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Does Jewish Renewal Have a Future?

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I recently had the opportunity to spend some time at the annual gathering of Ohala, the rabbinical association of the Jewish Renewal movement, and at a shabbaton led by students studying at Aleph, the rabbinical training program of the movement.

Although I knew quite a few people at the conference, I came as an outsider. I was invited to deliver the keynote to the Ohala national convention based on the work that I do with rabbis and congregations around re-imagining these institutions. A fairly comprehensive summary of my keynote appeared in a blogpost by the Velveteen Rabbi. Here I want to share a few impressions that I took away from my visit.

Note: This article appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy on February 2, 2014 and was subsequently syndicated by JTA.

Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi continues to be a powerful presence in the Jewish Renewal movement. The conference takes place near his home in Boulder, CO so as to make it easier for him to be present. People approach Reb Zalman with great respect and reverence. When he speaks, he fully commands the attention of the room. He has earned this status. Reb Zalman is one of the most important voices of Judaism in our time. Though he has had conventional jobs as a Hillel rabbi, University professor, author and lecturer, he is anything but conventional. In fact he is the ultimate boundary crosser. After escaping Nazi Europe in 1941, he was a Lubavitcher working on college campuses. But he soon made his reputation as a spiritual teacher who made company with the likes of Shlomo Carlebach, Ram Dass and the Dali Lama. I know of no other teacher who can move so seamlessly between Chasidic texts, Eastern religious traditions, Native American heritage and secular American culture. His groundbreaking work in what he terms, ”davvenology” permeates all the work done in the movement.

For anyone who finds worship in American synagogues boring, a small dose of Jewish Renewal prayer is worth a try. It isn’t for everyone but the use of chanting, meditation, movement, unconventional readings and personal sharing does provide much of what so many Jews are chasing in non-Jewish spiritual settings. Not surprisingly the rabbis who have been ordained by Reb Zalman and now the more formal rabbinical training program they have called Aleph, are classic spiritual seekers themselves. As the program for ordination and other spiritual leadership programs have become more rigorous it is clear that those training with Aleph are selecting this path with great intentionality.

It is ironic that much of what Reb Zalman and Jewish Renewal were developing 30 years ago and more is now making its way into mainstream American synagogues. Congregations of all denominations can now be found experimenting with meditation, yoga, drumming, chanting and movement, if not in their main services than in alternate venues that are sanctioned by the rabbi. This “borrowing” has led to some degree of resentment among the longtime leaders of the movement although I did not hear any such complaint from Reb Zalman himself.

The sentiment expressed is that mainstream Jewish denominations take advantage of the R and D work of Jewish Renewal without any attribution while, at the same time, Jewish Renewal struggles to gain acceptance and financial support. Frankly, Mordecai Kaplan and the Reconstructionist Movement can tell exactly the same story as fifty years ago non-Orthodox movements cherry picked Kaplan’s most attractive ideas and made them their own even as the movement that Kaplan helped to launch struggled for recognition and support.

One hears within the confines of the Jewish Renewal movement some anxiety about their future. While there were some young faces at the national gathering, most of the audience was made up of people in their 50’s, 60, and 70’s. While second career rabbis are becoming more common across the denominational spectrum, the Renewal rabbinate clearly skews older than most. The number of congregations in the Renewal network is growing but very few seem to be able to support full time rabbis no less a full complement of other professionals.  Renewal rabbis are also competing in a shrinking synagogue market place. Yet if there is growth in that sector it is likely going to come from independent, non-denominational groups of Jews who are drawn to the leadership and style of a given rabbi. This is a trend that Renewal rabbis may be able to capitalize on.

In Renewal circles there is a lot of excitement about the explosive growth of Romemu, a new congregation founded by Rabbi David Ingber on the Upper West Side of Manhattan which has grown to 500 households in less than two years. The charismatic Ingber was ordained by Reb Zalman and he is candid about the debt he owes to Jewish Renewal in shaping his approach to Jewish life. Yet he himself is unsure whether the Jewish Renewal label will be an asset or a liability in growing his congregation.

