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We are Family: Reflections on Israel in Crisis
Yom Kippur Sermon, 2002
No issue commanded the attention of Jews and the Jewish community this past year as much as the crisis in Israel. The campaign of suicide bombings have exacted a horrendous physical and psychological toll on Israelis. Just about two years ago it seemed as if Ehud Barak and Yassar Arafat¹s Palestinian Authority were on the verge of a breakthrough peace agreement. What we have witnessed instead is a progressive unraveling of a peace process that took years to develop and a return to the cycle of violence that leaves everyone bereft of simple solutions.
Many are weighing in with opinions about how to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict which has now gone on for more than 100 years. My concern here is a bit different. In the face of this conflict many Jews are questioning the very basis for their relationship to a state that is supposed to be central to Jewish identity and consciousness. Can we continue to talk about Israel as part of the larger Jewish family of which we are part? And if so, how?
What makes a family?
I ask myself the question: ³How large is the universe of Jews who wake up each morning and hasten to open the paper to see if the headlines bring news of another terrorist attack in Israel?
When hearing the news of another suicide bombing in Israel with fatalities and casualties, how many Jews get that queasy feeling in their stomachs that is our bodies way of telling us this is information that is not just being processed rationally in our brains but has somehow entered our kishkas, the antennae of our souls?
How many Jews see a Newsweek cover story entitled ³Will Israel Survive?² and read it as ³Will your People Survive?²
The Waning of Jewish Group Consciousness
There is much evidence that, in America, what has accompanied the general acceptance of Jews in society and our socio-economic success is a weakening of our feelings of ethnic connection to Jews around the world and to Israel. This, perhaps, explains an interesting change that has taken place in the American Jewish community. In 1975 the UN passed a resolution that equated Zionism with racism. The Jewish community responded with a campaign which included widespread distribution of buttons which said ³I am a Zionist². At least in the circles I ran in in those days, Jews wore those buttons proudly.
Today, the Jewish community attempts to respond to one of the most widespread and sustained campaigns of anti-semitism we have seen in our lifetime but it does not include an affirmative expression on the part of Jews that ³we are Zionists².
A good friend of mine who is a generous supporter of numerous Jewish causes and in fact, went to Israel last spring on a solidarity mission, said in my presence that while he will do whatever it takes to defend Israel, he is not a Zionist. My attempts to make the case that much of his behavior would suggest otherwise, were politely but vehemently resisted. Pro-Israel yes, Zionist, no.
I fear that this is a view that is widespread. Judaism has become an increasingly personal, inner, spiritual pursuit for American Jews. It is bad enough that only about a third of American Jews identify in any affirmative way with their Jewish identity. What is even more distressing is that many of that one-third would resist extending their sense of Jewish identity to some sense of civic commitment to the Jewish people. This manifests itself in alienation from umbrella Jewish federations that are the umbrella planning, fundrasing and allocation arm of the Jewish community; lack of concern with endangered Jews in places like Argentina, Europe and the former Soviet Union; and an aversion to thinking about what it means to be a Zionist.
Israel--June, 2002
These were among the concerns that motivated me to go to Israel this past June. I was a delegate to the 34th World Zionist Congress which first met in Basel, Switzerland in 1897. It was at this international gathering of Jews, on the eve of the 20th century, that Theodore Herzl, who was the moving force behind the Congress, earned his status as the father of modern Zionism and something of a prophet for he declared in that year, 1897, that in 50 years, there would be an independent Jewish homeland for the Jewish people. He got it exactly right.
There is much to tell, even after only a week in the country. Life seems telescoped in Israel. There is an intensity that is both intoxicating and exhausting. Every event seems to take on historical, if not theological importance.
The connection of Jews to Israel could hardly be better conveyed than it was in a letter written by Marla Bennet, the American studying in Israel to be a Jewish educator, killed in June, 2002 by a terrorist bomb at Hebrew University. The letter was written shortly before she became a victim to the campaign of terror which has targeted Israeli civilians for the past two years.
She wrote: ³I love living here. The air is charged with our debates and discussions. We are trying to absorb all of the lessons that life here offers. Life here is magical. But life here is also difficult. My time here is dramatically affected by both the security situation and by the events happening around me. I feel energized by the opportunity to support Israel during a difficult period. I have the honor to be an American choosing to remain in Israel and assist, however minimally, in Israel¹s triumph.²
Marla Bennet¹s words ring in my ears because virtually every Israeli I met--cab drivers, teachers, soldiers, public officials, housewives--asked the same question: where are all the American Jews during our time of trial?
However troubling and psychologically traumatic the two years of terrorism have been, Israelis say that the country has always lived in a sea of hostility, amid both actual and threatened attacks. They can deal with it. What is far more debilitating is the sense that the same Jews who raised money on the slogan: ³we are one², are now nowhere to be found in Israel. ³We are One, We are One, We are One²-This was the mantra of my Jewish youth. It was supposed to mean that the Jewish people and Israel were one family. It was supposed to mean that we would be there for each other. It was supposed to mean, ³united we stand; divided we fall². We, diaspora Jews, have hardly lived up to our end of the bargain. The evaporation of Jewish tourism during the past two years has both devastated the Israeli economy and undermined Israeli morale. Israelis have never before felt so alone.
This is the backdrop to two incidents that drove home to me yet again, on my recent visit, how we--Jews and Israel--are part of the same family.
We are family
As part of my participation in the World Zionist Congress, I chose to sit on a committee on ³Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State². A day earlier there had been a sucide bombing on a street not a mile from the convention center in Jerusalem. Ariel Sharon changed his plans to speak to us and instead, visited the site even as the bus was still in flames. Now, in the middle of our deliberations, word came to us of another suicide bombing in French Hill, a prosperous neighborhood near Hebrew University. The Magen David Adom, the Israeli Red Cross, set up a blood drive in the convention center and delegates took turns giving blood. Meanwhile, the chairman of our committee, a Jew from Germany who was not religious, turned to some of the kipah wearing delegates from the religious parties to lead the room in the saying of Psalms, a traditional Jewish practice to pray for the souls of those whose lives had just been extinguished and their loved ones, who would now mourn their loss. He asked all of us, Jews from all over the world, representing the full spectrum of political ideologies, to stand in respect.
Next to me sat a member of the Meretz party, an ideologically committed secularist from France. He stood with the rest of the room but because his english and hebrew were so poor, it took him about a 10 seconds to realize that he had been drawn into a moment that he deemed to be religious, and against his convictions. He started screaming at the top of his lungs: ³this is an outrage, I do not agree with this religious action; I protest².
