URJ Virtual Symposium on Jewish Education Day 3: Chain of Tradition in Jewish Education

The RJ.org blog had two postings in the Virtual Symposium today. Here is the first, by my friend and collegue Lisa Lieberman Barzilai, who is also the president of the National Association of Temple Educators (NATE). As before, please comment on the RJ.org blog, so that we are all part of the same conversation!

I share Dr. Charles Edelsberg’s trepidations about making predictions, especially when it comes to the curriculum – in its broadest sense – of Reform Jewish education. With dramatic changes underway in both the American and Jewish communal landscapes, it would seem folly to make statements for which one might be held accountable. And yet, because we are at a point in history when, as they say, “change is the new constant,” it is a question that must be addressed.

Indeed all learning, and most especially Jewish learning, needs to be relevant to the student— from the very youngest to those who are older. Watching my 5-year-old nephew sing Jewish songs because he understands the relevance of the lyrics to his life brings joy to my heart. Even better is to watch him talk with my 95-year-old grandmother, his great-grandmother, about a particular Jewish holiday about which he also sings. Here, it is clear that the curriculum is touching the heart of a student and is being shared with others. This core of relevancy will be vital to the avenue of delivery that is chosen.

Harnessing technology’s potential for education is one area that Jewish educators likely will need to address to ensure that we are on the cutting edge and not lagging behind. With today’s ever-changing technology, however, we cannot limit ourselves by stating that a curriculum ought to use the web, or a particular app or social utility such as Twitter or Pinterest. All too often, Jewish education lacks the ability to make nimble adjustments based on changes in our North American culture.

Abraham Joshua Heschel taught us, “What we need more than anything else is not textbooks but text people.” My interpretation of this quote for our times is that we need teachers who are living models of Judaism and masters in the art of engagement. Although the faculty as a whole needs to embrace the beautiful tapestry in which one can live a Jewish life, individual teachers—through their relationships with students—must be able to translate a true love of Judaism to the next generation. The world we live in does not embrace community in the same ways as of old. Once, people joined congregations to be part of a community, to seek opportunities for education and spiritual fulfillment; today, people join congregations because of individuals. It is the one-on-one relationships that then grow to create a community. Such community-building needs to take place in all our educational settings – encompassing the youngest of our learners through to those with lived-life wisdom.

Lisa Lieberman Barzilai

As the North American Jewish community changes, it is our responsibility to make this a time of inspiration and spiritual growth that will create an ever-vibrant Judaism. The National Association of Temple Educators (NATE) and its members understand and embrace our role in shalshelet hakabalah, the chain of tradition.

URJ Virtual Symposium on Jewish Education Day 2: The Future is Today

Here is the second posting from the RJ Blog Virtual Symposium on Jewish Education written by Robin Eisenberg. She is a synagogue educator in Boca Raton, FL and a past president of NATE, the National Association of Temple Educators. Please remember to comment on the RJ Blogsite, so that the conversation is shared by all!

Ira

The Future is Today

by Robin Eisenberg
Dr. Charles Edelsberg’s recent blog post begins with a statement about his being “wary of invitations to predict the future.” My sense is that much that is addressed in his post is not about the future: It is now! The points raised here can be heard in our congregational committee and staff meetings, as well as in parking lots and coffee shops.

The recurring theme of Dr. Edelsberg’s post calls for those of us who are educational leaders, dedicated congregational leaders, and members of Reform congregations to radically adjust our mindset. He highlights the need to pay attention to individuals who are seeking personal meaning. In my world, I immediately jump to the logistics of how to facilitate helping our members to find personal meaning.

We must keep in mind that our congregants comprise multiple identities, all working at the same time, sometimes in concert and sometimes in opposition. Our traditional congregational school system needs to be reinvented for some, while others are happy with the current structure because it works for them. We continually attempt to remove, or at least lower the barriers to give our congregants the opportunity to discover their own personal meaning. We must look at a reallocation of both financial resources and personnel, in order to create a variety of models to address today’s realities.

One of the challenges I face is ensuring personal relevance to learners of all ages while creating and nourishing opportunities for relationships to develop – not just the global relationships, but getting to know the people who live down the street. I constantly strive to strike a balance between these two key goals. We are faced with demands to accommodate a variety of schedules, learning styles, and interests. At the same time, we must make our programs relevant, challenging, and worthwhile. And if we haven’t established personal connections with others, their experience is not nearly as fulfilling.

