This past Shabbat, I had the honor of witnessing the “Second Bar Mitzvah” of Rabbi Bernard Lipnick, rabbi emeritus of Congregation B’nai Amoona in St. Louis. For seven years during my college and postgraduate work at Washington University in St. Louis, I was on the staff of the congregation as a teacher.

The celebration of the 83^rd birthday as a “Second Bar Mitzvah” derives from a passage in the Book of Psalms in which King David proclaims the average person’s lifespan is 70 years. Those fortunate to live past that age are thought to start life anew, so thirteen years later, the time is ripe for another bar mitzvah.

Rabbi Lipnick has been associated with B’nai Amoona for 58 years, beginning as a youth educator in 1951, later becoming senior rabbi. He retired in 1991, embarking on an extraordinary “second act” that has included, among many other activities, traveling North America in a motor home, becoming a carpenter and woodworker, and serving as the “chief rabbi” on six around-the-world cruises and many shorter voyages. He is the author of An Experiment that Works in Teenage Religious Education and is currently working on a book of his sermons and articles. 

Rabbi Lipnick and his wife Harriet are beloved leaders in the St. Louis community…and dear friends to me and my wife Susie. A dozen rabbis, a Roman Catholic priest, and faculty from Washington University where he earned his Ph.D. in education in 1972, along with 600 congregants, family and guests crammed the B’nai Amoona sanctuary on Saturday morning, May 9, 2009 for the big event. When current senior Rabbi Carnie Rose asked me to introduce the Torah portion for the day, Emor, I took the opportunity to reflect on the “Top Ten Ways to Be a Great Rabbi.” Many in attendance asked for a copy of my list, and although it refers specifically to Rabbi Lipnick’s distinguished career, it is a list that may prove interesting to current and future spiritual leaders:

The first time I heard Rabbi Bernard Lipnick give a talk was at the United Synagogue Youth Regional Kinnus at the St. Louis Chase Park Plaza Hotel, Thanksgiving weekend, 1963. I had come with a group from the Omaha chapter…it was my first convention. I remember two things about the talk – he was inspiring…and he had the best “rabbi voice” I had ever heard! Four years later, I was the EMTZA Regional President…and I came to visit Congregation B’nai Amoona and spent some time with Rabbi Lipnick…and when I decided to attend Washington University, I was thrilled to make this great congregation my spiritual home.

On the third day of Sukkot, 1968, the phone rang in my apartment in the Hillel House on Forsyth where I was the student caretaker…a phone call that changed my life. I recognized that deep baritone voice immediately:

“Ron, this is Bernard Lipnick calling. We have a sudden vacancy on our staff here at B’nai Amoona and we need someone to teach the Bar and Bat Mitzvah kids. Would you like a job?”

Now, I was an 18 year old sophomore, taking a full load of classes…and although I had never taught a single class in my life, as most of you know, when Rabbi Lipnick asks you to do something, it’s impossible to say “no.”

I thought about it a minute and then said: “Well, I just taught my brother Doug to layn Torah for his Bar Mitzvah, so I guess I could do it.”

“Wonderful!,” the booming voice replied. “you can start this afternoon. Be here at 3 o’clock.”

I was so excited and honored to teach for Rabbi Lipnick, I failed to ask two important questions:

Was there a salary?

• Number 10: Know your stuff. Be a student of Jewish texts, of Jewish history, of Jewish peoplehood.
• Number 9. Be a teacher. Open up the vast sea of Jewish tradition and knowledge for your students – young and adult.
• Number 8. Craft your sermons to inspire your people. Say something on Shabbes and Yom Tov that people can use in their lives every day.
• Number 7. Create a synagogue – a kehillah kedoshah - a sacred community of meaning and purpose. Build a “congregation of priests,” of people who see themselves as God’s partners on earth.
• Number 6. Stand for social justice. Do not be afraid to speak out against injustice – of any kind.
• Number 5. Love the State of Israel. Take your people there. Show them the vitality of the Jewish homeland.
• Number 4. Love your family, especially your devoted partner in building sacred community – the amazing Harriet Lipnick.
• Number 3. When you first retire, move to a mountaintop and build yourself a house! Show it off proudly to your visitors…in excruciating detail…down to every nail that you yourself hammered into the structure.
• Number 2. Never retire….be there for those who need you.
• And, the Number One thing you can do to be a great rabbi is cherish the relationships you create with your congregants and your colleagues.

The first-ever comparative national study of spirituality among American Jews and Christians demonstrates that young Jews are more spiritually inclined on every available measure than their elders. The historic large gap in spiritual orientation between Jews and others is narrowing, especially among younger adults, those 35 and under. The S3K Synagogue Studies Institute report, written by Professors Steven M. Cohen and Lawrence A. Hoffman, both of Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, draws upon a web-based national survey of 1596 Jews and 1520 respondents drawn from the general population.

This growth of spiritual receptivity among young adult Jews can be attributed to 3 factors:

1. The growth in the number of Orthodox Jews, especially among people under 35.
2. The parallel, and even more substantial, growth of intermarried families and Jews by choice, both signifying the growth of Jews with Christian parents, husbands and wives. These family members appear to render their Jewish relatives more open to, and comfortable with, the ideas, expressions and language of spirituality.
3. Even non-Orthodox Jews with two Jewish parents (a shrinking population sector, albeit still a majority) are more receptive to spiritual language than older counterparts.