The room was stunned. We were taken by the appropriateness of what the chairman had proposed we do as a symbolic act of solidarity and respect. Then the delegates started screaming back at the French Jew. Above the din, was our chairman, who controlled the mikes and who chastised the Frenchman: ³How dare you desecrate this moment. I was in Auschwitz. I saw my entire family, my entire community perish, and now Jews are being killed again and you have the chutzpah to bicker at this time!²
The Frenchman responded: ³ I too was at Auschwitz. It is this damned religion that got us killed. Don¹t you go trying to impose it on me². The room fell quiet. As angry as the entire room was a moment before, we were now looking into the eyes of a survivor. It confers a certain level of deference. The French Jews¹ anti-religious stance was forged by the fires of the crematoria. It was not easily dismissed. The quiet in the room was deafening. We wept silently.
We wept at our common historical fate; we wept because the Holocaust¹s looming shadow, which in Israel, never seems very far away, was suddenly in the room with us; we wept over the intensity of the anger that was expressed just a moment earlier, a family squabble that erupted because of the tension we all were under; we wept out of fear for ourselves and the future of Israel and the Jewish people.
How painful it is when families, whose members desperately need each other, fight.
The Ingathering of Exiles
The second incident took place when, during the week I was in Israel, I had the chance to go to Ben Gurion Airport to welcome arriving immigrants. Zionist ideology talks about the ³ingathering of the exiles², by which it means, that one of the functions of a Jewish state is to be a haven for Jews anywhere in the world, offering the opportunity to become a citizen of the Jewish state by simple declaration and moving one¹s life to Israel. I knew of others who had witnessed the arrival of new immigrants, but nothing prepared me for the emotional power of the experience. Here in a week that saw three terrorist attacks on Israelis, in a country barren of any signs of tourism, some 400 Jews were moving their entire families and lives to Israel. One plane was from the Ukraine, one from Russia and one from Argentina. Off the plane came young and old, men and women. Some looked religious; most did not. One Russian Jew, looked to be in his 90¹s, was being assisted by his grown son and followed by his grandchildren. He had no teeth, walked with a cane, and was wearing his WWI uniform with a chestful of medals. The Argentinians were mostly young families which had witnessed the bottom drop out of a once thriving economy. Most had gone from comfortable middle class lives to poverty, almost overnight.
We who were delegates there to greet the new olim , formed a human corridor. Those who came off the plane seemed stunned to be greeted by several hundred well dressed western Jews, cabinet ministers of the state of Israel and a band. As they trudged slowly through the human wall we had created, they began to respond to our gifts of flowers, Israeli flags and stuffed animals for the children. I was not the only only one shedding the kind of tears that one cries when witnessing a miracle.
Soon I along with other delegates started kissing each and every oleh chadash, every new immigrant. These were Jews who were about to start a new life; with almost nothing. They were coming to a place they had never been before, but they were coming home. And we were their welcoming family. The band struck up some music and despite the barriers of language and geography, we mixed together and danced. Like family.
This went on for over an hour, in the mid-day heat. The new immigrants had been on planes for over 12 hours. We were all physically and emotionally drained. But there was one last rite of passage. An official greeting from member of Knesset and Minister of Absorption, Yuli Edelstein. Yuli was one of the heroes of the Soviet Jewry movement. Raised a secular Russian, he discovered his Jewish identity as a young man and taught himself impeccable Hebrew. At great risk, he organized cells of Hebrew clubs throughout Russia, under the nose of the Russian KGB in the late 70¹s and early 80¹s. He was arrested and jailed in 1984, serving three years as a prisoner of conscience before being released and making aliyah in 1987. I had the privilege to meet Yuli in Russia before his imprisonment. He is one of my personal spiritual heroes. I¹ve met him several other times on my trips to Israel.
Yuli¹s message to the new olim boiled down to this: ³Don¹t let anyone tell you that absorption will be easy. It won¹t be. But I am here to tell you that you are home; you are among family. We will take care of you².
The Lesson
These are two powerful examples of what it means to see the extended Jewish people as part of one family. Being part of a family has many rewards; but it also carries obligations. The reward is receiving the embrace of a set of people who will always be there for you. But the obligation is reciprocal. You must be there for other members of your family when they are in need.
We cannot rejoice in the privilige of being part of the Jewish people and its legacy to the world unless we act in support of members of the Jewish people whom we can help. When we acquire that understanding, that consciousness, the implications are clear. The Jewish tradition is filled with the lesson:
Pirke Avot, The Ethics of our Ancestors says: ³You shall not separate yourself from your community². Talmud Sanhedrin teaches:³all of Israel is responsible, one for the other². In the tractateTaanit we receive one of the best lessons about the reciprocal obligations of being a member of a community of history and fate: ³At a time when Israel is in distress, one cannot go about eating and drinking in his or her own home, acting as if nothing is wrong².
I want to suggest that there is noone in this room this morning who could not legitimately add one extra al chet line in this year¹s Yom Kippur liturgy that would read: ³for the sin we have committed for going about our daily business, while Israel and the Jewish people is in crisis:²
Our tradition teaches that acknowledgement of a misdeed or a sin is only half the battle. We must then set about rectifying the wrong with positive actions. Let me here then suggest three things that we can, no, that we must consider doing, to act in a way commensurate with our obligations of being part of an historic and global Jewish community.
1. Be advocates for Israel by monitoring the media, responding where you think imbalance or inaccuracies exist, and by making contact with members of Congress with your views on middle east issues. Your involvement as informed American citizens on this front is crucial to help the state of Israel. Check out honesreporting.com
2. Seek to buy Israeli products. It is a tangible way to help the Israeli economy and there are websites that can help you identify a wide array of Israeli goods which local retailers could be encouraged to stock. Check out shopinIsrael.com
3. Seek to visit Israel in the next year. You may be interested in joining one of two specific missions to Israel being planned by our local Jewish federation. Nov. federation mission (11/3-7)and special Adat Shalom mission with me (Jan. 30-February 5).
Conclusion
A closing story: It took place on my cab ride from my hotel to the airport to return home from Israel. I got in the cab in Jerusalem at about 4:30am to make my 8am flight. My driver was in his 20¹s, clean shaven and appearing Jewish, but with a dark complexion, I couldn¹t be totally sure. In Israel, especially today, one is always making judgements about peoples¹s tribal connections: religious or secular? Ashkenazi or Sephardic? Jew or Arab? native born or emigre? hawk or dove? We are a fractious, divided people. I sized up my driver as a secular, native born Israeli, but I wasn¹t totally sure. And then I put it out of my mind, lost in thought over my intense week in the land.
As we approached the airport, the darkness of night yielded to the first signs of daylight. Suddenly my driver reached for the radio, turned it on and I recognized the sounds of one of Israel¹s state sponsored stations. According to Jewish law, upon the first signs of dawn, alah hashachar in Hebrew, a Jew is required to recite the shma . And here on the radio, was a voice reciting the shma . My cabdriver was reciting the prayer with the radio, and with the rest of the people Israel-- Shma Yisrael, Adonay Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.