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Jewish Renewal in the coming years is the extent to which they try to build the infrastructure of a denomination. For decades they reveled in their outsider status, suggesting that their post-denominational approach to Jewish life was more consistent with the ethos of a post-modern Jewish community. Yet today there are several post-denominational seminaries including Hebrew College in Boston and the Academy of Jewish Religion in New York and Los Angeles(independent of each other though bearing the same name). In addition, both United Synagogue (Conservative) and the URJ (Reform) broke all the old rules of denominational Judaism at their recent, respective national conventions as they invited in a broad array of rabbis and teachers who were not card carrying members of their movements. When even the biggest denominations of American Judaism go post-denominational, it makes it harder for Jewish Renewal to make a case to foundations and potential funders.

All this is not to say that Jewish Renewal has no future. At a recent retreat that I led for rabbinical students from eleven seminaries across the denominational spectrum (I do this regularly under the auspices of the Rabbis Without Borders program of Clal), a student from the Orthodox seminary, Chovevei Torah, commented that the teffilah he experienced at the retreat opened him up to levels of kavannah (deep, intentional spirituality) that he rarely experiences in Orthodox settings. Clearly this was the influence of the Aleph students who pushed the boundaries of what can happen in prayer space. I will also say that the four days I spent in the Jewish Renewal community were filled with a level of heartfulness, compassion and spiritual depth that is hard to come by in most Jewish settings today.

I’ve spent the past two years traveling the country first writing and then discussing Jewish Megatrends and the future direction of the American Jewish community. From what I can see, the Jewish community can use a healthy dose of what Jewish Renewal has to offer. I never bet against heart.

———

Rabbi Sid Schwarz is the director Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI), a program of Clal that helps to train rabbis to be visionary spiritual leaders. He is also the author of Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Community (Jewish Lights). Additional articles and information about bringing Rabbi Sid to your community can be found at www.rabbisid.org 

Where Fools Rush In: Spiritual Leadership for a Changing Jewish Community

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This morning I attend a keynote address by Rabbi Sid Schwarz, whom I have known since that PANIM interdenominational rabbinic student retreat I was blessed to attend all those years ago. He’s now involved with Clal (the Center for Learning and Leadership, the parent organization of Rabbis Without Borders), and has most recently published Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future, which makes him a perfect fit for an OHALAH conference themed around He’Atid, the future of Jewish Renewal. His talk is entitled ”Where Fools Rush In: Spiritual Leadership for a Changing Jewish Community.”

In a recent presentation to CLI, R’ Sid offered a metaphor of broadcast and receiving — that rabbis need to be able to both broadcast and receive. He suggests to us this morning that we might understand Torah as 70 wavelengths on which we might receive truth. Most of us can only broadcast on a few wavelengths and can receive on fewer than that, and that’s something we need to work on.

This article was originally posted Jan. 13, 2014 on Rabbi Rachel Barenblat’s blog, ”Velveteen Rabbi”. The article is a reflection piece by Rabbi Barenblat herself after listening to Rabbi Sid’s keynote address at the Ohala (Jewish Renewal) National Conference in Boulder, CO. Click here to see the original posting.

He reminisces briefly about how he wasn’t able to hear Reb Zalman’s Torah back in his early rabbinic school days, and indeed regarded it as ”strange fire” within the Reconstructionist rabbinical college… and because God has a sense of humor, here he is today, in full awareness of the debt he owes to Reb Zalman and to this neo-Hasidic / Jewish Renewal world. He talks about the shift which unfolded in the 20th century — thanks to R’ Mordechai Kaplan, R’ Abraham Joshua Heschel, our own Reb Zalman — between the vertical metaphor of God (God’s up there, we’re down here) and a horizontal metaphor of God (we and God are interrelating in an I/Thou fashion.)

I came to understand that what I’d seen as dichotomies in the Jewish world were in fact overlapping truths. We all need to work on our antennas so we can access one more wavelength than before so that we can acknowledge that truth has many faces, as does Torah, at least 70 faces.

He uses his work as a historian to try to help him understand not only the past but also the future. He acknowledges that we read in Talmud (Bava Batra) that from the time of the destruction of the Temple of old, prophecy exists only in the hands of children and fools. But notwithstanding that sugya, we have to try to take the risk of understanding not only the past but how we’re going to address the future.

In his newest book Jewish Megatrends he talks about the moment we’re at today in American Jewish history: a simultaneous decline of legacy Jewish institutions (synagogues, Federations, JCCs, membership organizations — the ”organized Jewish community”) and also a golden age. If you look at the legacy Jewish institutions, the current situation looks like a decline; but if you look at the innovation sector of Jewish life, you see amazing pockets of renaissance.

