United Synagogue’s 2007 International Biennial Convention
If a model Jewish life is shaped by a weekly cycle that moves toward the wholeness and peace of Shabbat, holds on to its sweetness for a few precious extra hours, and then plunges toward the excitement and reality of the new week in the world – and it does – then that life was lived at United Synagogue’s international biennial convention, held from November 29 to December 3 in Orlando, Florida.
If a model Jewish life includes a commitment to gemilut hasadim, works of lovingkindness – and it does – then that commitment was not paid lip service but lived at the convention.
If a model Jewish life comes equipped with a love for the state, the people, the history, and the future of Israel, along with the need to look at it with both love and clarity – and it does – then the tools for that life were on display at the convention.
If a model Jewish life is filled with text study, constant debate and discussion, and analysis of the position of Conservative Judaism in the abstract and situations faced by synagogues, religious schools, and other Conservative institutions in the very real world – and it is – then that kind of study was on offer at the convention.
If a model Jewish life is filled with music, both traditional liturgy and newer forms – and it is – then Jewish ears and Jewish souls were sated at the convention.
And if a model Jewish life demands discussion, debate, friendship, fellowship, food, though, and fun – and it does! – then the convention provided an outline for each of us to take home.
What follows is a lightly sketched impression of four tightly packed days.
The convention began on Thursday afternoon, with many of the early sessions focusing on the nuts and bolts of running a synagogue. Even before the convention began, a group of delegates had come to participate in Tzohar Orlando, a social-action project that worked with two local organizations. The Hebrew word tzohar means window, like the window in the ark through which Noah saw the first sunshine ray of hope after the flood that destroyed most of the earth. Through Tzohar Orlando’s work with the Gleaning Project, participants met with immigrants who glean cucumbers left in the fields after farm workers take the saleable part of the harvest; those cucumbers are free for the taking. After working in the fields alongside the gleaners, Tzohar Orlando participants – most of them descendants of immigrants who came to a very different America – met with some of them to get a firsthand look at their lives. Another group of United Synagogue volunteers worked in the background at Give Kids the World, a program that hosts and pampers terminally ill children and their families as they visit the area’s many theme parks. “It was a powerful way to start the convention,” said Gary Judd of Albany, New York.
Dr. Arnold Eisen, the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, gave the keynote talk on Thursday evening. Dr. Eisen, a lifelong Conservative Jew, talked about the excitement that is real and palpable within the movement, press reports to the contrary notwithstanding. The movement does face problems, he said, but those problems come at least in part with our engagement with the world around us. “As Conservative Jews we can walk unafraid at whatever this society throws at us and whatever it blesses us with,” he said. “It will make us stronger and make Torah stronger.”
As Conservative Jews we dance an intricate minuet; tradition and change circle and bow, sometimes hand in hand. The dance takes great concentration and focus but it is our strength and it will be our future.
Friday’s focus, in this year of Israel’s 60th birthday, was on the Jewish state. Rabbi Yafet Alemu, the first Ethiopian-Israeli to be ordained a Conservative rabbi, told the harrowing, inspirational, extraordinary story of his escape from Ethiopia, his trek across Sudan, his arrival in Israel, and his determination to help Ethiopian Jews fit into Israeli society. “I am living the Torah, I am thinking the Torah, I am dreaming the Torah,” he said. And he has a dream; he dreams that someday soon, with his help and with our help, his people can rise out of the poverty in which many of them find themselves mired in Israel and make themselves an integral part of their new homeland.
Ethiopian Jews are suffering, Rabbi Alemu said, because their family and community structure – hierarchical, male dominated, and based more in the oral than the written tradition – is at odds with modern Israeli society. Many of the community’s families cannot function effectively. Working with United Synagogue’s Israel Commission, Rabbi Alemu has set up the Family Education Initiative, a program that works with families to strengthen their bonds with each other as they integrate into Israel. He is asking our congregations to partner with him. For $1,000, a congregation can make a difference in the life of an Ethiopian-Israeli family.
Sallai Meridor, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, came to the convention, fresh from the talks in Annapolis between Israel and the Palestinians. “When the ambassador comes to town, people expect to hear only about security, and I will talk to you about it, but you should know that Israel is not only about security,” he said. “We are privileged to be the third generation building the new Jewish nation, the third generation to deal with major challenges not only from the outside but also in how we shape ourselves from the inside.” It’s just as necessary to ensure fairness within Israeli society as it is to make sure it’s secure from external threats, he said. After all, there is no oil in Israel, so “we must invest in the young generation – it’s the only asset we have.” The way to do that it to assure Israel’s continued economic growth.
We also must be aware of the enormous threat posed by Iran, he continued, and we must do something about it – and soon; it is the most serious threat Israel has faced since the Six-Day War and the world has faced since World War II. We have to worry about Iran developing nuclear weapons and we have to worry about freelance terrorists acquiring them. “We are on the verge of having those genies get out of the bottle,” he said. “If we allow it, we are leaving our children a world that is a different place. If we don’t act today, literally today, then their tomorrow will be not a day but a nightmare.”