As I looked at my bareheaded cabbie recite the shma in tandem with Israel¹s state sponsored radio station at the halachically indicated time, all of the conflict and divisions and tensions of the previous week dissolved. I was overtaken by the primary meaning of the Shma-- Oneness, unity, cosmic harmony, peace. I was in the Jewish homeland, hearing a prayer that has been the anthem of our people for over 3000 years. I was experiencing the very oneness that is the message of the Shma.
Isn¹t it ironic how we learn some of the most profound lessons by sheer coincidence. Or perhaps, it was the hand of God that put me in that cab, a hand that we see only when we are fully present to the holy moments that happen to us every day.
It struck me that the religious credo of Judaism, the shma, conveyed the same message of the Jewish peoplehood mantra of my youth--We are One, We are One, We are One. Jewish religion, Jewish people-they are of one piece.
So what¹s a rabbi to do when his secular cabdriver becomes his rebbe? I joined my cabbie and, the rest of my family, past, present and future, and said: ³Shma Yisrael, adonay eloheinu, adonay echad²--Listen up Israel, YHWE is our God; we are one with that God and we are one with each other².
We are, indeed, one. It is time that we live that truth.
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Ancient Wisdom for the Jewish Future
Appeared in Washington Jewish Week, June 6, 2002
The organized Jewish community is stuck in a time warp. Notwithstanding calamatous numbers reflecting declining Jewish affiliation rates, flat federation campaigns, and studies that show the low level of interest in communal expressions of Jewish identity, the Jewish community continues along its merry way.
For too long the mainstream Jewish community has been making assumptions about Jews that are no longer accurate. The baby-boomer generation, born after WWII and now coming into its own professionally and as leaders in society, has a vastly different psyche than the generation of Jews who built the Jewish organizational structure that is currently in place.
-They do not respond viscerally to appeals based on the Holocaust or the State of Israel;
- they do not defer automatically to religious or communal authority figures;
- they do not derive their sense of place in American society primarily based on their Jewish connections.
This does not make this generation of Jews, bad Jews. They are simply a new breed of Jew and to channel their loyalties in the direction of the Jewish people will require understanding them better.
The new breed of American Jew is aware of the historical persecution of Jews but does not have a persecution complex. They are sensitive to anti-semitism because of the lessons of the Holocaust but they do not mistrust gentiles in the way that did Jews who were born in Europe and who lived through WWII. For similar reasons, new breed American Jews are not as willing to excuse Israel her every excess because of "what Jews went through" or justify it because of security threats. The moral judgments that younger Jews make tend to be more universal and are as likely to move them to sympathize with the cause of the Palestinians as with Israel.
It is time to to recognize that the ethnic/survivalist agenda, which drove the Jewish communal agenda for the fifty years following the end of WWII, has run its course. That agenda revolved around use of the Holocaust as a symbol of Jewish victimization and powerlessness, support for the state of Israel, and a commitment to protect and defend the rights and safety of Jews at home and abroad. It needs to be said that that agenda has been tremendously successful. It has brought the Jewish community to its present place of power and status in the America. It was responsible for building up a most impressive communal infrastructure that sees to a wide range of needs for American Jews. It has created an international polity second to no other ethnic group in the world. Nonetheless, it is an agenda that increasingly falls on deaf ears.
What then will replace the agenda that has served the American Jewish community so well for half a century? Ironically, we need to look no further than a classic text from the mishna which tells us that the world stands on three pillars-- Torah , Avodah and Gemilut Chasadim ( Avot 1:2). Those three pillars, identified by rabbinic sages who lived in a time and place very distant from our own, nevertheless, represent three areas of activity that have tremendous appeal to a younger generation of American Jews.
Torah represents Jewish learning. Jews under the age of 50 were mostly poorly served by their afternoon Jewish education. Many concluded that Judaism was childish and unsophisticated and many walked away from serious engagement with the tradition early in their lives. But thankfully, a signficant percentage were prepared to give Judaism a second chance. There is now great energy around the country in serious adult Jewish education evidence programs like the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School, the Wexner Heritage Program and programs modeled on both of these above mentioned groundbreaking initiatives.
While Avodah is often translated as ³prayer², it literally means ³service², in this case, ³service to a higher calling². One of the reasons that the current Jewish organizational agenda does not draw many younger Jews is because its premise is the Jew as persecuted outsider. Younger Jews today are the consumate insiders, enjoying a level of success and power unimagined a generation ago. This is a generation that is ready to ³give back². The question is whether we will provide enough Jewish contexts for such service so that we will capture the energy, time and commitment of younger American Jews.
Gemilut Chasadim are acts of social responsibility, sometimes of a personal, one to one nature, sometimes having impact on the larger society. Recent studies bear out the ongoing inclination of Jews to be involved in all matters of social justice work. While many Jews engage in such work in secular settings, most understand that it represents the core of what our Biblical prophets taught and set forth as a Jewish mandate. The fact that in the last decade, more than a dozen new Jewish organizations have emerged dedicated to some version of tikkun olam , repair of the world, gives some indication of the hunger for such Jewishly inspired social justice work.
Change is hard. It threatens existing leadership. But the community has grown beyond a defensive and reactive communal agenda. Judaism has an important message for younger American Jews if we only knew how to talk their language. If we are interested in a vital Jewish future, you can¹t get much more authentic than putting forth an agenda devoted to Jewish learning, service and social responsibility. It is time to marshal all of the resources of the organized Jewish community to make these three pillars the centerpiece of our communal agenda.
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Synagogues that Work
This article appeared in Jewish Education News, Winter, 2002
It is just over a year since the publication of my book, Finding a Spiritual Home: How a New Generation of American Jews can Transform the American Synagogue, (Jossey-Bass, 2000). The book was intended to be a challenge to the professional and lay leadership of American synagogues, suggesting ways that synagogues can become more responsive to a younger generation of American Jews. Given the attention the book received, I expected considerable debate to ensue, if not about the analysis, then at least about my prescriptions for the synagogue of the 21st century. After all, American synagogues are the backbone of the American Jewish community. They are the primary "retail outlet" where Jews experience Judaism. Add together all of the money that goes into building synagogues, staffing them, maintaining their programming, training the clergy, educators and administrators that run them and supporting the laypeople who help to maintain them, and you are looking at a multi-billion dollar industry.
My single greatest surprise was that the discussion about the new paradigm that I proposed for the American synagogue was rarely about whether; it was primarily about how. There is almost wholesale recognition among the leadership of American synagogues that there is something wrong with their institutions. Thousands of Jews move through their affiliation with synagogues, their personal identities and life patterns essentially unaffected in any discernable way. Thousands of others don't even bother to affiliate. How, I was asked time and again, do synagogues that have been functioning in a certain way for decades, begin to change the way they function?