He files these renaissance happenings under the headings of four pillars. The first is chochmah, wisdom. In 50 years, he suggests, the world will be amazed that religious communities ever though of themselves as independent silos, rather than interconnected. Reb Zalman was way ahead of the curve on this! We all need to understand the overlap between our wisdom traditions and every other. The second pillar is tzedek, justice. And the third and fourth pillars are kehillah (intentional spiritual communities) and kedushah (helping Jews live lives of spiritual purpose.)

He asks: what is the nature of the kehillah we need to create? And what kind of spiritual leadership is required to lead such kehillot?

The American synagogue, he tells us, has gone through three stages, and we now need to figure out how to reach the fourth. First as new immigrants we created little shteiblach, informal home-based communities. As we became better-established in this country, we moved to secondary areas of settlement, creating ethnic synagogues. There might be a modest building, maybe hiring a rabbi with a small salary. In the post-WWII period Jews acquired affluence, moved to suburbia, and in this third era we were living in areas where we were no longer the majority. The synagogues built in that third era were ”synagogue centers,” which is still the dominant paradigm in congregational life today. And congregations which operate under that paradigm, he says bluntly, are failing. We need to move toward the next stage of the American synagogue.

The synagogue center is failing because it’s essentially in a consumer relationship with Jews, marketed like a commodity. Jews decide they need a certain set of goods and services (usually education for their children and of course the bar / bat mitzvah) — but that b’nei mitzvah tends to be the terminal degree in Jewish life, both in the sense that we won’t see most of those families again after b’nei mitzvah is celebrated, and because that in turn suggests the end of the Jewish future. People make decisions based on: what synagogue is convenient to me and offers a fair market price? People join synagogues when their kids are five, and when their youngest child is 14 they exit the synagogue. And during those years, nothing has changed in the life or heart of the neshama of the Jews who are members of that synagogue center.

Today, given the changing economy and the rise of the internet, the goods and services which for a long time Jews joined a synagogue to acquire can now be acquired á la carte, more cheaply, and sometimes at higher quality than via joining a shul. So the primary draw for Jews to join synagogue centers has evaporated.

Here’s the good news. Over the past 20 years, some new thinking has emerged about the nature of synagogues. (See Synagogue3K, STAR: Synagogue Transformation And Renewal, etc.) In the early years seminaries were grouchy about this new way of thinking, but today most seminaries are getting clarity around the fact that the kind of rabbis they’re training, and the synagogues for which they’re training them, will not serve the needs of the American Jewish community of the future.

Synagogues which are stuck in the synagogue center model, he says, are doomed. The best development consultants in the country can’t transform those old-model synagogue centers into what’s needed now. Change needs to come from rabbis; from inspired spiritual leaders who have a vision of what inspired spiritual community could look like. Beyond that, we need a toolkit for that transformation, because otherwise all of our energy and passion is going to lead us nowhere and we’re going to crash and burn in frustration.

Organizations naturally resist change. And in synagogues it’s even harder because resistance to change takes on a theological cast. We feel the weight of the challenge of trying to preserve a tradition which we love, as rabbis, but which (practically) nobody else gets. He quotes R’ Harold Schulweis: ”Rabbis have answers to questions which Jews no longer ask.” (A rueful and knowing sigh moves around the room.)

You can broadcast [your teachings] all you want, but if you don’t tune in to the wavelength of the Jews you want to touch, your broadcast is useless.

There are, R’ Sid says, three barriers in this work. First: the nomenclature problem. Second: a turf problem. And third: a play-it-safe problem.

When he wrote Finding a Spiritual Home, he was writing about people who had a deep desire for spiritual community and hadn’t found it anywhere in the organized Jewish community. In the late 90s, it was hard to find four synagogues to profile. Today there are several dozen new-paradigm synagogues! But here’s the nomenclature problem: many of them don’t want to call themselves ”synagogues,” because the word is so poisoned. Think of Ikkar in LA; The Kitchen in SF; Mishkan Chicago; Romemu in NY. These places are doing amazing work in this new paradigm model, but they often don’t call themselves synagogues.

