It’s always a pleasure for me—the JTS chancellor who is not a rabbi—to spend time with members of the Rabbinical Assembly (RA), kindred spirits to me on the path of Torah. A lot of good people doing dedicated, imaginative, and often successful work. Lively conversation partners. Spirited daveners. My pleasure at their company was enhanced at this year’s RA convention in Atlanta—from which I make this post—by the rollout of a new continuing education seminar, “Making Torah Relevant to “NextGen”: You’re the App for That!,” offered jointly by the RA and The Jewish Theological Seminary, coordinated on our behalf by Rabbi Hayim Herring, with Jane Shapiro as lead educator. The subject is one that is uppermost on the minds of many rabbis, whether they serve in congregations, schools, camps, organizations, campus Hillels, or military chaplaincy. I too think about it a lot:

How can we most effectively reach the generation of Millennials, 20- and 30-something participants in the ever-lengthening phase of life known as “emerging adulthood?” How can we provide them with compelling experiences of Jewish community and Jewish tradition? In particular, how can we do so using new media that did not exist only a few years ago?

It has to change matters that tweets and retweets, images and blogs, emerged in real time yesterday from the first meeting of our seminar at the RA convention—stimulants to a dialogue that proceeded even as I was giving my opening address. Many are wont to say that the technology is merely a tool, a vehicle for accomplishing goals that must be established independently in order for the media to be effective. I wonder, the more I come face-to-face with the possibilities and (to my mind) limitations of the new media, whether there may be something in the tools themselves, and in the fit between the technology and the particular characteristics of emerging adulthood, that should impact goals and not merely the means by which we pursue them. This question too is on the agenda this week of the convention. A new stage of adulthood has been born at the same time as a new stage in the way human beings receive information and communicate it. Teaching and living Torah will change as well.

For example, it seems that “emerging adults,” even more than the “sovereign selves” of the baby boomer generation about whom Steven Cohen and I wrote in The Jew Within, “have not yet entered [and do not want to enter] the enduring responsibilities that are normative in adulthood,” but rather “explore a variety of possible life directions in love, work and worldviews.” (Here, we cite an expert in the field, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, who himself is cited in a fine piece by Scott Aaron and Josh Feigelson called, “Experiential Education and Jewish Emerging Adults.”) Exploration wins out over arrival. “Enduring responsibilities” or commitments are difficult to undertake when one is physically moving from place to place every year or two; has not settled into a career (or long-term area of work); puts off marriage or long-term romantic partnerships; is still sorting through friendships from high school, college, and beyond to find which will be long-lasting; and—last but hardly least—has not yet met one’s kids, the most enduring responsibility (and love) of all.

The new media serve and reinforce these tendencies. They favor networks over communities, connection rather than relationship, bits of information rather than depth—all of them possible vehicles of something greater, if the self who stands at the center of this flow of images and lines-between-the-dots wishes to take that extra step. I found, teaching college and graduate school students, that the desire for relationship was matched only by fear of choosing badly, getting stuck and foreclosing chances of better relationships; the hunger for meaning was matched only by the anxiety at being snookered, i.e., sold a bill of goods that turns out to be shallow; the pleasure at being part of a group, or even a substantive community, was mitigated by apprehension that any bonds established would fast become fetters that close off other possibilities.

And we Jews speak the language of commandment, community, People, tribe, forever, Right, Truth, and God. The language is profoundly and simultaneously appealing, challenging, and disturbing to many emerging adults, as it is to their baby boomer parents and grandparents. How does one reach out across that divide or work around the barriers that remain, using new as well as traditional media? How does one apply the latest technology, as well as the old-fashioned, tried and true experience of human beings sitting in a room together, sharing a meal, studying a text, and giving of themselves face to face?

What one does not do with the new generation and the new technology, it seems clear, is talk at people, pronounce decrees, claim mastery of information and therefore of truth. This wastes the technology, which is wonderfully interactive and always open-ended, and closes off discussion that needs opening with emerging adults. Jewish teachers such as Buber and Rosenzweig recognized a century ago that our job as teachers is to model and to witness. We teachers are on life’s path—maybe older than our students, maybe not—and we have much to learn as well as to teach. None of us has arrived at the goal, even if some of us are prepared to say, with due humility, that Torah is life itself for us. We will stake our limited time on earth on the wisdom of this way and feel privileged to open it to others.