Here I will summarize the essence of both my analysis of the current state of the American synagogue and my prescription for how we can begin to create a new paradigm. Many who knew of my work in the field of Jewish education were surprised that more attention was not paid in the book to that dimension of synagogue life. I believe deeply that Jewish education for youth cannot succeed in an institution where the adults are not, themselves, deeply engaged in Torah (Jewish learning), avodah (spiritual exploration and expression) and gemilut chasadim (acts of justice and lovingkindness). That is the primary focus of my book. With that said, I will conclude by offering three observations about Jewish education that might be considered in healthy and vibrant synagogue-communities.
* * *
The Jewish community has ignored the spiritual dimensions of Judaism for far too long and we are paying a heavy price for it in terms of the number of younger Jews who have abandoned the Jewish community for a host of spiritual alternatives.
There is ample cause for concern that the Jewish community is not reading the signals of this changing agenda quickly enough. Wade Clark Roof in his A Generation of Seekers (1993) noted that the boomer generation of Americans, as they enter middle age, have little loyalty to their birth religion. Their search for "post-materialistic" values about meaning and the purpose of life generally leaves them disillusioned with the traditional churches and synagogues of their youth which are long on doctrine, liturgy and heirarchy and short on personal engagement. The greatest beneficiaries of the spiritual wanderlust of the boomer generation are a wide array of spiritual retreat centers, ashrams of eastern religious traditions and new age-inspired self-help groups. Among the most avid consumers of these new spiritual alternatives are Jews.
Given this fact, the emerging interest in revitalizing the American synagogue comes not a moment too soon. By any measure, there is a religious boom going on in America. The question is whether synagogues can read the generational preferences well enough to capitalize on this boom. Among these preferences are inclusivity, empowerment and engagement. Inclusivity implies a need for the synagogue to recognize that the two parent family with children is only one of many family configurations in the community today and that other family configurations are deserving of equal programmatic attention. Empowerment suggests an approach to Judaism which radically democratizes synagogue life, giving laypeople the tools to function as might rabbis and cantors. Engagement requires a serious approach to the study of the tradition and provides an opportunity for lay Jews to enter into the centuries-old exercise of text wrestling to discover what Torah has to say about the way we live our lives.
The synagogue-centers of the American Jewish community do not come by these traits naturally or easily. The synagogue-center was created for the first generation of American Jews that entered suburbia. As such, these synagogues served as status markers for a generation that was celebrating its newfound prosperity and was eager to fit into the the suburban landscape of middle class America. Synagogue-centers were characterized by large edifices, clergy in robes, services with choirs and rehearsed staging and a program that supported the ethnic agenda of the community. Though most synagogue-centers have made modifications from these institutional styles, inclusivity, empowerment and engagement are not their forte. The havurah movement and Jewish renewal have been important outlets for just such expressions of Jewish life and practice.
The challenge for the century that we are now entering is to mainstream much of this style. It calls for a change in the paradigm from synagogue-center to synagogue community. In my study of American synagogues I identified four characteristics of the synagogue-community that are beginning to transform the synagogue as we know it--articulation of mission, transforming organizational culture, spiritual leadership and framing of serious Judaism.
Articulation of Mission- Fewer and fewer Jews know why it is worth the time and expense to pursue Jewish affiliation. Precisely because the rationale for ethnic loyalty has broken down, we need synagogues to frame answers to the question "Why be Jewish?" for a generation that cannot, itself, answer the question. As synagogues begin to ask such big questions, it will point to new ways to reach a generation that has an entirely new set of assumptions than did their parents about being Jewish in America.
Organizational Culture- Synagogues need to embrace a new ethic of egalitarianism. The greatest spiritual power of a synagogue-community lies latent in the soul of every person who walks through the door. Attend the hundreds of lay-led minyanim that now take place in synagogues across the country concurrent with the main service. Compare the passion and energy at the two services and you will be amazed. When lay Jews are given a chance to lead services, deliver talks, read torah, introduce new music, etc. what is (sometimes) sacrificed in professional quality, is more than made up for in the sense of ownership that gets created. Synagogues need to find more ways to tap into that energy.
Spiritual Leadership- Most rabbis are relegated to serving as religious functionaries--leading services, overseeing b'nai/b'not mitzvah, weddings, funerals and the like. It is an important and time consuming job. But a generation starving for spiritual direction, will not be drawn to religious functionaries. They need to hear someone articulate a vision for how to invest life with meaning and purpose. Rabbis increasingly need to invite Jews to tell their stories, their spiritual journeys, and then to put those experiences into the context of Jewish wisdom and tradition. The deepest truth people know is their inner story, not Torah. Rabbis can and should help relate such personally framed truths to the truth passed down by our heritage through our sacred texts. It is the way that seekers come to realize that Judaism offers a portal to greater meaning. It is a portal that thousands are ready to walk through if properly guided.
Framing of Serious Judaism- If we want to create serious Jews, we must offer serious Judaism. Too many Jews remember the synagogues of their childhood as long on ostentation and form and short on spirituality and substance. It is enough to keep them away from synagogues as adults. Let synagogues be places that offer opportunities for study of classical texts, challenging torah discussions, and an incentive to achieve Hebraic literacy. Let worship services allow for alternate expressions of spirituality through meditation, music and movement so that we invest our ancient liturgy with newfound kavvanah (intention). Let the halls of the sanctuary reverberate with a multitude of voices--of joy, and of anguish, of faith and of doubt.
* * *
If these are the first steps to transforming the culture of American synagogues so that they might become more vital and engaging for the adults who make up the community, how might these same institutions do a better job with their youth? Let me offer three thoughts.
- I no longer believe that the afternoon Hebrew school system is tenable, if it ever was. Students of today are no more interested in giving up their after school hours than were their parents who today shlep them in carpools, fighting afternoon rush hours to get them to class. Though the caliber of educational materials and curricula are improving, the problem of finding competent teachers is getting worse, not better. It is the rare congregational school that can even dream of addressing the wide range of special learning needs that exist in their student populations. Most principals are struggling to start the school year with a live body in front of every classroom.
It is time to accelerate the transition to a retreat-based, experiential model of Jewish learning. Scrap the weekly lessons and in its place substitute a series of retreats, shabbatonim, half-day family education programs and trips. Educators know of the greater impact and effectiveness that these settings allow. Let's take the risk and go for broke. We can't do much worse. Let's create a logical sequence of such Jewish learning adventures so that they progress in a meaningful fashion and are age appropriate. Let's directly involve parents in some of the experiences but allow enough time for the age cohort to bond in informal settings. It will plant the seeds for ongoing involvement in youth movements and camps as kids move into their teen years. Use the internet to equip parents to support these activities with appropriate preparation and follow up. Even cognitive material can be imparted with greater effectiveness in informal educational settings in a fraction of the time then it would take in an after-school class.
