Jewish Megatrends: On the Road-part 1

Megatrends Book Tour

I’ve just completed the first segment of a national book tour which will take me to ten cities over the next few months. Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future (Jewish Lights) was published March 1st and I just returned from my second trip to the West Coast where I spoke at about a dozen separate events. Some authors despise book tours, accepting it grudgingly because they know it helps to create buzz about the ideas (which, to my mind, is the point of writing a book) and drive sales. In contrast, I love the opportunity to engage with different audiences, especially when the questions and interchanges that take place challenge some of my assumptions and expose me to new ways of thinking.

Here are a few highlights from the first leg of my tour:
• I did two sessions at the CCAR national convention, the annual gathering of Reform rabbis which took place this year in Long Beach, CA. In my first session, I had the pleasure of being on the panel with Rabbi Naomi Levy, a Conservative rabbi, author and founder of an alternative spiritual community in Los Angeles called Nashuva. The session was designed to discuss new ways of thinking about the synagogue business. I presented the four core principles of the new synagogue paradigm that I introduced in my 2000 book, Finding a Spiritual Home: How a New Generation of Jews can Transform the American Synagogue (Jewish Lights). I’ve called it the “synagogue-community” as distinct from the “synagogue-center” which is still the prevalent paradigm of the American synagogue and one that is seriously at-risk given the spiritual needs of the next generation of American Jews.

Since the publication of my book I have worked with dozens of synagogues and many more rabbis and rabbinical students to help them understand and implement the synagogue-community paradigm. It has necessitated a very planful, well constructed methodology. What was so refreshing was that, as Naomi told the story of how she started Nashuva, she confessed to little if any interest in the organizational principles that I outlined. Rather her approach was quite instinctive and intuitive and it has worked, attracting hundreds of spiritual seekers to her music-filled Shabbat gatherings in Los Angeles. Some would chalk this up to another illustration of the differences between Mars (male style) and Venus (female style). Perhaps. But I also think it points to the need to support different approaches to innovation and creativity in our community.

• In the 1990’s the synagogue world was abuzz with the astounding growth and palpable energy that was generated by B’nai Jeshurun on the upper West Side of New York. Indeed BJ was one of the four synagogues that I profiled in Finding a Spiritual Home. In the last few years, there has been equal, if not more buzz about IKAR, an alternative spiritual community in Los Angeles founded by Rabbi Sharon Brous and a small tribe of talented friends. I was thrilled when Sharon agreed to write the chapter on synagogues in Jewish Megatrends and it is just one of the parts of the book that is a “must read” for Jews who care about the future.

It would be hard to imagine a more receptive audience to the message of Jewish Megatrends than the IKAR members who filled the room after the Shabbat kiddush to hear my presentation. After all, the book has dozens of examples of young Jews re-inventing Jewish life in every conceivable way and the book makes the case why the organized Jewish community must help move these examples of Jewish creativity from the margins to the center of Jewish communal life. I should add that IKAR’s services more than live up to its reputation. Having visited and profiled many Jewish spiritual communities around the country, it should be a source of great hope and optimism that places like IKAR are being created around the country. In fact, I am involved in creating a new program at Clal (called the Rabbinic Leadership Incubator) to accelerate and support just such a process. (More about that in another blog.)

• My speaking engagement in San Francisco was organized by an old and dear friend, Toby Rubin, who founded and leads Upstart, a cutting edge incubator of new ideas and new ventures for the Jewish community. The mid-day forum at which I spoke was co-sponsored by Hazon, Bend the Arc and Keshet. What a perfect consortium for a forum on Jewish Megatrends with organizational sponsors that so embody the trends that I talk about in the book. Of course, that very sponsor line-up set the stage for a rhetorical question from a woman who identified herself as active in several legacy Jewish organizations that represent the “establishment” Jewish community. Mainstream Jewish organizations like Federations, JCCs and large synagogues need to hear your message, she argued. To which I could only say: “Amen”. Indeed, those opportunities are in the works.

A more provocative question came from a man who identified himself as my age (59). I make the case in the book for the importance of facilitating more cooperation and collaboration between the innovation sector and the legacy sector of the Jewish community. This gentleman said that, for most of his adult life, he has been involved in a variety of political and social causes that have been viewed by the organized Jewish community with suspicion, if not hostility. Before there is any of the collaboration that I advocated, he argued, the Jewish community needs to take responsibility for its behavior over the past few decades and make amends. I responded by saying that it reminded me of the argument made in the early 1970’s by Black Power activists who argued that the first step to racial harmony in America would be for the U.S. government to atone for the systemic racism of this country by paying reparations to the Black community. The amount of money and the use of that money varied depending on who made the case but I recall reading one article that asked for $10 billion—a nice round number and, in that day and age, something that represented serious money . I went on to say that without challenging the truth of his claims nor the very real woundedness that he experienced (and clearly that he still carries) his suggestion would not be a very helpful starting point for the collaboration that I think is essential for the vibrancy and future of the American Jewish community.

