covenantal community

Longing for Face Time

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Every good sermon has at least one compelling metaphor. Here is mine for this evening; it is visual (a camera shot of the empty sanctuary).

When I learned back in July that Adat Shalom would only be holding remote services for the High Holydays, I was overtaken by a deep sadness that I felt in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t a surprise and I think it was the only responsible course of action given the current state of the Covid-19 pandemic. And still, I found myself really bummed out. I was longing for face time, and I am not talking about the iPhone variety. Real face time, with each of you.

 

This was the Kol Nidre sermon delivered to Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation (Bethesda, MD) on September 27, 2020. 

I love the chagim. I love the liturgy and the music. I love the universal themes and the rituals that are particular to our tradition. I love seeing the Adat Shalom regulars as well as checking in with those who show up less regularly, but with whom I have had meaningful interactions over the years. I love the socializing before and after services and yes, maybe even a bit during services. I love the holiday meals (my wife, Sandy, is an amazing hostess and cook). And I love all the hugs. None of that is happening this year. And I miss it all very much.  

Given the scale of suffering that the pandemic has caused, my complaining about not having High Holyday face time may seem trite, or even somewhat indulgent. But maybe not. Because “face time” is a metaphor for something much larger.

Some of you know that the same year that I helped to found Adat Shalom, 1988, I also founded a national organization devoted to exploring the intersection between Jewish learning, Jewish values and social responsibility. It was called PANIM: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values. Our flagship program was called Panim el Panim, which brought Jewish high school students to Washington from all over North America for programs on Judaism and social activism. The phrase panim el panim comes from the Bible and it is used to describe Jacob’s experience of seeing God’s face in Genesis ch. 32. Later it describes the way Moses encountered God in both Numbers 12 and Deut 34. So, while the modern Hebrew word panim means “face”, the phrase panim el panim suggests a deep encounter, when you come to understand a higher truth about what it means to be a human being who functions responsibly in relationship with others. To me, panim el panim is an alternate formulation of the Golden Rule: vahavta lreacha kamocha, “you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. It is, in essence, face time that leads to “beloved community”, a form of community that we so desperately need today.

This kind of “face time” has informed the communal culture of Adat Shalom since its founding. The purpose of the community was not to sponsor shabbat services, educational programs, life cycle events and more. Most synagogues do that but it confuses ends and means. The purpose of every Adat Shalom event and program was to cultivate deep bonds of community and an ethos of chesed/lovingkindness to one another and tzedek/justice to the world. Services, onegs, classes were a means to an end. This was putting into practice a core Reconstructionist principle coined by our beloved, Rabbi Ira Eisenstein, that “belonging comes prior to believing”. It also is consistent with the teachings of Emmanuel Levinas, the 20th century French Jewish philosopher, who saw the Biblical phrase, panim el panim, as the way human beings cultivate a feeling of compassion and even love for the “other”, the fundamental building block of ethical living.

But I am afraid that this orientation to life is in short supply in our country today. And I believe that the manifold problems that we currently face—the pandemic, climate change, racism, poverty, the erosion of democracy– will get worse unless we make a major spiritual course correction. So, how do we do that?

I believe, as did the rabbis of our tradition, that human beings have moral agency. We have choice. And every day, each human being can decide either to exclusively advance their own interests or to act in such a way that shows concern, compassion and love for our fellow human beings and for creation. This is what our tradition describes as yeter ha-ra, the evil inclination and yetzer tov, a good inclination. These are Jewish terms for selfishness and selflessness. It is that simple. To my great sorrow, over the past few years, we have witnessed a situation in America where the evil inclination is ascendant and, as a result, every one of the crises I mentioned moments ago, is getting worse and not getting better. Alarmingly, that more selfish America, epitomized by the phrase “America First”, is like a contagion, spreading as quickly as has Covid-19. And it is seriously endangering our Republic.

The Bible seemed to anticipate periods of time when history would turn towards evil. Ironically, here too, the Hebrew word, panim, serves as metaphor. In Deut 31 God says: “I will surely conceal my face (haster astir panai) because my people have turned to other Gods.” The concealing of God’s face signals the breakdown of healthy societies and of social responsibility.

The philosopher, Martin Buber translates the hiding of God’s face, in Hebrew, hester panim, with the term “the eclipse of God” and he wrote a whole book with that title, published in 1952, to better understand the existence of evil in our world, including the Holocaust. Buber wrote: “When history appears to be empty of God, … it is difficult for an individual and even more, for a people, to understand themselves as addressed by God. … During such times the world seems to be irretrievably abandoned to the forces of tyranny.”

