Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI): Shaping Visionary Spiritual Leaders by Rabbi Irwin Kula

Articles, Featured

Organizations throughout the American Jewish community are painfully aware that the strategies and programs that may have been effective for a previous generation will no longer meet the needs of the younger generation of Jews who have been raised in a dramatically different world than that of their parents or grandparents. Indeed, many of those organizations are already experiencing attrition and loss of market share.

We are fortunate that forward looking philanthropists and foundations have stepped up over the past two decades to fund whole fields of endeavor that are having a dramatic impact on the vibrancy of Jewish life. The Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE) has strengthened our day school system. Birthright Israel has made it possible for 400,000 young American Jews to have a direct encounter with Israel. The Foundation for Jewish Camp has provided resources to improve the quality and increase the capacity of Jewish summer camps. It is long past time for the Jewish community to begin to invest in its rabbis.

Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership believes that the Jewish community can only be as strong as its spiritual leaders. Even though the Jewish community may rank among the most secular and least devout of any faith group in America when judged by weekly attendance at services or expressed belief in God, Jews represent a community of faith and of fate whose resilience and solidarity is unparalleled in the world. Jews continue to look to their rabbis to give voice to these bonds of communal solidarity that make Jews feel so connected to other Jews all around the globe and to teach and communicate wisdom that helps people improve their lives and become better, more compassionate, loving and happier people.

This is why Clal has invested major time and resources in the training of rabbis through its Rabbis Without Borders program directed by Rabbi Rebecca Sirbu. Since its inception four years ago RWB which received a 2013 Slingshot Award designating it one of the most inspiring and innovative projects in the North American Jewish community, more than 150 rabbis have participated in its programs and become part of the RWB network.

On June 1st Clal is opening the application process for a brand new program under the aegis of Rabbis Without Borders. It is called the Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI.). CLI is designed as a two-year program for early career rabbis to encourage innovative thinking and equip rabbis to serve as transformative change agents in the communities that they serve. We are looking for rabbis who think big, prepared to dramatically re-think how synagogues function or prepared to launch a spiritual alternative to synagogues of their own design. The syllabus will integrate methodologies from the field of leadership education and innovation with the best thinking in the field of synagogue transformation. The acronym – CLI – reminds us that clergy are intended to be human vessels that create sacred communities in which Jews can find meaning and purpose (klei kadosh).

Directing CLI will be Rabbi Sid Schwarz, whose book, Finding a Spiritual Home: How a New Generation of Jews can Transform the American Synagogue (2000) helped to define the field of synagogue transformation and which offered a model for a new paradigm for the American synagogue. His most recent book, Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Community (2013) has set an agenda for much of the American Jewish community as it seeks to remain relevant and engage Next Gen Jews.

Working with Sid Schwarz will be Marty Linsky, one of the top leadership consultants in the world. Serving on the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School since 1982, Linsky is the co-author (with Ron Heifetz) of Leadership on the Line (2002) and The Practice of Adaptive Leadership (2009). He and Ron Heifetz are also the co-founders of Cambridge Leadership Associates.

The CLI program is informed by more than a decade of work that Clal has done with rabbis and rabbinical students across the denominational spectrum. There is a gap between rabbis’ desire to provide leadership to the Jewish community and their sense that they lack the toolkit to be effective in that role. Recently graduated rabbis regularly talk about the need for a support system to help them navigate the challenges that new professionals invariably face. Because so many rabbis enter the field with a need to support themselves and their families many choose more conventional jobs even when they might have an interest in experimenting with riskier, more innovative models because the former offers a more reliable source of income.

Compared with other professions, the American rabbinate is woefully weak in the area of professional development. The lack of such support has created rabbis who feel isolated and who often face mid-career burnout. At a time when dramatic changes are taking place in American society and among the next generation of American Jews, Jewish institutions will require visionary leadership to adapt to these changes. That leadership will need to come, first and foremost, from rabbis who are still held in high esteem by Jews and who see them as the standard bearers of the Jewish tradition.