• One of the highlights of my recent west coast swing was a forum at the Jewish Funders Network annual convention. Not only did we have a standing room only crowd for the session but we had a “dream team” to discuss Jewish Megatrends and my presentation. Sandy Cardin, the president of the Schusterman Family Foundation and the author of an extremely important chapter in Jewish Megatrends about the future of Jewish philanthropy, framed the session masterfully. Responding to my presentation was Scott Kaufman, the executive director of the Jewish Federation of Metro Detroit, and Maya Bernstein, one of the most impressive voices of the Jewish innovation sector who works with Toby Rubin at Upstart in San Francisco.

What was so important about the forum was that it gave lie to the assumption that the legacy sector of the American Jewish community is out of ideas and out of gas and that they need to step aside to let the innovation sector take over. Scott is part of a new breed of Federation executives that is re-inventing the way Federations operate and it is most encouraging. To see the overlap in the way Scott thinks about building community and the way that Maya thinks about Jewish innovation was really heartening.

I hope that in the coming months, I will be able to bring the message of Jewish Megatrends to more and more communities to spark the kinds of conversations among professionals and lay leaders that we began at the Jewish Funders Network session.

On Jewish Service

Sermons and Speeches

Periodically, I have the joy and privilege of leading services at Adat Shalom in Bethesda, MD. I am the founding rabbi of the congregation and on most shabbatot I am “in the pews” (even though we have individual seats and not pews). But when I conduct services it is also my prerogative to frame the Torah discussion.

On a recent shabbat there was a plan for a post-oneg presentation on the Adat Shalom service mission to Haiti that took place a few months earlier.  This was the second year in a row that a delegation of adults and young people spent a week building houses and spending time with Pastor Johnny Felix’s church and school in Leogane, Haiti. Three years ago, after I met Pastor Johnny on my own trip to the country, Adat Shalom launched a Haiti Project to raise funds to support the K-6 school that Pastor Johnny started and leads.

Since the post-oneg presentation on the service mission was intended to build interest in the community for future service missions, I chose to speak about the Jewish values of community service during the Torah discussion.  Each year, one or more members of the Adat Shalom service delegation commented on the fact that, from a pure economic and material point of view, the missions did not make a lot of sense. One member calculated that just the airfare alone could have paid for 50 Haitians (earning $7/day, the average daily wage for a worker) to work on building the houses that we were working on. Not only would that have provided gainful employment to 50 people, it is quite likely that they would have been able to double our work output (Jews with hammers do not exactly strike fear in the hearts of nails or 2×4’s).

So, the question is put squarely in front of us:  why do we do it? Not only Adat Shalom mind you. Why is there such a growth in the volun-tourism industry, mostly middle-class Americans who travel to the remotest parts of the developing world to do community service?

This critique of community service in the developing world has been around for a while. There have been other concerns raised about such community service as well. Some would say that it perpetuates a harmful perception of the meaning of “needy”. Just because the per capita income of people in the developing world is but a fraction of what it is in the West, does not necessarily mean that those populations are needy. In fact, many under-developed and developing societies provide remarkable examples of resourcefulness despite their lack of what the West would call “material resources”.  A Westerner spending time in one of these communities must acquire a significant dose of humility so that they do not take on the attitude that they are bringing “progress” and superior cultural norms to a primitive population. There is also the danger that the wrong kind of aid or service can create a culture of dependency in a society that was for centuries, quite self-sufficient.

All community service programs, whether secular or Jewish, must devote considerable time to proper preparation of travelers and intensive reflection time during and after a period of service so that the experience is meaningful for the volunteer and truly beneficial to the people and communities being “served”.  This is why the field now prefers the term “service-learning” to the term “community service” because only with a strong learning component can some of the pitfalls of service be avoided and the benefits accentuated. In fact, service-learning incorporates all three dimensions that educators know are key to successful learning—knowing, feeling and doing. Put in more academic language, service-learning involves cognitive, affective and behavioral modalities in ways that classroom learning cannot even come close to delivering.

This is where the introduction of Jewish texts and values can be of real importance.  It moves the experience of service-learning from the purely material relationship (educated, middle class people helping, poorly educated peasants live better) to a spiritual realm in which both the server and the served are lifted to a higher level of understanding and mutual appreciation.

Having been involved in the development of Jewish service learning curricula and the sponsorship of Jewish service learning experiences that have touched the lives of thousands of Jewish young people, I can say without doubt that there is no better way to get Jews to understand many of the key values that lie at the core of the Jewish tradition. Here I will only mention three.

In Pirke Avot (Ethics of our Ancestors 1:14) the rabbinic sage Hillel states: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me; but if I am only for myself, what am I?”  In this one brief yet pregnant passage, Hillel touches on a key principle that has engaged societies from the dawn of time. To what extent must an individual, a family or a polity concern itself with only its own needs as opposed to the needs of others? Even as different theologians, philosophers and public officials can come up with different answers to this question depending on historical time period and social circumstances, Hillel’s dictum puts squarely on the table the notion that caring for others is a required element of any worldview that sees itself as compassionate and ethical. When a person who has been raised in relative privilege spends time in a community where resources are far more limited, the disparity of wealth in the world takes on a human face. Typically, the volunteer finds that their perspective on their own life and of the political and economic systems of which they are part, are changed forever.

