More than a week (five posts ago) has gone by since I posted my question
and the silence is deafening. Oh well……….

Shavu’a tov to all of us,
Biv’racha,
Jordan

Though this just hit my desktop, Pastor Rick Warren gave this talk in 2007, and it is germane to this discussion. It’s a little less than 20 minutes long. And, in the spirit of Shim’on ben Zoma’s important question and answer, “Who is wise? One who learns from all people.” Pirke Avot 4:1; it is worthwhile as well. Re the Christian theology that’s used; I’ve found that mentally substituting Torah for Jesus, Godly for Christlike, and Torah for usually works quite well.

My question is simple: where are the talks like this one, on the Jewish side of the aisle to be found? Where/Who are the Jewish teachers that teach and talk about these things?

http://www.qideas.org/talks/default.aspx?id=14

Happy Father’s Day and Shavu’a tov,

Biv’racha,
Jordan

In the consumerist world in which we live where “what’s in it for me,” is the operative question, “relevance” is the key to bringing the disenchanted,
disengaged majority of Jews back to Judaism and the synagogue. Theses folks will not care about “infusing life with holiness,” until Judaism and the synagogue prove that they understand their lives as they are lived and experienced in the 21rst century. The folks want to know that the synagogue and and Jewish teaching, have “walked a mile in their moccasins.” People have to leave the synagogue saying, “yes they really get it,” and not “so what,” or heaven forbid, “whatever.” The only hope for Judaism’s life transforming prescription of a life of holiness is through the doorway of relevance.

Bivracha,
Jordan

Rabbi Hayim Herring

I, too, have issues that “keep me up at night.” After almost thirty years in the (same) pulpit, I find myself increasingly assessing what has been the sum total of my effectiveness as a rabbi. I know that, via pastoral experiences that have spanned the tragic and the joyous, I have been a part of my members’ lives at critical junctures. The bonds created at those moments are unbreakable, and even at my most skeptical moments, I know that I have made a difference in their lives by bringing our tradition to bear on what they were experiencing, good or bad. That, actually, helps me sleep at night.

But what keeps me up is this question: outside of those critical moments where I know for sure that my intervention was important and significant, have I really changed people’s Jewish lives? Has my rabbinate- and the synagogue I lead- really made a difference?

When I was first ordained in 1981, I delivered a speech at a United Synagogue convention in Toronto that was full of the arrogance and hubris of a young rabbi. Not that I don’t think what I said was true; I do. But saying it so publicly was audacious in so many ways. It was intensely critical of the earlier generation of rabbis in the Conservative movement who had presided over the demographic expolsion of Conservative Judaism, and confused (I said) demography with religious vitality. They had four bar or bat mitvah ceremonies every Shabbat, but it had much more to do with the post-war baby boom than Conservative Judaism. Their caterers were happy, membership rosters were swelling, and so they chose not to “rock the boat” with any kind of articulation of religious responsibilities (read, hiyyuv).

I had submitted a copy of the speech to the United Synagogue leadership before the conference (as an organization of lay leaders, you can imagine that the speech went over quite well), and unbeknownst to me, they released it to the press. It became a front-page banner headline in the National Jewish Post and Opinion (in red ink, no less!), and one of the local Rabbinical Assembly regions actually had a motion advanced by some of my senior colleagues to censure me!

So, Rabbi Zimmerman, when you asked “what keeps you up at night?”. I was able to answer quite quickly. I spend a lot of (uncomfortable) time wondering whether or not, in all my rabbinic efforts to talk about hiyyuv, religious responsibility, the healthy and essential dialectic between traditional forms and practices and modernity, etc., I have really been any more effective than the generation of rabbis that I so broadly critiqued. You are asking essecntially the same question, but graciously broadening the scope. Are any of us really making a difference?

I have read all of the postings in this thread very carefully, and I hear those who would challenge me by saying that my insistence on traditional forms and concerns lies in the way of those who are the true seekers of our generation. But I guess I harbor equal concerns about alternate strategies- hence my original posting. And I fear that abandoning those traditional forms in the name of renewal may be causing us to cede the immediacy of our connection to that which is most precious in our tradition.

What I have learned from this exercise is that I have a lot to learn about the varied forms and expressions of renewal and transformation that organizations like Synagogue 3000 and STAR take, and that can only be a good thing. I am most grateful to Synagogue 3000 for providing me with this forum in which to express that which I think about 24/7, and I thank all who have shared their thoughts with me, and each other.