He chose to come to our convention, Ambassador Meridor continued, because the connection he feels to the Conservative movement is real. Ten years ago, his youngest daughter told him that she wanted a real bat mitzvah, like her brothers had, not just a party, like her older sisters’ celebrations. At first he was taken aback, but “after a minute I thought ‘Wow! I should be proud!’” He investigated their options, first finding “a special place where they have a minyan for the ladies.” “No!” said his daughter. Next, he thought of having a ceremony at home. “No!” said his daughter. “‘I want it in a synagogue.’ So we ended up proudly in a Conservative synagogue in Israel. Not only did it allow my daughter to become bat mitzvah and read the Torah portion and the haftarah, but my mother, who was 75, had an aliyah to the Torah for the first time. So I personally thank you.”
Then it was Shabbat, when we faced the challenges and glories of the vastness of our tent. How do we offer the widest range of possibilities? How do we encourage people to move beyond their comfort zones? How do we come together? When should we stay apart?
As always, it was music that brought us together. On Friday night we all met for kabbalat Shabbat and then maariv; the first used musical instruments and had a female cantor as shlichat tzibur and the second was led by a male cantor’s unaccompanied voice. On Shabbat morning, two sets of three services each – for shacharit and then, after breakfast, the Torah service and musaf – allowed people to choose services with or without musical instruments, egalitarian or not, traditional nusach or Amichai Lau-Lavie’s Storahtelling. A hunger for all kinds of music – unaccompanied vocal and instrumental; Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Mizrahi; traditional, modern, and soft American 70sstyle folk-rock – was palpable. Services billed as including music, of any kind, were huge draws. People sang with fervor. The rooms shook.
“Studies on successful synagogues came to the conclusion that to have a vibrant, dynamic synagogue service you need music,” said Cantor Stephen Stein of Beth El Congregation in Akron, Ohio. Cantor Stein is executive vice president of the Cantors Assembly and he organized the cantors at the convention. “When you look at those synagogues that have exciting, dynamic services, they are all led by people who are professionally trained to do so. One of the challenges that we have in our movement – and in synagogue life in general – is to create a service that people will find to be uplifting and meaningful. We know that music has a special way of touching the heart, so if we want to create services that will reach people music will have to be a key component.”
Of course, ideas matter too, and Rabbi Jerome Epstein, United Synagogue’s executive vice president, offered both an intellectual and a theological challenge as he delivered the d’var Torah to the entire convention on Friday night. We constantly face the tension between focusing on our core members and reaching out to the people on our fringes, he said; now it is time to concentrate on our core. We teach our children well, we infuse them with Jewish values, we fire them up with music and love, we send them to Israel. Then, when they come back, we act as if we have nothing more to give them. We must provide a Judaism that will nourish our best and brightest. We must reach out actively. We must practice retail Judaism, caring for individual Jews not only in the abstract and the aggregate but also one at a time and for real.
After Shabbat dinner, a panel of three lifelong Conservative Jews fleshed out Rabbi Epstein’s thesis, talking about how their ties to the movement came not only through theology and ideology but through personal connections of friendship and love. Each had a different story; each bears living testimony to the truth of Rabbi Epstein’s charge that each of us reach out to others, one person a time, offering to share the Jewish life we live.
Koach, United Synagogue’s program for college students, brought 20 members to the convention, and some of them spoke after the panel.
“It was an incredible experience,” said Rebecca Gillette, a Harvard sophomore who is her college’s Koach representative. “I didn’t know what to expect – 20 college students in a sea of synagogue leaders, rabbis, people who are at a very different stage of life. One of the reasons we were there is to show that there is a future for the movement.
“A lot of people think that it’s a lost cause, that no matter what, we lose everyone in college anyway, so it was wonderful that we could be there to show how much we care about it.
“I talked about the importance of a personal invitation or connection, and also about making people feel invested in a community by giving them a chance to take on leadership roles. And it’s not only in the context of college, but what happens when you graduate from college. The next step is to join a synagogue. They talk about adjusting dues for young people, but it’s not just about the money. It’s about walking into a community that must open its arms to young college graduates.
“We are the age group that’s going to be taking on leadership roles fairly soon, so the synagogue needs to be prepared and open to this new group, which might have slightly different traditions but is willing to make this movement its own. That’s hard, because there is something very important about continuity and tradition, but it also has to be open to new people and new ideas. We have to make sure that we don’t lose this age group. They are interested in questioning their Judaism in positive ways, and if you lose them I don’t know when they will come back.”
After Shabbat, the convention continued to celebrate Israel with a marketplace full of Israeli crafts; dinner was Israeli cuisine. Sunday was devoted to programming about the synagogue of the future. At a talk at a startlingly good barbecue, Dr. Raymond Goldstein, United Synagogue’s international president, sounded a theme that has echoed throughout his tenure as he said, “I am proud to be a Conservative Jew. I am proud to be part of a movement that has the intellectual and halakhic integrity to grapple with the questions posed by the intersection of today’s problems and possibilities. I hope you share that pride.”
At midday on Monday convention-goers began leaving, walking out from the hotel’s vast halls into the bright Florida sun. We hope to see all of them – and all of you – at our next international biennial convention, set for Cherry Hill, New Jersey, from December 6 through 10, 2009.
See you then!
Read more information about the convention.
To learn more about the Family Education Initiative to help Ethiopian Israelis, email freedman@uscj.org.