And, people are using different words to describe the same phenomena: ”the synagogue community,” ”sacred community,” ”the emergent synagogue,” ”commanding community,” ”visionary synagogues,” ”kehillot.” There’s so much overlap in the work of creating these kinds of communities — but if we’re going to have a social movement, we need to agree on nomenclature! It sounds like a minor thing, but having common language can make a real difference in terms of galvanizing the people who understand that we can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing in the ways we’ve been doing it.

The second problem is the turf issue. Three years ago, within a span of 3 months, the Conservative movement came out with their strategic study of their movement and the numbers were dreadful; the Reform movement experienced a revolt in some of the largest synagogues in their movement, and those communities declared intention to bolt; and the Reconstructionist movement sponsored a program on ”rethinking the rabbinate.” So R’ Sid wrote an essay called ”Are Synagogues Still Relevant?” which argued that there’s idiocy in every movement trying to do the same thing, competing to see who’s going to get to the finish line first.

There’s a growing body of expertise and best practices among everyone who’s trying to solve these problems. If there were ever a time when the denominations should come together and say ’we should work on this collaboratively,’ this would be the moment!

(That draws spontaneous applause.) But, he argues, it’s not going to happen. The denominations won’t want it to happen — and, he cautions, even we here in this transdenominational gathering are challenged by this work.

Jewish Renewal emerged as a nondenominational phenomenon. But Max Weber and Reinhold Neibuhr draw out the trajectory of all emerging religious movements — from sects to churches. Sects begin with charismatic leadership, which we here in Renewal clearly have. They have ”insider language,” which we here in Renewal also have. But ultimately in order to survive, we move from the sect stage to what looks like a much more conventional denomination, and R’ Sid sees that hapening here. ”I’m not saying ’don’t do that,’” he notes. ”But before we cast stones at the denominations which have been functioning for a century or more, remember that you too are on a trajectory.”

”To say that there are many ways of being Jewish is a narrow ridge to walk, but we must walk it.”

And the third problem he cites is a taking-risks problem.

We need to encourage our rabbis to be risk-takers — to dramatically rethink what synagogues can be and need to be. And we need to educate our lay leadership to be in partnership with us, the spiritual leaders — we need them to give us space to take risks and to fail! As long as we learn how to ”fail forward.” Because nothing ventured, nothing gained. If we want to play it safe, we condemn ourselves to stay on the trajectory of synagogues that will continue to shrink.

With awareness of those three obstacles, he moves on to the four pillars of intentional spiritual communities. An intentional spiritual community needs to be mission-driven. Writing a mission statement and then ignoring it — that’s not enough; that’s not a living document. We need direction. If you have no destination, any path will do; but if you’re clear where you’re going, you can correct when you stray from the path.

An intentional spiritual community needs to create an empowered and self-generating culture. Kedusha (holiness), like love, can only be created with reciprocity. It’s not a one-directional relationship. To get the gift of Torah, we take upon ourselves the ohl mitzvot, a sense of obligation. ”Even if you’re agnostic about the idea of Torah from Sinai, you can understand that community itself can be the commanding voice which gives shape to the desire of God.” We are all b’nei brit, children of the covenant. We are born into a sense of obligations and we need to make comnunities understand that we are obligated to a higher sense of purpose and also to each other.

The greatest gift we have in Jewish community, which remains untapped in most synagogues, is the brilliance and gifts of the people in front of us. And so often we reduce people to ”dues-paying members.” We have an obsession with size and membership, which has no meaning whatsoever. We need to move to a commitment toownership. It’s not how many people pay dues — it’s about how many people feel that they are part of a community of Jews who are committed to some sacred purpose.

He moves then to talking about framing serious Judaism. Larry Kushner has a great piece,  The Tent-Peg Business, written back in the 70s and still relevant. The way he judges success in his community is how much Jews engage in primary Jewish acts. And he defines those primary acts the way the tradition does: Torah — avodah / service / some encounter with the divine and with sacred purpose — and gemilut chasadim, acts of personal lovingkindness and acts of global and social repair.

One of the greatest errors made by non-Orthodox Judaism in the 20th and 21st century is the belief that the only way you get Jews in the tent is by offering ”Jewish Lite.” The communities which are thriving are those which offer a sense of authentic Jewish encounter with Torah, avodah, and gemilut chasadim.