In order to address the issues of personal relevance and individual needs we have created new learning models. We now offer a menu of learning options for children in two locations 10 miles apart. They include:

1. A one-day option (Sunday 9:30 am-1:30pm)
2. A traditional two-day program (Sunday plus a midweek day)
3. Individual plans (using technology with staff support)
4. A combination of classes/options to gain credit while incorporating Jewish activities in daily life
5. A combination of classes/retreats for post-b’nai mitzvah students

The classrooms on our Beck Family Campus are equipped with SMART boards, and our teachers are encouraged to bring the world into their classrooms by using the web and the many other resources available. Our b’nai mitzvah program encourages families to customize their service by planning a mitzvah project that the child is passionate about. For adults, we offer a variety of standard classes, in addition to targeted learning opportunities for doctors and lawyers that has been quite successful.

Our goal is to provide multiple entry points for congregants and potential congregants of all ages. Our menu of learning options starts to address the need for individualization and relevance, but it remains a challenge to figure out how to ensure the development of significant personal relationships. We have widened our options outside the classroom with retreats and expanded youth activities, and are now considering broadening our adult interest groups from our current Knit and Nosh with a biking group and dinner club.

When all is said and done, I agree with most of Dr. Edelsberg’s points. Where I take issue is that I believe the future is today!

Robin Eisenberg, RJE, is the Director of Jewish Learning and Living at Temple Beth El in Boca Raton, FL.

URJ VIrtual Sympsium on Education: Unprecedented Opportunity: The Future of Reform Jewish Education

The URJ began a Virtual Symposium on Jewish Education today. I hope you are aware of it. Here is the first posting by Dr. Chip Edelsberg, who I met as a Jim Joseph Foundation Fellow at Bar Ilan University. He is the founding Executive director of the Foundation. If you have comments, please do so on the symposium site: http://blogs.rj.org/blog/tag/virtual-symposium-on-jewish-education/, so that we will all be part of one conversation. I plan on commenting there and here, and to crosspost the main blog articles.

Ira

This post is the first in our Virtual Symposium on Jewish Education. Each day this week, we’ll feature posts from Reform Jewish educators responding to this piece and discussing the future of Jewish education.

by Dr. Charles Edelsberg

I am wary of invitations to predict the future… of anything. While I am a longtime student of literature on the future of education, dating back nearly four decades to my public school days (when I frequently consulted the works of Marvin Cetron, Paul Ehrlich, John Naisbitt, and Alvin Toffler), I seem to have an uncanny knack for miscalculating what the future will bring.

It has taken me years to learn to distinguish between fads and trends. It requires a great deal of careful study to separate out the pundits from the pontificators, an activity I take seriously. But I am no oracle. Thus comments I offer below are issued with a healthy dose of trepidation.

First, I believe any prognostication about the future of Reform Jewish education must begin with the understanding that education does not equal schooling. In fact, the very place of Jewish institutions as centers of Jewish teaching and learning – day and congregational schools perhaps most prominent among them – must be called into question by any earnest futurist. The fact of the matter is that profound revolutions in information and communications technologies are accelerating deep learning outside of formal institutional settings – occurring in real time, all the time.

Secondly, the basis on which Reform Judaism as a movement defines itself has a critical relationship to the nature, shape, and future forms of education that it will promulgate.

With these two assumptions in mind, I would suggest the following seven phenomenon as potentially seminal to a robust Jewish Reform education future:

• Any and all teaching must be designed with personal relevance to the learner foremost in mind.

• Platforms that facilitate self-directed learning will maximize engagement.

• Multimedia simulations will become increasingly prevalent as a means to engender learning.

• To the extent Reform Judaism successfully differentiates and “brands” the values it represents –  for example, religious pluralism, social action and gender equity – the greater the likelihood the Movement will pull members into educational engagement with its distinctive Reform Jewish beliefs, values, and practices.

• Reform Jews’ relationships with Jews in Israel and around the world will become a more prominent part of individual Jewish identity.

• Jewish learning capitalizing on burgeoning interest in the environment; the food movement; Jewish literature, film, art, music and dance beckons Reform Jewish educators to meaningfully engage their members in “life-centered” Jewish education (Redesigning Jewish Education for the 21^st Century: A Lippman Kanfer Institute Working Paper, p. 20).

• In anticipating that humans will live longer and enjoy better health, even in the later years of their existence, lifelong learning should be integral to the future of Reform Jewish education.

In a global world, there is unprecedented opportunity for relationship-building, interconnectedness, learning, and meaning-making between and among Reform Jews across the globe.