As ethnic ties among American Jews diminish — with more non-Jewish parents, spouses, children, friends and neighbors — American Judaism is becoming, in broad terms, less ethnic and more religiously and spiritually oriented.

These findings have serious implications for Jewish communal policy makers, rabbis, educators, and planners. More American Jews are expressing interest in the study and experience of spirituality. The two population segments showing especially elevated spiritual concerns are precisely the two major demographic growth sectors of the Jewish population: the Orthodox, and Jews with at least one non-Jewish nuclear family member.

As spiritually oriented American Jews grow in number, seminaries will have to educate students to show comfort with spiritual language, and help congregants with their spiritual search. Congregational rabbis, especially those serving large numbers of intermarried families or the Jewish children of the intermarried, will find greater demand and greater receptivity to spiritual language and concerns in the years to come.

Join the conversation with study authors Steven M. Cohen and Lawrence Hoffman.

Full report, http://www.synagogue3000.org/files/S3KReportHowSpiritual.pdf

This article by conversation partner Joshua Avedon appeared in The Forward

Depending upon your perspective, Jewish spiritual communities are either calcifying into pillars of salt, or experiencing a renaissance unlike anything since the havurah movement of the early 1970s.

The view from 30,000 feet is one of institutional religious Judaism, where membership in synagogues (at least in the non-Orthodox world) is both aging and diminishing. These synagogues are frequently failing to attract 20- and 30-somethings, which means their lifeline to the future is starting to fray. But the view from the street is that the growth of independent minyans and new spiritual communities is exploding, and is largely fed by that same demographic that is missing from many synagogues. If the mainstream Jewish community doesn"t get hip to what is driving the new start-ups soon, a whole parallel universe of Jewish communal life might just rise up and make the old structures irrelevant.

The Jewish emergent-community phenomenon is just beginning to coalesce — but one could argue that we are not seeing something brand new, but rather that these communities exhibit characteristics of what has always been compelling about organic Jewish community through the ages, distilled to its essence. Perhaps there was a similar blossoming of micro-communities after the Romans wrecked the Temple as rabbinic Judaism began to take hold. While an inherent critique of institutional Judaism fuels many of the upstart Jewish communities, from an evolutionary standpoint the whole Jewish religious ecosystem stands to benefit from their emergence.

One evolutionary theory holds that species go through periodic bursts of rapid adaptation in between long stretches of relative calm. We are now experiencing such a time of religious flowering across movements and faiths.

Some leading thinkers from the mainstream Jewish world have argued that the emergent phenomenon is a fringe development at best — and, at least in terms of the numbers of individuals involved, that is true. Synagogues are still the central institution of Jewish life, and the place where the vast majority of those searching for a Jewish spiritual community go. There"s also the argument that the new communities aren"t sustainable and that, in any case, they aren"t true synagogues. Last year"s study of the participants of these communities sponsored by the S3K Synagogue Studies Institute and Mechon Hadar may indicate otherwise. Many of the emergent communities may eschew the “synagogue” label, but some are evolving to create a complete synagogue environment nonetheless.

The important distinction is not about nomenclature, but about inner nature. Many shul-goers would agree that there are plenty of synagogues that fail to be sacred communities. But we should also recognize that there are Jewish sacred communities that aren"t exactly synagogues.

Mainstream synagogues aren"t dinosaurs, but they do suffer from the kind of complacency and inbreeding typical of geographically isolated species. In the Galapagos Islands, which is famous for its secluded fauna, there is a species of bird called the blue-footed booby that has no fight-or-flight instinct at all. You can walk up to one, pick it up, poke it and prod it without the bird trying to escape or even reacting at all. The blue-footed booby simply has no experience with the idea of another animal being a threat.

Imagine what would happen if the ocean lowered enough to create a land bridge to the mainland. The boobies would have no skills to deal with the oncoming predators and get eaten for lunch. Synagogues today may be facing a similar challenge.

There may not be anything wrong with the underlying genome of synagogues, but too many are stuck with what synagogue revitalization expert Ron Wolfson calls “revolving-door membership.” Parents join when their first child hits school age and then disappear after their last child becomes a bar or bat mitzvah. That might be good for business, but it"s not so great for building community. It"s the Jewish communal equivalent of a cushy island with plenty of vegetation and no predators.

But in the past few years a land bridge has emerged. On the other side of the bridge are alternate spiritual paths, a plethora of weekend entertainment options, online social networks, affinity groups based upon love for your local sports team and a whole lot of other competition. The emergents seem to be the equivalent of a highly adaptive strain of Jewish blue-footed boobies, one that has learned quickly to evolve to suit the new environment. They actually thrive in the more competitive milieu — and are succeeding at what many established synagogues fail to do: create intentional sacred communities that are both sustaining and sustainable. If we could isolate the meme for that (a meme being the cultural equivalent of a gene) and splice that dynamism into the cultural DNA of all the other shuls that need help, we would be a long way toward making all synagogues great.

