Climbing Sinai

This entry has been cross-posted at eJewish Philanthropy.

The theme was “anything is possible,” and yet the predominant mood of this year’s GA was anything but starry-eyed. Amidst the inspiring stories of hard-won campaign achievements and anecdotes from those whose lives have been touched by Federation, an overall sense of gravity pervaded. Steve Schwager, CEO of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, informed us that this past year, JDC could not serve 60,000 frail Jewish elderly in the FSU due to a lack of resources. Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, reminded us of the dire threat to Israel posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Forums and workshops such as “Fundraising in Hard Times” and “Betrayal, Redemption and Reward in a Post-Madoff World” grappled with the unprecedented economic challenges that we face today.

Yet I found that this gravity lent the conference a strong sense of purpose. At the opening plenary, Joe Kanfer, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Federations of North America, recounted the story of the twelve spies. Why did Joshua and Caleb counter the report of the other spies, and encourage the Jews to continue on into the land of Israel? Kanfer argued that it was not only because they were inspired by the challenge, but that they kept their focus on what was possible, rather than on what was impossible.

The GA certainly echoed Kanfer’s sentiments – the enormous sense of gravity also lent the conference a strong sense of purpose. The entire hotel was abuzz with energy as ideas were exchanged and connections made. Personally, I attended a number of informative sessions, including workshops that addressed the shifting landscape of Jewish influence in political Washington, mobilizing community in response to economic crisis, and changing trends in philanthropy.

This was my first GA. Going in, I didn’t really know what to expect, other than that I would meet a number of interesting people, and hear from a few interesting speakers. And while I felt that there were a number of pressing topics that could have been better addressed, in the end, I found the experience highly educational and incredibly inspiring. Now I’m just counting down until next years’ GA in Orlando!

Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the US, addresses attendees

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

After a moment of silence in honor of those tragically killed at Fort Hood, Jewish soldiers serving in the American Armed Forces brought an small, portable (and still incomplete) Torah scroll to the stage. This Torah scroll is being donated to the military, so chaplains can carry it to Jewish soldiers on duty in volatile areas such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

As part of my work at the Jewish Publication Society, at one point I did a fair amount of research on the Jewish Renewal Movement.  I was mostly trying to get contact information for Renewal synagogues and rabbis, but in the process, I learned a fair amount about the movement itself.  Here’s a taste of what I learned:

Members of this movement seek to spiritually reinvigorate Judaism by bringing kabbalistic and Hasidic philosophy into an egalitarian framework. The result is a Judaism infused with spirituality and liturgical creativity, blended with elements of Sufism and Buddhism, and stridently supportive of feminism, LGBT rights, pacifism, and the environmentalist movement.

The movement sees itself as neo-Hasidic; meaning, it embraces the Hasidic philosophy of creating a connection to God through joyous worship and a connection to the natural world, and blends that philosophy with modern, liberal egalitarian values.

Personally, Renewal isn’t really for me.  But I found something very heartening about the fact that there is this core group of Jews who have such a strong spiritual connection to Judaism.

Not everyone would agree with me, however.  I just stumbled upon this fascinating 2007 debate at Jewcy between Rabbi Arthur Waskow (one of the leaders of the Renewal movement) and Rabbi Daniel Bronstein (a prominent leader in the Reform movement, and rationalist extraordinaire).  I’m not going to post the entire debate, because it’s rather long.  But let me whet your appetite: the subject of the debate was “Is Jewish Renewal the Next Step in Spirituality, or Bommer Narcissism?”

Here’s how Jewcy sums up the two sides of the debate:

Say you attend a speech by the prominent Jewish Renewal rabbi Michael Lerner. Once you experience the way he whips up a rapt audience of trustafarians into an orgy of indignation (followed, like clockwork, by a soothing postcoital bath of self-satisfaction), then you actually start to agree with conservative critics who see the movement as a lingering expression of 1960s narcissism. After that kind of trauma, it’s hard to give the movement’s theology or rhetoric a fair shake.

And yet Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder and primary leader of the Renewal Movement, doesn’t seem to fit that description:

His understanding of God was intellectually sophisticated, not archaic, and his Judaism inquisitive about other faiths rather than fearful of them. He relentlessly engaged with the non-Jewish world, rather than retreating from it or placating it.

Now, I’m a big fan of instilling spirituality in Jewish practice (after all, I love love love really long Carlebach services), but I’m also a religious rationalist.  I don’t beleive that Judaism can be all things, and I don’t believe that Judaism should ignore its intellectual, rabbinic soul.  So having read through the entire debate, I’m leaning towards Rabbi Bronstein’s side…  but he’s just arrogant enough in his assertions for me to take him with a grain of salt.  Waskow does make some really valid points, and Bronstein simply insults them away.