Reform Judaism is exceptionally rich in its social capital. Its committed organizational leadership, charismatic rabbis and educators, cadre of successful overnight camp leaders, social activists and the like make for a formidable pool of talent. The Movement is well-positioned to optimize its educational effort as the shift in the world from one “where value is concentrated in [didactic] transactions to one where value resides in large [dynamic] networks of long-term relationships” (page 55 of The Power of Pull by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, Lang Davison).

Arguably, we live in a post-denomination era. Democratized access to information and the decentralizing of sources of conventional authority pose a daunting challenge to the Jewish denominational movements. Reform Judaism is a movement built on renewal of religious traditions, creative adaption of Jewish customs, and continuing education of Movement members. As Rabbi David Ellenson indicates in his position paper “The Future of Jewish Education from the Reform Perspective,” Jewish education must ultimately be “generative – inspiring Jews to create and support vibrant Jewish communities that sustain Jewish life.”
Charles (Chip) Edelsberg, Ph.D. is the founding executive director of the Jim Joseph Foundation, a $700 million dollar private foundation whose mission is to support education of Jewish youth in the United States – one of the largest foundations of its type in North America.

Who is a Jew? Peoplehood Versus Religion

If you follow my blog, you know I have been hot on the idea of Jewish Peoplehood since the conference a bunch of us in the Leadership Institute helped Oranim College conduct last February. This is seemed to me to be a brilliant (re-)statement on the overall topic by Avraham Infeld that ran today in eJewishPhilanthopy.com. 

 

I think the point he makes about how we have re-learn who we are is spot on. When German-Americans were facing accusations of disloyalty during WWI (and then the Japanese-Americans in WWII and then the Communists and Socialists after that), it made a lot of sense to tone down the peoplehood and raise the volume on the religious identity. Infeld suggests - and I agree - that the time has come (and came some time ago) to reset the equalizer (ancient stereo reference) and turn up the peoplehood volume.

 

Avraham Infeld is President Emeritus of Hillel International, Chairman of the Board of the Hillels of Israel, consultant on tikkun olam to the Reut Institute, President of IsraelWays, and well-known educator and speaker. He lives in Jerusalem and shares four children and 15 grandchildren with his wife, Ellen, who is originally from New Jersey.

 

Posted on September 4, 2012 Written by eJP 7 Comments

by Avraham Infeld

I’ll begin with a story. A few weeks ago, eJewish Philanthropy ran on its front page a quote: “Being Jewish is defined by membership in the People and not by religion.”

It was attributed to me.

I confess: Guilty, as charged. I said that and I stand by it.
Soon afterwards my phone rang. It was a well-known charedi rabbi who was less than pleased. “How dare you wear a kippa and say something like that? Who do you think you are making a statement like that?” he blasted me.


I told the rabbi that I would be happy to meet with him and talk it over in person, but since we were on the phone anyway, I had a halachic question for him.

You see, every morning I daven on my porch and my next door neighbor, who happens to not be Jewish, sees me praying and it got him thinking. One day he came to me with an unusual request. He wondered whether I would go with him to buy tfillin and help him wrap his arm so that he could pray in the morning, too.

“So, rabbi,” I asked, “what should I tell him?”

“You’re not allowed to, of course!” the rabbi responded.

“Why not?” I asked, innocently.

“Why not?” he repeated my question. “Because he is not a member of the Jewish people, that’s why!”

It was music to my ears.

“Rabbi, did you hear what you just said?”

There was a pause and then he sheepishly admitted that maybe I was right. That just maybe, it is membership in a People that defines whether you are a Jew or not.

Here’s the part where I confess that the non-Jewish neighbor with tfillin-envy never happened, but this scenario came to me during my conversation with the rabbi to illustrate my deep conviction that everything goes back to Peoplehood.

In other words, this concept of Peoplehood that is so fashionable these days, wasn’t invented by Mordecai Kapalan in the 20th century. It is, in fact, the oldest phrase in Jewish history. We were always known as am Israel, the People of Israel. Even Pharaoh in Egypt spoke about the Jews as an am, as a People.

And yet, to my mind, the most serious danger facing the Jewish people today is that Jews of all kinds have forgotten that word: People.

We are not a religion and we’ve never been a religion. Judaism is the culture of the Jewish people. It bases itself entirely on the covenant between a People and God Almighty – not between an individual and God.

And yet, we are losing more and more Jews because fewer and fewer Jews recognize the fact that we are a People. That is why so many organizations and educators have awakened this very word that we should have never have lost in the first place – to carry us back to our roots.