A second core principle that comes to life in the midst of a service-learning experience is the principle of tzelem elokim, the belief that every human being is made in the image of God. The key verse is Genesis 1:27, “in the image of God did God make human beings”. While literalist readings of that passage take the meaning of the verse to suggest that God must have the same physical attributes of human beings (e.g. eyes, nose, arms, legs, etc.), the rabbinic tradition offers a much more nuanced understanding of the verse. It is the belief that every human being, precisely because they reflect a spark of the Divine, is of infinite value. Any law that is promulgated by the Jewish legal system (halacha) may be abrogated in order to save a life. To my view, this is the single most radical teaching of Torah and it is not limited to Jews. If we in fact behave towards all human beings as if they are of infinite value, regardless of race, religion, ethnic or national identity, it would change the face of human history. That we are very far from that ideal in the 21st century simply underscores how much work we have to do to get people to “know, feel and do” this core concept from the Bible. Many people who have a service-learning experience make a gigantic leap forward towards that very goal.

The third Judaic concept that can be learned in the context of a service-learning experience is the distinction between tzedek (justice) and chesed (selfless compassion).  The way I have taught these concepts is that tzedek points to the systemic inequalities that perpetuate oppression and suffering in the world whereas chesed is the act in which one person encounters another person in a situation of pain, oppression or need and extends themselves to rectify the situation as compassionately as possible.

Clearly service-learning experiences are the single most effective way to bring people closer to those who are in need. When done well, the one who is “served” can feel respected, understood, validated and supported in very tangible ways. In turn, the one who serves can emerge with that experience that all religious traditions have taught since the beginning of time—helping others, another way of defining the Hebrew word, chesed.  So central is the Jewish belief that one’s full humanity can only be experienced in the context of helping others that Judaism teaches that even the recipient of charity is obligated to give charity. There is no better example that Judaism sees “value” as about much more than money. This also explains the danger of reducing a service experience to a calculation of how many Haitians could have been hired for the price of a plane ticket from the U.S. to Haiti.

The most effectively structured service-learning experiences will push volunteers to go one step further than even their exemplary acts of chesed. It will make them aware of the fact that no matter how much chesed they or thousands of others offer, it is not enough to overcome systemic injustice. Our societies are constructed in such ways that perpetuate inequalities in terms of wealth distribution, educational opportunities, vulnerability to violence (both domestic and in unsafe neighborhoods), exposure to environmental hazards, and access to healthy and affordable food. The list is actually much longer than this. Each of these examples of social injustice can be rectified by social policies that can be enacted by local, state and federal political bodies.  While some societies make citizen advocacy more possible than others, the much larger obstacle to advancing policies that address social injustice is apathy.

Even as we believe that a service experience has inherent value on the level of chesed, if we really care about advancing justice in the world, we must challenge each and every teen, college students, young adult, adult and senior citizen who engages in service, whether in their own neighborhood or on the other side of the world, that to be an agent of healing in a broken world involves both personal acts of compassion and service (chesed) and increased attention to the kind of community organizing and political advocacy (tzedek) that can begin to address the larger, global injustices in the word.

At a time when conventional forms of identification with the Jewish community are breaking down, there is no better way to engage the next generation of Jews in “walking the talk” of Judaism than to increase the opportunities available to do service in the world.

 

 

 

 

A New Day, A New Website!

Megatrends Book Tour

I thought writing a new book was a big undertaking! In some ways that was less challenging than launching a new website, which we are doing today, Feb. 28, 2013.

My new book, Jewish Megatrends, has been long scheduled for release on March 1, 2013. I knew that it was important to create a more interactive website than the one I had to  help promote the book and to catapult me fully into the 21st century. It seemed a bit ironic that I was writing a book about the future of the Jewish community and I was still not fully up to speed on the use of social media.

I was fortunate to find Ari Evergreen of Shirari Industries who built this new website for me and is now helping to train me to be a regular blogger. If you need web work done, I highly recommend her. Check out www.shirari.com.

Talk about timing! I leave for LA tomorrow morning for the start of a 7-city book tour. I’ll be in LA for five days and ten speaking engagements including two sessions at the CCAR national convention (the Reform Rabbinate). I’ll use this blog space to share some of the highlights of the tour.

Rabbi Sid in Print

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“A Rabbinic Call For Human Rights”

published in the Jewish Week – January 23, 2013

Last week, I was one of several rabbis from a range of religious denominations who met with a senior Israeli diplomat at the Israeli Embassy. We were there to deliver a letter asking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cancel plans to construct a new settlement in the E1 zone.

Such a new settlement would not only create a major obstacle to a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict, but would exacerbate tensions between Jews and Palestinians and inevitably lead to the violation of the human rights of Arabs living in that area. The letter was signed by more 700 rabbis and cantors representing well over 100,000 American Jews.

Last year, I was one of several rabbis who went on a trip to South Florida to stand in solidarity with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) who have been trying for years to stop the near-slavery conditions endured by migrant workers in the agriculture industry. Since then, the CIW has made significant progress in getting the food industry to abide by a Fair Food Agreement that holds growers to a policy of zero tolerance for slavery, zero tolerance for sexual harassment, and minimum wage and safety protections for all workers.