To be fair, the reason we went down the road of Jewish Lite was that earlier generations wanted to desperately to ”be American” that they wanted to fit in, not to stick out like a sore thumb. But that’s no longer an issue with the next generation. Now the next generation is asking, ”do I need Judaism?” Many of them look at religion and see narrow-mindedness, chauvinism, and fanaticism. If we want to reach that sector of Jews, we need to think of other ways of talking about what sacred community might look like.

He cites the Pew study: that 94% of Jews say they have a positive feeling about being Jewish. This is an amazing thing! People already have a positive feeling about Judaism — but the way to get them to live out that positive feeling is to give them serious Judaism, Torah and avodah and gemilut chasadim.

The fourth pillar of building intentional spiritual communities is, he says, visionary spiritual leadership. In the mid-20th century as the Jewish community was building synagogues and community centers all over America (proving that we could build shuls as large and beautiful as their churches), rabbis were trained to be CEOs of those synagogues. (And this is something about which Reb Zalman spoke as recently as yesterday at the smicha ceremony — that it’s fine for our boards to want to run synagogues as businesses, as long as they remember that synagogues are in the ”business” of doing Jewish, not the business of earning dues.)

The chavurah movement arose in response to this — the yearning to create rabbi as teacher, friend, colleague instead of the ”imperial rabbinate” paradigm. That was a good corrective to the CEO model, but that also doesn’t turn out to be all that’s needed. We need to own our power as rabbis with sincerity, clarity, integrity, strength. Rabbis need to listen — but we also need to be able to dip into our well of deep wisdom and to share that wisdom. We need to be able to share what people could aspire to become, and to put that out there, and then listen to their reaction. That, he says, is the recipe for success.

Our tradition, he reminds us, is not value-neutral. Judaism is in favor of certain ways of being in the world. We as teachers and rabbis need to give voice to that as strongly as we can! Jews are hungry for rabbis who can make some sense out of a world that seems to get more materialistic, more superficial, more profane and less compassionate every day. They need our vision of what sacred community can look like. Rabbis can’t be CEOs, but neither can we just be facilitators. As important as learning Tanakh and rabbinics and Hasidic texts, he suggests, is taking time to study the works being written around leadership.

We are on the cusp of enormous potential. But we need to tune up our antennas, to listen to the fact that Torah comes in at least seventy faces, and to understand that the Torah we have to offer is a Torah that Jews are hungry for.

Truth or Consequences

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Truth or Consequences was the first game show ever aired on commercial TV in the United States, appearing first as a pilot in 1941. It seems an apt phrase to describe the dilemma facing us today as we try to get a younger generation of Jews to have an affinity with Israel and the Jewish people. Starkly put, many Jewish-sponsored programs believe that we need to protect Jews from encountering any information that might put Israel in a less than morally righteous light. There seems to be no limit to the amount of money that can be raised for pro-Israel/hasbara organizations. While I am sympathetic to the motivations behind those organizations—creating a generation of Jews who appreciate the miracle of the state of Israel and its centrality to the Jewish people—I find the methodology to be problematic both ethically and pedagogically.

This article was published in The Jewish Peoplehood Papers, November 2013.

I have spent much of my career as a rabbi and educator with young people. In short, we are losing the battle for their hearts and minds because they don’t believe that we—the Jewish community—is telling them the truth. The consequences for both Jewish identity in the diaspora and for support for and affinity with the state of Israel, is disastrous.

It need not be this way. For several decades I have created and run educational programs for young Jews designed to increase their social and political activism on a range of issues, including Israel and the Middle East. I have also run numerous trips to Israel to explore, not only the geo-politics of the region, but the Jewish and democratic nature of the state as well. In these efforts, I have consistently looked for people and organizations that can speak to the challenges that Israel faces on a range of issues—the peace process, relationship with the Diaspora, treatment of Palestinians in the territories, Jewish pluralism in Israel, attitudes towards and policies affecting Israeli Arabs, the income gap between various ethnic groups, etc.

With few exceptions the reactions are consistent. There is some initial shock at the extent of Israel’s social and political challenges but then people realize that we are talking about a relative young country, existing in the midst of an undemocratic region of the world facing ongoing security challenges. They are impressed at the robust nature of Israeli civil society, a feature unique to democracies. They realize that Israel is not a Jewish Disneyland where everything is perfect. Most importantly, they appreciate that they have been treated like adults, exposed to hard and often competing truths out of which they need to re-weave a narrative that makes sense to them.

