July 2007 Archives

It’s one of the most challenging situations that faces many American rabbis today, especially in the progressive movements: a young couple approaches a rabbi and asks about officiating at a wedding. One partner is Jewish and one is not. The rabbi is suddenly confronted with two young people--deeply in love and ready to make a commitment--who want to spend their lives together. More than that, the couple is sufficiently interested in having a Jewish ceremony, perhaps even committed to creating a Jewish home together, and they are seeking out a rabbi to perform the wedding to solemnize their relationship in a Jewish framework. If the rabbi says "no" he or she risks alienating these young people from Jewish life–a dangerous precedent given the high intermarriage rates in the American Jewish community. If the rabbi says "yes" he or she is contributing to the same demographic trend that threatens the community’s long-term existence given all the statistics and evidence that children of intermarriage identify with and affiliate with Judaism at an alarming low rate. What to do?

It’s interesting to see the tension between Rabbi Stern and Rabbi Grossman’s posts–the former portrays himself as the purveyor of substance and the latter as the purveyor of sizzle. What we need, of course, is both. It goes without saying that we need to make Judaism accessible and inviting, but it also needs to be grounded in a content that does more than take the things people are already doing and flavor them "Jewish." As a Reconstructionist, I’m a big believer in the collective wisdom of the Jewish people to make Jewish decisions–this is why Judaism has evolved over time and remained an organic and relevant part of Jews’ daily lives. So I don’t think we need to tell young people what their Judaism should look like, they can figure that out for themselves.

What we do need to do is emphasize the importance of Jewish identity and of proudly and publicly proclaiming their allegiance to Jewish peoplehood. We need to offer them ideas of what our civilization has created (abiding sense of holiness in the world, justice, ethics, belief in the perfectability of the world, beauty, humor) and the tools they can use (sacred texts, Jewish history, social action, liturgy, music, art) to help create a meaningful and dynamic Judaism in their own time. Then we watch them go in directions we can’t possibly imagine. The key is to get young Jews to care, to be invested in the Jewish project, to understand that being Jewish is important–possibly the most significant aspect of their being. It all flows from there.

For all the efforts that are going into attracting and retaining the next generation of Jews, one step is sorely missing: adequate and effective training for youth leaders. Most congregations hire staff for youth groups who are self-taught. Perhaps they were youth leaders as young people, or have some teaching or camping experience. What a far cry from the very organized and directed training I see going on in the evangelical Christian community.

Every so often I get a flier from a church group that holds national training institutes for youth leaders. The programs look so dynamic. I know from neighbors that some of these churches run dynamic services for their youth. Their kids are always reaching out to unaffiliated classmates (and unfortunately also affiliated ones) to bring them with them to some church youth event. The point is that they know how to successfully excite and motivate the unaffiliated.

Where are we going wrong and what can we do to get it right?

We, Jews, need to retool our youth leadership training now. Let’s take a page out of the church groups and train our youth staff and leaders in the most effective outreach techniques and how to make dynamic and moving services. Let’s have a series of regional national conferences with our great musicians like Craig Taubman to bring ruach (spirit) to the group, dynamic motivational speakers, and training in outreach methods, which use the best practices adapted from church and community organizing methods.

Megachurches have made a megabusiness of training youth leaders who then train the youth in their local churches. We need to do the same. We need to teach our kids how to reach out to their peers, and not just their friends, how to engage newcomers in a deep and consistent way. We need to teach our kids to reach out to everyone, not just the cool kids. We need to teach them to be loving and welcoming to the unpopular kids as well.

We are at a desperate junction, in danger of loosing almost an entire generation of unaffiliated young people. We need a Birthright-style investment to identify and train leaders and our youth who are affiliated for congregational and college-based youth work. It is all very fine to debate what it means to engage in a Jewish act, but what we need now are the tools to effectively transmit our religious values (across all the movements) to the next generation. Every marker shows that adults who are synagogue affiliates are more Jewishly engaged than those who are not affiliated. Therefore we should be doing what we can to bolster that affiliation into the next generation through our youth groups. To do that, we need to build more effective youth training.

I love Jewish outreach, I support it all the way. But sometimes, in the hope of pleasing and bringing someone into the fold, it can become hurtful to that person. Recently, I was having a conversation with a "leader" in the American-Jewish community and they told me they did not believe in a lapsed Jew. Seconding this sentiment, another person in the audience blurted out that in Judaism that there was no such thing as "a bad Jew" or "wrong Jewish behavior." It took me a minute to gain my composure but I finally innocently asked the leader and her groupie what the concept of repentance (teshuva) mean to them? If Judaism is anything and if there is no such thing as a lapsed Jew than did a Jew ever have to say I am sorry? They looked at me askance, brushing aside my question as the ranting of some Fundamentalist Orthodox rabbi.

What I really wanted to say to them was that simply not everything is Jewish. Just because someone is speaking Hebrew does not make something Jewish, just because someone is eating bagels does mean they are doing something Jewish and just because someone has a long nose does not mean every time he puts it into a handkerchief he is doing something Jewish.

The truth is that in our attempt to reach out and be welcoming, we many times forget about the importance of conveying the concept of responsibility that comes with being Jewish. By forgetting, we hurt the person who we want to make more Jewish more than we hurt Judaism. We fail to give them something real and authentic that can not only make them feel good, but also teach them something new, help them grow, and improve their lives. Jewish outreach is great, we need more of it. Irrespective of whether one is orthodox, conservative or reform, Judaism makes demands on people and asks them to be a certain type of person: a better person.

Both Rabbi Grossman and Rabbi Stern grapple with the question of God’s role in calamitous events that befall us, either as individuals or as a people. If God is loving and good, it is difficult to understand these catastrophic occurrences–either God is somehow "not present" at these moments or is justly punishing us for our wrongdoings.

There is a danger, however, in identifying God only with those good things that happen to us, with making God overly "nice." If we affirm God’s presence only in the good, we suggest that God is absent from those moments of hardship and deprivation when we are most in need of divine comfort. Instead, it is important to recognize that God is equally present in everything that happens to us–hence the rabbinic dictum that we must “bless the bad the same as we bless the good.” The prophet Isaiah, himself no stranger to hardship and deprivation, records God as saying, “I form light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil–I the Lord do all these things.” (45:7)

As a Reconstructionist Jew, I don’t believe God ordains divine punishment or share Isaiah’s belief that God is the cause of the destruction that befalls us: God did not will the destruction of six million innocent men, women, and children. But I do believe that God is equally present in all parts of our lives if we are open to recognizing it. It’s easy to affirm God’s presence in the miracle of a new life, but God is equally present in the mystery of the end of life, even if we respond to these two events (both far outside of the realm of human understanding and control) very differently.

Tisha B’Av is an opportunity to look for God and affirm God’s presence even in the darkest of places.