We engaged in several protests at local supermarkets to put pressure on grocery chains to comply with the agreement. In one, not so small victory, days after our protest at a new Trader Joe’s, the company signed onto the Fair Food Agreement and also agreed to pay one penny more a pound for tomatoes — for the average worker, that translates into $7,000 a year. Trader Joe’s became the ninth major retailer to sign the agreement.

And just last fall, I joined a rabbinic-led campaign that stood up to anti-Muslim hatred with a true Jewish message. What spurred us into action was the fact that Jewish “activist” Pamela Geller had raised money to place an ad in the New York and Washington subway systems that read: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.” It continued, “Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” Now it is hard for me to be ashamed by an ad that ends with “support Israel,” but I was more than ashamed; I was outraged. Within weeks a counter ad appeared that read: “In the choice between love and hate, choose love. Help stop bigotry against our Muslim neighbors.” The “love” ad made New York magazine’s 2012 list of Fifty Reasons to Love New York.

The common denominator in all three of these stories was Rabbis for Human Rights-North America (RHR-NA). Founded in 2002 as an affiliate of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, the organization has gradually broadened its mandate to include a wider range of issues. By mutual agreement with our colleagues in Israel, this past week the organizations announced that even as we would continue to collaborate on Israel related issues, the North American organization would re-organize itself independently under the name, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. (See “Rabbis For Human Rights’ International Split,” Jan. 18.)

Much of my work in the American Jewish community involves helping rabbis be more effective leaders. Whether serving in congregations, Jewish educational institutions or Jewish communal organizations, rabbis represent our link to a precious Judaic heritage. Rabbis need to be not only teachers of the values of that heritage but also guides for how Jews might navigate a morally complex world.

Yet advancing human rights is not just the job of rabbis. It is the responsibility of all people of conscience. Religion, if it is going to be a force for good in the world and not a force for division and extremism, needs to motivate people to protect the rights that are guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ratified by the international community in 1948. That Declaration was largely driven by the horrors that the world witnessed during the dark days of World War II. Going forward, T’ruah intends to mobilize the larger American Jewish community to address human rights issues in the world from the perspective of Jewish values. As a people that was so victimized by the failure of the world to take action during the Holocaust, Jews should be at the forefront of efforts to ensure that such horrors never happen again.

There are currently more than 1,800 rabbis and cantors who are part of T’ruah’s network. But this is only the beginning. In the coming years, we hope that all Jews, whether religious or secular, conservative or liberal, wealthy or poor, become part of a movement to ensure that all human beings be treated as if they were made in the image of God (b’tzelem elohim). Standing up for the human rights of all people, regardless of religion, race, sexual orientation or national origin is one of the central mandates of Judaism. If Judaism cannot offer wisdom and guidance as to how we might make a small contribution to heal a broken world, then it has little to no relevance at all.

New International Fellowship Program on Judaism and Human Rights

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Last week an application process was launched for a brand new program called the René Cassin Fellowship Program (RCFP). With hubs in New York, London and Jerusalem, the RCFP will select 36 outstanding Jewish young professionals, ages 25-35. The year-long program of study, travel and hands-on impact projects does not take the place of one’s current employment or program of studies. It is rather an enrichment experience that will explore Jewish visions for a just society and will provide young Jewish professionals with the knowledge, skills and contacts needed to enhance their activism in the areas of social justice, international human rights or related fields.

It is sad and a bit ironic that some in the Jewish community have acquired an aversion to the array of organizations that deal with human rights. This stems from the fact that for several decades many human rights groups have put a spotlight on Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinian population living in the territories captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War. The U.N. has been a forum particularly hostile to the state of Israel, with many resolutions of condemnation failing only because of a United States veto in the U.N. Security Council. The U.N. sponsored 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban South Africa became a flashpoint for the obscene and disproportionate attention paid to Israel as compared to many other countries with no tradition of democracy or legal due process and with far worse records on human rights.

The RCFP starts with a different premise. We believe that the many international, national and NGO forums in which human rights is the focus can either support or detract from the legitimacy of nations. Israel and the Jewish people have an important stake in the issues addressed by these bodies. While it is unfortunate that Israel must engage in a debate over its legitimacy in the community of nations 65 years after its founding, the choice to be absent is an error. Israel was created by an act of the United Nations. Even in the face of the most outrageous accusations and plentiful evidence of double standards being used by states whose record on human rights are among the worst in human history, Jews must appear at such forums and speak the truth in the noblest tradition of Jewish values. The Fellowship program is designed to equip participants for just such kind of engagement.

The sponsoring organization for the fellowship program is René Cassin, a human rights NGO based in London that uses the experience of the Jewish people and Jewish values to campaign and educate on universal human rights issues such as discrimination, detention and genocide. Founded in 2000, the organization is named in honor of René Cassin, a French Jew and Nobel Laureate who was one of the principal co-drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With special consultative status at the United Nations, René Cassin uses that forum to give voice to Jewish values within the international human rights community.

The RCFP is funded by a lead gift from New York UJA/Federation’s Commission on the Jewish People. A critical dimension of the program is having three cohorts of fellows each from a different center of world Jewry. Between monthly study sessions, there will be regular Skype conversations between Jews in the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel. Each will bring their unique historical and cultural background to bear as they reflect on the very challenging issues presented in the international human rights arena. The group will participate together in a study tour of Israel in June 2013.