But before we examine how it is that we are a People over a religion, we must first ask ourselves, how we lost this identity in the first place?

If there is anything about which Jews have been in agreement throughout the generations, it was the understanding of what it meant to be a Jew.

Up until great emancipation in the beginning of the 19th century, being a Jew meant being a member of a particular People. Once upon a time we were slaves in Egypt and when we left Egypt and came to Mt. Sinai to meet the creator, we signed a covenant with him by which we agreed that we would be his People and he would be our God; he would take care of us and give us rain in the right season and take care of our land and we would keep His commandments.

I know of no Jewish philosopher before the emancipation who understood being Jewish as anything other than this covenant of Peoplehood.

But back to the covenant itself. It turns out that God kept his side of the bargain, but we sinned and because of our sins, we were scattered among the nations of the earth. This is why for thousand of years every Jew understood inherently that our role in life was to keep ourselves distinct as a People, which was why Jews lived in ghettos. It was there that we could more easily keep God’s commandments. It was there that we hoped and prayed that God would forgive us and bring us to back to the land of Israel. Then around 250 years ago, along comes modernity, and with it, modern nationalism, and with that, modern liberalism and suddenly, Jews are faced with the opportunity to leave the ghetto and in order to do so, many of them have to change their understanding of what it means to be a Jew.

Some simply stopped being Jewish.

The charedim among us became more ghettoized.

But the mass of Jews accepted two new issues of what it meant to be Jewish. One is that Judaism is a religion, which most of the Western world still believes today, and the second is that Jews are a nation, which is a product of Zionism.

For many who left the ghetto eager to become assimilated, they adhered to one non-written rule: We can act like them, but we can’t accept their God. From that day on, Judaism became a religion.
For the Zionists, the manifesto became: We are a nation.

The American Jews declared: We are a religion.

And so it was that the basic idea of who we are started getting lost. All Mordecai Kaplan did was try to reawaken the oldest idea of what it means to be a Jew – that Judaism is a culture of that particular people.

When I was President of Hillel International, I used to travel around the Jewish world meeting with young students. I always carried a chart with me that was divided into three columns. The top line listed: apples, oranges, bananas. Down the side read: lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber. A final line that asked the students to fill in the blanks: Jew, it listed, and then two blank spots. In other words, What is to a Jew as an apple is to an orange?

In the USA, over 200,000 responses were unanimous: Jew, Christian, Muslim.

What does that say? Judaism is a religion.

But from the over 40,000 responses from Israelis, not one said Jew, Christian, Muslim. Instead they said Arab or Italian or American. In other words, for them, Judaism is a nationality.

When it came to the Russian Jews, 10,000 responded this way: Jew, non-Jewish is a Russian?

What does this all tell us? I’ll tell you what this tells us: the Jewish people are totally confused about our identity!

So now we see organizations, like the former UJA, making statements like, “We are one.” We are one what? We are one hell of a mess, that’s what we are!

Therefore, the time is ripe to remind the Jews that we are first and foremost a People. Let is remember what Ruth, the first convert to Judaism, the great-grandmother of King David, the forerunner to the messiah for both Jews and Christians once said, “Your people shall be my people and your God is my God.”

The order is not accidental. If I want to become Christian I would say, “Your God is my God,” but when it comes to Judaism, I cannot first say, “Your God is my God” until I say, “Your people is my people.”

It is not that I am anti-religions. I am an observant Jew. But I am bound to the commandments only because I am a member of a People. The moment you define Judaism as a religion, the first thing that happens is you create religions denominations. Where was Reform, even Orthodox Judaism 700 years ago? They did not exist because we did not define ourselves as a religion.

Also, if Judaism were only a religion, what right would Jews have to their own state? No other religion has a state.

We are only perpetuating confusion by not educating our children that they are members of a People.

Only when we understand Judaism in the context of Peoplehood can we begin to understand what it means to be a Jew. And only when we see ourselves as part of a People will Judaism unite – instead of divide – us.

Without Peoplehood what would Israelis have in common with Jews in the Diaspora?

The time is now to teach our children that Judaism is the culture of the Jewish people. The State of Israel is the homeland of the Jewish People and all the organizations that are supposed to serve the Jewish people should put up front and center the message of Jewish Peoplehood.

That is why I have become a fanatic about teaching about the Jewish People.

If you want to know the truth, I hate the word Peoplehood. It is confusing. I want to teach about am Israel. I want to create a sense of belonging in every Jew to the Jewish People. How do you interpret the culture of Jewish Peoplehood into your life?

