In the last few weeks one of the great mysteries of this year has been finally revealed—not the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein, but the statistics of the long delayed Jewish population study that only cost $6 million dollars to produce. The most interesting fact that has come out of this current study (whose accuracy has already been seriously challenged) is that the famous figure of the previous national Jewish population study, done a decade ago, which claimed that 52% of Jews were intermarrying, turns out to be inaccurate—it should have been 43%. Now they tell us. That 52% statistic was the most frequently cited number of the decade, as policy makers throughout the land asked the questions that have been asked in every preceding generation, even those without multi-million dollar studies: Is there a future to this community or will it succumb to intermarriage and assimilation? How can the future be assured? What should the Jewish community be doing to get more Jews active in Jewish life?
In response, the organized Jewish community first rallied under the banner of Jewish continuity, then they called it Jewish renaissance, and now it is known as Jewish pillars (my own choice would have been the Jewish counter-reformation just to be unnecessarily confusing). But underlying the various efforts to combat assimilation or, to put it more positively, to encourage greater involvement in Jewish life, there began to emerge a debate about how to spend the resources of the Jewish community. Should communal dollars be spent on outreach or in-reach? Is it a better use of Jewish philanthropic dollars to help strengthen those Jews who are already active in synagogues and communal life or to reach out to those standing on the margins or even those outside organized Jewish life?
Those who argue for in-reach say it is a more efficient use of funds to focus on those who have already bought in, while to spend on outreach means inevitably to “waste” money on people who are unlikely to be part of the community in any event. On the other hand, proponents of outreach say that if the Jewish community is to grow and be large enough to sustain itself then we cannot afford to write off the majority of Jews who are not actively affiliated. We ought to spend time and resources trying to understand these folks and see what strategies might work to bring them closer to the fold.
These issues are played out in very concrete ways. Should philanthropic dollars be used to supplement day schools as opposed to Hebrew Schools? On this particular issue, focusing on in-reach efforts takes the form of subsidizing the high cost of intensive Jewish living rather than investing in the improvement of less intensive models that reach larger numbers of people. While most people would argue that both strategies are useful, in a world of limited resources certain choices inevitably have to be made and are being made, though often not as transparently as we might expect or want.
Just below the surface of this debate is a much deeper argument reflecting sharply different notions of who the Jewish community is and thus who it should be. The real question may be not so much where we invest our resources but whom we want in and whom we want out. If you listen carefully to what the in-reach advocates are saying it is not just a question of priorities, about which reasonable people can disagree. Rather it is about the very nature of the community itself. At its starkest, the in-reach advocates are saying that outreach is not good for the Jewish people. Why? Well, to put it bluntly, if outreach is successful, the community will be filled with the non-Jewish partners of Jews, as well as those who are not halakhically Jewish, and most of all those who have a very different idea of what it means to be Jewish, that is a community that doesn’t resemble the elite leadership. In other words, outreach results in diluting the strength and commitment of the Jewish community. The gain in numbers in this view is not worth the loss in intensity.
Those who advocate for this position are what I call the Jewtocracy—a description of a community run by and for an elite. This elite is committed to a definition of “good Jew” that includes regular synagogue attendance, day school education, and observance of kashrut and Shabbat—in other words, those Jews who feel a strong commitment to key elements of the ritual practice of Judaism plus Talmud torah—Jewish education. In the vision of this elite what it means to be Jewish is to do those things that are uniquely Jewish, that which is different from the rest of the world.
Some listening to this might think that this is a strange critique coming from a rabbi, let alone a person so deeply involved in the Havurah movement. Weren’t these small intentional communities by definition elite? Can’t it be said that this greater emphasis on Jewish ritual was in part related to the Jewish Catalogs and the Jewish counter-culture’s critique of the existing institutions of Jewish life as pallid and not serious about their Judaism?
While there is some truth that any small movement that is critical of the larger world around them has by nature an elitist element, I think the current elitism is actually different from that of the early havurot for two reasons. First, back in the 60’s, those looking for intimate services with a serious intellectual component that encouraged participation rather than passivity and that valued egalitarianism over hierarchy would have been hard pressed to find a liberal synagogue to meet their needs. (In fact, some Reconstructionists synagogues, because of ideology and size, were among the exceptions to the synagogue picture of the time.) For the most part, if you wanted those things your only choice was to create your own service. The Jewish world has shifted since then and such values as intimacy and congregational participation are reflected in the rabbi coming off the bimah to lead Torah discussions instead of sermons and increased congregational singing. In other words, many contemporary synagogues offer services that in terms of values are not so different than those of the alternative minyanim. This was not true in the late 60’s when the gap between what was being offered in most synagogues and in the havurot was a chasm.