What is more, since our job is to bring Torah to the tasks of living in the world and making it better, we have to welcome every opportunity of bringing the realities and possibilities of that world to Torah. Any point we make, or that any text makes, or that any historical case study makes, can be amplified or questioned, driven home or rendered more far-reaching, by our ability—and the ability of everyone in every “classroom” or remote learning site—to summon up additional context and put it before the group instantaneously. I used to draw on TV shows, movies, and incidents in Shakespeare’s plays when teaching undergraduates. It sometimes turned out that my students had not read Macbeth, nor heard of the Crusades, nor could manage to make it to the library to screen the video that I had placed on reserve. Ancient history, this. Now a film clip comes to mind, and it is there in front of us; a fact is in question, and the evidence is on our screens; if no film is suitable for the counter-factual reality we want to imagine, we make the film, splice the images together, etc.

Teaching is different. Life is different. Torah is different. It’s exciting, exhilarating, and not a little terrifying to stand where we stand in 2012, realize how much has changed in the last decade, and strain to imagine how much more will change by 2022. I am betting, given three thousand years of Jewish creativity until now, that our imagination will be equal to the task and that our fidelity to Torah will take us in directions that are not yet conceivable.

“Turning the World Upside Down,” by Anish Kapoor, Israel Museum, Jerusalem

For my Yom Ha’atzma’ut blog, I have invited Rabbi Charlie Schwartz, alumnus of The Rabbinical School and The Davidson School, to engage me in conversation on what Israel means to us. Before coming to JTS, Charlie, a U.S. citizen, voluntarily served with distinction in an infantry unit of the Israel Defense Forces (2003 to 2005). He is currently our director of Digital Engagement and Learning.

Dear Arnie,

You asked me to write you and share some of what I’m thinking and feeling this Yom Ha’atzma’ut. As a rabbi, non-Israeli veteran of the IDF, and a Jew committed to the State of Israel, I feel the complex mix of emotions I’ve come to experience on every Israeli Independence Day: namely joy, pride, and—to be 100 percent honest with you—anxiety. Let me explain.

The joy I feel on Yom Ha’atzma’ut is tied to my deep sense of Zionism and love for the State of Israel. To say I feel privileged and blessed to live in a time when a Jewish state not only exists but thrives (albeit with the challenges that face every country in the 21st century) would be an understatement. For me, the creation of the State of Israel represents the type of miracle only possible when people take up the work of the Divine will, when the collaboration between God and humanity is realized.

My joy on Yom Ha’atzma’ut extends beyond the creation of the State of Israel to the benefits the State has afforded me. The vibrancy of Jewish life, culture, and religious practice flourishing in cities like Tel Aviv, Be’er Sheva, Haifa, and Jerusalem has helped to shape me as a Jew, and provided me with spiritual and intellectual sustenance. When this vibrancy comes into contact with the renaissance of Jewish life underway in the Diaspora, Judaism’s power to provide meaning, inspiration, and fulfillment becomes clear.

I constantly find myself marveling and taking familial pride at what the State of Israel has been able to accomplish in its relatively short history, and at how the citizens of Israel engage with the numerous challenges facing their country. From security threats, to the role of religion in the public sphere, to growing economic disparity, to the clear moral challenges posed by the Israeli presence in the West Bank, the issues faced by Israel are many. Yet, Israelis respond with passionate debate, organizing, and activism. As shown by the widespread support of last summer’s social justice protests, the large-scale demonstrations on matters such as the disengagement from the Gaza Strip and the racism still present in Israeli society, there appears to be a national Israeli ethos that says working to better the State of Israel is an obligation of every citizen. In this I take pride.

The anxiety I feel on Yom Ha’atzma’ut comes from the difficulty of the work that lies ahead. The challenges facing the State of Israel have no clear answer, nor does the increasingly important question of how to meaningfully connect Jews in the Diaspora with our Israeli family.

At times, the political and security situation leads me to despair. But in those moments, I am reminded of the great Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who was asked if he believed in the coming of the Messiah. Leibowitz, not missing a beat, slyly responded, “I believe that the Messiah is coming.” Clarifying the intentional ambiguity of this statement, Leibowitz continued, “The essence of the Messiah is that He will always be coming.”

I take this to mean that the messianic age is an ideal to aspire to. Put into the context of Israel, as Jews we have the responsibility to continually push the State of Israel to better itself and to fully actualize the values of the Jewish people. And while this ideal will never be fully attainable, we are still obligated to work, hope, and pray for it.