Funded by lead gifts from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, and Alisa and Dan Doctoroff, the Clergy Leadership Incubator is designed to create an intensive mentorship program for some of the most creative and innovative rabbis entering the rabbinate from across the denominational spectrum. The challenges facing American Jewry can not be successfully met by any one denomination working in isolation. Furthermore, increasing numbers of rabbis are now being trained for a post-denominational Jewish community. The Clergy Leadership Incubator will make available to its participants the best minds and practices in the nonprofit sector around reflective practice, adaptive skills, innovative thinking and visionary leadership. Finally, it will provide as mentors to the CLI fellows the experience and wisdom of some of the most successful and innovative rabbis in the American Jewish community.

The future vitality of the American Jewish community depends on our ability to train and nurture a cadre of young, visionary spiritual leaders. No seminary can do this alone. CLI will leverage the many assets of the Jewish community and tap into the great wisdom beyond the Jewish community, to create this cadre of new rabbinic leaders for our community.

To apply for participation in the program go to rabbiswithoutborders.org/?q=forrabbis#CLI

Rabbi Irwin Kula is the President of Clal: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He is also the author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life”. 

Gary Rosenblatt on Jewish Megatrends

Articles, Megatrends Book Tour

 

Jewish Megatrends:  Rabbi offers a new way to think of ourselves: “tribal,” and “covenantal”

Gary Rosenblatt

New York Jewish Week, 5/22/2013

Rabbi Sidney Schwarz recalls the exact words of a comment from a liberal rabbinical student that disturbed him profoundly.

“We were at a retreat, and he said to me, ‘I didn’t go to rabbinical school to carry the tribal water of the Jewish people.’ And I thought, ‘that is the job of a rabbi.’”

Rabbi Schwarz, founder and leader of a Reconstructionist congregation in suburban Maryland, says the encounter was not atypical of a select group of progressive Jews who are deeply committed to Jewish life — but not to the agenda of an organized Jewish community perceived as “obsessed by continuity.”

Calling for a new way to reach these and many other young Jews, most of whom eschew the term “Zionist,” Rabbi Schwarz has come up with an unusual approach in his new book, “Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future” (Jewish Lights Publishing). It opens with his thesis on how to engage the majority of young Jews who show little interest in traditional forms of affiliation — synagogues, organizations, Federation — and then asks 13 leading Jewish innovators to each write a chapter in response to his views, based on their own observations about what works and what doesn’t.

He closes the book with a rebuttal of sorts, “fine tuning” his initial thoughts and charting an upbeat path for an American Jewish community he views as “in transition” rather than “in decline.”

The result is a compelling overview of the stand-out successes and major challenges in confronting a generation many believe is moving away from its parents’ and grandparents’ ways of identifying Jewishly, and in charting a course for engaging it in ways it can relate to, authentically.

Rabbi Schwarz has the credentials for this effort. Besides his rabbinic duties, he is known nationally as a social and political activist, and founder of Panim, a group he led for two decades that trained teens for leadership through Jewish education, values and social responsibility. He is also the author of two previous books, one exploring the key to successful synagogue models (“Finding A Spiritual Home”) and the other (“Judaism and Justice”) on the power of social justice in engaging young people.

Those themes form the core of “Jewish Megatrends,” in which Rabbi Schwarz identifies a growing polarization between what he describes as two types of Jews. One, like himself, he dubs “tribal Jews”; they identify strongly with Israel and worry about external and internal threats to Jewish continuity. The other he terms “covenantal Jews”; they are primarily made up of younger people who are less parochial, less concerned about group solidarity, and more interested in universal themes like justice and human dignity.

Rabbi Schwarz argues that the organized Jewish community, led by tribal Jews, is in effect driving away covenantal Jews by “drawing hard and fast lines on who does and who does not belong to the Jewish community.” He says “rabbis and the organized Jewish community are notoriously bad at understanding and validating” those whose Jewish identity is “soft and highly ambivalent,” but who can be engaged through programs that connect them to universal and liberal values stemming from their Jewish heritage.