It was also the case that membership in the early havurot was open to anyone who wanted to participate. Havurat Shalom in Somerville, Mass had a membership that included rabbis and Jewish academics as well as those who knew no Hebrew and had little Jewish background. One member had just left Ner Yisrael, a right wing yeshiva in Baltimore, while another still got chocolate Easter eggs from her Jewish parents. And as much as the havurah was a small community that was inner focused, we also desired to be open to the larger community. The Shabbat morning services often had 75 attendees, only a third of whom were members. That desire to bring to a wider audience what we had learned from our havurah experience is nowhere better demonstrated than in the Jewish Catalog, which tried to open the resources of the Jewish tradition to the widest possible spectrum of Jews. Its basic message was that anyone could participate in Jewish life and in this catalog we will give you what you need to know so you won’t feel like a stranger in the strange land of Judaism.
The havurah movement tried to balance the idea of living a Jewish life for ourselves and feeling a sense of responsibility to the larger Jewish community. Looking at the elitism in the Jewish community today, it seems to me the sole focus is on creating a community that works for its insiders and for the people just like them. This distinction crystallized for me this year on the weekend that the neo-Hasidic Shabbaton was hosted by SAJ. I had urged SAJ to serve as host despite some people’s reluctance. I came into that Shabbat with some nervousness about whether this would be a positive or negative experience. I went to the Friday night service in the social hall. The room was filled with people, many of whom I had known for years, and there was a sense of hevra/affinity because of those connections. Two people very ably led the service. The hevra joined in the davening with lots of people saying the prayers in an audible hum rather than the silence of most synagogues when it comes to sections of silent prayer. The singing was enthusiastic, filled with niggunim. Lots of people loved it, including some people not in the hevra moved by the spirit and energy. I should have loved it, but instead I became increasingly alienated from it. Why? Not a page was announced and I watched some people flipping pages in a vain attempt to follow and then finally resign themselves to the role of spectator rather than participant.
The difference between a synagogue and a minyan is that a synagogue is really open to all kinds of people and tries to stretch wide to make that accommodation. A minyan is most like a club only for its members and like-minded people. The truth is a synagogue is not just a broader version of a minyan. The synagogue cares about the whole Jewish people. Sitting there that Friday night reminded me why I wanted to be a congregational rabbi. I still want to open the doors wide as we did in the Jewish Catalog. I am the rabbi of everyone in this community –both the few who don’t need page announcements and the many that do. And as much as being a rabbi is about being in relationship to you, I am also deeply concerned about all the Jews out there who feel disconnected from Judaism. On Shabbat mornings, I am concerned about the experience of those sitting in the seats and yet present for me in their absence are all those who can fill the empty seats.
Yet those who are part of that elite would respond: it is very easy to criticize the elitism in the community, but there is an unpleasant truth that you are ignoring. Aren’t we, the shul and day school going people the very core of Jewish life and its only future? Even if we want to be inclusive and mostly non-judgmental, aren’t we better Jews than those who don’t come regularly to synagogue or are ignorant about their Judaism? Or to ask the question in a somewhat different way—in our heart of hearts in 100 years, will there be any identifiable, vibrant Jews other than the most traditionally observant Jews?
I imagine in all depends on your definition of identifiable and vibrant. Before modernity, traditional Judaism had been predicated on living in a traditional world with a common set of truths about God and the universe. These truths included a belief in a God that rewarded and punished. For those who bought into this system, the world, despite all its pain and injustices, made Ultimate sense. And if such a person had a question of what to do, he could be guided by the Torah, a document divine and thus infallible. And if someone decided to perhaps peer outside that traditional Jewish enclave, he would discover a vastly different world populated by goyim, by non-Jews. More important than the hostility the Jew faced in the outside world was the fact that the world was so different that there was not going to be a competing value system to make him question his inherited values. The only common value of that outside world and the Jewish world was a belief in the correctness of tradition and of a theology that made sense of the way things were and militated against a desire to change.