Partnering with René Cassin in Israel will be Makom, a division of the Jewish Agency for Israel led by Jonny Ariel. Makom is playing a leading role as a catalyst for effective and compelling Israel engagement and Israel education. The lead educator in Israel will be Rabbi Gideon Sylvester, an Orthodox rabbi from the UK with expertise in human rights who now lives and teaches in Israel. The lead educator in London will be Simone Abel, a human rights attorney who is also the executive director of Rene Cassin.

The deadline for applications is December 1, 2012. Those interested in learning more about the fellowship program or who would like to obtain an application form please email info@renecassin.org with subject line “RCFP”. Applicants should be between the ages of 25 and 35 and live close to one of the three regional hubs – New York City, London or Jerusalem. Selections will be made by February 15, 2013, with the program commencing in May. To learn more about the program, please visit: http://bit.ly/UCaRz3 which is part of the René Cassin website.

Rabbi Sid Schwarz, author of Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World and the forthcoming, Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future, is the director of René Cassin Fellowship Program and will also serve as the lead educator in New York.

(Originally posted on http://ejewishphilanthropy.com)

Welcome to the Tribe

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Kol Nidre, 2012:

Some years ago the Jewish Week asked me to write an op-ed before the High Holydays. At the risk of being thrown out of the rabbi’s union I said that I wasn’t quite sure how many of the Jews showing up for Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur were there for the prayers or, for that matter, to wrestle with the themes of forgiveness and repentance. Rather, they were there to hang out with other Jews. Well before the internet was invented, Jews created the original flash mob. “Pass the word. Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur are coming. Everyone will be there. Show up.” And we do.

There is something nice, comforting, even exciting about being with other people that you know and even many that you don’t know who share a common history, religion and ethnic folkways. Mordecai Kaplan hit the nail on the head when he called it “peoplehood.” In many ways, peoplehood is another term for tribalism. For me, there are no negative connotations to the term “tribalism”.  It does not require drums, feathers or body paint (although Adat Shalom is really big on drums). Tribalism is simply an extended family, and it carries all the charm and dysfunction of family as well. The tribal instinct of Jews is strong due to historic conditioning; in so many places over so many centuries, Jews were the oppressed minority. There was no one we could count on except each other.

There are, however, two problems with tribal Judaism. First is that we are becoming increasingly aware that tribal identity can be morally corrosive. It is too easy to get into our tribal cocoon and see everything exclusively from our own, limited perspective. Jews are certainly prone to the syndrome. There are many Jews who evaluate every matter of public policy based on whether or not it is “good for the Jews”. In Israel, the tribal path is the one that makes Palestinians invisible. Too many Jews in Israel and in the diaspora choose to ignore the abuses of Palestinian rights that take place in the territories every day and the discrimination facing the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Palestinian Arabs. Sometimes our tribal tendencies make us so obsessed with our own history of persecution and ongoing threats to Jewish survival that we cannot see how we might be complicit in the oppression of others.

There is also a second problem with tribal Judaism. Our children, next generation Jews, the Jews who are Millenials, are increasingly post-tribal. I call their identity “covenantal”. Covenantal Jewish identity is strongly rooted in universalist tendencies. Covenantal Jews have some awareness that Judaism brought many core values into the world like compassion, charity, human dignity and care for the natural world. They might even take pride in that fact. Yet they will see those values best realized in service to humanity at large. Because their primary identity is as global citizens, and their Jewish identity is secondary at best, covenantal Jews resist the bias of previous generations to preference Jewish loyalties. That bias relates to friendships, organizational affiliations, relationship to the state of Israel and even the choice of spouse. In fact, the suggestion to a covenantal Jew that they should only consider marrying other Jews sounds ethically offensive because they see it as violating a key Jewish value about treating all human beings equally.

As with all attempts at categorizing attitudes and behaviors, my tribal and covenantal categories are stereotypes. Many here will identify with some parts of each. The case I want to make is simple. The Jewish community we have today was created by tribal Jews for tribal Jews. To the extent that the next generation of Jews is more heavily covenantal than it is tribal, the Jewish community cannot conduct business as usual and expect that the Jewish community will still be around in 100 years. We are already seeing dramatic declines in all of the tribal indicators of a strong Jewish community including synagogue affiliation, participation in communal Jewish federation campaigns, support for the state of Israel and in-marriage.

So here is the challenge: Can we transmit a tribal Jewish story in a way that next generation, covenantal Jews can hear it?

This evening, I want to articulate the shape of this new narrative.  I’ve got two objectives. First, there are a fair number of covenantal Jews here tonight whose future commitment to their Jewish identity and that of their children is up for grabs. I am hopeful that what I say and how I say it might make them open to Jewish identity in a way that they may not have been before. Second, for those whose Jewish identity is stronger, I hope you will take on some missionary work. Not in the Mitt Romney/Mormon fashion; I don’t want you to go door to door either in your neighborhood, or God-forbid in a developing country across the globe. Yet you interact daily with family members, friends and colleagues who don’t totally “get” why you identify as strongly as you do with your Jewish heritage and with the Jewish community. I want to provide you with some language that will help you because I think that our Jewish identity should be a great source of pride that we are willing to share with others.