The key, he says, is to reach these “covenantal Jews” from the outside-in rather than the inside-out approach. In other words, don’t begin by preaching Jewish texts, which they see as irrelevant. Rather, “start with what matters” to sophisticated, thoughtful Jews, like their commitment to improve the world, and show them how these goals can be advanced through Jewish wisdom and spirituality. That means tracing social justice to ancient Jewish values, and offering a caring community and “sacred purpose” to their lives.

Don’t try to give them Judaism-lite, Rabbi Schwarz insists, but “raise the bar” in terms of content and commitment. If you’re serious with them, they’ll take you more seriously. And don’t be afraid to proclaim Jewish life as countercultural, emphasizing personal relationships in an era so dependent on technology that people prefer texting to meeting face to face.

The main section of the book is made up of chapters on innovations in Jewish culture (by Elise Bernhardt), synagogues (Rabbi Sharon Brous), family foundations (Sandy Cardin), Israel (Barry Chazan and Anne Lanski), denominationalism (Rabbi David Ellenson), “getting” the next generation (Wayne Firestone), Jewish social justice (Rabbi Jill Jacobs), community centers (Rabbi Joy Levitt), the Orthodox difference (Rabbi Asher Lopatin), interreligious collaboration (Rabbi Or N. Rose), tribes, food and community (Nigel Savage), the federation system (Barry Shrage), and Jewish education (Jonathan Woocher).

Most agree, to varying degrees, with Rabbi Schwarz’s basic premise and approach, giving examples of how they try to provide authentic experiences to a younger generation for whom Israel and the Holocaust hold increasingly less appeal. For example, both Wayne Firestone, outgoing president and CEO of Hillel, and Jonathan Woocher, a leader in innovative Jewish education, make the point that Jewish students aren’t trying to “fit in,” as their parents did, but are seeking ways to live more meaningful lives through Judaism. Rabbi Ellenson, the president of HebrewUnionCollege, notes that young Jews are not interested in denominational labels. And Rabbi Brous, who leads a popular synagogue in Los Angeles, emphasizes that the more demands she makes on her congregation members in terms of attendance and commitment, the better they respond.

Only Barry Shrage, the chief executive of the Jewish Federation in Boston, seriously challenges Rabbi Schwarz, arguing that the author’s “tribal” and “covenantal” depiction is an inaccurate stereotype, and that in truth the younger generation is more nuanced in terms of Jewish identity. For example, he says some may care deeply about the Palestinians’ plight but far more worry about Israel’s security.

Most significantly, he believes Birthright Israel has had a profound positive impact on young Jews, and he argues against dismissing tribal Judaism. “Not only is a ‘tribal-free’ Judaism inconceivable,” he writes, “it is also not necessary to attract the next generation of Jews.” That can and must be done, according to Shrage, largely in the ways Schwarz calls for.

The hopeful note throughout is that the contributors to “Jewish Megatrends” are seeking and finding creative ways to make Judaism compelling to people who are not just seeking to balance their American and Jewish identities, as did their parents and grandparents, but are looking to Judaism to provide deeper value in their lives. The question is whether these innovators are reaching enough Jews to make a difference, and if the rest of us are paying attention.

 

Q & A with the Religious News Service

Articles, Megatrends Book Tour

Rabbi’s Message for American Jews: Change or Die

Interview with Lauren Markoe posted on the Religious News Service (RNS)

Rabbi Sidney Schwarz, ordained in the liberal Reconstructionist tradition, sees a divide between generations of American Jews that could spell disaster for the community.

One generation he calls “legacy” or “tribal” Jews — those who built the national organizations and synagogues that have served for decades as the backbone of American Jewry. But reams of statistics show legacy Jews have enjoyed limited success attracting younger Jews.

The other is what he calls “covenantal” or “innovation sector” Jews, a younger generation that has founded a myriad of niche Jewish organizations — environmental, social justice and political — that can, in Schwarz’s vision, build on their parents’ work toward a more brilliant American Jewish future.

In a new book, “Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future,” Schwarz says the upstart generation cares deeply about Judaism — but draws on its spiritual legacy more than a sense of tribal solidarity.