Not in our world. “Progress is our most important product.” “Judaism is an evolving religious civilization.” Who can imagine what scientific, medical and engineering feats will occur in the next 100 years? In a traditional society, the hope is the next 100 years will be just like the last 100 years but with better crop harvests. That is neither our expectation nor even our hope. Ours is not a traditional society. We live in a naye velt—in a new world, in a naye tzeit—in a new age. Our circumstances may be unique in Jewish history. It is not just that America offers Jews freedom to live our lives in any way we want. Mordecai Kaplan understood what America would offer when he talked about us living in two civilizations—the American and Jewish. This was a change from the past where Jews lived in the Jewish civilization and moved into surrounding non-Jewish civilizations only because of economic circumstances. In the past, the Jewish civilization proclaimed it represented the Truth and all else was not true or at best second rate. By celebrating the modern Jew’s two civilizations, we say that the diversity is essential, not incidental to our lives. It is also an expression of pluralism. Truth exists in America as well as in Judaism. While far from perfect, we live in a society that has offered us unparalleled opportunities and extraordinary blessings.
If in Kaplan’s time Jews lived in two civilizations I would suggest that today we live in one—a combined Jewish/American. The two have become inextricably bound together. In the past, there were American Jews who tried to escape their Jewish heritage because it reeked of the old country, because some doors were still shut. Today people accept their Jewishness in the same way they accept their family name and birthplace. This is just who they are. The only question is how significant their Jewishness will be in their lives. Significance is not simple to measure. Perhaps the classic questions asked on Jewish population surveys—do you keep kosher or light Shabbat candles—demonstrate little of the significance of Judaism in the life of the respondent. If we keep measuring the answers to those questions, the community may look less and less identifiable, less and less vibrant. Never mind that we aren’t asking on those surveys how many people are making “to do” lists in their heads when they light candles or have extremely holy stomachs but extremely unholy ethical behaviors. Perhaps the measure of the vitality of Jewish life is not how many people attend services weekly after all.
What about these moments: when a person comes and rearranges all the books in the synagogue’s library; when a person accompanies a friend to the doctor so she can be assured that the doctor’s diagnosis can be clearly heard; when people screen those who might be eligible for earned income credit, when someone helps tutor an adult bat mitzvah student in her haphtarah reading, when a community gathers to celebrate a lifecycle event like a baby naming or a 50th anniver., when a community gathers to mourn the death of a beloved member; when a person dances with a torah scroll for the first time, when a person speaks passionately at a torah discussion only to be persuaded by a differing view expressed by someone else later on in that discussion; when a person suddenly finds themselves singing with all their heart as a whole congregation lifts its voices. And the more private moments—the I love you, the hands held across different generations, the moment of forgiveness, the sight of an old friend, the random act of kindness, the sense, for once, of doing the right thing—all these are mitzvoth, moments of holiness—in all these the Divine Image is revealed and we re-experience Judaism’s most profound truth—that we are all created in God’s image. These are moments of purpose and meaning and when we experience them as Jews these are Jewish moments.
Too often, we say that these are human moments, no different than the non-Jew who lives next door and does them. Certainly an act of kindness is an act of kindness. But Judaism is about helping us act in kindly and caring ways. It provides us with insight and wisdom when the choice before us is not clear. Which is the caring way to act in this difficult situation? Judaism is about reminding us all the time that we were called at Sinai to live lives of holiness and meaning. All of this, all of life is what Judaism is about—not just what we do on Sat. mornings or Fri. nights. As much as we should be concerned about what goes into our mouths, we need to be just as concerned with what comes out of our mouths in our speech. I think that the true purpose of Jewish community, and particularly of synagogues, and most particularly of this synagogue, is to strengthen our ability to live decent lives of kindness and generosity, because that is what God asks of us and that is what Jewish tradition asks of us. In truth, many of you are already living very Jewish lives, but no one has told you that ethics and interpersonal behavior are central to being a “good Jew.”
How do these things get measured by a survey? Did you help the old person across the street because of Jewish values or human? How will we know how committed people are to Judaism if we can’t measure quantifiable things? We won’t know. Who cares? The question is how I lead my Jewish life. There really is only one question—the first question God asks Adam after the eating of the fruit ayekha-where are you?
Why count? After all, there is a strong anti-counting tradition in Judaism. We are not supposed to count people. King David got into trouble when he tried to do a census. Why is there this prohibition? Because counting reduces you and me to a cipher. But I am neither righteous nor wicked. I am neither super Jew nor super ambivalent about Judaism. I do not want to be pegged as this kind of Jew or that kind of Jew. I do not want to be counted, but I do want my life to count.