What do y’all think of the debate?  (Again, you can read it here.)  Are any of you involved with the Renewal movement, or have come into contact with it?  What are your thoughts?

I’ve got a surprising number of friends who are converts to Judaism.  (”Surprising number” means 5.  In my experience, converts to Judaism are few and far between, so 5 is actually quite a lot.)  I was having a discussion with one of them the other day about the “convert problem” in the Jewish community at large, and in the Orthodox community specifically.

It’s a sorry state of affairs, but the fact is, the Jewish community is regularly guilty of breaking the Torah prohibition, “do not oppress the convert.”  Many secular Jews, who see their Judaism as almost purely cultural, feel threatened by the “outsider” who embraces Judaism without much familiarity or experience with Jewish culture.  The Orthodox community will often question a convert’s halachik authenticity, sometimes even decades after that person has been living a dedicated Torah lifestyle.  Among the more right-wing elements of the Orthodox community, long-time converts are often asked to bring proof of the authenticity of their conversion before others will consider their children as potential shidduchim.  In Israel, the rabbinate (a political body which, I personally beleive, is extremely corrupt) is beginning to reject American Orthodox conversions, and even annul some conversions years after the fact.  (If you’re interested in reading more about the topic, Aliza Hausman over at Memoirs of a Jewminicana blogs extensively about this stuff.)  Understatement of the year: being a Jewish convert is tough.

We’re a very insular people in many ways – we’re clannish, we beleive that Judaism is something you’re born into, Judaism is sometimes just as much about culture as it is about religion (even for Orthodox Jews, though we’re usually loathe to admit it).  It’s hard for an outsider to break into that.  Often, after someone converts to Judaism, the last thing they want is to be seen as “The Convert.”  They want to fit in, to not be perpetually seen as different.  But that’s not always the case.  Sometimes, converts are very eager to share their experiences and thoughts.

Now, here’s where my question comes into play.  As someone who is very interested in how different people relate to their Judaism, I am always intensly curious about what it is that brought a convert to Judaism.  I don’t want to make them feel different or inferior; I simply want to learn, to have a fascinating conversation with someone who’s embraced Judaism with a full heart.  But when I meet someone who I know (or suspect) is a convert, I never know what to do.  Is it ok to ask questions, or should I simply pretend that I don’t know?  When is it ok to point out someone’s differences, and when must I simply put up and shut up?  What’s the best way to approach a Jew By Choice about his or her conversion, if there’s a way to do it at all?

Who wants to be Jewish nowadays?  I mean, we swindle billions of dollars (and from nonprofit organizations, no less), we throw lavish parties in jail, and our religious leaders get caught in stings involving money laundering and organ traffiking.  I mean, geez, we should be throwing away our yarlmukes and flushing our Chanukkah menorahs down the toilet.

… Oh. Wait.  Remember that old adage, “don’t confuse the Jew with the Judaism”?  Well, while it can easily be argued that these scandals are rooted in internal communal problems, we need to remember that Judaism is at its heart a religion steeped in ethics, social justice, and moral responsibility.  Yes, there will probably always be people who forget that fact.  But in the end, we would do well to realize that Judaism does a great job encouraging and nourishing those ethical values.  Every year, hundreds of Jewish students participate in programs organized by the American Jewish World Service or AVODAH.  There is a growing trend among bar and bat mitzvahs to do some sort of service project in honor of their big day.  And many, many Jews who self-identify as secular still look to Judaism for inspiration to lead moral, ethical lives.  So actually, we have quite a lot to be proud of.

That’s why it’s so great that the UJC – the umbrella organization for the Jewish Federations of North America – has just launched the first Jewish Community Heroes Award.  We need a reminder that there are still wonderful, passionate Jewish leaders who are doing incredible things.  The award is a grassroots effort – anyone can nominate a hero, and voting is open to all.  When the polls close on October 8th, the winner will be honored with a $25,000 reward to go to his or her cause.  The nominees are an incredible bunch – they run the gamut from the founder of Uri L’Tzedek, an Orthodox social justice organization, to Hebrew language teachers, to soup kitchen volunteers and rabbis.  They’re professionals and lay people, of every age and denomination.  It’s really inspiring to read through the list.

As a side note, the Darim Online blog has an interesting take on the award:

Using this open forum,  Jewish communal institutions will be able to listen unfiltered to leaders on the ground. The issues that are most important to the institutions may or may not be the issues that individuals are most passionately working on. For that reason alone, the Jewish Community Heroes Awards will be fascinating to monitor.

