I don’t know if s3k has a ‘message for those Jews,’ but I am struck by the easy way we use words like commitment and responsibility without defining them. Then we add the concept of mitzvah which has wide ranging definitions based on movement affiliation (or lack thereof) and personal whim.

The word we use now at s3k is engagement. Part of the concept of engaging people is accepting them wherever they are in their Jewishness. We’re finding that many are very interested in their Jewishness but not in the confines or structures of past language. I’m not saying I agree with this, but we, the Jewish community, have created this skepticism. It may simply be semantics - or not so simply… but it’s very tied to language and expectations. We’re trying to find ways to connect Jews with Judaism that are accessible, authentic and meaningful. Stay tuned!

So, if Rabbi Hoffman and I agree that building true community means breaking with fee-for-service thinking in favor of something deeper, and we also agree on where that something deeper comes from – that it flows out of relationship – then what is this debate about?

I have to say that I am not sure. Rabbi Hoffman accuses me of having an “authority-centered” worldview that is all about obedience. It is hard to figure out why he would think so. Perhaps he is expressing visceral discomfort at my call for synagogues to build a culture of shared commitment and responsibility. When he writes about religious commitment, he tends to qualify the concept rather than celebrate it. Perhaps that need to qualify is the difference between us.
I recognize that words such as “commitment,” “responsibility,” and “mitzvah” can touch raw nerves and conjure up authoritarian associations. But reacting defensively to those words has its own costs. It limits our horizons, narrowing our range of options. For example, when presented with a promising congregational model, we may find ourselves unable to take yes for an answer.

If we cannot celebrate religious commitment, then we will have no way to reach those who have the greatest potential to revitalize non-Orthodox Judaism. Such Jews are looking for a way to speak the language of mitzvah. They have no intention of submitting to external authority. Obedience is not in their DNA. But the language of responsibility, of being needed – by each other, and by God – resonates deeply with them, and they are ready to make serious choices. If we speak only about personal freedom per se, and not about the joy of mitzvah that flows from the connections that we choose, then we will lose them.

Does Synagogue 3000 have a message for those Jews?

People do things for two reasons: because they want to or because they have to. Most Orthodox and a small minority of non orthodox Jews are in the “have to” category: ” ‘ol malchut shamayim,” is a real and abiding obligation. Some are in the “want to” category. Judaism for most who self identify as Jews is neither a “have to” nor a “want to.” What’s left is the great opportunity to persuade those marginalized and disenfranchised Jews to ‘convert’ to the ‘want to’ group. This is the ever growing pool of “just Jews” about whom the vast majority of congregational Rabbis as well as the Jewish movements, academics and “leadership” are clueless as to how to reach with measurable success. Indeed, it appears that these “experts” have abandoned the vast majority of these “just Jews.”

In contradistinction, the ten word mission statement of Willow Creek Community Church (a megachurch in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago) is “to turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Jesus.” Yes it’s evangelistic and so is Habad. Willow and Habad not only understand that opportunity, they both have kishke level convictions about their obligations “lo l’hibatel” from seizing that opportunity. Quite simply there can be no renewal of non orthodox Judaism or its synagogue without an antecedent non Orthodox analog/equivalent to kishke level convictions.

Biv’racha,
Jordan
eashtov

That is, of course, the way nation states operate. And they get away with it – because a) we fear having to give up citizenship; and b) they have police and an army to enforce what they require. To be sure, we are fortunate to live in a democracy where the demands are hardly onerous, and where we have a say in what they shall be. They are the sort of thing we would gladly obey in any case – part of the social contract that we made because we know (as Thomas Hobbes did) that life in the state of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” or, to quote the much earlier rabbinic parallel, “Pray for the welfare of the government, for without the fear we have of it, we would swallow each other alive.”

The question is whether religion is that sort of thing. As long as religion was tied inextricably to government, it was. Both Spinoza and Mendelssohn, our two quintessentially modern Jewish philosophers — at opposite ends of the Jewish-observance spectrum, mind you — tried to end it, and we have been fighting that battle ever since.

Old habits die hard, however. When the community no longer has the power to enforce its will, it changes the rhetoric by linking obligation to worthiness rather than to punishment. If we cannot punish recalcitrant members, we can at least demand that they prove their worth.
There is another model, not authority-centered but relation-centered. In the authority-centered mode, relationships flow from obligations: Lord and master, ruler and subject, teacher and student – these come into existence because the parties accept their roles prior to the relationship.
Martin Buber, among others, argued precisely the reverse: relationships come first; out of them, flow roles; the experience of meaningful roles produce willing obligations.

Another way of thinking about it is to see experience prior to doctrine. Doctrine tells us what to do. Our experiences flow from playing out the doctrinal definitions of who we are. The sea change of the last twenty years or so, has been our unconscious societal decision to make experience primary. We experience relationships; relationships tell us who we are; doctrine emerges from relationships; doctrine tells us what we need to do, given who we experience being.

Not everyone has that luxury – the poor do not choose their experiences, so much as experiences (mostly negative) choose them. But some of us are fortunate enough to be able to choose the experiences that will constitute our lives. We have become an experience–society, and despite the doomsayers who wonder about the selfishness of it all, that is not all bad – because in the end, experience is primary: it may be the only thing we know for sure.

We discover that some experiences are fleeting and momentary, not lasting and profound. The first require nothing beyond a momentary commitment – pay the price and enjoy the movie. The latter, however, are what stay with us. And they require commitments. We know that in advance, actually, but we suspect commitments that arise out of nowhere, as it were. We readily see their validity, however, when we first experience what the commitments support. .

When Wassmerman suspects me of pandering to individualism, he would mistake the two types of experience. Were I to limit myself to the momentary, they would have good reason to call me to account. My interest, however, is the momentous. I call on synagogues to foster experiences that are profound. If people have certitude that they can matter in the long scheme of things; if their communities model relationships at their finest; if they at least have intimations of the divine; then they will gladly take on obligations inherent in retaining those experiences.

I (no less than my critics) care deeply about obligation to God, to the Jewish People, and to the human community. But I believe these can come only from communities of experience, out of which responsibilities flow; not the other way around.

My point was not that spiritual options should be limited. My own shul represents an attempt to move beyond existing categories. Like other emergent communities, it represents an expansion, not a limitation, of choices. My point is that true spiritual community cannot be bought. It can, and in many cases must be chosen. But it requires a different kind of choice, deeper than the choice between a mocha and a caramel frappuccino.