So that’s some of what I am thinking and feeling on Israel’s birthday. What’s on your mind?

Sincerely,

Charlie

Dear Charlie,

Thanks for sharing those thoughts. I will pick up where your letter left off. The quote from Leibowitz called to mind a remark by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. His subject was the Messiah:

I say, Messiah has not yet come. I do not wish that the Messiah will come. At the moment that he comes, he will cease to be Messiah . . . The days of Messiah are more important than Messiah, and the Jewish people lives in the days of Messiah, expects the days of the Messiah, believes in the days of the Messiah, and this is one of the main reasons for its existence.

Israel to my mind exists simultaneously as a real-world place, with all the problems of any modern State and then some, and as a place that in its very being anticipates messianic fulfillment. I walk the crowded streets, sit in the cafes, curse the traffic jams, read the papers, argue about politics, marvel at the beauty of the landscape, reflect on the fact that a guard checks my bag at every gate and doorway, worry when there is no guard to check my bag at certain gates and doorways, and wonder how the State can possibly solve its immense problems of air pollution, shrinking water supply, unemployment, growing gaps between rich and poor, a severe housing shortage and, yes, its unending conflict with Palestinians and neighboring states.

And, in the background, I cannot help but hear the words of the prayer I say fervently each Shabbat—with Jews around the world—that God will finally appear from God’s place and rule in Zion (soon we hope) in our days and forever more. “We are waiting for You.” I’ve never had much sympathy for Jews who proclaim with utter certainty that Israel already inhabits messianic space and time. The Jews who identify God with their own politics, and justify the violence they practice in the name of bringing messiah, positively scare me to death. I have much more sympathy for Ben-Gurion’s notion—a foreshadowing of the careful formulation we utter weekly in the prayer for Israel—that it marks “the beginning of the flowering of our redemption.” I read that prayer as a reminder to all of us: Israel’s existence is a miracle, a chance to bring the lessons of Torah out of the private sphere and into every realm of public life. We have to work hard and make sure Israel really is the beginning of that beginning of redemption. We dare not blow it by turning aside, resting complacent, or failing to grasp hold of the miracle.

Charlie, I don’t see how Jews who are alert to Jewish tradition and Jewish history can avoid feeling the tension that you express. It’s built into our double relationship to Israel, itself a combination of “above” and “below.” Israel is a place that really does make deserts bloom, ingathers dispersed Jews from the four corners of the earth, and builds the greatest of high-tech companies in close proximity to holy sites and archeological digs that go back many centuries. This is life with a capital L, made all the more incredible because the Nazis nearly ended our people’s life and Israel’s enemies seek to end it still. The stakes could not be higher nor the problems more formidable, and this makes the mistakes committed there all the more painful and difficult to bear.

Which is why I’m so happy to recite Hallel and sing on Yom Ha’atzma’ut, and dance and eat falafel and all the rest of it, lest the worry crowd out sheer celebration that Israel is there and we can be part of it.

On that note: what was Yom Ha’atzma’ut like in the IDF?

Arnie

Dear Arnie,

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I’m glad to know ambivalence about the messianic age extends beyond religious philosophers. You ask a difficult question about what my experience of Yom Ha’atzma’ut was like while serving in the IDF at the end of the Second Intifada. My recollection of the immediate experience was one of unadulterated joy and celebration. I was fortunate to be off duty during each Yom Ha’atzma’ut that I spent in the army. Instead of manning checkpoints, performing random searches, and guarding settlements in the various Palestinians areas, I served in Jenin, Hebron, Bethlehem, and the Gaza Strip, and was able to celebrate the day with friends, community, and what felt like the entire State.

As a soldier, I felt a deeper connection to the narrative of the State of Israel on those holidays than I had ever felt before, giving me a sense of pride and gratitude in the fact that I was living a personal dream of serving in the IDF. But when I returned to the army from those Yom Ha’atzma’ut furloughs, the mix of emotions I described came flooding back. In your letter, you called that mix a “double relationship of ‘above’ and ‘below,’” to use the language of the Midrash of heavenly Israel and earthly Israel. Regardless of what we call it, I distinctly remember feeling it as I left Jerusalem post–Yom Ha’atzma’ut, overstuffed bag in tow, rifle over my shoulder, and on my way back to active duty.

