Rabbi Susan Grossman: February 2006 Archives

Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, sees the collapse of social groupings, from fraternal organizations to bowling leagues, as symptomatic of the modern desire to relate on one’s own terms and schedule with like-minded and demographically similar people. What is true for communal organizations is true for religious congregations and even national denominations.

Among my Christian neighbors, more and more belong to non-denominationalist churches. The funny thing is that these churches share an amazing amount of similarity in their religious philosophy and political perspective. There are well-funded national organizations, publishing houses, and media ministries that service them and reflect their interests in public discourse. I would suggest that what we are seeing is not post-denominationalism but a restructuring of Christian denominationalism in response to social and technological change. These unaffiliated churches are attractive because they harness these waves of change.

What we rabbis wouldn’t give to be so attractive to the largely unaffiliated Jewish masses.

On second thought, though, there are things we would not give--give up, that is. As Conservative Jews, we wouldn’t give up our commitment to faith without fundamentalism, expressed in our open approach to text and its intersection with science, as well as our commitment to the equal participation of women. We wouldn’t give up our commitment to Torah as an expression of how to live our lives in the presence and under the authority of God.

However, we don’t need to sacrifice any of these core values to reposition our movement to successfully attract the Bowling Alone generation. Just the opposite: we need to identify, advocate, and live our values all the more clearly and consistently. This is the position of Tom Bandy, an ordained minister who has helped transform numerous churches into dynamic, synergetic, inspiring, and usually growing faith communities.

There are significant theological differences between the Orthodoxy, Conservative, Reform, and the Reconstructionist movements, but those differences don’t mean a thing if they are not linked to the personal beliefs and practice of their adherents (in addition to their rabbis).

The implications may be threatening, because we will have to change our assumptions and practices so that what we do is consistent with what we say we believe. It also means we have to come to some consensus. This is particularly difficult for the Conservative movement, which prides itself on its pluralism. However, the disconnect between belief and practice has perhaps been the Conservative movement’s greatest albatross.

Change may be costly, but the rewards are priceless: a revitalized movement boasting egalitarian congregations who welcome the Sabbath Queen Friday nights and don’t let her go until the following evening.

This is not about raising our expectations of our congregants as much as cultivating communities that share a common set of values that can then attract like-minded individuals. The rejuvenation of the Orthodox movement is, in large part, a result of a such a dynamic.

Such a process is also possible for the Conservative movement. Last spring, Bandy met with Conservative rabbis to kick start this process. A symposium on "Conservative Judaism and the Future of Religion in America," edited by Jack Wertheimer, in the recent issue of Judaism will broaden the conversation and move it forward.

We are in an exciting time of retooling and redefinition in the Jewish community. The Reform movement certainly is redefining itself and its expectations for its members. The Conservative movement is doing the same.

Denominationalism is not dead. It is just in the midst of a transformative resurrection.

When Sex in the City’s Charlotte is rebuffed by the rabbi in her attempts to begin conversion training, series writers evoked the Jewish tradition that potential converts be turned away three times to test their sincerity. There was good reason then a days: A potential convert could be a “double agent,” part of a plan to harm the Jewish community. There was also fear of syncretism: converts could dilute Jewish belief and practice with “foreign” traditions like idolatry.

Thankfully, times have changed and our attitude towards converts should too. Jewish converts are a great blessing, often more Jewishly knowledgeable, passionate and observant than born Jews, particularly in the non-Orthodox world. They are the Charlottes who ask their Harrys to turn off the ball game during Shabbat dinner.

Today a different reticence exists regarding conversion: having expectations of people.

It’s a societal problem, really. People want to feel OK on their own terms. They reject external definitions of what is correct or good and disassociate from those making demands upon them. This is partially why the Reform Movement dropped the original requirements for patrilineal descent. Consequently, though, so few patrilineal children raised their children as Jews that the Reform Movement recently decided to encourage conversion in intermarriages.