The mission of Jewish leaders in the 21st century should therefore be how to ensure the continued, significant renaissance of the Jewish people, ensuring a sense of belonging by every Jew to his people, its heritage, its values, its State, and its dreams and aspirations to work as Jews to make this a better world for all.

A Letter to Aly Raisman From an IDF Soldier

There is nothing I have to add to this very eloquent post from Olympic Gold Medalist Aly Reisman's Facebook page as reported by the Algeminer.

Below is a letter to Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman, the American and Jewish gymnast who performed to the tune of Hava Nagila in London, from an officer in the Israel Defense Forces. The letter was posted by the author on Aly’s Facebook page.

Dear Aly,

I want to tell you about how you became the hero of a gym full of Israeli soldiers.

The same Israeli soldiers who have to deal with Iran’s nuclear threat to the Jewish state. The same ones who serve two-to-three years of their lives, because we have to; because there’s no one else that would do it besides us, because our neighborhood sucks, and when the leadership next door in Syria massacres their own people, there’s no way we would let them lay hands on our kids, as foreign dictators have done for thousands of years.

You picked a song for your floor routine in the Olympics that every Jewish kid knows, whether their families came from the shtetls of Eastern Europe, the Asian steppes of Azerbaijan, the mountains of Morocco or the Kibbutzim of northern Israel. It’s that song that drew almost everyone at the Israeli army base gym to the TV as soon as the report about you came on the news this morning. After showing your floor exercise to Hava Nagila, the announcer told about your gold medal with unmasked pride, and of your decision to dedicate it to the Israeli athletes who were killed in the Munich Olympics in 1972.

There were some tough people at that gym, Aly. Men and Women, Battalion Commanders from Intelligence, Captains from the navy, Lieutenants from the Armored Corps and more. You probably understand that words like ‘bravery’ and ‘heroism’ carry a lot of weight coming from them, as does a standing ovation (even from the people doing ab exercises.) There was nothing apologetic about what you did. For so long we’ve had to apologize for who we are: for how we dress, for our beliefs, for the way we look. It seems like the International Olympic Committee wanted to keep that tradition. Quiet, Jews. Keep your tragedy on the sidelines. Don’t disturb our party.

They didn’t count on an 18 year-old girl in a leotard.

There wasn’t one person at the gym who didn’t know what it was like to give back to our people, not one who didn’t know what happened to the good people who died in 1972, not one who didn’t feel personally insulted by their complete neglect in the London Olympics, the 40 year anniversary of their deaths, and not one who didn’t connect with your graceful tribute in their honor.

Thank you for standing up against an injustice that was done to our
people. As I was walking back to my machine at the gym, I caught one of the officers give a long salute to your image on television. I think that says it all.

Sincerely,
Dan Yagudin
Officer, Israeli Defense Force

Yoav and Ayala get married - again

I love Israel. It is the only  place in the world where you can get a McDonald's cheeseburger made with certified kosher cheese, glatt kosher beef on a pesadik bun during Pesach. It is also the place where each time you return up to Jerusalem, it feels like the very first time you are arriving. And when you come up to Jerusalem for the very first time (for real) it feels like you have always been there. It is a place of delights and contradictions.

It is also a place of deeply personal aggravation. Personal not because many of these angst producing behaviors affect me personally, but because I feel a personal connection to Israel, and when the nation allows officially obnoxious behavior, I am disappointed and embarrassed. Unfortunately I am not surprised. So today's piece from Ha'aretz surprised me only because the author, Naomi Schacter,  identifies herself as orthodox. As I have ducked into the office on Labor Day to get a jump on the opening of religious school this week, I am reminded that one of our biggest challenges as Jewish educators is to help our students and their families develop an intense love for Israel in the face of this kind of narischkeit. Enjoy.

- Ira

The Jewish wedding ceremony is a ritual that connects us to the generations of our ancestors and resonates deep in our souls. But I also hope that my children will bring, for example, a bit more egalitarianism to the ceremony.

Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman

Yoav and Ayala both grew up in Jerusalem, and both their families were active in Kol Haneshama, a Reform synagogue here. They each celebrated their bar and bat mitzvah, respectively, at the synagogue, where they enjoyed the spiritual guidance of Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman. A romance between these two fabulous young adults developed, and when they decided to get married, they naturally wanted their rabbi to officiate at the ceremony. This event took place this week near Jerusalem.