Let me start with a story. Last December, I led a group of 18 members of Adat Shalom on a trip to Haiti. Organized by Pamela Sommers and Wendy Swire, the group was evenly divided between adults and their children, ages 15 to 30. We stayed in Leogane, near the center of the earthquake that devastated the country two years ago, and close to the New Christian School of Pastor Johnny Felix which Adat Shalom is supporting financially. During the days we worked side by side with Haitians helping to build houses that would enable them and their families to move from one room wood huts with no plumbing to these new homes. In the evenings, after our physical labor was done, we explored the teachings of Judaism to understand how our work was a fulfillment of Judaism’s core commandments about tzedek u’mishpat, doing righteousness and justice in the world without regard to race, religion or nationality.

It was clear to me that the adults were more taken by the study of Jewish sources than the young people. Though respectful, my sense was that to the teens, the Jewish study was some nice window dressing offered by their rabbi to fill the evenings. To paraphrase the title of a sermon I gave from this bimah a few years ago: “What’s Judaism got to do with it?” The important work was happening during the day.

Then on Sunday we went to Pastor Johnny’s church. It became abundantly clear in that setting that our being Jewish mattered a great deal.

The church was in a tent with a dirt floor. The benches people sat on were cast offs. Some were broken. It was clear how poor these Haitian were. Most did not even have permanent homes. Yet they were dressed exquisitely and had been there already for two hours when we arrived for the last 90 minutes of the service. As we walked in we were greeted by a Hebrew song that I taught a year earlier when I first visited the congregation–Shabbat shalom.  Our visit fell during the festival of Chanukah. Pastor Johnny had invited me to preach the morning sermon so I chose to use the lessons of Chanukah to offer words of hope and encouragement to people that had endured not just the devastation of a natural disaster but whose families had endured decades of brutality, oppression and corrupt rule by a string of dictators. And when our makeshift Adat Shalom choir got up to teach some Hebrew songs, the congregation joined with passion to the words: Hine mah tov umah naim, shevet achim gam yachad, “how good and beautiful it is to be in this space, one tribe of sisters and brothers sitting together in the spirit of friendship and in unity.”

These Haitians were devout Christians who live on next to nothing. Most had not finished high school. Sunday worship was the highlight of their week and no one would dream of missing it. They were simple people but beautiful souls. They had never read Mordecai Kaplan. To them we were God’s chosen people who had come to worship with them, to support their pastor and to provide financial support to the school Pastor Johnny built to educate their children. To them we were the children of Israel doing God’s work in the world just as had been written in the Bible.  The fact that we were Jewish mattered and everyone of us in the Adat Shalom delegation walked out of that church tent knowing it.

The work we did was not benefiting Jews; we were engaged in helping poor Haitians whose predicament got worse as a result of an earthquake. But Judaism framed our entire experience. It helped us explore the meaning of faith and suffering. It offered us the wisdom passed down through the centuries about our obligations to the poor. And to the Haitians who had never met a Jew before, we were the children of Israel, behaving in accordance with the word of God as written in the Bible. We were engaged in covenantal work but it took on much greater meaning when understood and presented in the context of our tribal identity.

Which brings me back to the changing nature of Jewish identity in America. How do we fulfill the commandment from the Sh’ma: v’shinantem l’vanecha, “you shall teach it diligently to your children?” How do we convey that Judaism is not some relic of religious practices and superstitions handed down from the past but rather a way of being in the world that allows us to live a life that honors our particular history and urges us to make the world better for all of humanity?

I believe that being a member of the tribe that we call the Jewish people helps us to live lives of sacred purpose. I offered a glimpse of what that looks like by bringing you with me into Pastor Johnny’s church on Sunday morning. But too many Jews, disgusted by the excesses of tribal identity, come to the conclusion that they are better off, the world is better off, if they abandon their religious/cultural/ethnic identity. They are wrong.

It is not a coincidence that Jews have been in the leadership of movements for positive social change for more than a century in numbers totally disproportionate to our percentage of the population. I could cite the labor movement, the civil rights movements, the anti-apartheid movement, international human rights and a dozen more such causes. Even fairly assimilated Jews are powerfully motivated by the Jewish tribal story because it contains universal, covenantal lessons. We are a people who were born in slavery and transitioned to freedom. We are a people who are reminded again and again in our liturgy and sacred texts, “oppress not the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”. We are a people that has been history’s perpetual minority so we have worked to make the most radical teaching of Torah become part of a global ethic of human rights–that every human being has within them the spark of the Divine and must be treated with respect and dignity.

And you, my friends, by virtue of being part of the tribe called “the Jewish people” are potential carriers of that sacred covenantal message to a world that desperately needs it. I know many of you. And I know how many awesome good things you are already doing in the world. Yet I fear that there are still too many Jews who rejoice in their Jewish tribalism without thinking about the sacred purpose behind the tribe. And I also fear that too many Jews do the covenantal work but don’t value the tribe that is necessary to carry the message forward.