Or perhaps the memes that permit the emergents to thrive are just dormant in the Galapa-gogues but are being expressed in the new communities due to some kind of hybrid vigor between the emergents and modern culture. And perhaps those dormant memes can be reactivated in the mainstream synagogues so they too can flourish in the new land-bridge scenario.

Some emergent communities may just be interesting experiments. But enough of the emergent communities have failed and enough have survived so that we can observe vigorous cultural selection in action. Emergents show the kind of adaptability and innovation that are hallmarks of a survivor genus. But since they share their basic DNA with Synagogus Mainstreamus they can (and should) interbreed. That kind of cross-pollination can only benefit both the established shuls and Synagogus Emergentus. We are living in a time of increasing bio-diversity in the Jewish eco-system — and witnessing the emergence of a 21st-century Jewish life that is the next stage in Judaism"s evolution. We should celebrate this fecundity and do our best to assure that all forms of spiritual community are fruitful and multiply.

Joshua Avedon is COO and director of strategic initiatives for Jumpstart: A Thinkubator for Sustainable Jewish Innovation. He is also one of the founders of IKAR, an emergent spiritual community in Los Angeles.

Check out this Jewcy post from Benyamin Cohen about what synagogues can learn from churches.

Parashat Toldot

Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman

If you have already turned 40, you know it is no ordinary birthday; if you are not yet 40, pray God you will get there, but, perhaps, with appropriate trepidation.

These thoughts on “40″ are prompted by our sedra’s curious insistence that Isaac married Rebecca when he was 40 years old. Commentators are taken aback, if for no other reason than that 40 is pretty old for Jews who believe that their halakhic mandate is to have children. Granted, it worked out for Isaac, and granted also, Abraham didn’t father Isaac until he was over a hundred, but still, as the Talmud puts it, “We should not depend on miracles.”

Rashi explains the calculation. “When Abraham returned from the akedah (the binding of Isaac), he was informed that Rebecca had just been born. Isaac was then 37 years old.” If he met and married Rebecca when he was 40, she would have been only three years old at the time.

That is, of course, outlandish. So Abravanel quickly concedes, “This is pure midrash. Can a three-year old water camels at a well?” So 40 is a symbolic number, not a real one. But what is it symbolic of?

“Forty” turns up everywhere in the Bible. Esau too marries at 40 (Gen. 26:34). Noah’s flood lasts 40 days and 40 nights (Gen. 7:17, 58:6); the spies take 40 days to scout the Land of Canaan (Num. 13:25); 40 days and nights is how long Moses spent atop Mt. Sinai (Exod. 24:18, 34:28); the book of Judges says, “The land had rest for 40 years” between the time that Othniel conquered the Arameans and “the children of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” (Judg. 3:11). So maybe “40″ just means “a long time.”

More specifically, it means a period of transition, the time it takes to grow up, the time necessary (for instance) for young men like Jacob and Esau to come into their own. Until then, they are the youth of tomorrow. At 40, they become the adults of today, inheriting the mantle of leadership from their parents. That is why Joshua is 40 when Moses (whom he will replace) appoints him (Josh. 14:7); and why the generation of disloyal Israelites must wander the desert for 40 years before entering the Promised Land. It takes 40 years for the generational turnover to occur.

In 1946, the largest ever generation of Americans was born: the baby boomers. We date the end of the boomer era with people born in 1964. People born as of 1965 are the next generation, sometimes called Gen X. If the biblical number “40″ symbolizes maturation, Gen X began coming of age in 2005. We should just now be seeing the first signs of the baby boomers being replaced by their children.

And so we are – most evidently in the recent presidential race where a candidate of the next generation was elected, largely with a massive effort by Gen X supporters who said they wanted change, and trusted no baby boomer (or older) to bring it. America has begun the process of turning the reins of the country over to this next generation.

What is true of America generally is true of Jews particularly. Jewish organizations, however, have no national democratic elections to vote people in or out of office, so it will be harder for Jews to make the transition. Current leaders can stonewall and hold on for dear life while the next generation decides it is easier to contribute to causes outside the Jewish arena.

We cannot afford to let Gen X opt out. As Moses turned to Joshua when he turned 40, so must the boomers now transfer power to their children, even if they suspect they will disagree with what those children decide to do once they get it. Suspecting the next generation of naivete, stupidity, or worse is natural. Boomers in power today may recall that it took a revolution for them to be recognized by the establishment in the turbulent 1960s, when they were suspected of radicalism and even sedition. But they did pretty well. On their watch, we built UJA and Federations into massive agencies, saw Israel through the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars, saved Soviet Refuseniks, rescued Ethiopian Jews, and launched continuity efforts when the 1990 census showed Jewish numbers receding.

We cannot predict the challenges of the next twenty to forty years, but whatever they are, we know for sure that boomers won’t be around to handle them. It is time to empower the next forty-year old cohort to take its place in the long line of leaders who bring our People to greatness.

Dr. Ron Wolfson

Synagogues looking to makeover the “atmosphere” of their sacred space would do well to take note of how The Gap recently transformed their stores from “institutional” to “homey.” In an effort to woo back customers, the retailer has devised a radical plan to remodel their outlets.