But Yoav and Ayala's marriage by Rabbi Weiman-Kelman will not be recognized by the State of Israel, which sanctions only Orthodox marriage ceremonies presided over by Orthodox rabbis authorized by the Chief Rabbinate. Yoav and Ayala's wedding ceremony was rich in Jewish tradition, liturgy and spirituality - nevertheless, it will not render them legally married here in the Jewish state.

And so, before this week's wedding, Yoav and Ayala did what many couples either choose or are forced to do: They had a civil marriage abroad, as civil marriages from abroad are recognized by the state. Not only are Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist or other Jewish alternative ceremonies not recognized in Israel, but there is no option for civil marriage, either. Among the Russian community living in Israel, the approximately 350,000 of whose members are of uncertain religious Jewish status have no choice but to marry abroad. There is new legislation that offers one exception to this rule: In cases where both members of the couple do not meet halakhic standards of Jewishness (even if they legitimately came to Israel under the Law of Return ), they are permitted to marry here according to a category defined by the Interior Ministry as a "civil partnership agreement."

Ironically, these presumed non-halakhic Jews have to have that status certified by the rabbinate - in and of itself a humiliating bureaucratic ordeal. However that may be, this policy may ease the way for a handful of couples in Israel each year. It clearly does not solve the basic problem.

Yoav and Ayala had a beautiful civil ceremony in Washington, D.C., in late June, at the residence of the Israeli ambassador, Michael Oren. Michael is Yoav's father. So it turns out that the son of Israel's ambassador to the United States could not be married in Israel by the rabbi of his choice because that rabbi belongs to the Reform movement. Is this a big deal? I think so. Any couple may opt to have a wedding party overseas for personal reasons - but they should not have to do so.

How much longer are we going to put up with this absurd situation? Approximately 20 percent of Israeli Jews do not marry under the auspices of the state rabbinate, most of them through lack of choice. The most popular destination for Israelis who opt for or are forced into a civil ceremony is Cyprus, and the Hebrew-language Internet is chock full of Cyprus marriage packages. It's a phenomenon.

The late Yosef "Tommy" Lapid, with his Shinui party, and more recently Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beitenu, in their campaign platforms, both pledged to bring civil marriage to Israel. Neither succeeded (aside from the recent minor exception mentioned above). Coalition politics and the power of the ultra-Orthodox parties blocked them. Most of Israel's Jewish Knesset members are secular or somewhat traditional, but that majority has done nothing to change the status quo. Why do we allow this non-democratic situation to continue?

People may feel irritated by the restrictions, but when they are immersed in other marriage preparations, they usually just take a deep breath and either opt to accept the dictates and authority of the Orthodox rabbinate (many now use the slightly more user-friendly Tzohar rabbis ), or choose another option. Some may decide on a common-law partnership. Some couples will marry with an Orthodox rabbi and then supplement the ceremony with the rabbi or spiritual leader of their choice. Or they go abroad for a civil marriage, and then have the meaningful Jewish ceremony when they return home.

 Those who opt for a civil marriage abroad and later decide to divorce cannot do even that in a civil court; the divorce has to go through the Chief Rabbinate, which is predominantly ultra-Orthodox and has a poor track record regarding women's rights. This leads to a not insignificant aguna problem (literally, a "chained woman," referring to women whose husbands refuse to grant them a divorce ).

I myself am Orthodox, but I hope that my kids, when they get married, will opt for a ceremony in which they combine traditional and original elements. The Jewish wedding ceremony is a ritual that connects us to the generations of our ancestors and resonates deep in our souls. But I also hope that my children will bring, for example, a bit more egalitarianism to the ceremony. Depending on what they choose, they too may require a civil ceremony abroad and only then a modified Orthodox wedding here. For even those Orthodox rabbis who are inclined to allow certain alternative elements in the ceremony are being watched, and have to be careful about what they do and don't do to avoid risking their eligibility to officiate.

The "Take 2" wedding event this week for Yoav and Ayala was truly lovely and moving. But if circumstances in this country were different, this should have been the only wedding they had.

Naomi Schacter

Naomi Schacter is associate director of Shatil, an initiative of the New Israel Fund.

Some of you know I have an attitude or tone when the topic of Chabad comes out. I own it. Today in eJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Paul Steinberg does some very constructive evaluation of Chabad and its activities in comparison to the Conservative movement. As a Reform Jew, I do not feel competent to judge what he says about Conservative, but I can easily see how his analysis can apply or be adapted to apply to my movement as well. I believe this is a very well written and very important piece.