Along these lines, this past year I helped to launch the Rene Cassin Fellowship Program (RCFP), a year long program on Judaism and human rights for young adults, ages 25-35, with hubs in New York, London and Jerusalem. With lead funding from the New York UJA/Federation’s Commission on the Jewish People, the program includes monthly study sessions from a common syllabus, monthly chevruta discussions between and American, European and Israeli Fellows on the monthly sessions, impact projects to be implemented with specific NGO’s and an Israel study tour.

Our study tour in Israel looked at some very challenging issues: the Arab minority; Bedouins; religious pluralism; security; settlements; African refugees; the nature of Zionism. Our presenters included government spokespeople, representatives from a wide array of NGOs and both Jews and Arabs. The interchange between Fellows from the three different regions was fascinating. A very politically progressive Israel found herself becoming an eloquent spokesperson for the merits of Zionism and the state of Israel despite its challenges. In turn, a very politically hawkish American Jew found herself so upset by our visit to Hebron and the treatment of Arabs there by the IDF and by Jewish settlers that politically left Israelis had to help her recover her Zionist balance.

To the extent that one of the goals of the RCFP is to strengthen the ties between young adult Jews in three centers of Jewish life (North America, Europe and Israel), it is clear that our theme of human rights created a common universe of discourse. In fact, many of the Fellows made clear that they would not have chosen to sign up for a more conventional program dealing with Israel sponsored by the Jewish community. They were drawn to the RCFP because they were convinced that the program was committed to a rigorous and critical look at international human rights, including Israel. The Fellows are among our best and brightest but many represent a constituency that most Jewish communities cannot access. The fact that the RCFP program spends considerable time helping Fellows appreciate the alignment between Jewish values and human rights values is one of many ways that gives participants a renewed sense of pride in their Jewish identities.

The responses to a variety of attitudinal questions on a questionnaire we administered on the last day of the program offers some insights into what participants took away from the program. The responses that were statistically significant included the following:

• I have a better appreciation of the challenges that Israel faces in its attempt to balance its commitment to human rights with its commitment to security and the safety of its citizens.
• I feel connected to my Jewish identity as a result of this trip.
• I have a more nuanced understanding of the meaning of the term “Zionism”
• Israel is now more central to my identity as a Jew.
• I believe that Israel’s democracy is seriously at risk.

One of our European participants, who has participated in more Jewish community sponsored programs than any of the other 29 Fellows, wrote the following in his evaluation:

“This seminar reminded me what peoplehood is, or at least should be about. …The program took ‘Israel engagement’ to a whole new level. Just as in relationships we can tell the difference between a flirt and real love – when we fall in love, it happens despite the other person’s problems, mistakes and issues. It’s the same with Israel: If we want young adults to have a strong bond and a real connection with Israel, we have to see the country without any make-up, as it is, with all its difficulties and challenges. That was the main gift given to those of us who were privileged to participate in the RCFP Israel study tour.”

The message that we were able to convey is that Israel is both a sovereign nation but that, on a larger level, it is a joint venture of the Jewish people. That sends an empowering message to young Jews that their engagement can make a difference in Israel. The lesson for those who care about strengthening the Jewish people is that we need to meet today’s young adults where they are at and help them articulate what is at the root of our collective Jewish enterprise. This is the only way to engage Next Gen Jews.

The RCFP program is charting an educational methodology that is desperately needed in the Jewish world because there are thousands of young Jewish adults who can be more deeply engaged in the Jewish peoplehood conversation with a program that resonates with their values about creating a more just and peaceful world. Unless we are prepared to engage in this conversation in a critical and truthful way, the consequences will not be pretty.

________________
Rabbi Sid Schwarz is the director of the Rene Cassin Fellowship Program. He founded and led PANIM: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values for 21 years. He is also the author of the recently published Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Community (Jewish Lights).

A Synagogue Stimulus Plan

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At the recent national convention of United Synagogue, Rabbi Ed Feinstein was reported to have said “the house is burning down” as a way to signal to Conservative congregations that the hour is too late for synagogues to think about modest changes in the way they do their business. Since the 2000 publication of my book Finding a Spiritual Home: How a New Generation of Jews can Transform the American Synagogue I have worked with many congregations and rabbis across the denominational spectrum about strategies to move their institutions from the current paradigm—the synagogue-center—to a new paradigm, the synagogue-community, which is far better suited to address the changing reality of American life and the next generation of American Jews.