CEO Paul Pressler recognized that companies such as Starbucks and the Pottery Barn have created warm, comfortable places that people want to spend time in. The Pottery Barn stores look like home and Starbucks encourages customers to linger by providing music, entertainment and high-speed Internet access.

To accomplish this “makeover,” twenty senior Gap executives in three different teams traveled the world to learn “what everyone else was doing and really experience a lot of different customer experiences – and not just retail,” according to Christopher Hufnagel, the Vice President for Brand Store Experience. They visited places as diverse as retail stores, museums, and amusement parks. They took 4,000 photographs and recorded observations in journals. When the teams reconvened, they spent a week sifting through their findings, distilling the best suggestions into a one-page brief. This formed the basis for a detailed plan to remodel their places.

Among the best ideas: warmer lighting, upgraded display tables, better sound systems, and free bottles of water in fitting rooms. After noticing the enthusiasm and pride of a young tour guide at the Kennedy Space Center, the Gap put more emphasis on staff training: instead of pushing particular products, staffers are to spend more time asking customers about their needs (emphasis mine).

In researching my book, The Spirituality of Welcoming: How to Transform Your Congregation into a Sacred Community (Jewish Lights Publishing), I cite many ideas for improving the “atmosphere” of synagogues I have gleaned from noticing the “best practices” of organizations that interact with the public: better signage, color photographs of clergy and staff on a wall near the office, placing couches in the lobby, and offering a Starbucks-quality coffee bar.

Some synagogues have completed their “extreme makeover.” Ahavath Achim Congregation in Atlanta participated in our recent Synagogue 3000 Initiative there and decided to renovate a long, narrow and bland entryway to their mid-twentieth century building. Instead of a “bowling alley” effect, the entry now features a gorgeous “concierge” desk and a flat screen LCD television that flashes rotating images of congregants participating in all sorts of activities, color photographs of clergy and key staff, and notices of upcoming programs. Situated next to this desk is a “living room” with couches, coffee tables, Jewish periodicals and membership information. In the corner, guests and members discover “Café Schmooze,” offering excellent coffee, teas, and treats.

This renovation addressed one issue facing congregations seeking to create an “ambience of welcome” in the building. But, the lobby is only the first step into a sacred community. Many congregations are looking anew at their sanctuaries, offices, classrooms, and other facilities to upgrade them from dreary to delightful.

Moreover, the quality of the building is only one aspect of creating a welcoming community. Far more challenging is to improve the hachnasat orchim (hospitality) most guests experience when they meet our synagogue leaders and members. Is everyone in your congregation equipped to be a great greeter? Are the prayer experiences you offer welcoming to those with few or no “access skills” to the liturgy? Have you thought about how to deepen the relationships between members and the congregation, members and each other?

Embarking on a serious assessment of your building is one way to begin the “extreme makeover” of your congregation into a sacred community. The most important lesson is this: synagogue leaders rarely look at their sacred spaces with fresh eyes. Familiarity breeds myopia. Here"s a best practice idea from The Gap: form a team of people to visit the stores and public venues in your community. Visit other congregations – Jewish and Christian. Collect your photos and observations. Look at your building as if you are a first-time visitor. Then, make the changes that can transform your “institution” into a spiritual “home.”

Dr. Ron Wolfson is President of Synagogue 3000 and Fingerhut Professor of Education at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He is the author most recently of The Spirituality of Welcoming: How to Transform Your Congregation into a Sacred Community and God"s To-Do List: 103 Ways to Be an Angel and Do God"s Work on Earth (both Jewish Lights Publishing).

Althought S3K is out of the ‘emergent’ business, our research into emerging (pardon the pun) Jewish community trends informs our current work with synagogues. Independent minyanim are one form of new community. What do you think?

By Ben Harris · November 11, 2008

WALTHAM, Mass. (JTA) — When Kehilat Hadar met for its first Shabbat morning service on Manhattan"s Upper West Side in 2001, about 60 people showed up, some of them spilling into the hallway at the apartment of Ethan Tucker, one of the minyan"s founders. Three weeks later the number had ballooned to more than 100.

“It was a wide range of people already there and I didn"t know half of them,” said Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, another of Hadar"s three founders. “That"s when I actually got a sense that this was bigger than just a couple of friends getting together.”

Seven years later, Hadar now attracts some 200 worshipers on a typical Shabbat and has a mailing list of about 2,500. More significantly, it has been joined by some 55 so-called independent minyanim across the country.

The Jewish institutional world is beginning to take notice.

On Monday, representatives of dozens of the minyanim met with academics and communal professionals at Brandeis University for the second independent minyanim conference. The meeting provided a chance to discuss the manifold ways these communities pose both a challenge and an opportunity for established Jewish organizations.

“I think ultimately there will be a necessary transformation in what American Judaism and what the institutions of American Jewish life look like in the 21st century,” said conference participant Felicia Herman, the executive director of Natan, a foundation that supports several emergent Jewish communities, including independent minyanim. “This is part of that reinvention. We"re helping to build a new infrastructure, but we have no idea what it"s going to look like.”

Though the minyanim by nature are independent of the mainstream institutions of Jewish religious life, their rapid growth has made them difficult to ignore. Typically they are lay-led communities with spirited prayer and an ability to attract the elusive cohort of 20- and 30-something Jews that the organized community has struggled to engage in Jewish life.