There are two broad paths in front of us. The first path, lying in the face of modernity and assimilation, calls us to resist modernity by hoisting ever higher the banner of tradition, to call for ever greater diligence to the past even knowing that this will be always a path of a minority of the Jewish people. The second path takes us into this new world where the walls between Jew and Gentile, truth and falsehood, the particular and the universal are increasingly dissolving. It is a world where everyone is a Jew by choice both in the choice to be Jewish and in choosing from a broad variety of ways to be Jewish. To take this new path, we will need to reconstruct our Judaism in fundamental ways. We will need to create a Judaism that is not defined by ghetto walls. There is no fence around this halakha/Jewish practice. Rather than fences and boundaries, we need positive expressions of the beauty and wisdom we find in Judaism.
My wife Joy was doing a class at the JCC for expecting parents. In the context of talking about Jewish rituals related to birth, she suggested that it was an opportune time to check out the interesting choices of synagogues on the Upper West Side. One person hesitantly raised her hand and said that she thought you had to be member in order to attend services on Friday night or Saturday morning. Joy was even more shocked when the 12 other people in the room nodded in agreement with the questioner. What a mark of our failure!!!
Judaism is not a precious legacy from the past that needs preserving. Judaism is a challenge to us and an aid to us to live in this moment, in the year 2003 of the 21st century in this new millennium and in this New Year 5764 since it all began. While we need to remain deeply connected to our past, our focus needs to be on our present. The formula for success is relatively simple—if our tradition can provide us wisdom in order to create meaning out of our present blessings and challenges (both as a people and as individuals) then we will have a future. And we won’t need commissions or continuity or pillars. The future will take care of itself.
Instead of a fragile legacy that needs stern guardians to prevent its corruption, let us throw wide open our doors. In so doing, we will recognize the real truth that we are deeply influenced by the modern world. Opening our doors says we welcome the open society in which we live. We will celebrate its possibilities—not only to benefit from the economic opportunities our ancestors sought, but to shape a Judaism not distorted by living under oppression and persecution but allowed to breathe free air.
The elitism of Jewtocracy has led to a new Choseness—the chosen few of the chosen people. And as Kaplan argued about the concept of the chosen people—that there was no way to posit the concept of a chosen people without suggesting some people are better than others, so too with Jewtocracy. In the Jewtocracy, there is an inherent quality of judgment about who is a good Jew and who is not. Unfolding before us in the wider world is the struggle between those who believe that they alone are bearers of the truth and those who believe that no one has a monopoly on truth. Fundamentalists in every religion deny the legitimacy of all others—verbally or violently. We need to promulgate our own fundamental Jewish truth; that we are all created in the image of God and that means all Jews, to say nothing of all people. We need to stop worrying so much what other Jews are doing or not doing and focus that energy on ourselves and our families in deciding how each of us wants to live our Jewish lives. Let the Jewish community make Judaism as accessible as possible for everyone and trust that Jews will make the appropriate choices for themselves.
This notion gave me a new way to re-interpret so much of the High Holy Day liturgy that talks about God as judge. Yom Kippur helps us acknowledge and reflect upon our limitations. One of those limitations is that we are, as individuals and as a community exceedingly judgmental. Instead, a functional byproduct of a belief in God is if God is the judge, then we are not. God is the true judge—because as the liturgy reminds us God knows all that is forgotten—yodea kol ha-nishkahot—or there is no forgetting before the throne of glory –ein shikhkha lifnei kisei kevodekha. God knows all that is hidden even from our selves. We who have forgotten, we who have distorted, and most of all we who do not really know the motivations for our own behavior never mind the motivations of those that hurt us—how can we be true judges? The High Holidays suggests that we have enough of a challenge in figuring ourselves out; let us leave judgment of others to God.
The holiest season in the Jewish calendar does not commemorate the Exodus from Egypt nor the Revelation at Sinai—the two great moments in the story of the Jewish people and its relationship to God. We begin the High Holy Days with Rosh ha-Shanah—the birthday of the world, not the birthday of the Jewish people. After all the Torah itself begins not with Sinai, and not even with Abraham but with Genesis. Why? To teach us that we are part of the world. All human beings are descended from one set of parents and thus all equal. Those parents, Adam and Eve, were not Jews. The Torah of Genesis, which teaches us about relationships between humans, our relationship to the earth, home and exile, life and death, and closeness and distance from the Divine (and even the Sabbath day), all existed before there were any Jews. Judaism is the attempt of the Jewish people to create a way to live wisely not in the Garden of Eden but rather the garden of everyday life filled with fruit and thistles and thorns. Rosh ha-shanah is the holiday that calls us to embrace the most universalistic moment—the creation of the universe, but to do so in the particular manner devised by the Jewish people. This teaching of Rosh
Hashanah should become the larger paradigm of Jewish life—to embrace the totality of the world.
Copyright © 2003, The Society for the Advancement of Judaism