The infantry unit I served in was largely made up of young Israelis who spent a year volunteering in underserved communities as an expression of their Zionist ideals. They taught in schools on Israel’s periphery, facilitated group therapy sessions for recovering drug addicts, and bolstered struggling agricultural settlements before learning to become soldiers. Mixed in with these Israelis were a number of new immigrants from around the world, who came from countries such as France, Morocco, Belgium, and even Iran.

In many ways, my unit, like many units in the IDF, embodied the idealized Israel, an ingathering of the exiles brought together by a true sense of Zionism and a desire to meaningfully contribute to the betterment of the State of Israel. Yet, at the same time, we were constantly confronted with elements of the “real” Israel—most notably in the moral and ethical challenges faced by soldiers serving in the West Bank, and of the dehumanizing effect of viewing every Palestinian—whether man, woman, or child—as a potential threat, a possible suicide bomb. While in the army, I was unable to feel the unadulterated joy I felt on leave, and it is that mix of emotions I carry with me during Yom Ha’atzma’ut and throughout the year.

Frankly, I don’t see this mix of emotions in totally negative terms. Rather, I see it as a very Jewish response to the complexities of the world. To that end, I’ve always been amused by the fact that there is no Hebrew word for “fun.” Kef, the modern Hebrew word you’ll find listed as meaning fun in the dictionary, has its origins not in biblical or rabbinic Hebrew, but in Arabic.

Hebrew has plenty of words for religious joy: simhah, sasson, rina, and gilah to name a few, but no word for plain fun. What separates religious joy from simple fun is its complexity, the range of emotions, both happy and sad, embodied in the Jewish festivals and in Jewish life for that matter. We are commanded to be happy on Sukkot, while being reminded of our vulnerability; we are joyous on Rosh Hashanah, while contemplating our mortality. Maybe on Yom Ha’atzma’ut we are meant to have a mix of emotions as well: to celebrate with joy, while using the anxiety as a reminder of the work left to do.

My question to you is, how to maintain the balance between the joy that the State of Israel is there and the despair, anxiety, and ambivalence that worry about it can produce?

Charlie

Charlie,

Thanks for that honest and personal response to my question—and for the question you ask me in turn. The truth is that I have no theory of how to balance the love, anxiety, critique, awe, enthusiasm, admiration, and all the other complex feelings I have about Israel. I just know that, above and beyond anything else, I feel enormously thankful and blessed to be alive at the same time as the State of Israel. I am all the more thankful that I’ve been able to spend so much time there, share experiences close-up with Israeli friends and family members, and work with Israeli leaders (including those in the Masorti Movement) on Jewish concerns that we share. I know something else too: how happy it makes me just to walk the streets of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, or gaze at the landscape of the Aravah or the Galilee, or feel that I am somehow helping in a small way to bring the dream of Israel closer to realization. No theory here, just an unshakable conviction that the meaning of my life is tied up with that place and its people. The hope for its continued flourishing—which I think depends on peace with Palestinians and neighboring states—is at the core of my soul, worthy of the definite article—“The Hope”—it bears in the title of Israel’s national anthem.

Two memories, in conclusion:

The Haredi, Neturei Karta resident of Mea She’arim, who said to me as we stood on his balcony overlooking the old city, “Either the three religions will learn to live in peace with one another here, or this will be Armageddon.”

The Israeli cousin, visiting the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum last year, who could not stop looking at the shards of pottery on display created some 2,000 years ago and dug up from the area around the Dead Sea: “I too make pottery in the Land of Israel,” she reflected quietly. Her daughter and granddaughter took in the scene.

Hag sameah.

Arnie

Amy Skopp Cooper, national assistant director of the National Ramah Commission of JTS, director of Ramah Day Camp in Nyack, New York, and 2011 winner of the prestigious Covenant Award, on the joy, power, and community of serious Jewish camping.
I spoke last week at the Leaders Assembly of the Foundation for Jewish Camp on a panel, hosted by the Jim Joseph Foundation, with President Richard Joel of Yeshiva University and President David Ellenson of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. We were there to celebrate the enormous achievements of serious Jewish camping in North America in recent decades, to thank donors such as the Jim Joseph Foundation who have greatly assisted in that achievement, and to reflect upon the still-greater possibilities to be tapped in years to come. I share the gist of my presentation to the Foundation for Jewish Camp here.