There appears to be widespread agreement that the minyanim provide an avenue of engagement for what sociologists increasingly describe as a new developmental stage: the post-college and pre-marriage period, when many young Jews often fall off the communal radar.

Hadar"s original Shabbat morning prayer community has spawned Mechon Hadar, an institute creating the first egalitarian yeshiva in the United States to train a corps of leaders for the minyanim, which require highly educated participants for their rabbi-less communities.

And while both Kaunfer and Tucker have recently received major grants from Jewish foundations, there has been some hesitation to fund minyanim that are seen as catering to a population that is highly educated and already relatively well-connected to Jewish life.

“We felt in the beginning that our added value in the field was focusing on unaffiliated jews,” Herman said. “That"s changing over time and we"ve become much more willing to consider organizations that are developing Jewish leaders and that are just giving all kinds of Jews creative new expressions for their Jewish identity.”

Most minyanim cluster around a point on the ideological spectrum between Orthodox and Conservative Judaism, finding a number of innovative ways to balance an egalitarian impulse with an otherwise traditional prayer service. Most members define themselves as nondenominational, according to survey results presented at the conference.

They also seem to reject what several participants refer to as a consumerist model of Judaism, where members pay dues to synagogues in exchange for services provided, in favor of a more participatory experience.

But in creating communities with no rabbinic leadership, and where participants are unlikely to affiliate in traditional ways—through synagogue membership, for instance, or by donating to federations—the minyanim pose particular challenges to existing communal structures.

Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, the dean of the Hebrew College rabbinical school and a longtime member of a Boston-area minyan, joked that by existing communal standards, she probably would be counted as an unaffiliated Jew.

“Significant numbers of Jews are rejecting a consumer model of Judaism and opting for a model where they see themselves as co-creators of Jewish life,” Cohen Anisfeld said. “In a culture of rampant commodification, this is an amazing achievement.”

The minyanim also pose significant challenges to the rabbinate. Most of the communities are led by extremely knowledgeable lay leaders who conduct services and deliver Torah commentaries, as well as carry out many of the functions typically performed by rabbis. Even those minyanim that might want a rabbi may find themselves rubbing up against institutions that limit the range of positions their rabbis can assume.

“Independence is not compatible with the protectionist guild system that has a stranglehold on the American rabbinate, and I would say on rabbinic creativity,” said Tucker, the Hadar co-founder.

Though Tucker, speaking in a session on minyanim and rabbinic authority, argued for changes to rabbinic roles and training, he and several others at the conference agreed that no long-term minyan model was viable without some rabbinic guidance.

In this respect, as in many others, the minyanim have looked for inspiration to the havurah movement, which saw the rise of similar lay-led and self-governed communities in the 1960s and 1970s. They were sort of a Jewish religious version of the larger countercultural movements of the time.

Rabbi Arthur Green, the rector of the Hebrew College rabbinical school and one of the founders of Havurat Shalom in Boston in the late 1960s, said during the closing plenary that a rabbi would have helped havurot avoid another pitfall that threatens the independent minyanim—the tendency toward cliquishness.

Green recalled how Havurat Shalom had twice rejected a candidate for membership who had all the qualifications, but was deemed to be a somewhat obnoxious personality who would not get on well with other members.

“That was one of my failures of leadership,” Green said. “Had I been the rabbi of that group I might have been able to say, ‘We stand for something. We"re not just here to satisfy ourselves, we"re not just here to have fun." I couldn"t do that because I was just one of the group. We didn"t believe in professional leadership.”

Though some of the independent communities are organized around a paid rabbinic leader, most are not, which makes a knowledgeable lay community integral to the continued growth of the minyanim.

“The No. 1 scarce resource for the minyanim is not dollars, it"s human capital,” said Kaunfer, now the executive director of Mechon Hadar. “What"s crucial about these communities, it"s not a single person who"s in charge. It"s not even five people. There"s a premium on having a wide variety of people running services, teaching, etc. The question is how do you develop that pipeline of participant leaders who can continue to work and grow communities.”

From JTA.org

“The long-standing identification of large numbers of American Jews with the Democratic Party and the liberal camp in American politics has been one of the most reliable features of national elections.” Is this still true or a stereotype. “The 2008 election again raises the question of how American Jews will vote – and why.” Steven Cohen and colleagues examine this question using empirical evidence gathered through a recent survey of American Jews. Read this BJPA (Berman Jewish Policy Archive) report

American Jews and the 2008 Presidential Election: As Democratic and Liberal as Ever?

Newsweek released its top lists of rabbis for the year - the Top 25 Pulpit Rabbis in America and the Top 50 Influential Rabbis in America. Of the top 25 pulpit rabbis, at least 9 have present or past relationships with Synagogue 2000/3000. That’s nearly 40% of the top synagogue leaders. The pessimistic view is that these leaders were already creative, dynamic, synagogue pioneers when we began working with them. The less humble view is that Synagogue 2000/3000 had something to do with their success. Either way, we"re happy and proud to count them among our chaverim.

Read Shawn Landres’ take on the “emerging” leaders on the list at http://religion-society.blogspot.com/2008/04/emerging-to-top.html.