- To the extent that the Bar/Bat Mitzvah will continue to be the holy grail of Jewish education, let's use it to maximize what impact it has on the student and their family. Let the focal point of the experience be a tzedakah/tikkun olam project. Let it be shaped by the student in consultation with teachers, rabbis and parents. Let it be a focal point of the service in addition to the chanting of tefilot, Torah and/or haftrarah. Imagine the value to all assembled as the Bar/Bat Mitzvah talks about how they helped to organize a book drive for an inner city library, raised money to build a playground for a youth center in Israel, collected household items for a family recently escaped from Kosovo, now living in a nearby community (all real examples from the congregation I was privileged to lead). Imagine the impact as the Bar/Bat Mitzvah talks about the Jewish values that informed their project and asks their guests to honor them by contributing to the cause that they just presented.
This is, by no means, a panacea to Jewish education. But it can provide a critical focal point to a young person's entry into responsible Jewish adulthood. It marks the "coming out" of the child into a new identity as a "mitzvah-man/woman". Not bad for an adolescent searching for self-esteem and a feeling that they can make a difference in the world. In addition, on the eve of the rebellious teen years, it provides a young person with a sense that their religious heritage is more than pomp and ceremony. It drives home the lesson that the centerpiece of their entry into Jewish maturity was an act of reaching out to repair a piece of a broken world (tikkun olam). Hopefully the experience will pave the way to rich engagement with a whole range of social action and community service work during the teen years under the aegis of youth movements and camps.
- To paraphrase a title of a book by our former first lady, Hillary Clinton, "it takes an entire community to raise a child". So often synagogues seem to have two separate realms that rarely come together--the adult and youth realm. When the two realms meet, on the day of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah, both constituencies are resentful. The student is placed in a setting that is more or less foreign to him/her; the regular worshippers wonder why there is so much intrusion into the worship service that they cherish.
One of the great untapped treasures of the Jewish community is the life experiences of the thousands of Jews who are in our midst. The raising up of a generation of young people who, we hope, will be affirmative and identifying Jews as adults, is the process of passing a heritage down through the generations. Obviously, family legacies and parenting play a big role in this process. Where there is little to no Jewish legacy, it is much harder to raise a child into an affirming Jew. But more and more of our families are in this very catagory. What should they do?
I want to suggest that synagogues should pair every child up with an adult in the community who is a positive Jewish role model. The purpose of this pairing is to create a mentoring/role model relationship for the student. It is relatively easy to suggest dozens of appropriate activities for the pair to engage in. When we did this in my congregation, the experiences varied widely in terms of frequency of contact. It was originally conceived of as a tutoring relationship in cases where the parents had no ability to help their children with Hebrew language assignments. But in many cases, the relationships blossomed into regular outings and the sharing of a wide array of experiences. In most cases the pairings were with adults whose children were already grown. Not only do those adults have more time available but they also begin to play the role of pseudo-grandparents.
The effect of the program is transformative for the entire congregation. First, it connects the adults with the "netherworld" of youth in the community in a way that rarely, if ever, happens. Second it sends the message that the entire community needs to take responsibility for raising the next generation of Jews. It also gives important recognition and honor to the wisdom and experience of older adults at a time in their lives when they are beginning to feel "put out to pasture". I recall several b'nai/b'not mitzvah when the adult mentor made a presentation to the student during the service. There is hardly a better example of "dor, dor vedorshav" (passing down the heritage through the generations).
* * *
These are some of the characteristics of synagogue communities that will inspire a new generation of Jews to join their ranks. It requires some "thinking outside the box" and institutional leadership that will not shrink from taking some risks. But for those synagogues that are bold enough, they will soon find themselves to be the kind of communities that will lead the way to a renaissance of Jewish life.
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Exploring Religion, Social Justice and the Common Good
Appeared in The Reconstructionist, Vol. 65, No. 1, Fall, 2000
For the past twenty-five years I have been professionally engaged in exploring the nexus between Judaism and justice as a rabbi, an educator and an executive of two different communal organizations. For the last thirteen years the programs and curricula of The Washington Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, which I founded, have reached well over 10,000 Jewish high school and college students. But nothing that I have done has been as rewarding in terms of both outcomes and learnings as the the E Pluribus Unum Project, an interfaith program exploring religion, social justice and the common good that we launched in 1997.
The EPU Project emerged from three distinct but interrelated observations. As a rabbi, it became clear to me how easily religion loses its way. By tending to give more attention to the customs, ceremonies and forms that give institutional religion continuity than to the ethical raison d¹etre of the respective faith tradition, many people of conscience turn away from organized religion. I found that many of the people doing the most important God work in the world won¹t ever set foot in a church, mosque or a synagogue. We are looking for God in all the wrong places.
In my political and social change work I became discouraged at how many people engaged in such work were dismissive of religion and spirituality. Given how challengeing and difficult such work can be, I observed that those who stay with it were sustained by a deep faith that comes from another dimension of reality, from a transcendant source. To be able to access that requires an openness of the spirit to alternate ways of seeing a hard world.
Third and finally, as an educator of young people I witnessed how successfully Jewish texts and values could be used to inspire greater commitment to issues of social justice and political activism. I was eager to explore whether the same approach could be used successfully by other faith traditions. Given how much energy for community service and social change emanates from the religious communities of America, it seemed only natural to explore ways that a diverse group of young people could be motivated to pursue the common good in a setting where the primary learning rubric was the religious social teachings of the respective faiths.
Objectives
When the EPU Project was launched in 1997 with funding from the Lilly Endowment and subsequent funding from the Righteous Person¹s Foundation (Steven Spielberg) and the Ford Foundation, the expressed objectives were as follows:
1) to raise students¹ awareness of their respective religious traditions as a source of ethics and values that have direct bearing on a variety of major issues confronting our society today;
2) to allow students to explore both the similarities and differences between their respective faith traditions and discover those areas of common interest which might form the basis for a stronger civic fabric in America;
3) to give students an understanding that a democracy rewards those who are most informed and active on issues and to specifically teach the students how they can become more effective advocates for responsible social and political change informed by the teachings of religion.
All four of the discreet strands of the EPU program--the academic track, spiritual arts and worship, volunteer service and advocacy and the community life experience--were designed to maximize the chance that participants came to see the connection between their respective faith traditions and the need for any practice of that faith tradition to be in the service of some greater social good.
In the original design of the three-week EPU program for entering college freshmen, each morning the sixty rising freshman were divided by faith group into three faith-alike classes with a faculty member expert in that tradition. Three topical areas served as the themes for each of the respective weeks--human rights, poverty and the environment. Policy experts would be invited to address the entire community in a plenary session, grounding the students in the specifics of the given issue. Each faculty member had a good deal of autonomy to determine how best to introduce the students to the particular teachings of that faith tradition as it pertained to the particular policy theme of the week. Every few days, students gathered together to participate in educational exercises which challenged them to learn, compare and contrast the teachings of their own faith tradition with those of the other two traditions.