So much of the program here at Adat Shalom is designed to balance those twin commitments. Whether it is showing up the third Tuesday of every month when Adat Shalom staffs the Manna Food Center in Rockville; participating in Sukkot in April in conjunction with Yachad, to rehabilitate the home of a poor resident in our community; or perhaps signing up for Adat Shalom’s second annual service mission to Haiti Dec. 22nd-30th. I could give you a dozen other examples, but you get the point. The way Jews “walk the talk” of prophetic Judaism is by practice, practice, practice. I urge you in the year ahead to consider increasing your commitment to engage in just such kind of holy practice.

When we make “lives of sacred purpose” the central core of our Jewish identity, it is much easier to appreciate and celebrate the tribal aspects of our identity. I remember bumming around Europe as a college student with my best friend. In every city, we made a bee line to the synagogue or Jewish community center where we never failed to find a free meal, a warm bed and stories that gave me a new appreciation of the tenacity of Jewish survival and the mutual support from one Jew to the next that made that survival possible. Thirty years later Sandy and I were in Madrid during Passover. After we finished touring the Prado Museum we sat outside to eat lunch with the matzah and tuna fish that we had brought with us. A college student walked by and exclaimed: Matzah! She was a Jewish exchange student studying in Spain for the semester and had not made a single Jewish connection in all her time there, not even for Seder. But seeing matzah, all of her tribal bells starting ringing and she was elated. Of course, we invited her to share our matzah. We did not stay in touch, but I’d like to think that that little matzah moment helped connect this college student to her Jewish identity. Welcome to the tribe!

Some of you know that for more than 20 years, one of my central passions was the Soviet Jewry movement. I can think of no better example in my lifetime of how tribal ties between Jews was leveraged to achieve a greater good. In fact, the Soviet Jewry movement effected a change in the course of the history of the world. I was therefore deeply touched when just this past shabbat, David Silberman relayed a story initially told by Shlomo Carlebach during his session at shabbat breirot. It takes place in a Russian Gulag prison during the dark days of Communism. A Jew is serving a life sentence for his activism to emigrate to Israel, a crime under the Soviets. He hears that another Jew was just brought to the prison and he is committed to seek him out. During their one hour of exercise in the yard, he sees the new inmate, and falls into step beside him.

“Shalom Aleichem landsman”, he says in a whisper.

The new inmate glares at him. “Are you crazy? You will get us shot.”

“Do you know what tonight is?” asks the first Jew. “It is the start of Yom Kippur.”

“Big deal. We are Jews. So what? What has it gotten us?”

“I’ve been in this prison for ten years. You are the first Jew I have seen in all of this time. We must share this night together in some way. Let’s sing Kol Nidre together. Do you remember the melody?”

Tears filled the new inmate’s eyes. He whispered: “I used to sing Kol Nidre with my father in synagogue as a young boy. I haven’t heard it since then.”

So the two of them begin to chant the Kol Nidre melody together very softly. Suddenly they see the guards in the watchtower pointing their guns at them. The captain climbs down from the tower, walks in their direction with gun drawn. “What are you two Jews doing?” he demands.

“We are just singing a song.”

“Let me hear it again” said the captain. The two Jews are certain that this will be their final act before they are shot. The captain listens for a couple of minutes, allowing the prisoners to sing the melody through.

And then the captain said: “I was taken away from my family at age 14 and put into the Tsars army. I have been in the army my entire adult life. But your melody brought back memories that I had long forgotten–going to synagogue with my father, huddling under his talis as the cantor sang the Hebrew prayers. Now I realize that I was born a Jew even though it has been decades since I had anything to do with my people. I cannot help you out of this prison, but thank you for helping me remember who I am.”

Welcome to the tribe indeed.

Each of us asks ourselves. “Who am I? What parts of my identity are most meaningful? What is the legacy that I want to pass on to the next generation? For me, there is no part of my identity that confers more meaning than being part of the Jewish people. Not just the tribal part of the Jewish people but, as well, the piece of the Jewish story that compels me to ask myself every day whether I am worthy of my ancestors who stood at Sinai to receive the covenant of Torah.

At this time of the year we are painfully aware of our own mortality. Part of the beauty of connecting our personal life journey to the Jewish tribal story is that we know that the work of healing a broken world neither started with us, nor will the work end with us. To the extent that our values are important to us we hope that they will be carried on by our children, our grandchildren and generations well into the future. If we are successful perhaps our sacred tribal legacy might just bring the world a tad closer to redemption.

Covenant Award Acceptance Speech

Sermons and Speeches , , , , , ,

Philadelphia, PA
November 21, 2002

I need to start with something of a heresy for a Reconstructionist rabbi. With every passing year, I am increasingly aware of the hand of God in my life. The latest evidence was this morning, as I attended a morning experience with Storahtelling, a new dramatic performance group that brings the Torah to life through interactive presentation. Not yet being Friday, I had not even focused on the week’s Torah portion when the leader of Storahtelling invited for an aliyah to the Torah all those who had collected battle scars, inner or outer, in their attempts to bring about something they desperately wanted to achieve on their life journey. I immediately identified. In coming to the Torah, we would be linked to our ancestor, Jacob, who, in the reading, wrestled with a divine being, became Israel (one who wrestled with God), and was left with a lifelong limp as a result.