Schwarz, who lives outside Washington, D.C., and has worked in both sectors of American Judaism, talked about the conversation American Jews need to have among themselves to preserve their collective future. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What’s wrong with the way that Jewish America organizes itself?

A: The problem is that the institutions that have guided the community for the better part of 100 years are too much in touch with their base. They’re committed to serving the people they consider loyalists, and they assume the next generation will fall into line. I wrote this book to send up a flare that that’s not going to happen.

Q: What can this new “innovation sector” of American Jewish life offer younger Jews, who are far less likely than their parents to join synagogues, Jewish federations and groups like B’nai B’rith?

A: The Jewish community was becoming less progressive in the 1980s, and Jews whose political affiliations skewed left were feeling disaffected. In response, you had an array of organizations crop up, ranging from Jewish Funds for Justice, to Mazon doing hunger relief, to the American Jewish World Service doing development work, to the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. They’ve proven for more than a decade that they can identify a market that the legacy sector can’t seem to capture.

Q: So should the oldsters just hand the car keys to your young innovators?

A: I believe the future lies in the two sectors collaborating. Each sector is at risk in different ways. The legacy sector’s membership and its budgets are declining. They can’t capture the next generation of Jews. The innovation sector is organizationally immature. Organizations pop up on the innovation screen, and everyone is so excited, journalists write about them — and then five years later they’re gone.

If some of the resources and the know-how of the legacy sector were shared with the innovation sector, you’d have a way to win.

Q: There’s tension between the two groups on Israel. Is that a sticking point in getting them to cooperate? I’m thinking of J Street, an organization that attracts Israel supporters who find the American Israel Public Affairs Committee too hawkish.

A: Israel is definitely a flash point. The Jewish community in America has very low tolerance for dissent around Israel. And if you are an organization that wants to challenge the policy of the State of Israel on any front, you are going to incur the wrath of large powerful forces.

In some cases, these new organizations love that conflict. When J Street came about, there was a strong effort to marginalize them, to portray them as not loyal to Israel. J Street parlayed that into astronomic growth over their first three years.

Q: Where do the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox fit into your landscape of American Judaism? What about Chabad, the Brooklyn-based Hasidic organization, which is running programs that attract Jews of varying levels of observance the world over?

A: Chabad has kind of written the playbook on innovation, and legacy organizations can learn much from Chabad. The two things they do right are one, they don’t judge you, and two, they set a high bar. The ethos of legacy organizations has been that the only way to interest non-Orthodox Jews in being Jewish is to deliver “Jewish lite” or watered-down Judaism. That totally doesn’t work.

What next-generation Jews want is something that’s authentic. The Orthodox, they get serious Judaism. The challenge will be: Can we create a non-Orthodox brand of Judaism that’s equally serious?

Jewish Megatrends-On the Road, Part 2

Megatrends Book Tour

 

In the past two weeks we held a beautiful book launch at my home shul, Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, MD and then I did events in New York and Boston.

The New York event was held at the JCC of Manhattan, directed by my good friend, Rabbi Joy Levitt who is also a contributor to the book. We had an embarrassment of riches with five contributors all coming to the same program. In addition to Joy, we had Nigel Savage of Hazon, Jon Woocher of the Jewish Education Service of North America, Jill Jacobs of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights and David Ellenson of Hebrew Union College. The evening was moderated incredibly skillfully by Jane Eisner, the editor of the Forward.

One interesting moment was a comment by Nigel about the need for the Jewish community to engage in evangelism. Nigel believes that Judaism has something precious to offer the world and he believes that we should be more pro-active in telling non-Jews that they would be welcome to join us. I publicly challenged Nigel on this. I state quite clearly in the book that Judaism can provide an antidote to the spiritual malaise of American life.