One of the most surprising findings over the course of the three years was how little most students knew about the social application of their respective faith traditions. This, despite the fact that the recruitment process brought to the program young people who were far more connected to their religion than the average young adult. It suggested to the project organizers that none of the three faith communities was particularly effective at conveying the social message of their respective traditions.
In a questionairre administered prior to the start of the program, fewer than two-thirds of participants could name even three teachings from their own faith tradition that spoke to any social issue. Over 95% could answer that question by the end of the program. It was less surprising that less than a third of participants could site three religious social teachings of faiths other than their own on the intake interviews. That number rose to over 80% by the end of the program. There was considerable evidence that the EPU educational environment helped students ³find their voice² in relating religious teachings to pressing social issues of the day.
Interfaith Exposure and Religious Identity
A somewhat counter-intuitive finding of our three year EPU experiment had to do with the relationship between commitment to faith and the ability of participants to fully engage with others who did not share their religious heritage.
One of the commitments of the program design from EPU¹s inception was that we would not sacrifice the passionate embrace of one¹s own faith tradition in the process of creating an environment that encouraged pluralistic expressions of faith, ethnicity and ideology. We were committed to avoid this common pitfall of so many well-intentioned interfaith programs. The organizers were not unaware of the peculiar brand of intolerance born out of religious passion and fervor. Yet we believed that before participants engaged in any interfaith approach to pursue the common good, they would need to be grounded in the social teachings of their own respective faith traditions.
Not only did our program design abide by this principle, but in a 6-month follow up study of alumni, we found that those most grounded in their own tradition were able to create the strongest relationships with people of other faith traditions in the pursuit of some social justice cause. Essentially, they were more inclined to look to religious cohorts for allies because their experience of faith through EPU bore witness to the relationship between religion and social justice.
It is not that the EPU experience did not challenge every participants¹ understanding of their own and of other religious traditions. It was programmed to do so. In some cases, the expression of a viewpoint from one faith tradition, helped a fellow EPU participant understand or articulate a belief or position from his/her own tradition for the first time. This phenomonon tended to strengthen commitment to one¹s own faith. At other times, however, the array of ideas about faith and religion from so many different perspectives challenged deeply held views and beliefs. One participant wrote: ³I am flooded with new ideas and not sure where I stand with my own (faith) anymore².
While participants may have, at times, found themselves, confused, the faculty was confident that it was the kind of confusion that would help them grow, both in faith and in maturity. The challenge articulated to the community was to be able to stand in one¹s own truth while simultaneously being able to acknowledge another¹s truth. Clearly, it was the focus on the theme of social justice that got participants to look past the particular elements of their respective faith traditions and encourage them to engage in some ³boundary crossing² to find common ethical elements among all traditions.
Long Term Impact
With the benefit of a grant from the Ford Foundation, we had the ability to monitor the effect of the EPU program on our alumni over a two year period. Rising college sophomores reported that in the year following their initial EPU experience they found that a major shift in their religious self perception had taken place. They found that they now framed their statements of belief and commitment from a much deeper place within themselves, coming to feel that they more fully ³owned² the convictions of faith. They had moved decisively beyond the stage during which such statements parroted that which they got from their parents and teachers. This self-conscious internalizing of deeply felt life commitments they largely attributed to EPU. The group, as a whole, and the individuals that were part of it, were more solidly reflective of James Fowler¹s post-conventional, ³individuative/reflective² faith stage characterized by the ability to live with religious doubts (³Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning², 1981). EPU¹s dance faculty member invoked a West African proverb to describe the kind of spiritual learning that was engendered at EPU--²the opposite of truth is not falsehood, but another profound truth².
³Justice, Justice...²
These alumni had also more fully embraced the ³servant leader² ethic that the EPU model promoted. One student said, ³we all discovered that the idea of working for the community and (for) the common good and going out and making a difference is something that is common in all our religions.... Before last summer I¹d have been against working collaboratively (with people of other faiths). I would have only worked to support (my religion¹s) organizations.² A second student said, ³Something I got out of EPU last year is looking at the religious texts from our various backgrounds and what our faith in general has to say about the quest for social justice. When you realize that they are so similar ...you realize how much bigger a group of people you have to workwith for the common good from different faith backgrounds. It is a very empowering thing.²
In several EPU reunions held during the winter of 2000 with alumni from all three years of EPU, this theme recurred with significant regularity. Even as these alumni bemoaned the fact that they could not devote as much time to community service and social justice causes as they would have liked, (owing to their commitment to their undergraduate regimen) virtually all reported on the impact of the EPU experience on their thinking. Some had changed their majors, some had developed new ideas about career goals. All had been challenged to reassess the way that they thought about religion, social justice and the common good.
Next Steps
As we consider the impact of the EPU Project on the thinking and behavior of 160 young people, all of whom are now moving through their college careers with varying relationships with churches, synagogues and the communities in which they find themselves, we are given pause to consider the ways in which EPU¹s unique configuration of themes and disciplines might benefit other fields.
The next phase of the EPU Project was launched during the summer of 2000. Some 50 nationally prominent professionals from the fields of religion, education, social change and the arts were brought together with a handful of EPU alumni and faculty. The purposes was two-fold. First, we wanted to describe and demonstrate the unique EPU programmatic model to individuals who were positioned to incorporate elements of EPU into their respective institutions. Second, we created a program incubator to launch several new projects which would extend the EPU vision into new settings. Among the most exciting of these is an interfaith service house in which recent college graduates would live, engage in study and spiritual practice and work in social justice related organizations for a year. Several other, similarly ambitious projects are in earlier stages of development.
However rewarding and rich the EPU experience has been for those who have lived it, it is clear that we are only scratching the surface of the impact that religion can have on the pursuit of the common good. Indeed, every question that gets answered, generates two new questions. The questions that we intend to pose at our future professional consultations include: To the extent that higher education is concerned about ³character education², can colleges and universities afford not to integrate the social teachings of the world¹s historic religions? To the extent that social change organizations seek to provide impetus to and support for people who are committed to the work of peace and justice, how might they marshal the support of religious social teachings?
Last, but perhaps most importantly, given the galvanizing impact of exploring the social teachings of one¹s own and other faith traditions, how might churches, synagogues, seminaries and parochial schools reassess the way that they teach religion. Might it be that the most compelling aspects of each of our faith traditions lie precisely at the intersection between faith and the common good? Is not the purpose of religion helping people tread the very narrow ridge between attention to one¹s own needs and self-interest and devoting energies to the needs of those less fortunate than ourselves? Must not religion serve both as a balm for the afflicted soul as well as a spur to the complacent conscience?