Further proof that Web 2.0 – and its underlying grassroots values – is changing Jewish communal institutions (for the better, I think).

This entry is cross-posted at the JPS Blog.

About a week ago, the Jerusalem Post reported about a recent attempt to revive the Jewish religious literary tradition in Krakow, Poland.  Today, fewer than 1,000 Krakow residents identify with the Jewish community.  Yet before the Holocaust, the city was home to 80,000 Jews – and some of the greatest religious writings to come out of Eastern Europe from the early modern period onward were written by the rabbis of Krakow.  Haviv Rettig Gur reports:

The new Polish-language book Dovev Siftei Yeshenim (The Utterings of the Lips of the Sleepers), written by Krakow’s Rabbi Boaz Pash, is an effort to bring back to life the voices of the city’s rabbinic tradition in the place where it all happened. The book is a collection of interpretations on the weekly Torah portion written by some of the greatest rabbis Krakow ever produced.

“Everyone has heard about the rabbis and sages of Krakow, but who can quote them?” asks Pash. “What member of the current generation that is living and growing up in Poland can open their books? This book and others of its kind represent an attempt to meet that need.”

The book begins with 15th century scholar Rabbi Yom Tov Milhausen, and continues with such luminaries of the Jewish bookshelf as the 16th century giant Rabbi Moshe Isserles, better known as the Rama, and the 17th-century halachist Rabbi Yoel Sirkas, the Bach.

(Interestingly, Dovev Siftei Yeshenim is coming on the heels of a possible re-publication of a German edition of Mein Kampf! That’s irony for ya.)  The publication of this book is indicative of a larger trend in Polish Jewish life:

The book, like Pash’s rabbinic work, are funded by the Shavey Yisrael organization, one of the groups at the forefront of the quiet rekindling of Jewish life in Eastern Europe.

“Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, more and more young Poles are rediscovering their Jewish roots and expressing a desire to draw closer to the Jewish people and the State of Israel,” according to the Israel-based chairman of Shavey Yisrael, Michael Freund.

“At the same time, Jewish communal life in Poland is gradually gaining strength. We cannot turn our backs on these exciting historic developments and must do everything we can to facilitate them,” Freund said in a statement announcing the publication of Dovev Siftei Yeshenim.

I’m thrilled that they’re publishing this book in Polish, so it will be accessible to Polish Jews and non-Jews alike.  At the same time, however, I’d love to see an English translation of the book.  It sounds like an absolute gem.

- Naomi

This entry is cross-posted at the JPS Blog.

I’ve always had this nerdy thing for antiquarian books – I even once spent a summer working at a rare books and manuscripts library. So naturally I got pretty excited when I stumbled across this article earlier today.  The article was published a little over a year ago, on June 27 – I’d be curious to know what kind of progress has been made in the smuggling operation since then.

The Agence France-Presse reported from Jerusalem:

Some 300 rare and valuable books confiscated from Iraq’s Jewish community by Saddam Hussein’s regime have been secretly spirited into Israel, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday.

The books include a 1487 commentary on the biblical Book of Job and another volume of biblical prophets printed in Venice in 1617, the Haaretz daily said.

The volumes are part of a massive collection of books confiscated by the secret police of the executed Iraqi dictator and stored in security installations in the Iraqi capital until the US-led invasion of 2003.

Many volumes were damaged during the bombing of government buildings in the opening weeks of the war, and after the fall of Baghdad most of the books were sent off to be temporarily stored at the Library of Congress in Washington.

Others however ended up in the hands of private dealers.

“We bought them from thieves,” Mordechai Ben-Porat, an Iraqi-born Jew and the founder of Jerusalem’s Babylonian Jewry Heritage centre told the newspaper, adding that the foundation paid some 25,000 dollars (16,000 euros).

In the beginning, Ben-Porat sent an emissary to Baghdad who shipped the books directly to Israel, but once the Americans caught wind of his activities they forbade further shipments, forcing him to smuggle the rest, he said.

I think this article poses an interesting question: who is the rightful owner of these cultural artifacts?  Of course, it’s a little difficult to side with a repressive dictatorship, but still – are these Iraqi rare books, or Jewish rare books?  I think you can easily argue either side.  After all, Iraqi history isn’t just Arab, it’s also Jewish, Kurdish, Armenian, and even Christian.  (Sidepoint: this definitely brings to mind the Elgin Marbles debate, and the sticky issue of art and cultural repatriation in general.)

And to add another layer of difficulty to the debate – the article says that these books were purchased from theives, who stole them from private dealers.  Is this ethical?  Of course, we don’t know how those private dealers got their hands on the books.  But the question of rightful ownership is still very unclear.  What are your thoughts on the issue?

-Naomi