By Jack Moline, Director of Public Policy, RA

Anyone who engages in advocacy on behalf of a religious community has to puzzle over the role of religion in the deliberations of the United States government.

I have been privy to some passionate debates over the meaning of the protections in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Some people, suspicious of the “faith agenda,” contend that the wall of separation between “church and state” is meant to be impenetrable. Others – especially those who feel faith has been marginalized by society – insist that government must protect the devout as vigorously as any minority.

Of course, there is a both-and aspect to this debate. But when we engage in public advocacy, we’d do well to remember a simple piece of wisdom into what keeps Jewish tradition vital. “Everything is in the hands of heaven except the fear of heaven” means that the person who does not respect the operating premise of a sacred system will ultimately compromise the system.

It is fair to say that the Constitution protects the integrity of religious traditions that, if authority were reversed, would not protect the integrity of the Constitution and other religious traditions. When religious partisans seek to promote their values and practices at the expense of others’ full engagement, they only reinforce that fact. It is true whether a group seeks to impose public prayer or to limit medical treatment, or whether the group seeks to redefine ritual objects as “cultural expressions” to circumvent Constitutional restrictions.

My friend Rev. Galen Guengrich once observed, “The price of America is that the Constitution trumps Scripture.” His observation should be understood broadly in our civic engagement. While we should seek the welfare of our people and the advancement of our concerns, we should recognize our responsibility to join with everyone who respects the foundational principles of US society. We should always be able to affirm that what we seek for ourselves is both right and responsible.

By Simon Greer, President and CEO, Nathan Cummings Foundation

Seven years ago, when I was beginning my first job at a Jewish organization, a prominent rabbi shared an insight that stuck with me. He said that the network of social service agencies established by the Jewish community was the gold standard in the field, but we lagged far behind others when it came to our institutional commitment to systemic social change.

The vision I have pursued since then is of a Jewish community that excels at both. Without senior centers and soup kitchens and health clinics, we would fail to meet our basic obligations to society’s most vulnerable.

Yet services alone are insufficient.

We must be engaged in pushing public and private institutions to take the steps necessary to eliminate homelessness and hunger, ensure access to quality health care and education, and protect our planet from all forms of unnecessary degradation.

The past twenty years has seen a significant shift. More and more Jewish communal institutions are providing opportunities for Jews to advocate strengthening these and other strands of our social contract. Synagogues have joined congregation-based community organizing networks and begun to act independently, helping to pass health care reform in Massachusetts and marriage equality legislation in New York. Organizations that engage Jews in social justice advocacy have proliferated and grown.

A young woman recently shared with me her own insight. She came of age experiencing a Jewish community where Jewish civic engagement is normative, from service trips with American Jewish World Service to organizing with Progressive Jewish Alliance and Jewish Funds for Justice to environmental education with Hazon.

Our communal commitment remains insufficient to address the root causes of the very problems whose symptoms we treat so successfully. But we are making progress. At a time of profound challenges facing the world, it’s worth remembering how far we have come.

By Julie Schonfeld

Note: Julie originally gave the remarks below on February 6 at the Jewish Energy Covenant Campaign signing.

The Torah describes a quieter world, a world quiet enough to hear God’s holy intentions for us. The stories we read take place amidst the struggles for survival of an agrarian community, a basic subsistence society. The principles of our Torah, the striving after justice and kindness that we understand to be the foundations of our Tradition emerge from a world in which people’s interdependence was present and immediate. In Parshat Mishpatim we will read:

ושש שנים תזרע את ארצך ואספת את תבואתה: והשביעת תשמטנה ונטשתה ואכלו אביני עמך ויתרם תאכל חית השדה כן תעשה לכרמך לזיתך:

“Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but in the seventh you shall let it rest and lie fallow. Let the needy among your people eat of it, and what they leave, let the wild beasts eat. You shall do the same with your vineyards and your olive groves.” (Exodus 23:10-11)

The notion that all people and things would require a Sabbath was not a theoretical construct, but a reality born of experience. Decent and just treatment of workers, kindness towards animals, and stewardship of the land were necessary disciplines to survival. If we did not treat laborers with care, they would cease to work productively and to be in a positive relationship to the community, if we failed to treat animals with kindness, they would suffer and fail physically, if we neglected our stewardship of the land, it wouldcease to give forth sustenance. The Torah’s sacred precepts were not a quid pro quo, they were the building blocks of a sustainable community.