So here I am standing at the Torah, which was being read by, of all people, an alumnus of our Panim el Panim program who is currently studying to be a Jewish educator. She is reading the weekly portion of Vayishlach on the day that would later feature my receipt of the coveted Covenant Award for my contributions to the field of Jewish education, primarily through the vehicle of the organization I founded, PANIM. And the first verse reads: “Jacob called that place Peniel, for it was in that place that he encountered God, panim el panim (face to face), and survived”!

My life is indeed blessed.

* * *

We read in the Talmud, tractate Ketubot, priat baal chov mitzvah, “the acknowledgment and settling of debt is a mitzvah, a religious obligation.”

Standing here today, I am keenly aware of how large my ledger of debt is. Noone who has enjoyed the success that has come my way does so without help. So, allow me to chalk up a mitzvah this afternoon (I can use all that I can get) by acknowledging some debts, to many people who fill this room:

  • to my parents, who gave me both a strong Jewish education and identity and then let me find my own path;
  • to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Reconstructionist movement which gave a refugee from an Orthodox yeshiva a new perspective on how Judaism could be made relevant to the American Jewish community;
  • to members of both congregations I had the privilege to serve, Beth Israel of Media, PA and Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation of Bethesda, MD. We proved that Judaism could be joyful, soulful and powerful, all at the same time.
  • to members of my staff, past and present, at PANIM who tolerate my maniacal passion to try to undertake way too many projects in way too little time, and then help me do it;
  • to members of my PANIM board who believed in me and who have been my partners in creating a significant new organization in American Jewish life, starting from nothing;
  • to Jon Woocher and the JESNA staff who gave so much support to our programs early on, providing important endorsement and credibility;
  • to Shulamith Elster, a treasure to the field of Jewish education and a mentor I am lucky to have down the hall from my office;
  • to the Covenant Foundation, which first invested in PANIM in 1996 with a grant to launch the Jewish Civics Initiative, now the largest Jewish community service program in the country, and which now honors my work and achievements. Truth be told, I see my work as sacred, as a calling. Every day I feel privileged to be engaged in the work of Jewish education, tikkun olam and strengthening the fabric of the Jewish people and the Jewish community. The recognition bestowed on me by the Covenant Foundation today, is just a bonus.
  • last, but certainly not least, to my wife, Sandy and my children, Danny, Joel and Jennifer. The kind of work that so many of us in this room do, cannot be sustained without love. My wife and family are a never ending source of support and love without which none of my work would make sense, nor be possible.

I want to take advantage of this distinguished and accomplished audience for a few minutes to share three lessons that I have learned in the course of my work in the community. I share it because I believe and hope that it might be instructive for how we, as a community of faith and of fate, might conduct ourselves in the future. The three lessons are:

  1. It shouldn’t be so hard
  2. It shouldn’t be so easy
  3. It isn’t just about Jewish education

1. It shouldn’t be so hard

When I set out to launch, what has become, PANIM in the late 1980’s, I had a fair amount of professional experience, a good reputation and a solid business plan. Yet years went by until I could find philanthropists and foundations to invest in me and in the idea. There is truth to the saying that success is a product of 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, but someone should re-do the math because it also takes 20% worth of good luck as well. I shudder to think how many good ideas our community has lost out on because we have not been open to entrepreneurial creativity. Thank goodness for new projects like JESNA’s Bikkurim program and the Joshua Venture, which now serve as incubators for such creativity. We need to do more to support social entrepreneurship in the Jewish community. The Jewish community’s greatest asset is that there are a lot of smart Jews out there. We need to find better ways to channel their smarts to benefit our community.

2. It shouldn’t be so easy

Jewish education today can be characterized as small islands of success in a sea of failure. The reality is that it doesn’t take all that much to connect with Jewish teens. We need to spend more time trying to enter their world and less time trying to shoehorn them into ours. I once read a story about a magic coat. It would fit any person of any size perfectly once they put it on. Jewish tradition is like that magic coat. It is a treasure of wisdom and insight if only we try to put it on. We live in a world in which people spend a lifetime and small fortunes to find wisdom and insight. If educators took a bit more time to listen to their charges, they would be astounded by how many young people would be willing to try on the magic coat of the Jewish tradition. … And the coat would be worn for generations to come.

3. It isn’t just about Jewish education

We need to rethink what we mean by “Jewish education”. Let us remember that Jewish education is a means, not an end in itself. Two percent of the Jewish people care about Jewish education. Ninety-plus percent of the Jewish people care about making some contribution to making the world a better place. Our job as Jewish educators is to provide Jews with the language to understand what is Jewish about caring for the stanger (ahavat ger); helping the most vulnerable members of our society (hakem takim imo); speaking truth to power (hocheach tocheach); wiping out intolerance, bigotry and prejudice because we understand that within every person is a spark of God (tzelem elohim). These values reveal the purpose of our tradition. When Jews start to see that the purpose of Jewish education is to make these values manifest in the world, we won’t have to go running in search of a vanishing Jewish population. Jews will, instead, be running after us for we hold the key to making their lives filled with meaning and purpose.

Friends, the purpose of Jewish education is not to make more Jews, more Jewish. It is, in the words of the mishna, to create a world of din, emet and shalom , a world of justice, truth and peace. Ironically, when we focus on that as the goal, we will have more success at making more Jews more Jewish than we ever dreamed possible.

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