Yet evangelism strikes me as a bad strategy. I believe that if we create compelling spiritual communities, people will come, both Jews and non-Jews. Heaven knows we don’t have to work hard to bring non-Jews into our spaces. They come quite naturally, hand in hand with our sons and daughters, or as guests of the Bar or Bat Mitzvah or as spiritual seekers who are checking out the Jews. I’ve had numerous encounters with these gentiles after services. Even when I discount the false flattery (and there is plenty of that) there are many who find our music uplifting, our Torah discussion stimulating and the way the community embraces each and every visitor, quite special. I know that it plants seeds in people’s minds about whether they might want to join our community through conversion or help to create something similar in their church.

I am less interested in capturing souls than I am in offering a spiritual alternative to the superficiality of the American public square.

 *                   *                    *

The morning after the New York event I got an email from a 20-something who was in attendance at the event. He grew up in an interfaith household, attended Unitarian church and experienced both Christian and Jewish holidays in his home. After getting turned on to Jewish life as a result of a Birthright trip to Israel he got involved in several Jewish social justice organizations, became an active participant in a Reform congregation in the DC area and volunteered for HIAS. On all counts, it was quite a Jewish communal success story, though not as common as I would like to see.

But then the letter changed tone. He went on to say that he moved to New York almost two years ago and has yet to find a welcoming environment. It has not been for lack of trying. He also finds a disturbing gap between Jews of his generation and older Jews. Reacting to the comments I made about the need for more dialogue and cross-fertilization between Jewish legacy institutions (e.g. Federations, synagogues, JCC’s, etc.) and the younger, Jewish innovation sector, the letter bemoaned the fact that he saw few people his age at the very forum where I was speaking about Jewish Megatrends. Nor does he find many older people when he spends time at some of the Jewish social justice programs that he attends.

 *                                  *                                  *

The letter was an interesting reality check on the state of the American Jewish community, made even more poignant because the next day I was in Boston, participating in two separate forums with Barry Shrage, the long-time director of the Boston Federation and a contributor to Jewish Megatrends.  I invited Barry to contribute to the book because he has built one of the most innovative Federations in America. In his chapter he reflects on the similarity between the four core principals that I suggested are necessary for Jewish institutions to have a shot at engaging Next Gen Jews and the core principals that guide the work of the Boston Federation.

Still, despite that common ground, Barry and I do not see things exactly the same way. He does not agree with my assessment that Next Gen Jews are largely turned off by Jewish legacy organizations. He also does not share my view that Next Gen Jews are seriously distancing themselves from identification with the state of Israel. After our exchange that was done in front of his own staff at the CJP offices in Boston, I asked Barry publicly if he thought there was a serious divide between Jews who were involved with and played leadership roles in the Jewish establishment and the vast majority of Next Gen Jews. He said “No”.

Now despite an impressive list of accomplishments at the Boston Federation, I don’t believe the Jewish community is well served by such a sanguine assessment. At virtually every stop of my still young book tour, I hear stories from young people that suggest that a serious divide between them and the organizations that are the stewards of Jewish communal life. Not only do we need to do more to fund and support the new approaches to Jewish life that are emerging from Next Gen Jews, I think that the legacy organizations need to pro-actively try to bring Jews from the next generation into their planning and leadership circles. Only that way can we hope to build and shape new models of Jewish life that are responsive to the changing nature of the American Jewish community.

The Jewish Social Justice Bus

Articles

Last month I was invited to speak at the Jewish Funders Network’s (JFN) annual conference in Los Angeles. JFN has emerged as an important player in the American Jewish community. As Jewish Federation fundraising has been relatively stagnant for the last two decades, family foundations have emerged as a very important source of philanthropic venture capital, helping to get new ideas and new organizations off the ground. In my new book, Jewish Megatrends (Jewish Lights), I write about the differing fortunes of Jewish legacy organizations (e.g. Federations, synagogues, JCC’s and membership organizations) and the Jewish innovation sector (e.g. new organizations that have been targeting Next Gen Jews). The former are suffering from serious attrition; the latter are booming. In any event, JFN has become the support network for Jewish family foundations.

On the second day of the conference, participants were able to choose from four bus tours of Los Angeles: LA Arts, Creative Community Engagement, Health and Social Services and Social Change. Not surprisingly, I chose Social Change, a central focus of my work and passion. Even before we boarded, not exactly knowing who had signed up, the trip became dubbed “the Jewish Social Justice Bus”.

