USCJ Review - Spring 2006
Convention 2005 - Conviction and Passionate Intensity
It's risky scheduling a convention in Boston in December. The bustling old city is far enough north to be a snow magnet; often it glitters bewitchingly all winter long. It looks great once you're there, but getting there can be a challenge. Choosing it as a convention venue in snow season can be an act of faith. The snow held off during the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism's international biennial convention, but the risk-taking continued inside the Park Plaza Hotel. Provocative speakers broached ideas and convention-goers assessed those ideas with passionate, occasionally high-decibel debate that went on far into the night, although the overall feeling was not conflict but excitement. Few aspects of the Conservative movement remained unexamined; to listen to convention-goers as the meeting drew to a close was to hear that few left without feeling hopeful about the movement's health. The four-day convention was full of workshops and classes; awards were given, accomplishments recognized, and new officers installed; there was time for shopping, meals, and entertainment; each day began with Shacharit services. There were plenary sessions or other large gatherings each day, and much buzz from each one.
The convention proper began with Rabbi Harold Kushner, rabbi emeritus of Temple Israel of Natick, Massachusetts. Rabbi Kushner is the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, a best-selling and enormously influential work of popular theology. He discussed what it means to be a Conservative Jew, a member of the group that values both tradition and serious learning and understands that there is both tension and growth to be gained from their interplay.
There are four pillars to Conservative Judaism, Rabbi Kushner said. First is the paramount importance of community. "A structural difference between Judaism and Christianity is that we were a people before we were a faith," he said. "You can form congregations of people who do not believe the same thing" - and in fact, he added, we not only can but usually do form such congregations - "because Judaism is more like a family." And that, Rabbi Kushner added, is why the Conservative movement traditionally has been overwhelmingly Zionist, the most Zionist of the Jewish streams. "That's because we understand the primacy of people," he said. "We understand that if Judaism were just a theology we wouldn't need a homeland.
"Ideology needs a library; a people needs a state."
The second pillar, Rabbi Kushner said, is a respect for truth. "If emet is one of the names of God, if truth is the seal of God, then I see no reason why we should ever be afraid of the truth.
"We shouldn't be afraid of what Darwin might teach, or Galileo, or Freud. If it is true, and if the Torah is true, we will find room for it in our Torah. I believe in intelligent design - I see the fingerprints of God all of creation - but I believe in it as a religious truth, not a scientific one."
The third pillar is "the recognition that life is a quest for holiness. That is the purpose of life. Life is not a quest for wealth, for pleasure, or for immortality, but for holiness, and the mitzvot command our observance not only because where they come from but because of where they lead." The observance of kashrut allows us the opportunity "to meet God at breakfast, lunch, and dinner."
The fourth pillar of Conservative Judaism, according to Rabbi Kushner, is an understanding of the importance of history. "It is a not a coincidence that the Jewish Theological Seminary's Chancellor Schorsch, like Gershon Cohen before him, is a pre-eminent historian of Jewish life," he said. "History is what validates us and validates the changes we have made in Jewish law and Jewish life.
"Don't believe the canard that Conservative Judaism is for people who are too lazy" to practice halacha as they have inherited it, he continued. "The fundamental truth is that Jewish law always has changed. Like the American constitution, Jewish law is a living, breathing document. To remain healthy - to remain alive - is to constantly shed old cells and grow new ones."
The position of women in Conservative Jewish life, he added, is a prime illustration of this change. "In the 21st century, when you have women senators, women CEOs, women on the Supreme Court, it makes no sense for us to limit the role of women based on the role of women two thousand years ago." It's not giving in to political correctness, he said; it's simply doing what's right.
As he concluded, Rabbi Kushner offered achallenge to the audience. "Build an edifice on these four pillars," he said.
The next night, the theologian and philosopher Rabbi Neil Gillman, who has been at the Jewish Theological Seminary in one capacity or another since the mid-1950s, talked about the past, present, and future of the Conservative movement. It is safe to say that Rabbi Gillman's "Aggada for the Conservative Movement," a long, closely argued academic paper, contributed a major amount of buzz to the convention.
"My theme was a critique of the movement's self-identification as a halachic movement," Rabbi Gillman said later. "I suggested that rubric has failed to engage our laity, is vague enough to escape any precise definition, and is ultimately subverted by the academic culture of the seminary."
Instead, he said, the movement, as part of a voluntary, pluralistic, open Jewish community, can move toward the more subjective standards of aggadic Judaism. "I have long felt that to think and live as a Conservative Jew is to live in a state of perpetual tension," he said in his talk. "That this should be the hallmark of our movement is somewhat incongruous because if, as contemporary anthropologists suggest, the whole purpose of religion is to order our experience of the world, to subdue the anarchic dimensions of our human experience, to turn chaos into cosmos, then why is all of our activity designed to counter that basic human need?"
But, he continued, if we are looking for a symbol that "flaunts what is distinctive about our identity," then why not consider the tension in which we live? "Its very incongruity may be its attraction. It may well be precisely what we need to say about ourselves at this stage in our history."