Delivered at the CCAR convention, Cincinnati, March 31 2008
Steven M. Cohen, Research Professor of Jewish Social Policy, HUC-JIR

Intermarriage as the challenge of our generation
Every generation of Jews confronts its distinctive challenges and in doing so leaves its particular contribution to Jewish life and history. The previous generation struggled for Jewish rights and interests in the public arena. It achieved widespread support for Israel, freedom for Soviet Jewry, the public memorialization of the Holocaust, and a virtual end to American anti-Semitism, winning astounding success in all four domains.

In our times, the key challenge by which history will judge us revolves around how we will respond to the impact of intermarriage upon our individual and collective Jewish futures.

Given the attraction of Reform Judaism to so many intermarried families, both current and in the future, no movement is better positioned to address this critical issue. When intermarried families look for a congregation to join or a rabbi to guide them, they choose Reform temples more often than all others combined. With such a large proportion of North America"s Jewish children in our congregations, and the high rates of intermarriage among them, more of tomorrow"s intermarried will emerge from Reform temples than from all other denominations. Thus, Reform is not only the primary denominational home of today"s intermarried; it is also the point of Jewish origin for most of tomorrow"s intermarried.

Marriage and intermarriage are so much the province of the rabbi. So, given the centrality of Reform Judaism on this issue and your pivotal role in this domain, it can safely be said that the actions of those present in this very room, at this very moment, will significantly affect the future of Reform Judaism, and, by extension the future of American and Canadian Judaism as well.

How are we doing?
In this context, it behooves us to assess the current situation, to understand both the challenge of intermarriage and the effectiveness of our response to date.

Anxieties over the impact of intermarriage date back decades. As early as 1964, Look magazine ran its widely noticed cover story, “The Vanishing American Jew.” Since then, American Jews have survived while Look magazine has vanished. The American Jewish population has grown since then, aided primarily by the addition of Russian-speaking and Israeli immigrants, by high Orthodox birthrates, as well as by thousands of very welcome converts to Judaism who, it should be noted, were often prompted to convert by romances and marriages with born-Jews.

In the 1990s, following reports of exploding rates of intermarriage, American Jewry mobilized expressly to address the intermarriage challenge to Jewish continuity. We dramatically increased our investment in Jewish education – including day schools, Israel travel, Jewish studies, Hillels, and most recently Jewish summer camping. And, simultaneously, we dramatically increased our efforts at outreach, seeking to welcome the intermarried and remove both explicit and implicit barriers to engaging them in congregational life. One sign of success is that today, about half of the newly affiliated married couples in Reform temples have at least one member who was not raised Jewish.

Indeed, in thinking of the intermarried, our experiences abound with instances of the Jewishly engaged. We note with hope, pride and gratitude the thousands of non-Jewish parents who raise their children as Jews, as well as the gratifying instances of conversion, albeit relatively less often than in the 80s or 90s.

But, I hasten to remind us, we cannot accurately judge the impact of intermarriage from our personal experience. Given who we are, those we most often encounter are the intermarriage success stories. The intermarrying children we know best derive from families who remain temple members well past their youngest child"s Bar or Bat Mitzvah; the intermarried couples we know are the small fraction who join congregations. Among the intermarried, our impressions are shaped by a blessed but biased sub-sample.

Unfortunately, the intermarriage problem is embodied not in those we know and see, but in those we hardly know and almost never see. These are the intermarried with little Jewish connection. They are often themselves the offspring of intermarried parents. They are more likely to live in parts of the country with sparser Jewish settlement, frequently at distant remove from congregations and from informal Jewish social networks.

The only way we can learn about such Jews is through the various Jewish population surveys we conduct, be they national or local. And whenever we compare the results from studies then with those from studies now, we find the same disheartening trends – be it in the National Jewish Population Studies of 1990 and 2000, or in local comparisons such as in the Boston area in 1995 and 2005.

Wherever we turn we find continued growth in intermarriage. For example, in Boston of 1995, 28% of married Jewish households were intermarried. By 2005, just ten years later, that figure grew to 45%. We find more non-Jews in Jewish homes: In Boston, from 1995 to 2005, the rate of growth of non-Jews in Jewish homes was more than four times the rate of growth of Jews in Jewish homes. We find more non-Jewish children in Jewish homes: In Boston of 1995, only 15% of children in Jewish homes were non-Jewish; by 2005 that number grew to 24%. Even of those raised Jewish by intermarried parents, we see overwhelming evidence of very weak levels of Jewish engagement.

For the latter insight, we are indebted to a recent report issued by Boston"s Combined Jewish Philanthropies. Drawing upon the excellent data collected by Professor Len Saxe and others in 2005, and by Dr. Sherry Israel and others in 1995, the CJP study compared the children of in-married Jews with the sub-segment being raised as Jews by intermarried families, that is, those who are the “best” products of intermarriage. But, as we learn, even the best is nowhere good enough. We learn that …

• The Jewish children of the inter-married are far less likely than the children of the in-married to attend Passover Seders.
• The rate of Brit Milah ceremonies is almost twice as high among the in-married couples" sons as among their intermarried counterparts.
• Just 3% of the in-married children ever see a Christmas tree in their homes, as compared with fully 82% of the Jewish children of the intermarried so report.
• After Bar Mitzvah, the children of the in-married are almost four times as likely to attend religious school; their families remain temple members almost twice as often as the intermarried families who claim to be raising their children as Jews.
• The in-married are five times more likely than the intermarried to join a JCC.
• In fact, a majority (64%) of the intermarried parents raising Jewish children under age 18 are totally unaffiliated, that is unconnected with ANY Jewish institution, a rate more than four times that among the in-married.
• And, the rate of travel to Israel among the children of the in-married is 20 times – 20 times — that of Jewish children of the intermarried.

