Rabbi Susan Grossman: July 2007 Archives

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.

Centuries ago, our sages ruled that the destruction of the First and Second Temples would be commemorated together on Tisha B’Av. Early after World War Two, some suggested that Tisha B’Av also serve as the memorial to mark the Holocaust. Other voices won out, identifying the unique aspects of the Holocaust which required its own mourning, its own lessons. In many communities, Holocaust remembrance services bring large crowds, much larger than those who show up for Tisha B’Av services in United States congregations. That is not only because Tisha B’Av falls during the summer months when so many of our congregants, and rabbis, are away on vacation. I think it is also because, living in the shadow of the trauma of the Holocaust, and the theological questions it raises, we find it hard to cope with a holy day that, at its theological center, focuses on a God who allows destruction to occur.

There are some things Jews can believe about Jesus. We can believe that he was a Jewish man who lived during the first century CE. He was well versed in the ways of the Pharisees, who he often quotes. (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is a paraphrase of a statement by the Pharisaic elder Hillel.) He preached a unique message of economic justice, faith, and acceptance during a time of great social upheaval in Palestine under increasingly oppressive Roman rule. He was killed by the Romans as a Jew, crucified like many other Jews of his time.

We can also believe that if Jesus were alive at the time, he would have condemned much of what has been done in his name, from the Crusades to the Inquisition to the pogroms of Eastern Europe, etc., etc.

There are other things Jews cannot believe about Jesus.

When I lived in New York, the only congregants I knew in the military were veterans from World War Two and a few from Korea and Vietnam. However the demographics are very different where I now live, in the greater Washington, D.C. area. I have had several congregants serve tours of duty in Iraq and Afganistan. Some are there today. Many more congregants are veterans. Some are doctors, dentists or lawyers. Others were officers. Many served with distinction in the first Gulf War. Several of my friends are active military chaplains.

All these people have changed my attitudes towards the military and the importance of supporting our troops. Since this newest war began, I have recited a special prayer for our soldiers, and those of Israel and our other allies, over the Torah during Sabbath services. The congregation rejoiced at the news announced during services last week that one of the names of family and friends I recite each week had returned safely from his second tour of duty in Iraq.

Given all that, Jews still represent a disproportionately small percentage of the active military. That is true for other upper middle class populations as well. However, the less affluence segments of the African American community are disproportionately represented in the military. Why? Because the military offers job training and college assistance, things that may be otherwise out of reach. The basic injustice is not religious, it is economic. The military understandably does what it can to make enlistment enticing. However its leveraging of a major societal injustice (that you need money to go to college) is our fault. It is our failure that we allow society to make it so difficult for the poor to go to college so that those with few other choices decide to place their life in danger by joining the military in order to secure a college education. When those decisions fall more often to one ethnic group than another, for example to the African American community, we must confront that our political culture has institutionalized racism. That is something the Jewish community can do something about, by supporting more aid for college grants and subsidized loans so that achieving a college education is not a class privilege.

There are good and honorable reasons to join the military: to serve one’s country, to help make the world a safer place, to defend innocent people here and abroad. I honor those who have made the choice to serve. It is appropriate to financially support our troops, to an even greater extent than we currently do, for the service they render in faithfulness. However, we also must be vigilant and proactive to create the economic opportunities for everyone in our country, regardless of race or class, so that those who choose to serve do so out of real choice rather than a lack of choice.