Tension, he said, can be healthy, even liberating; it can "serve as a source of vitality, growth and creativity. We should learn to teach our children that this dimension of our Judaism is a source of its strength.
"After all," Rabbi Gillman concluded, "our model is the biblical Jacob. Jacob wrestled with an angel and emerged both wounded and blessed. Maybe we too need to feel wounded before we can be blessed. We could do much worse than emulate Jacob." The talk went late, the panel discussing it went even later; afterward, as the crowd wandered the hotel's elegant mezzanine level and waited interminably (but with impressive politeness) for the too-little too-late elevators, the talk kept flowing. Some listeners were offended, some intrigued; many were unconvinced but most seemed excited by the intellectual challenge posed by Rabbi Gillman. (A complete, slightly revised, and more extended version of his talk is slated to be published in the winter/spring issue of "Conservative Judaism.")
On Tuesday, United Synagogue's executive vice president, Rabbi Jerome Epstein, inaugurated what will be the organization's new approach to outreach to intermarried families. Although such efforts traditionally have been called keruv - conventionally translated as outreach - Rabbi Epstein introduced a new word. United Synagogue, he said, now will work on edud - encouragement, support, or inspiration. We must go beyond even warmly welcoming, he believes. Instead we must actively encourage non-Jews spouses to join us, at least as welcome visitors and if possible as new Jews. Using our passionately held beliefs and deep-seated feelings about the joy, beauty, truth, and community Judaism offers, we must show and offer to share the treasure that is ours. After Rabbi Epstein's talk (excepts appear on page 14 and it is available in full at uscj.org/Beyond_Keruv_to_Edud6908.html), the large audience was subdivided into themed groups; the sounds of dozens of conversations filled the room. It was so noisy because everyone wanted to talk; although the groups had been scheduled to end after half an hour or so, many of them kept going for far longer.
It is clear that edud, keruv, intermarriage, and conversion are hot-button issues. As convention-goers talked about them, personal stories outnumbered policy debates. Rabbi Epstein's talk was based on Al HaDerekh, a longer paper that was written by United Synagogue's Rabbi Moshe Edelman with the input and approval of representatives of all the branches of the Conservative movement. (It's available online here.) The speech and the paper are just the beginning; information gathered there, along with what's learned at discussions with Conservative Jews across the continent, will be combined and used as the basis for new programming.
After dinner, Dr. Daniel Matt addressed another highly visible subject in the Jewish work, kabbalah, as he talked about his new book, the third in his ongoing translation of the Zohar. The book was brand-new, just off the presses; it was launched at the convention.
Dr. Matt, who is the grandson, son, and brother of Conservative rabbis, is passionate about kaballah. That is, he said, because "it challenges our understanding of life. It dares us to transform ourselves. It shatters our childish image of God into a God called infinity. God is not in heaven - God is the energy that animates the universe. God is father and mother equally. And it is up to us humans to unite the male and female parts of God." Kaballah, Dr. Matt continued, is both ancient and absolutely new. The word means "to receive," and it is about both the tradition we have received and what we can do right now to open up to the spiritual.
Kaballah is based on mysticism at least as old as the Bible, but it developed in 12th century Provence and 13th century Spain, Dr. Matt said. The Zohar, its single most seminal text, is "a kind of mystical novel," a picaresque adventure. Just as Don Quixote, written just a few centuries later, is a knight errant, the Zohar's protagonist, Rabbi Shimon Bar Zakkai, is a saint errant, he said.
Although the kaballah is esoteric, some of it has filtered into our lives. Kaballat Shabbat is based on the mystical idea of the Shechinah as Shabbat bride, and when we sing the psalms and then welcome her we are using some of the words and images of the kaballists, Dr. Matt said. (For more information about his translation of the Zohar and to see the Aramaic text upon which it is based, go here.
On Wednesday, in a striking break with its own tradition, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards held a virtually unprecedented open meeting. The members of the committee sat around an open-square table in a well in the center of a large assembly room, and observers sat behind them, watching, listening, and taking notes. There were hundreds of onlookers; there was almost no sound in the room other than the debate at its center.
The shailah, or question, the committee considered had been proposed by United Synagogue's Rabbi Robert Abramson and Dr. Elaine Cohen, respectively the director and associate director of our education department. They had been asked by a Solomon Schechter day school principal whether the school was obligated to accept children who were unvaccinated. The children's parents said their decision to leave their children unvaccinated was a "religious" one.
Once the civil legal questions were dealt with - as they must be, outside the purview of the committee - the religious and moral ones remained.
"I had a lots of thoughts about it, but there was no halachic principal I could hang my hat on easily," said Rabbi Abramson. "And so I said to Elaine, the school's actually asking a halachic question - we should give it to the committee."
Rabbi Joseph Prouser of the Little Neck Jewish Center in Queens, New York, wrote the teshuvah; he read and explained it and then the committee debated it.
It was an odd and moving experience to sit and listen to his question being discussed, Rabbi Abramson said. "The question got a very thorough reading. It was very serious. It's one of the most important ways the movement discusses values."