The good news is that dozens of congregations have been moving in this direction aided by many national and local initiatives among them: STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal), Synagogue 3000, the Legacy Heritage Innovation Fund and the Synergy project of the New York UJA Federation. The bad news is that not enough synagogues have recognized the need to change. If the Pew study does nothing more than to provide a strong kick in the pants, it comes not a moment too soon. National rabbinical associations and congregational unions are well aware of the precipitous declines in synagogue affiliation and they are acting with a sense of urgency that I have not seen in my lifetime.

There are four core principles that are essential to move a congregation towards the synagogue-community model and they are set forth in great detail in Finding a Spiritual Home. Like with all institutional transformation strategies, those principals require diligent attention over two to three years before they will start to produce results. But I often am asked: “What can we do in the short term to begin to build some energy in our congregation as we start the longer term process of systemic change?” To that end I propose a three part synagogue stimulus plan, shock therapy to move congregations out of the stasis that threatens to make them increasingly irrelevant to American Jewish life.

Rabbinic renewal– A community is only as dynamic as its spiritual leader. Many rabbis are not spending the most of their time on the things that they are passionate about. At the same time, rabbis spend enormous amounts of time planning for and conducting religious services. We did not need the Pew survey to tell us that few non-Orthodox Jews attend religious services in synagogues with any regularity. Even as there are emerging around the country amazing alternatives of joyful and soulful worship, it has yet to manifest itself in most American synagogues. I suggest that synagogues reduce by 25% the amount of time their rabbi needs to lead services. On that one Shabbat a month, the community should tap the talent of its members to create a lay-led service, even if it is dramatically different from what happens the other three weeks of the month. It is one way to generate some of the energy that one witnesses when attending an independent minyan and bring it into the synagogue. In turn, the rabbi should be charged with re-directing that newfound release time to any initiative around which they are passionate that might attract under-engaged Jews into the orbit of congregational life, whether that happens in the building or outside of it.

Diversify the Program– One hundred years ago Mordecai Kaplan argued that Jews are a religious civilization and that worship represented only one manifestation of that civilization. The Pew study validates Kaplan’s prescient analysis. Jews love being Jewish but fewer and fewer of them want to express it in religious ways. Congregations can and should be the main retail outlet where Jews can explore the rich heritage of our people. Once a month, on Shabbat morning, congregations should offer a wide array of activities through which Jews can deepen their engagement with Jewish life and learning. Let there be classes on Bible, rabbinic texts, Musar, contemporary Israel, Jewish fiction and contemporary Jewish music. Run workshops for families on how to celebrate an upcoming holiday, how to develop Shabbat rituals, how to raise well adjusted children or how to create a family that effectively conveys the values of hesed (compassion), kedusha (sanctity), tzedek (social justice for all) and tzedakah (sharing of our resources to support good work in the world).

Once down this path the options that emerge from the community itself are limitless. In my own congregation we double our attendance on those shabbatot when we offer such options and most workshops are led by congregants. Everyone, including those who attended the worship service, then joins together for a pot-luck lunch and the community feels that Shabbat is at the center of our communal experience. The rabbi should be central to these optional activities, both in supporting those who lead them and offering an option herself/himself that they are passionate about.

Jewish Renaissance Innovation Fund– Synagogues have got to serve a constituency broader than their current membership. I suggest that congregations set aside 5% of their budget to create an innovation fund offering mini grants to anyone, member or not, who wants to develop a new Jewish initiative. The initiative should then be made available to both members and non-members in that congregation. The monthly Shabbat program mix is the ideal venue for the congregation to benefit from this investment. Equally important is that young people, who want to re-invent their Judaism, will feel supported by and increasingly appreciative of the sponsoring congregation. Right now, they are nowhere to be found on the synagogue landscape.

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There are dozens of ways that these innovations can roll out. Each is a catalyst to help synagogues re-tool themselves for the new social reality that we live in and for the next generation of American Jews. There is no time to wait. Let the conversation begin.

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Rabbi Sid Schwarz is the director of the Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI), a program sponsored by Clal: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, training visionary spiritual leaders for the American Jewish community. He is also the author of Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Community (Jewish Lights). A version of this column was delivered at the recently held United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism national convention.

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”.