Today, in our global society, the wisdom of Torah and the necessity of maintaining these sacred practices are only more urgent. It is harder to comprehend effects of unsound agricultural practices when our food, grown and cultivated by people we never see, is flown in from thousands of miles away. The collective carbon footprint of these transactions creates energy insecurity for developed nations that makes all of us, and especially Israel, more vulnerable.

The COEJL energy covenant campaign calls upon all of us within the Jewish community to act responsibly and to remember that we remain one world community, with one sacred agenda for a peaceful and sustainable world. What was true thousands of years ago in the quiet world of the Torah is more true than ever before.

By Elliot Salo Schoenberg, International Director of Placement, RA

How does a rabbi establish rabbinic authority? Two synagogue lay leaders (Robert Jossen, past president of Temple Israel Center, White Plains and Chistine Levin, President, Germantown Jewish Center, Philadelphia) recently shared their thoughts with members of the RA. These thoughtful, sensitive and wise lay leaders made the following suggestions:

1. Be yourself. Authenticity matters. 
2. Be confident. Presentation matters. 
3. Rabbinic authority is earned. The rabbi needs to work to gain the trust of the congregation by being a competent rabbi. Ordination by itself does not confer rabbinic authority in the eyes of lay people.
4. Rabbinic authority is a relationship. The lay leaders frequently used the word “partnership” in describing rabbinic authority. Even when the rabbis are clearly in the defined area of their authority like a halakhic practice, the lay leaders suggested it is always good practice to check in with the lay people. 
5. There is a gray area – there are areas of religious practice and synagogue management which are jointly owned by the clergy and the lay leadership. Rabbis need to understand there are times when they will be called to take the leadership role and times when it is appropriate to take a step back.
6. Do not be apologetic. Exercise your authority with respect, but don’t apologize for it.

Other ideas? What examples of success can you share for your successful rabbinic authority, what works? What does not work? How do gender or other factors play a role?

By Jennifer Gorman, Executive Director, Canadian Foundation for Masorti Judaism

Note: Rabbi Gorman led the first Masorti minyan at the Knesset on Tuesday, January 24. It was covered by Ynet (English, Hebrew), JPost, and JTA, among others. Photos of the minyan are available here.

I am not usually tongue-tied, a fact to which my family and friends can attest. But, my last two days on the Masorti Mission have been so filled with emotion, I can barely articulate it. On Tuesday I led Mincha in an egalitarian minyan at the Knesset. It happened quietly, no fanfare at the time, but the joy and pride in the room was palpable.

I’ve been jotting down notes since, trying to get the experience on paper, but, while I have pages of notes for every other day, my notes on this experience seem to consist of fragments and single words. The emotion is like a balloon inside me that seems to keep inflating. I left the Knesset shaking, tears in my eyes, my cheeks hurting from smiling, but even so, it wasn’t until the following day morning, seeing it in the news, that the significance really hit me. It’s like waking over and over on my birthday to the greatest present ever. With all my oral skills, the word that keeps repeating is, “wow.” Even today, two days later, I found myself overwhelmed with emotion at Shacharit, my heart full, tears spilling from my eyes at unexpected moments- Ivdu et Hashem b’simcha. Ozi v’zimrat Yah vaiy’hi lishuah. I have been struck with the intense feeling that this is what it means to love God b’chol levavcha, b’chol nafshecha, u’v’chol m’odecha. With one small act, as natural to us as breathing, our mission made a change in the world.

I am extremely grateful for the experience I have had on this mission, an experience that will never leave me. I look forward to bringing my children, especially my daughter to that beit knesset to say this is where I made a difference.

The next Masorti mission is December 2-7, 2012. Together we really do make a difference.

An aside: On Tuesday there was another incident of a woman being attacked in Beit Shemesh. While we were making positive history at the Knesset, others were driving wedges deeper into our community, and it truly pains me to think of these two together.