These are the kind of questions that EPU poses. It is in our response to these and other questions that we might find some important answers for creating a more just and peaceful world.
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Synagogues for a New Era
Appeared in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October, 2000
The changing agenda of the Jewish community is increasingly well-documented. For the better part of the post-war period, the Jewish community focused its communal energies and resources on an ethnic/survivalist agenda. But the ethnic/survivalist agenda, which stirred the passions of an entire era of American Jews, no longer excites younger American Jews. Raised in relative affluence with few international Jewish needs demanding their attention, younger Jews have turned inwards. Everywhere the evidence abounds that the ethnic/survivalist agenda is being replaced by a personal/spiritual agenda.
Many will weigh in about whether this is good or bad. The truth is, it is a mixed blessing. The Jewish community has ignored the spiritual dimensions of Judaism for far too long and we are paying a heavy price for it in terms of the number of younger Jews who have abandoned the Jewish community for a host of spiritual alternatives. At the same time, no responsible representation of Judaism can exclude a healthy dose of communal solidarity and public responsibility--perspectives that are woefully absent from the promoters of the "new Jewish spirituality".
With that said, there is ample cause for concern that the Jewish community is not reading the signals of this changing agenda quickly enough. Wade Clark Roof in his A Generation of Seekers (1993) noted that the boomer generation of Americans, as they enter middle age, have little loyalty to their birth religion. Their search for "post-materialistic" values about meaning and the purpose of life generally leaves them disillusioned with the traditional churches and synagogues of their youth which are long on doctrine, liturgy and heirarchy and short on personal engagement. The greatest beneficiaries of the spiritual wanderlust of the boomer generation are a wide array of spiritual retreat centers, ashrams of eastern religious traditions and new age-inspired self-help groups. Among the most avid consumers of these new spiritual alternatives are Jews.
The emerging interest in revitalizing the American synagogue comes not a moment too soon. By any measure, there is a religious boom going on in America. The question is whether synagogues can read the generational preferences well enough to capitalize on this boom. Among these preferences are inclusivity, empowerment and engagement. Inclusivity implies a need for the synagogue to recognize that the two parent family with children is only one of many family configurations in the community today and that other family configurations are deserving of equal programmatic attention. Empowerment suggests an approach to Judaism which radically democratizes synagogue life, giving laypeople the tools to function as might rabbis and cantors. Engagement requires a serious approach to the study of the tradition and provides an opportunity for lay Jews to enter into the centuries-old exercise of text wrestling to discover what Torah has to say about the way we live our lives.
The synagogue-centers of the American Jewish community do not come by these traits naturally or easily. The synagogue-center was created for the first generation of American Jews that entered suburbia. Synagogue-centers were characterized by large edifices, clergy in robes, services with choirs and rehearsed staging and a program that supported the ethnic agenda of the community. Though most synagogue-centers have made modifications from these institutional styles, inclusivity, empowerment and engagement are not their forte. The havurah movement and Jewish renewal have been important outlets for just such expressions of Jewish life and practice.
The challenge for the century that we are now entering is to mainstream much of this style. It calls for a change in the paradigm from synagogue-center to synagogue community. In my study of American synagogues (Finding a Spiritual Home: How a New Generation of American Jews can Transform the American Synagogue, Jossey-Bass, 2000) I identified four characteristics of the synagogue-community that are beginning to transform the synagogue as we know it:
Articulation of Mission- Fewer and fewer Jews know why it is worth the time and expense to pursue Jewish affiliation. Synagogues need to engage their members in a process of creating a covenant--one that elevates the purpose of the institution and does not shrink from making demands on members.
Organizational Culture- When lay Jews are given a chance to lead services, deliver talks, read torah, introduce new music, etc. what is (sometimes) sacrificed in professional quality, is more than made up for in the sense of ownership that gets created. Synagogues need to find more ways to tap into that energy.
Spiritual Leadership-The deepest truth people know is their inner story, not Torah. Rabbis increasingly need to invite Jews to tell their stories, their spiritual journeys, and then to put those experiences into the context of Jewish wisdom and tradition. It is the way that seekers come to realize that Judaism offers a portal to greater meaning. It is a portal that thousands are ready to walk through, if properly guided.
Framing of Serious Judaism- Synagogues must be, primarily, places that Jews attend to study classical texts, engage in social justice activity, and extend themselves in acts of mercy and compassion. Let worship services allow for alternate expressions of spirituality through meditation, music and movement so that we invest our ancient liturgy with newfound kavvanah (intention). Let the halls of the sanctuary reverberate with a multitude of voices--of joy, and of anguish, of faith and of doubt.
These are the characteristics of synagogue communities that will inspire a new generation of Jews to join their ranks. They will also be the kind of communities that will lead the way to a renaissance of Jewish life.
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E Pluribus Unum Project
Inagural Keynote Address 1997
The Buddhist tradition has a teaching about "mindfulness" which has always impressed me. It is, in my view, the essence of a spiritual life that is at the root of all religions. I want to ask you to be intentionally mindful for just a moment about how you have come to be here today. Consider how many people and experiences have given you direction in life. Consider the challenges and obstacles that you have had to overcome. Consider your good fortune at having heard about this conference and at having been selected. I want you to know that you are not here because you are smart, though many of you are.
I want you to know that you are here not because you are talented, though many of you are. You are here because we thought that you had the potential to be wise. And only wise people have the ability to know that it takes sacrifice of self-interest to advance the common good. That is what it will take to build a better society.
I need to talk to you about three things in order to define key terms that we will be using during this conference. It will help set forth what we have planned for you during this inaugural E Pluribus Unum Conference. Those three things are religion, social justice and the common good, and finally, the meaning of E Pluribus Unum.
RELIGION
In the history of human civilization, religion is the most common way that people have divided themselves. Through particular beliefs, customs, values and rituals, religion has provided humanity with a symbolic way to give life meaning. Unfortunately, for much of human history, the stronger one's allegiance to one's religion, the more likely one was to reject and ridicule other religions.
There is a very big difference between righteousness and self-righteousness. Righteousness is when we act towards others in a spirit of justice and compassion. Self-righteousness is when we come to be convinced that the religion, lifestyle or philosophy of living that we have come to embrace is superior to alternate paths.When we cross the line between righteousness and self-righteousness, we find ourselves in the territory that leads to prejudice, hatred and death.
In a similar way, there is good religion and bad religion. Bad religion is triumphant. It confuses ends and means. It places doctrines over people.It accepts injustice as a divinely-ordained condition, beyond the ability of humanity to affect. It breeds self-righteousness.Good religion recognizes that there are many equally valid paths to God. It puts a premium on acts of kindness and compassion for others. It is based on the belief that every person is made in the image of God.
Good religion promotes the belief that a human being's duty here on earth is to repair a broken world. In the Jewish tradition, we call this concept tikkun olam.