But having expectations is not just a Reform movement problem. In our desire for inclusion, we in the Conservative movement sometimes forget that expectations are about living for, and actualizing, a higher purpose, God’s purpose. We forget that we can be accepting of everyone, loving them for who and where they are when they enter our synagogues, even as we provide them encouragement and opportunities to continue to grow on their spiritual journeys.

It is hard to find the right balance between expectation and acceptance. Most non-Orthodox congregations include non-Jews in life cycle events in some way, if only because it’s often the non-Jewish parent who drives the child to Hebrew School.

It is important that non-Jews feel welcomed. Sometimes that sense of being warmly enveloped in a community who prayers for and cares for each other inspires a non-Jew to convert, but not always. It is equally important to take seriously what a faith commitment means and to honor the decision non-Jews make not to change their faith commitment to Judaism. That is why the converts in my congregation argued that a non-Jewish spouse not accompany the Jewish spouse to the Torah for an aliyah, for why did they need to bother to convert if no distinction is made between those who convert and those who don’t. Their concerns made we realize that synagogue policies that fail to offer real incentives for conversion actually discourage conversion.

Some of the incredible converts I have worked with began the journey because they fell in love with a Jew committed to building an unambiguously Jewish home. Some wanted to participate fully in their children’s Bnai Mitzvah. A growing number came to Judaism because it makes sense to them, where their Christianity no longer does, or never did. All these candidates understand that committing to a new faith and a new way of life takes training and, well, commitment. They embrace the idea that Judaism is not just a belief system but a way of life: that we serve God in how we eat and how we spend our time and resources in addition to how we treat others and what we believe.

Perhaps our Charlottes can teach a thing or two to our Harrys, as converts inspire born Jews to live richer Jewish lives.

It was insensitive and inappropriate for the Danish and Norwegian press to print political cartoons that were disrespectful of Muhammad, in particular, and stereotypical of Muslims, in general.

We Jews know how painful, and dangerous, such images can be, especially since the Arab press has been filled with vicious anti-Jewish cartoons for years now. And not only the Arab press: To give just one example, in 2003, a British paper printed a cartoon depicting Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon eating the head of a Palestinian child as a city burned in the background. The cartoon won the newspaper's annual political cartoon society competition. Israel is still waiting for an apology from the paper's editor. No violence. No riots. Not even cartoon comebacks attacking Anglican belief or British history in the papers. And not because we couldn't do so, but we wouldn't do so.

(By the way, are we Jews the only ones who see the hypocrisy and villainy in Iran's plan to run a Holocaust cartoon competition to get back at Denmark? Do you think it is because Denmark was one of the few countries to save almost all of their Jews in the Holocaust?)

But the real question is why are we shocked that the Arab world has broken out in riots, destroying an embassy, killing at least four (as of the time of this writing)? According to an NPR report, the rage was consciously fanned by Denmark's Muslim clerics, who distributed throughout the Muslim world not only the cartoons in question but also much more graphic and offensive cartoons and coupled them with hate-inciting propaganda. If no one in any of our Western intelligence agencies knew what was going on, we are in more trouble than we think. Jack Bauer, where are you when we need you?

Another real question is why isn't the world more shocked at this Muslim rioting, shocked enough to demand more from our Arab allies to quiet the tide (or has it become impossible for them to control the mob-inflamed monster they created)?

Maybe it is not only a question of intelligence but a question of Western ambivalence. We read in Ethics of the Fathers, Nittai the Arbelite said, "Consort not with the wicked." But that is what we in the West have done by continuing to support the nations that support the schools and mosques that train the Muslim on the street to hate us (both as Jews and Westerners).

Ultimately, Western ambivalence will continue until we free ourselves from the temptation and stranglehold of Arab oil. For that we need a much more aggressive energy policy than the one President Bush unveiled in his State of the Union speech. We need a combination of tax incentives, stricter mileage standards on autos (the technology for which is now achievable), and a Manhattan Project on serious alternative energy sources like solar, rather than pork-barrel programs like ethanol that will use more energy than it creates. As we also read in Ethics of the Fathers, Hillel used to say, "If not now when?"