Over the course of his or her nominally Jewish childhood, the average Jewish child of the intermarried – even in a community as Jewishly well-endowed as Boston — experiences years with no parental affiliation, no physical contact with Israel, widespread disaffiliation with the temple and Jewish schooling following Bar Mitzvah, and, to top it all off, the warm experiences and lasting memories of opening presents from family and friends on Christmas morning. The study"s authors conclude that these families “are deeply engaged in Jewish practice,” that they “are generally as observant as inmarried Jewish families,” and that “they participate in synagogue life in similar ways to other Jews” – apparently until the moment just before they leave their temples. How the authors arrive at such inferences is baffling to say the least, and derives primarily from a selective focus on attitudes rather than action, and on the pre-Bar/Bat Mitzvah years rather than the full span of childhood and adolescence.

As depressing as are these results, scattered pieces of evidence suggest that the Jewish identity gaps between the intermarried and the in-married have widened over the years, and not shrunk. For example, in San Francisco, holiday observance gaps in 2004 were wider than they were in 1986. And in several national data sets, the gaps in Israel attachment between the in-married and intermarried, are greater for younger than for older Jews, suggesting a growing gap as the years elapse.

Intermarriage remains North American Jews principal route of exit during their lifetimes. As HUC-JIR professor Bruce Phillips reports, of those with two Jewish parents, 98% are raised as Jews; of those with one Jewish parent, the figure drops to 39%, albeit with noticeable differences when the mother is Jewish than when the father is Jewish; and of those with one Jewish grandparent, just 4% are raised as Jews, As Professor Len Saxe and colleagues forthrightly report, “Adult children of intermarriage are significantly less likely to raise their own children as Jews compared with their peers who grew up in inmarried homes. From a continuity perspective, this is an important difference.” In other words, even when Professor Saxe and colleagues controlled for all available background factors, intermarriage remains crucial for predicting one critical consequence: raising Jewish children. And to paraphrase Vince Lombardi, for continuity purposes it"s true that raising Jewish children isn"t everything; it"s the only thing.

The implications of these trends need to be well-understood.

First, we are now in the midst of a non-Orthodox Jewish population meltdown. Its signs are as visible and frightening as is global warming. Among Jews in their 50s, for every 100 Orthodox adults, we have 192 Orthodox children. And for the non-Orthodox, for ever 100 adults, we have merely 55 such children. In nearly two generations, in our own lifetime, the Orthodox have embarked on a path to nearly doubling their size. At the same time, the non-Orthodox are en route to nearly half their number. Rising intermarriage rates over the years past are right now engendering sharp declines in the non-Orthodox Jewish population, not in generations yet to be born, but among our own children and grandchildren, those now under 25.

And, as the Boston data tell us, those who emanate from intermarried homes, even if raise Jewish, exhibit far weaker Jewish background, engagement, knowledge, and commitment.

Thus, we are threatened by not only a quantitative decline, but by a clear qualitative challenge to the future of American Jewry, and especially to the future of Reform and Conservative Judaism.

Welcome the Intermarried or Educate the non-Married – or Both?
Since the 1990s, we have devised two major lines of response to the quantitative and qualitative challenges of intermarriage. One camp emphasizes outreach and welcoming, seeking to draw those who are already intermarried closer to Jewish life in general, and to congregational participation in particular. The other camp emphasizes providing intensive Jewish educational experiences to our children, those not yet married, so as to reduce the chances of intermarriage in the first place.

Owing in part to differences in ideology, in part to misunderstanding, and in part to personalities, these two camps have, in the past, engaged in some fairly acrimonious debates.

At the root of the acrimony lies each side"s belief that the other undermines its primary objective. The welcoming camp generally believes that an explicit and up-front emphasis on in-marriage will make many mixed-married families feel unwelcome and end any chance for meaningful involvement. The education camp generally believes that extending a full and hearty welcome to the intermarried undermines the objective of inspiring young Jews that they should seek to marry Jews. They also fear that it diminishes the perceived value of conversion. For if non-Jewish spouses are permitted almost all honors in Jewish life, then why bother to convert?

Each camp fears that the other operates well within earshot of the very people they are trying most assiduously to influence. The welcoming camp believes that the intermarried will be alienated from Jewish involvement by outspoken normative demands and critical views. The education camp believes that the non-married will find intermarriage more acceptable precisely because the welcoming camp smoothes the full entry of intermarried families into Jewish communities with nary a word of criticism for their having intermarried in the first place, nor an explicit word of encouragement for the non-Jewish spouse to convert to Judaism. In this regard, I hasten to commend the URJ Outreach and Membership Department, along with many rabbis, for their explicit focus upon the desirability of conversion.