If that Buber passage sounds dark, it is intended as such. He was trying to make the case for God even in the face of the horrors of the Holocaust. The Yom Kippur liturgy seems designed to do something similar. First it holds up a mirror to all the ways that we have personally fallen short of living a moral and ethical life. In not so subtle ways it tells us that, because of our sins, we may not be worthy to live for another year. But then it tells us that we are capable of repentance and, if we do it with a full heart, there is the possibility of a return to a right relationship with others and with the society in which we live; in religious-speak: to once again merit to be panim el panim with God.

I don’t think it is as simple as fasting and reciting a few lines from the machzor. But, with every passing year, I become increasingly impressed how those ritual pieces remind us of the need for a course correction. And part of that course correction is relating to all people in the spirit of panim el panim, seeing the other in the fullness of their humanity.

Face Time is my shorthand for how we make our world a more compassionate and loving place. To do that, we need to be inspired by acts of hesed. Fortunately, such acts can be found virtually everywhere, made even more obvious against the backdrop of our current crises.

  • We saw it in the many stories we heard about doctors and nurses putting their own lives at risk, working 16-17 hour days to treat Covid-19 patients. Thousands of health care workers travelled to New York City at their own expense in March to volunteer their time with Covid patients. Some paid with their lives!
  • We saw it in the life of Congressman John Lewis who, from his early 20’s, was willing to sacrifice his life for the cause of civil rights in this country. And we saw it in the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg who, despite the discrimination she faced for being a woman early in her legal career, helped to re-write this country’s laws around gender equality.
  • We see it, week in and week out, in this holy community of Adat Shalom where we have created a culture of caring; where people show up for each other in such impressive numbers in times of illness, injury, loss and need. We have created a hesed culture that is so lacking in much of American society.

I truly believe that the antidote to the spiritual, moral and political decay of our country and of the world is more “face time”, treating each and every person we encounter as mirror images of the Divine. I am longing for that kind of face time, not only because this year I miss hugging you on the High Holydays, but because these days, our world is so lacking in that kind of caring between people.

This kind of face time is not only possible during a pandemic, it is a necessity! And we must extend it well beyond the people we know because we are all now more keenly aware of how much we have allowed our country to divide itself into tribes of race, religion, class, and country of origin. We simply don’t know one another well enough to warrant the term United States of America. I dare say, we must even extend face time to those who are on the other side of today’s political divide. I know that is a big ask; I am not even sure that I am capable of it. But we must try. Our country is in desperate need of some healing and it must start with people who can see the divine image in the face of every person who, to us, is “other”.

Do it for the sake of heaven; do it for the sake of humanity; do it for the sake of the world that you want to bequeath to your children.  

Gmar Chatima Tova, may you be inscribed for a year of health and spiritual wholeness.

It is Called “Covenantal Community”

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We should appreciate David Cygielman for introducing the broad eJP audience to the notion of communal “thickness” in his 11/13/17 post. As was noted in the response by Rabbi Michael Holzman, this is not a new concept. Well before the David Brooks’ column in the New York Times, sociologists have sought ways to measure the depth of connection between the people who make up any given social system. The idea of thickness was first introduced into the lexicon of the social sciences by Clifford Geertz in his classic study, The Interpretation of Cultures, which was published in 1973.

Note: This article appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy on November 28, 2017.

In my view, it is essential that those who care about the future health of the American body politic focus their attention on the nature of community. This is no easy task because we use the word “community” so often and so freely, that the word loses much of its potential power and meaning. Yet there is a clear connection between the erosion of the civic fabric of American society, which has been documented by Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, 2000) and others, and the current climate of intolerance, bigotry and polarization that threatens the future of American democracy.

In his work, Putnam introduced the term “social capital”, to my mind, a far better descriptor for what others have called “thickness”. But to document the various ways in which social capital has been eroded in American society over the past 25 years is only the first step. Few argue with the diagnosis. The question is: What is the proper response?

I have argued that the Jewish community has a unique opportunity to respond to the loss of contexts of meaning for Americans by taking a closer look at how we go about the task of constructing our micro-communities (Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future, 2006). If one were to ask a random sample of Americans what institution provided a context of meaning for Jews, many would say: ”synagogues”. Would that only be true! If synagogues were structured in such a way that the people who came into its orbit truly felt a deep connection to the institution’s mission and to the other people who were part of that synagogue, we would not be facing the phenomenon of synagogues across the national and denominational landscape losing market share for the last two decades.

