who is to say that the adamant curator of the Hebrew museum does not go too far in the opposite direction? Only time will tell. We rabbis who are charged with making such weighty decisions must be properly humbled by what is demanded of us. That is why you and I are engaged in this machloket l’shem shamayin (“argument for the sake of heaven”).
I supply the English (“argument for the sake of heaven”) for less Hebraically knowledgeable readers who may actually choose to read this exchange of views, and who should not have to feel that they must be able to get the “esoteric” references in the original Hebrew. A further question might well be whether knowing Hebrew (and operating with the references) helps further the appreciation of the debate. I think you and I would agree that it does. I suspect that first-time readers engaging in this exercise will slowly learn some of this “in-language” that we like to quote. And similarly, I think newcomers to exceptional prayer in poetic English may come to appreciate the warmth and texture of traditional Hebrew prayer. If so, however, the goal is not that competence for its own sake! In one case (our conversation) it is appreciation of the argument for the Jewish People and for the purposes of God. In the other case (prayer) it is the human intuition (and, perhaps, divine will itself) that God and we be in dialogue.
I suspect Hebrew helps in both cases. But I also suspect that replacing Hebrew as universally better than the appropriate English parallels would rob each aspiration of its full possibilities for success – at least among many of the Jewish “searchers” we are discussing. Having appreciated the finesse of English in prayer, I, for one, cannot go home again: I want the best of both worlds, the Hebrew I learned as a child, but equally, the English I learned as an adult. My prayer is deepened by one as well as the other.
You raise so many magnificent issues! I am tempted to attend to them all. But I hope my overall point is clear enough as the matter stands. By no means do I advocate my own artistry over someone else’s. I argue only for a deep and passionate regard for other artists, and the recognition that their canvasses may be equally rich in Jewish value, equally appreciative of Jewish tradition, and no more a threat to the disappearance of our historical treasures than our own predilections, if taken to extremes.
Hence, to put back on my S3K hat, our S3K insistence on interdenominational conversation. We are not curators but artists, outfitting (rather than protecting) the museum of a Jewish eternity (not just a Jewish past). You and I have somehow found our way into adjoining rooms in this Jewish museum, committing ourselves to adding the newest touches of paint to a different vision of what the canvass might become. From time to time we wander into each other’s room to appreciate the alternative that we see there. We return enriched by what we have seen, better able to develop insight into our own project of the ages.
Warmly and with appreciation,
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman
Steven M. Cohen’s response…
The Rabbi is Right, uh, Conservative
This may be a case of the Fiddler joke that ends with, “But they both can’t be right.” “You’re right too!” – Or, maybe not.
To elaborate …
The backdrop for this stimulating exchange between Rabbi Skolnik and Dr. Wolfson is critical: Notwithstanding the familiar but often over-stated and premature pronouncements of the death of denominations, Conservative and Reform embody striking and healthy contrasts. The contrasts are both worth noting, and, in my view, worth keeping.
For its part, Reform Judaism is remarkable for its agility and for the premium it places on creativity and innovation. It is attuned to the ever-shifting and diversifying Jewish market place. In so doing, Reform temples manage to attract far larger numbers of intermarried Jews and converts than do their Conservative counterparts down the road, or in town.
At the same time, taken as a group and compared with Conservative shul members, Reform congregants are more tentative about their engagement with congregations. More of them drop out of congregations with the Bar/Bat Mitzvah of their youngest child. What’s more, the tendency to dis-affiliate at that moment is even more pronounced among intermarried than in-married congregants. On most of the standard measures of childhood Jewish education, Reform congregants score lower than do Conservative members. They score lower on equivalent measures of current Jewish engagement, e.g., the importance of being Jewish or frequency of attendance at services.
In short, Reform congregants are more tentative in their commitment (on average), less Jewishly well-educated (on average), and more recently arrived at Jewish engagement (on average). As such, they pose distinctive challenges and demands, very different from those posed by Conservative congregants.
Reform Jews need rabbis, cantors, educators, leaders, community and Judaism who are attuned to their needs, interests, language, worldview, and so forth. Hence, the adaptability and innovativeness of Reform is both necessary and, I would argue, proper for these Jews. Even the most traditional Jew who cares only about more Jews doing more mitzvehs ought to say, “Baruch Ha-Shem for Reform Judaism.” The purpose of Reform Judaism is embedded in its very name: to re-form Judaism, and to do so in line with the times, and the needs and sensibility of its prime constituencies.
In contrast, Conservative rabbis are dealing with a very different constituency. It’s older, more ethnic, more in-married, less converted, more tied to Israel, more familiar with Hebrew prayers and their melodies, more resident in areas of higher Jewish density, more tied to Federations, JCCs and other Jewish organizations, and on and on. The graduates of Ramah and Schechter schools, as well as today’s day school parents, are over-represented among the more active Conservative shul members and among the regular daveners.
In this environment, the Conservative approach is to treat the inherited and prevailing cultural patterns as “authentic.” Change in liturgy and tfilla undermines the claim to authenticity and to the compelling nature of Judaism. To many Conservative davenners, shorter services, instrumental music, the sound of English, an emphasis on social action, and divrei Torah that fail to emphasize textual analysis, all seem like concessions to the influences of the larger society (in general) and of Christian churches (in particular).
Conservative leaders therefore work to preserve the compelling image of authenticity by resisting visible change, especially in ways which can be interpreted as yielding to larger social forces and cultural patterns. Thus, Conservative Jewish leaders (both clerical and lay) do what Conservative Judaism does best: they conserve Judaism, as they understand it.
To bridge the gap between what they see as authentic Judaism and an under-committed and under-educated laity, Conservative rabbis and educators invest considerable time and effort in growing the skills of their worshippers. One rabbi’s proud remarks about his achievements stick in my mind as emblematic of this approach. To paraphrase: “When I came here, maybe three people could leyn. Today, if I need someone to prepare shlishi on the spot, forty hands go up.” [Translation: At one time, only three worshippers could prepare to read from the Torah on Shabbat mornings. As a result of classes and training, many worshippers now are able to do so with minimal notice.]
In other words, if one is confronted with a liturgy that appeals to very few worshippers, as I learned from my friend and colleague Prof. Lawrence A. Hoffman, one can change the liturgy or one can change/teach the worshippers (or do both). Reform tends to invest more in the former approach; just as Conservatism tends to invest more in the latter approach. And, Synagogue 2000, and now Synagogue 3000, has tended to emphasize the manifold ways to adjust the services, while not particularly developing new approaches to teaching and learning synagogue skills.
Hence, Rabbi Skolnik does have a point. The S3K effort with which I am proud and pleased to be associated is not explicitly Reform, but its methodology has what my teacher Charles Liebman, z”l, would call, an “elective affinity” with Reform Judaism.
So, as I said at the outset about Rabbi Skolnik and Dr. Wolfson’s comments – they’re both right – or maybe they’re not!
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ildflowers. I expected a beautiful hike into one of Boulder’s canyons… but I didn’t realize that as I was taking in the Rocky Mountains, I’d also gain a new insight into my generation’s quest for meaningful Judaism. 