But, at the same time, these two conflicting camps actually share some key assumptions and conclusions. Fundamentally, they agree that intermarriage constitutes a significant challenge. They share grave concerns about the future of American Jewry. They agree that in-marriage is preferable, that conversion to Judaism is desirable, that the next generation should be raised as Jews. And, to be clear, those who emphasize welcoming certainly seek more Jewish educational experiences for young and old; while those who stress Jewish education, for the most part, yearn for more intermarried Jews to engage in Jewish life and raise their children exclusively as Jews.

They concur on yet another crucial point: Whatever we have done, it hasn"t “worked,” at least not yet, at least not on the population level. The manifold efforts in Jewish education, congregational renewal, welcoming, taking Judaism public, and so forth have hardly made a dent in the relevant problem areas. As I noted earlier, the incidence of intermarriage continues to mount. So does the large number of intermarried families leading lives bereft of Jewish practice and meaning. One telling statistic: Of in-married Jews with school-age children, about 82 percent belong to congregations; among the comparable intermarried, about only 18 percent are congregationally affiliated.

Why are we not succeeding? After all, day schools, Israel trips, Jewish camping, youth groups, Hillel involvement, Jewish Studies, and the many self-organized Jewish endeavors on the part of those in their 20s and 30s, all increase the in-marriage rates. The problem is that not enough Jews undergo those experiences. At the same time, efforts at outreach and welcoming have undoubtedly brought thousands of intermarried families into Jewish life and affirmed their decisions to raise their children as Jews. Yet even more remain outside of Jewish life. Even more, especially intermarried Jewish men, raise their children as non-Jews. And far too many those raising Jewish children fail to provide what any of us would regard as an adequate level of Jewish education and socialization.

What is to be done?
In light of the critical challenge posed by intermarriage, and our inadequate measures thus far, it is time we seek to transcend the differences between the outreach camp and the education camp. Both have important lessons for us to learn, and both have valuable messages for us to deliver.

The outreach camp reminds us not only that we must be attentive to welcoming the intermarried in all their contacts with organized Jewry, but that we need as well to support all manner of Jewish connection and endeavor among the many who will remain unaffiliated with temples for years to come. They say, in effect, if you can"t bring them inside, help them build it outside.
The demographic backdrop here is critical. Like the rest of America, Jews have undergone a vast increase in the number of unmarried. Of non-Orthodox Jews between 25 and 39 years old, a majority are neither in-married nor mixed married – they are non-married. As such, very few join temples; but many are open to self-organized efforts by members of their own generation in spirituality, learning, culture, social justice, and the Internet. Most people don"t join congregations until they give birth to a seven-year old child. On average, it now takes almost twenty years from college graduation for this blessed event to take place. If we are to engage Jews in their 20s and 30s, we need to support their efforts to promote Jewish engagement outside of congregations. Paradoxically, it is in the self-interest of congregations and their rabbis to assist in furthering endeavors that may seem competitive, but that serve to grow young Jews connections until such time as they turn to congregations.

From the education camp we need to learn that our responsibility extends not only to the already-intermarried, but equally to non-married Jews, whom we hope to guide on a path toward marrying another Jew, by birth or by choice.

How can we do so? We must recognize the two primary paths to in-marriage: Jewish education and Jewish
association. Now, rabbis certainly recognize the value of Jewish education in all its modalities, formal and informal. That said, I suggest that we generally fail to appreciate how Jewish social networks, in-group friendships and residential density work so well to promote in-marriage. For predicting in-marriage, friends are more fateful than faith, and postal codes are more predictive than pedagogy. We need to do far more to guide our young people, if ever-so-subtly, to places and experiences where they are more likely to meet and associate with other Jews.

Synthetic Lessons and Messages: A Third Way
Finally, we need to take actions and draw lessons not just alternately from one camp, or from the other. Rather we need to synthesize two seemingly dissonant messages. One is that Jews should marry Jews; and the other is that Jews who marry non-Jews should be fully welcomed in our communities. Projecting these two dissonant messages simultaneously is inherently difficult. It is a very good thing that some rabbis and movements privilege the education message over the outreach message, while others emphasize the outreach message over the education message. We absolutely need both sorts of rabbis and both sorts of movements.

That said, we can also look to the very creative work of several rabbis who engage their congregations in complex, considerate, and constructive conversations about the sensitive and delicate issues that divide us. I cite with admiration the sermons of rabbis who bless non-Jewish spouses for raising Jewish children. I commend those who, with care and complexity, angst and anxiety, explain their decisions to officiate, or not officiate, at mixed marriages. All these early steps at synthesis offer us instructive models for synthesizing the best of the education camp and the best of the outreach camp.

In this election season, we live in an age where leaders are expressing the yearning of young Americans to transcend long-held antagonisms. The leaders talk openly and candidly about our deepest fears and our most lofty aspirations.

Let us draw instruction and inspiration from this season"s spirit of honest reconciliation. May we draw together and learn from one another, even in, and because of, our disagreements. May we do so, so as to assure that no Jew is left behind. May every child of a Jewish parent, or grandchild of a grandparent, enjoy the maximal feasible opportunity to identify as an educated Jew, a committed Jew, and a truly engaged member of the Jewish People.