And what a bus it was! When I wrote my book, Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World, I identified and tracked down for interviews about 50 Jews who were playing an important role in the emerging Jewish social justice sector. I felt a bit like a kid in a candy store to find some of the most important leaders of that field on the same bus—Simon Greer, who led the Jewish Funds for Justice and now is president of the Nathan Cummings Foundation; Alan van Capelle who succeeded Simon at JFSJ, now called Bend the Arc; Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service; Dan Sokatch, president of the New Israel Fund; Rachel Levin of Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation; and Rabbi Sharon Brous, the founding rabbi of IKAR. I found myself invoking Tefillat haDerech, the Jewish prayer for safe travel, because if the bus happened upon misfortune, the whole field of Jewish social justice would suffer a cataclysmic setback.

The field trip included a few stops and a chance to meet an array of activists. One was the Breed Street Shul in the BoyleHeights section of East LA. Once a thriving Jewish area, the neighborhood has suffered from some decline in recent years and most of the synagogues closed their doors years ago. In 1988 the Shul was registered as a national historic landmark, insuring that it would not be torn down and eleven years later, a non-profit group incorporated with the express intention to refurbish the synagogue. What is most significant about the project is that the intention was not to create a museum. Rather the goal was to create a new hub of Jewish activity in a section of LA that might attract different Jews than those that join affluent suburban synagogues. Part of how Breed Street is already realizing its dream is through partnerships with immigrant organizations in the neighborhood, mostly Latino.

Many urban areas throughout America are being re-discovered by younger Jews who are drawn not only to more affordable housing, but to mixed neighborhoods filled with the kind of cultural, political and social energy that is rare to find in suburbia. These Jews are also drawn to a different kind of social justice engagement. There was a time when Jews of conscience left their comfortable neighborhoods in the suburbs and spent an afternoon in a social action program in the inner city, only to go back home at the end of a few hours. Today, Jewish social justice activists know that real social change only happens when we create alliances with at-risk communities, live and work side by side with those communities and treat our allies as full partners. Indeed our meetings with Angelica Sales of the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of L.A. and with Kafi Blumenfeld of the Liberty Hill Foundation spoke of just those kinds of partnerships with the Jewish community.

The Breed Street Shul represents a return to a neighborhood that was once bustling with Jews who might have been the grandparents of the Jews now moving back in. But it is more than that. It also represents an embrace of a serious commitment to tzedek, to the kind of justice work that is central to an authentic expression of Jewish living and Jewish values.

It is exciting to note that similar reverse migrations of Jews are happening in other communities in America. In Detroit, Jews helped to save the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue (IADS) that was located in a former Jewish neighborhood downtown. In WashingtonD.C., the original Adas Israel in Chinatown was about to be sold to become a nightclub when it was bought by a few Jewish philanthropists. Refurbished and re-dedicated in 2004, the Sixth and I Synagogue is one of the brightest success stories in American Jewish life. Seven days a week Sixth and I is bustling with activity, including an eclectic mix of religious services, cultural events and social justice engagement in the neighborhood. It is no accident that both AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps and Moishe House, are renting houses for their 20-something participants in similar urban neighborhoods. There is more than a little poignancy in the fact that these grandchildren and great grandchildren of immigrants are now moving back to the old neighborhoods to help a new generation of immigrants establish lives of dignity.

Those of us who were on the Jewish social justice bus may have helped a bit to create the impetus for this kind of re-engagement with the Jewish past and with Jewish values. But it is the young Jews who are now “walking the talk” of Judaism who are really to be celebrated.

The day after the Jewish social justice bus trip, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Morton and Jane Blaustein Foundation and the Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation joined together to launch “Justice, Justice Shall You Purse”, a $1 million Jewish social justice matching fund under the aegis of the Jewish Funders Network. It is an exciting moment in the expansion of Jewish social justice in America and precisely the kind of development that I wrote about and encouraged in Judaism and Justice.

The Jewish social justice bus is on the move. It is time to get on board.

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)

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