For the past twenty years I have had the privilege of working with dozens of synagogues and rabbis, trying to help them move from the prevalent synagogue-center paradigm to a new way of thinking about and structuring their communities. What we know about the synagogue-center paradigm that emerged in the post-World War II era of suburbanization is that it is primarily a transactional institution with relatively low expectations for membership (except for the payment of dues) and, consequently, low buy-in from members.  Nonetheless, for several generations, a large percentage of American Jews (studies suggest upwards of 80% in the course of lifetime), joined synagogues in their suburban neighborhoods to: a) acquire a basic Jewish education for their children, at least up until their Bar/Bat Mitzvah; b) to associate with other Jews; and c) to accommodate to a pattern of American life in suburbia where most middle-class people became members of religious congregations.

For a whole host of reasons that I have documented in Jewish Megatrends and elsewhere, that synagogue-center model of the American synagogue meets the needs of fewer and fewer American Jews. Jews, especially younger Jews, are voting with their feet and synagogues leaders across the country are in search for ways to make their institutions more attractive to Next Gen Jews.

What is so interesting to me is that the handful of people who have written about the future of the American synagogue, who have served as consultants for synagogue change efforts and who have led national efforts addressing the issue (e.g. Synagogue 3000; STAR; the Jewish Emergent Network, etc.) are in general agreement about what is wrong with the synagogue-center model and what a new paradigm might look like. However, there has been no agreement about what to call that new paradigm. In my own work (Finding a Spiritual Home: How a New Generation of Jews can Transform the American Synagogue), I have used the term “synagogue-community” and “intentional spiritual community”. Others have used terms like “visionary synagogues” or “emergent synagogues”.

I sometimes say, partly in jest but not facetiously, that successful movements require at least two things: common nomenclature and a theme song. We can ditch the theme song for the present moment but I’d strongly recommend that those who care about the future of the American synagogue rally around the term “covenantal community”. I first introduced the term in a keynote address to the first national conference of the Jewish Intentional Communities Initiative co-sponsored by Hazon and the Pearlstone Center in November 2013. Dr. Bill Robinson, Dean of The William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary, addressed the elements of covenantal community in an article in eJP in May 2017 entitled “Leadership Towards Covenantal Community”. And equipping rabbis with the vision and tools to transform their congregations into covenantal communities has been the centerpiece of the two-year fellowship program—the Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI)— that I have led since 2013. CLI is sponsored by Hazon.

What are the characteristics of covenantal community? A full answer requires far more space than this post allows but my working definition is: A group of people who intentionally enter into a mutual obligatory relationship in which they commit to: a) a common mission; and b) give of their time and psychic energy to support the viability of the group and the material and spiritual needs of the members of the group.

The key words are “mutual obligatory relationships”. This is no easy task in a society that so worships individualism and autonomy. Yet in my own experience, first as the founding rabbi of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, MD, and then in consulting work with synagogues across the country, I have found that when you raise the bar of expectations, people are both willing and eager to make a much larger commitment than they ever dreamed possible. And then, in what become a virtuous cycle, people find that the community is able to feed their hunger for meaning and purpose in ways they never previously imagined possible.

A covenant is a contract of the heart. It is far more than an exchange of money for a range of goods and services. The starting point for the spiritual history of the Jewish people begins at Mt. Sinai when our ancestors entered into a brit, a covenant with God. That covenant involved many obligations for our people, obligations that we were not always prepared to live up to. But there is an implicit promise that if we live up to our part of the covenant, we are rewarded with a life of blessing. At a time when Jews, when all Americans, are so desperate to craft lives of sacred purpose, it is time for us to commit more time, resources and attention on how to build covenantal communities.

Something’s Happening Here

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In 1967 Buffalo Springfield issued an anti-Vietnam War song called “For What It’s Worth” that began with, “There’s something happening here. What it is, ain’t exactly clear.” The lyric expresses what I was observing in the Jewish communal landscape over the last decade that inspired me to write Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future (2013). In the book I describe two opposite trendlines that were happening simultaneously—the decline of legacy Jewish organizations and the concurrent rise of an innovation sector of Jewish themed organizations that were experiencing growth, especially among millennials.

Note: This article appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy on Dec. 13, 2016.

The analysis from the book suggested an opportunity that I was eager to pursue. In 2015, with the support of the William Davidson Foundation, we launched the New Paradigm Spiritual Communities Initiative (NPSCI) under the auspices of Clal: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. NPSCI’s mission is to identify, convene and build the capacity of emerging Jewish spiritual communities and organizations.