The value in this case, he continued, was "the priority of human life within the appropriate medical context. Dealing with up-to-date medicine means dealing with up-to-date problems; here we're dealing with the possibility of contagion." The panel considered whether it is acceptable to act on the assumption that because everyone around your child is vaccinated your child is in no risk of catching a disease and therefore need not bevaccinated. They also considered such questions as whether a child with an autoimmune disease must be vaccinated. As they deliberated, the committee took into consideration authoritative sources ranging from the Talmud (in its discussion of when a roof must be surrounded by a parapet) to the latest medical studies.
The committee unanimously decided to accept Rabbi Prouser's conclusions that if a child does not have a serious medical condition that would make being vaccinated risky, he or she must be vaccinated to become a Schechter student. The unanimity is unusual; there is often a split in opinion, and if they are backed strongly enough two opposing opinions can both be judged valid. "I had been to meeting of the committee on halacha before, but not with all those laypeople," Rabbi Abramson said. "The committee does serious work, and it is impressive."
Jerold Jacobs of Rockville, Maryland, was among the spectators. A lawyer who spent many years at the FCC, seven of them as an appellate judge, he was impressed by what he saw.
"It was very stimulating; it was worthy of our movement," he said. "The opinions were based on both citations of Talmudic authority and the latest scientific and sociological information. That's just as it should be.
"Sometimes you have an ideal vision of the way something should look or be, and then you're disappointed at the reality. I would say here that the reality equaled or surpassed my expectations." Some of the committee members are "luminaries," he added. "I felt privileged to be there."
He did point out, though, that it is not possible to know what a meeting held in private would be like by looking at that same meeting held publicly; the act of opening it to observation inevitably changes it.
Dr. Marilyn Lishnoff Wind of Bethesda, Maryland, is one of United Synagogue's lay representatives on the committee, able to contribute to the discussion but not to vote. The committee's deliberations were not affected by the audience, she said, and she was pleased that nonmembers could see "how somethingseemingly noncontroversial, such as a question about vaccinations, is approached from a halachic point of view, and the kinds of in-depth questions that committee members ask, and the depth of expertise that everybody brings to the table." Dr. Wind's doctorate is in pharmacology, so she had some background in the subject under discussion. "I was really impressed with the way Rabbi Prouser was able to cut through thescientific prose and understand the complex scientific information," she said.
On Wednesday night, the casual clothes and intense discussion that had characterized the convention were replaced by the black and white of the men's evening dress and the glitter and twirl of the women's, as the old officers stepped down and the new slate took their new positions. Standing in a long, wooden-paneled room, lit by the jumping flames of rows of long white tapers, Judy Yudof talked about the challenges she faced during her four years as international president and Ray Goldstein took them over. In his speech, Dr. Goldstein talked about being Jewish in New York, where he grew up, and then in the upper Midwest, where he's lived all his adult life. It was an emotional time for both of them, and the audience listened with close attention.
Later, when it was time for something completely different, the Zamir Chorale joined Safam for a closing-night concert. Safam, which coincidentally was celebrating its 31st anniversary that night, set out to prove the truth that "Adon Olam" can be set to virtually any piece of music ever written. Its list of the 10 most unlikely tunes for "Adon Olam" includes "New York, New York," "Old Man River," "Silent Night," and "I've Got You, Babe." (Try them. They all work.)
On Thursday morning, as the convention ended, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, who is ending his tenure as chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, spoke. It was to some extent an elegiac talk - he's been at the helm of the movement for almost 20 years, and people wanted to provide him a forum where he could say goodbye to us, and we to him. Judy Yudof, who had said a fair number of goodbyes already that weekend, thanked Chancellor Schorsch for his service to the movement in general and to United Synagogue in particular.
But Chancellor Schorsch wasn't at the convention only to say farewell. He also had a new idea to present - or, as he put it, a "modest proposal."
Positing that "the unabated hemorrhaging of the American Jewish community - the freest, wealthiest and most influential ever - due to intermarriage surely jeopardizes its long-term vitality," and that the hemorrhaging is in large part due both to intermarriage and to the communal lassitude that finds intermarriage acceptable, Chancellor Schorsch suggested that only a serious push to educate young Jews can save us. "It is the irrefutable impact of Jewish education that moves me to make the strategic proposal that the organized Jewish community in America guarantee a free Jewish education to the children of all members of the Jewish polity," he said. He defined citizenship in that polity as deriving from membership in a synagogue or Jewish community center, "the great aquifers of the organized Jewish community and the source of its social capital." The initiative, which would be very expensive, would be financed by federations, which are casting about looking for the sort of goal that can galvanize their members.
"Literacy has always been the key to Jewish survival," Chancellor Schorsch concluded. "The crown of Torah can't be worn without it. To provide our children with access to their spiritual heritage is a supreme communal responsibility because it is an urgent communal necessity."
On that note, the convention ended. The snow had continued to hold off; people went off home on schedule. They left looking tired and rumpled, but they left still talking. The next convention's scheduled for November 29 to December 3, 2007, at Shingle Creek Resort and Golf Club in Orlando, Florida. We're trying something new - this convention will meet over Shabbat, so we can celebrate it together. We hope to see you all there!
For more background on the convention, click here.