-Ira

What Can We Really Learn From Chabad:
A Conservative Perspective

Posted: 26 Aug 2012 09:45 PM PDT

by Paul Steinberg

“Excuse me, are you Jewish? Have you put on tefillin today?” Many of us recognize this signature introduction to our Chabad Lubavitch brothers. I certainly do. Actually, I should disclose that I have personal history with Chabad, having attended a Chabad day school and Camp Gan Israel, and, for several years, my family went to a Chabad house every week for Shabbat and holidays.

I am no chabadnik now and, in fact, I feel very much at home in the pluralistic, historical, and multi-faceted ideology of Conservative Judaism. Still, as a Conservative rabbi, Chabad has an impact on me, especially in the form of friends and congregants who eagerly tell of the warmth, personal appeal, and authenticity they feel at Chabad houses. I understand the attraction, for I knew my Chabad rabbis well. I also appreciate identifying the striking contrasts between what happens at Chabad houses and relatively large Conservative congregations like my own. 

I also absolutely agree with Professor Steven Windmueller’s recent article identifying what he considers to be Chabad’s success, when he suggests that we should learn from what Chabad does that works. Yet, when I hear the accounts and read the articles that compare our congregations with Chabad, I am not always convinced of an honest and fair accounting of our differences whereby we both define what we mean by Jewish organizational success and candidly acknowledge the reality of American Jewish sociology.

In order to make any comparison with Chabad and identify their success, we must first understand Chabad. Chabad is a movement that started in the territories of modern day Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Eastern Poland. It is a Chasidic movement that is most famous for its emissaries, known as shluchim. These shluchim, numbering over 4000, go all over the world (and there don’t need to be too many Jews for them to go there) from Congo to Columbus, Ohio. With these dedicated shluchim, Chabad has managed to place itself not only on the national Jewish agenda, but also the international Jewish agenda.

One of the extraordinary things about Chabad is that, although it is a Chasidic movement, most of its followers are not Chasidic, nor are they even Orthodox, nor are they likely to become so. Indeed, Chabad houses offer a warm and accepting environment where there are no strings attached at all. In this regard, Chabad’s model of communal engagement is actually the opposite model found in most of the Jewish world. 

For most congregations, the basic model goes something like this: you become a member, and then you receive services and become a friend. The Chabad model reverses it: they provide services and become your friend, and later you’ll want to pay them something because of everything they do for you. They never expect anyone to become a member; there is no explicit expectation or demand for financial, communal, or even Jewish commitment.

So then, what is Chabad’s goal? What do they want? They nobly want us to do mitzvot or mitzvos (fulfill Jewish commandments). And why do they want us to do mitzvos? Because of messianism. That is to say, doing mitzvos – “changing the world one mitzvah at a time” – helps to bring about the messiah. 

Messianism is the belief that there is a messiah (the mashiach) and that he is coming (they are sure it’s a “he”), and, for some in Chabad, he has already been here (we’ll discuss below). Messianism has been at the heart of the mission of Chabad for at least the past hundred years, and they believe that it is their job is to hasten the coming of the messiah by encouraging mitzvos, specific ritual acts. Chabad has their own version of a top ten list of mitzvos, and the performance of those mitzvos has cosmic significance, potentially tipping the spiritual balance toward the messiah’s arrival. In other words, putting on tefillin in the street, eating a kosher meal, or spending a Shabbat at a Chabad house just one time and never doing it again is an act that has the power to tip the celestial scales. Therefore, the role of the shluchim is to encourage mitzvos in order to accelerate the coming of the messiah.

Over the past 50 years, Chabad has taken this message and skillfully packaged it into media and slogans – slogans that are particularly catchy in America, such as, “We want mashiach now!” Wanting something and wanting it now, after all, is about as American as apple pie. However, what is fascinating about this religious ideology is that it doesn’t take much to motivate the mashiach and get him here now. It doesn’t require keeping 613 commandments, it doesn’t require a lifetime of service, and it doesn’t even require a sustained commitment to the Jewish community. They claim that for mashiach to be here, it requires us to “just add goodness and kindness,” something of which no one could possibly be opposed.

What most people notice about Chabad though, is how it has proudly promoted traditional Jewish culture in the public square. Many are familiar with their telethon dancing rabbis and street-tefillin shluchim. And don’t forget the gigantic Hanukkah menorah that Chabad introduced to the world, as shluchim are raised on forklifts in public malls and plazas to light the lights. Chabad’s presence is prominent at the Kotel in Jerusalem, in the cyber world of the Internet and even at the White House in Washington. Furthermore, their marketing products such as publications and magazines, as well as collective distribution are the envy of many in the Jewish organizational world.