Because we were particularly interested in emerging groups that were attracting Next Gen Jews we looked at activity in five discreet sectors: social justice; spiritual practice; Jewish prayer groups (like independent minyanim); Jewish learning groups; and eco-sustainability/food-justice. Helping us in the effort are five co-sponsoring organizations: Hazon; the Institute for Jewish Spirituality; JOIN for Justice; Mechon Hadar; and UpStart.

We have just completed our first cycle of NPSCI. In March 2016 we gathered 55 creatives together, well distributed from the five sectors and coming from every part of the United States and Canada. While the innovators skewed heavily towards those in their 20’s and 30’s, the phenomenon is by no means restricted to that age group. The second stage of NPSCI is called Kenissa (Entrance-way): A Training for Leaders of Emergent Jewish Communities. That took place in December 2016. Each member of the initial Consultation was invited to bring a team of up to three people, professional or lay, from their communities.

What is exciting as we think about repeating this cycle for the next several years is that each person we find helps us discover one or two other Jews who are creating approaches to Jewish life and identity of extraordinary variety. NPSCI is creating a platform where these innovators can come together and gain strength from spending time with other creative individuals from around the country. Typically, most of these innovators are under-resourced, over-worked and sit at the margins of the organized Jewish community. Despite the fact that they are having success attracting the very Next Gen Jews that the organized Jewish community fails to attract, typical of start-ups, most struggle to become sustainable.

An invitation into the innovator’s network that is NPSCI is a little taste of heaven. If we did nothing more than identify these creative individuals and convene them, we could say “dayenu” but we do much more. We are essentially unleashing the creative wisdom of those in the network to teach and learn from one another. We are also offering a specific conceptual framework that inspires communities and organizations to imagine their work in more robust ways.

If the Jewish community is to turn the corner and be relevant to the next generation of American Jews, we need to better understand the phenomenon that NPSCI has begun to identify. To that end, we commissioned a study of the first cohort of NPSCI by Dr. Tobin Belzer, a sociologist affiliated with the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. Her findings build on previous work in the Jewish innovation space: Mechon Hadar’s Emergent Jewish Communities and their Participants (2007), and two studies by Jumpstart: The Innovation Ecosystem (2009) and The Jewish Innovation Economy (2011).

Studying the background, attitudes and behaviors of those attending the 2016 NPSCI Consultation, the study found that the vast majority were beneficiaries of strong Jewish backgrounds including a mix of afternoon religious school, day school, participation in Jewish youth groups and summer camps. Yet few identified themselves with the movements that presumably sponsored those experiences. The vast majority identified as “just Jewish” or “post-denominational” which raises question about their future affiliation patterns and the ongoing challenge to existing synagogue movements.

In terms of attitudes, our sample reflected the waning influence of the Holocaust on their identities and a rejection of a communal narrative centering on anti-semitism and “Jews at risk”. It confirmed what other recent studies have told us about attitudes towards Israel, with very few putting Israel at the center of their Jewish identity and a majority holding critical views about some of Israel’s policies. One fascinating paradox is that the vast majority saw their identities as global and universal instead of particular and Jewish and yet, virtually all expressed an affinity to the ethics and values of Judaism.

I have argued in my own articles and books that while some describe the next generation of American Jews as “post-tribal” a more accurate term would be “covenantal”. What I mean by that term is that even as younger Jews reject many of the parochial aspects of Jewish communal life, they resonate to values that are core to Jewish teaching—every person made in the image of God; the protection of the stranger and most vulnerable in our midst; a pursuit of peace and justice; a commitment to learning and the pursuit of truth. As such, programs and organizations that put such values at the center have the best chance of attracting this next generation of American Jews.

In fact, the Jewish innovators that NPSCI is identifying and convening are building exactly these types of communities and organizations. Asked to characterize the organizations that they are creating or leading, the terms most often used were: transformative, welcoming, non-judgmental, pluralistic, accessible, unconventional and risk-taking. By implication, few believed that the legacy organizations that make up the organized Jewish community reflected these values or principles.

As part of NPSCI’s commitment to support emerging Jewish communities in the innovation space, we are about to undertake a major mapping project of the phenomenon across North America. Identifying the people and organizations that are part of the upsurge of creative efforts to redefine Jewish life and Jewish identity is a necessary part of any effort to support the Jewish innovation sector. Those interested in being listed in our database and being invited to future gatherings sponsored by NPSCI can register their organizations or communities on the home page of our website: http://www.npsci.org/

Those interested in reading the Tobin Belzer’s full report, “Jewish Communal Transformation: A Look at What’s Happening and Who’s Making it Happen” can find it here: http://www.npsci.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/NPSCI-report-Nov-16-final.pdf.