We need to recognize that every religion represented in this room today has elements of good religion and bad. Ironically, when our loyalty to our own religion blinds us to the truth and wisdom of another's tradition, we go down the road that has given religion a bad name. This is why it is so easy to hate religion. This is why so many dismiss it. This is why so many have overlooked the possibilities that religion offers to create an alternative reality to the world we currently find ourselves in.
My hope is that this conference will help you learn the difference between good religion and bad and thereby, make religion a more effective tool for the betterment of our world.
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD
The Bible gives us a paradigm of how religion can and has functioned in the world. We start out with an idyllic past in the first books of Genesis. God, representing the perfect unity of creation, fashions a perfect place on earth called Eden. Adam is the first human being conscious of a transcendent power beyond self. From Adam, all humanity descends, and thus, the brotherhood of humanity.
Soon, humanity is "out of Eden" and reality sets in. We see a world of murder, fratricidal jealousy, slavery and liberation, territorial conquest and displaced populations, alienation, promises made and promises broken, disobedience, and punishment. This is not just the Biblical story; it is our story. It is the world that we live in. It is the wilderness.
Starting with the idyllic past and then taking us through the wilderness of reality, the Bible leads us to understand its messianic vision of the future. Part of the spiritual vision of the Bible is its vision of a messianic future. We find it in many places in Scripture but nowhere is it better articulated than in the book of Micah ch. 4 (also paralleled in Isaiah ch.2) "It shall come to pass in the end of days that the mountain of God's house shall be established on the top of the mountains. And all nations shall come to it and we will walk in God's path. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
Life is a journey through a wilderness filled with much pain and suffering, injustice and inequality. Religion has the power to move us toward the messianic future.
Consider the great moral giants just of this century: Mahatma Ghandi developed his philosophy of non-violence out of his Hindu roots. He used it to overturn British colonial control of India and later tried to quell the violence in his native land between Moslems and Hindus.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. admired the teachings of Ghandi greatly and applied the same principles to advance the cause of civil rights in America. His call for social justice pricked the conscience of an entire nation.
Dietrich Boenhoeffer was a Protestant minister in Germany during the Nazi regime. He deplored the silence of the church in the face of Hitler's tyranny. Arrested for plotting to assassinate Hitler, he was executed two months before the end of the war, but not before he authored Prisoner for God, his call for an ethically based Christianity.
I could go on and cite the way that Elie Wiesel used his personal experience as a Holocaust survivor and his understanding of Jewish tradition to become an international crusader for human rights. Or how the Dali Lama continues to offer a model of spiritual resistance out of his Buddhist tradition to the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Or how Archbishop Desmond Tutu challenged the policy of apartheid in South Africa from pulpits in that country and around the world.
These are examples of people whose lives bear witness to the incredible power of faith to stand up to evil and oppression and to rally people of conscience to a given cause. There are thousands of other such religious role models for social justice and you will meet some of them during these next three weeks.
What has given these individuals the strength to be "drum majors for justice" (MLK) in a world filled with poverty, oppression and selfishness? Good religion gives people just such strength. A person of faith believes that good can triumph over evil despite the injustice that they see in the world and lives his/her life in a way to make that belief true.
In order to acquire such moral courage and strength you must learn to simultaneously be committed to and rooted in the particularities of your own faith and also, reach across the boundaries of your faith to understand and to empathize with those whose beliefs are totally different from you.
Social justice is to religion what love is to family. One is the institution; the other is a quality of being that makes the institution worthwhile. Just as a family without love is dysfunctional, so is a religion that does not teach and manifest a deep commitment to social justice, dysfunctional. It is a religion that has lost its way.
E PLURIBUS UNUM: What are we doing here?
The sense of tribe is deeply embedded in the human soul. Religion is only one example (e.g. professions, geography, race, club, nationality). And tribalism is gradually overtaking our nation and our world. Millions have been slaughtered just in the past few years due to ancient tribal animosities in Africa, in the Balkans, in the former Soviet Union, in Cambodia and in other places around the globe.
Nor is America immune. Our body politic easily falls prey to the competition between American tribes (e.g. corporate interests, professional groups, ethnic groups, etc.). Each is determined to advance its own, group self-interest regardless of the consequences to other groups or to society at large. The victim is "the common good".
This is precisely where E Pluribus Unum- "Out of the many, one" comes into play. This latin phrase, which appears on your dollar bills, was coined as the motto of our nation with reference to the necessity of creating one centralized country out of the colonies of the Revolutionary era. Since that time, the phrase has come to mean more.
We are, in every sense of the word, a pluribus. Our differences in religious backgrounds just happens to be the most obvious way that this conference has grouped you. But we wear multiple identities: families, ethnic groups, states, soon colleges and universities. We root for different ballclubs, we speak the same language with different accents, jargons and sometimes, even meanings. (ex. "bad").
We are therefore a grand experiment. Our hope is that we can use the very religious traditions that, in fact, divide us from each other, to unite us. We hope to do that, not by minimizing the importance of our respective faith traditions, but rather by exploring those core values of our respective faith traditions that might bring us closer to working in partnership towards creating "the common good". The key to creating a democratic, pluralistic society that demonstrates concern for the outsider, the oppressed, the hungry and the weak is not to make us all the same. We are strengthened when we celebrate our differences and, simultaneously, recognize that we are all enriched when we recognize our common humanity.
If we can, out of our diversity, create an intentional, spiritual community for three weeks, modeling tolerance and respect in speech, religious practice, and beliefs, we will gain a glimpse of the possibilities of a truly civil society.
We have created a program with four strands: academic, community service, spiritual arts and worship and community life. Some of this program is already prepared; much of it you will co-create with each other. It has been designed to bring to the fore the special gifts that each of you have to contribute to the common good. It is your ability to realize those gifts and exercise them in society that will determine how well we can move our society closer to the messianic ideal of the Bible.
CONCLUSION
I have had the good fortune to spend a good deal of time in Jerusalem. I've always been intrigued by its name. In Hebrew Jerusalem means "city of peace (shalom)". How odd for a city that has been the focal point for religious wars for several thousand years! Even today this city is divided into religious sections and is at the center of controversy between competing national aspirations.But consider this. The Hebrew word "shalom" also means "wholeness". Perhaps the message is that only when work through our differences and learn to live together can we achieve true wholeness and true peace. Perhaps that is the significance of the end of the quote from the prophet Isaiah that I quoted earlier, part of the Bible's messianic ideal for humankind: "For out of Zion shall come forth truth, and the word of God from Jerusalem".
We here are a microcosm of the diversity of society. We will have to work hard to experience shalom/wholeness/oneness. If we can achieve a glimpse of E Pluribus Unum, however fleetingly during these 3 weeks together, each of the 80+ of us will be a candle, able to light a way in the wilderness, to a better tomorrow.
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