Finally, what we also associate with Chabad is the image of the Rebbe himself as the centralizing source of inspiration. No other Jewish leader in modernity has achieved his status of popularity. One only needs to see his face to know what he represents – and what he represents is not without controversy. To this day, banners donning his photo, mounted at storefronts and at the entrance of the Chabad Lubavitch Yeshivah on Eastern Parkway read, Yechi Melekh Ha-Mashiach (“Long Live the King Messiah”) and “MESSIAH IS HERE: Add just goodness and kindness.” These markers leave little doubt as to who they believe is the messiah. However, since the Rebbe’s passing in 1994, Chabad has worked very hard to shift its messaging regarding the Rebbe as the messiah, but still has not changed the banners.

So, now that we have a context for Chabad, we can better assess the question of its success. Professor Windmueller and others pronounce Chabad’s great organizational success, corroborating the claim that Chabad is possibly the most successful Jewish outreach organization in the world. Maybe they are. But that would only be success according to their own goals of bringing the sum number of mitzvot performed into the world for the hastening of the messiah. These, however, are not our goals at all.

Frankly, it is unwise and misleading to contrast the totality of Chabad’s successes with our own because we are working toward two totally different sets of goals. Such comparisons often result in more confusion and doubt about who we are than inspiration and solidarity in our own vision of Jewish life. And there are good reasons why we are who we are and not who we are not. For example, the fact that Chabad is able to get someone to put on tefillin in the street once so as to tip the balance in favor of a messiah is irrelevant for Conservative Judaism. Our goal is to help Jews live an integrated, whole life of mitzvot, so that each of us contributes to an ongoing and evolving world of goodness. We measure ourselves by different goals and ask ourselves different questions:

• Are we helping Jews to live an embodied and rich life of mitzvot?
  
• Are we heightening and expanding Jewish life both locally and nationally throughout America?
  
• Are we building a stronger feeling toward the State of Israel and an expansion of a robust Jewish life there?
  
• Are we helping to bring Jews of different streams and ideologies together to work in a pluralistic and respectful manner toward common aims?
  
• Are we providing ample opportunities for more Jews in America live a life of Jewish learning?
  
• Are we contributing to the advancement of scholarship and research in Jewish studies?
  
• Are we working to improve relations between Jews and non-Jews?
  
• Are we engaging Jews in honest and mature conversations about God?
  
• Are we helping Jews enroll their children in a Jewish educational programs, Jewish summer camps, and Jewish youth groups?
  
• Are we guiding Jews toward a rich inner spiritual life, including prayer?
  
• Are we advancing Jewish civics and actively applying Jewish values toward worldly ethical problems?

These are the kinds of questions that we ask of Conservative Judaism. I don’t think we ask these questions of Chabad and I’m not certain it would do any good because they are not the questions they ask of themselves. Plus, if we did, I’m not too sure they would fare very well on the affirmative side.

There is no denying that our Conservative institutions need fixing in many ways, especially now, as we find ourselves in what seems to be a very unstable time. That being said, we are supremely aware of our own deficiencies and peccadilloes because we are experts at stacking up the self-criticism, jumping at every complaint, and overreacting to any demographic downturn. It’s good to remember that inspiring Jews toward authentic, serious Jewish living has been a challenge since the time of the Torah. Why should it be different today? Of course, complacency and hubris would be foolish and we should continuously seek out best practices. Yet as we look to those virtues of success (as identified in the questions above), let us neither overstate others’ nor deny our own.

Lastly, if there is anything we can learn it is to be resolute in our ideology and our message of relationships and connectedness. For us, it’s about connecting the wisdom of the past with the advances and insights of the present – connecting Jewish thought with Jewish practice; Jewish law (Halakhah) with ethics; Jews with other Jews of all varying denominations and perspectives; Jews with non-Jews, Jews with the State of Israel, and Jews with God. We believe in a world that moves toward more connectivity in all its glorious Jewish diversity, and bound by the unifying force of the oneness of God. It is from this place of authentic, religious vision that we are compelled to set our benchmarks and measure successes.

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Rabbi Paul Steinberg is the Senior Educator at Valley Beth Shalom in Los Angeles, CA and is the author of the award-winning series, Celebrating the Jewish Year (JPS, 2009). He also teaches at the Graduate School of Education at American Jewish University and is working on his doctoral dissertation on the Bar Mitzvah at the Jewish Theological Seminary.