By Ben Goldberg

Imagine that you’re a freshman in college and it’s your first Shabbat on campus. You decide to check out the Jewish community in hope of continuing the vibrant Jewish life you came to love in your Conservative synagogue, youth group and summer camp.

With some new friends from your dorm, you check out the campus Hillel. But the Judaism offered there seems superficial and geared towards people with very little previous experience with Jewish life. You next check out the Chabad House, but with its strict gender roles and abundant alcohol, it seems more like a fraternity than a Jewish organization.

I exaggerate, but students like me who come from strong Conservative backgrounds often experience difficulty finding a Jewish home on campus. Hillel nationally has made great strides in engaging “uninvolved” Jews through innovative, network-based initiatives, but this has often come at the expense of traditional programming for the kind of student who does not need to be convinced to participate in Jewish life. Likewise, recent years have witnessed a proliferation of ultra-Orthodox kiruv organizations on campuses that offer more traditional Jewish experiences, but deny equality to women and shun critical inquiry into Judaism.

KOACH exists to fill this small but crucial void on the college campus. Through its grants, internship program, and especially its upcoming national Kallah, KOACH empowers students to create Conservative Jewish life on their campuses. It offers substantive learning, meaningful prayer and engaging activities that allow students who were raised in the Conservative movement to grow in their Judaism. In particular, the Kallah allows us to meet students from other schools, experience a powerful Shabbat weekend together, and learn from each other about how to improve our communities. In these ways, KOACH has been instrumental in my college experience and is indispensible to the future of Conservative Judaism.

 

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Ben Goldberg, a senior studying History and Jewish Studies, is the president of Northwestern Hillel and a member of the KOACH Student Steering Committee.  

By Jan Caryl Kaufman, Director of Special Projects, RA

I will never forget where I was on December 23, 1972 when I learned of the passing of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. I was a junior in college and had gone to my evening classes at the Baltimore Hebrew College. I was looking at a bulletin board a few minutes before class and our philosophy professor told us that Rabbi Heschel had passed away.

The previous year, my class had studied Jewish philosophy from a B’nai B’rith reader with selections from dozens of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Jewish thinkers. Years before I decided that I wanted to be a Conservative rabbi and paid close attention to the two Conservative rabbis in the book who were alive at the time – Rabbis Heschel and Mordecai Kaplan. I had come to think of myself as a neo-Kaplanian with a little Heschel mixed in. So, what did I mean by that? For me it meant that the Jewish people were at the core of my Jewish identity, but I believed in a supernatural God who created the world. It meant that the lessons of our prophets to do justly and walk in God’s ways were just as crucial to my Jewish observance as were my allegiance to kashrut, Shabbat, daily davening and other ritual mitzvot.

The inspiration from reading Heschel from that B’nai B’rith series led me to read more Heschel. When I graduated from college one of my teachers, Rabbi George Berlin and his wife, Dr. Adele Berlin gave me a copy of A Passion for Truth, about the Kotzker rebbe and Kierkegaard. I received the book on the day of my graduation which was Erev Shavuot. That yontiff I was transported into another world reading this Heschel book. I better understood Rabbi Heschel’s message of religious imperative played out in the modern world against a backdrop of intellectual acuity.

Over the years I had the privilege of meeting Rabbi Heschel’s widow, Sylvia and becoming a friend of his daughter, Prof. Susannah Heschel. I treasure my relationship with Susie and as her father’s yahrzeit approaches, I am indebted to his legacy.

 

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Note: This article was corrected on Jan. 5 2012 to reflect A. J. Heschel's correct year of death. Heschel's 40th yarzheit will be in 5773.

In response to photos of the protests in Jerusalem where a misguided few dressed their children in concentration camp uniforms and yellow stars, we cannot stay silent. Whatever they meant, they told the world that their Judaism is engulfed in darkness. We live rich Jewish lives every day. Our Judaism adds meaning and purpose. Our Judaism exists to bring light to the world. 

If you feel the same way, please share a photo! Let’s show everyone what Judaism means to us by visiting addyourlight.tumblr.com!