First things first: I was proud to address the gathering as chancellor of JTS, the institution that founded Camp Ramah more than 60 years ago and which has worked closely with it ever since, and doubly proud to speak as the parent of two former campers and counselors. I know first-hand, as well as through my scholarly work on Judaism in North America, the tremendous role that intensively Jewish camps play as a vehicle of Jewish education, a building-block of Jewish identity, and a vital source of Jewish community. That role is why JTS is intent on working ever more closely with Ramah. We want to help grow the Ramah network through new camps, new sorts of camps (such as Ramah Outdoor Adventure in the Rockies), and increased numbers of campers. We hope to participate in deepening the links that join Ramah to Israel and to heighten Ramah’s impact on experiential education that takes place in day schools and congregational schools—and to increase Ramah’s impact on JTS. The challenge facing all of us in Jewish education, I think, is to take the phenomenally successful model of Jewish camping in places like Ramah and adapt it to the generation that tweets, blogs, multi-tasks, and routinely embraces changes with which people of my generation struggle to keep up.

The current enthusiasm for serious Jewish camping is well justified. There are not many things any of us could do for the future of Judaism and the Jewish community in North America that would be more effective than getting more Jewish kids to spend more time in serious Jewish camps, experimenting with different educational aims and methods at those camps, and increasing the presence there of Hebrew, Israel, and compelling, relevant teachings from the Jewish tradition—such as Jewish ethics pertaining to relationships and other issues that are at the forefront of kids’ and teens’ minds. Our people, our tradition, and our society will be the better for this effort.

Why is this so? There are two major theoretical sources for understanding why Jewish camps like Ramah matter so much right now.

The first source is the Torah. We Jews are here, I believe, to build communities guided by Torah, and to carry forward the tradition of thought and practice that has Torah at its core, so as to serve as God’s partner in a covenant designed to make the world better—more just, decent, and compassionate. To that end, we Jews were not constituted as a religious group alone but as a people: a nation; a global community; diverse and disparate local communities. We need the enhanced ability to get things done in the world that comes from community, and the added resolve to go against the flow. We know from the Torah, as well as from our own experience, that participation in the building and maintenance of communities can take individuals higher and deeper than almost any other activity in which they engage. Communities focused on what Martin Buber called a “Living Center,” capital L, capital C, have the proven power to elicit, as nothing else can, the gifts and talents with which we are blessed.

The Torah demands and makes possible a kind of wholeness. We yearn for that wholeness: heart and soul and mind wrapped up together, every member of the group needed for the task at hand, every experience and source of wisdom valued. And, as wise educators know, when you teach lessons that seek to take hold of a person, especially when these lessons go against the taken-for-granted assumptions of a larger culture, the teaching must be operative 24/7—“when you lie down and when you rise up”—and must take place in public space and not just private space—“sitting in your house and walking upon the way.”

That’s where camping in North America rises to meet the challenge of a social reality that for the most part does not place Jews inside Jewish gates or Jewish doorposts very much of the time. The Jewish part of life is usually off to the side, marginal to the main business of life as we live it—and so a Jewish educator wants to create a counter-reality, where sports take place in Jewish space, where drama and arts take place in Jewish time, and where Torah is studied and practiced in surroundings filled with Jews, Jewish commitments, Jewish images, and Jewish fun.

These imperatives are amply confirmed by current sociological and pedagogical theory. We know from social scientists such as Peter Berger about the “social construction of reality” and the need for “plausibility structures” strong enough to bear the weight of transmitting values. Educational theorists and developmental psychologists have explained over and over why giving kids a space of their own, safely away from parental supervision, can have the remarkable effect of making those kids committed to bringing new energy, direction, and ideas to the service of their parents’ ideals.

Jewish camps like Ramah regularly accomplish that. They make the parents of campers wish that their own Jewish lives were more like camp, their synagogue services more like those at camp, their friendships as intense as those one forms at camp and often keeps for life. At its best, a camp such as Ramah creates a world where Jewish kids can come to be at home in the world, including the natural world, at the same time as they grow comfortable inside their own bodies and skins. They are places where teens can feel themselves growing, and growing more confident; coming alive intellectually and emotionally and, yes, awakening sexually. They are places where they reach the bedrock of self, in the dining hall and the bunk, and so no longer need worry that they’ll be “found out” as being less than what they are and less than what they want to be. Add other elements such as Hebrew, Israel, the fact that studying and even davening are part of the culture rather than the counterculture; factor in the information that campers and junior staff learn less from books than from activities with good friends supervised by teacher-role-models just a few years older than they are; and you have a Jewish reality where community is not discussed or planned but danced, sung, played, loved.

I’d add one more piece to this mix, which is the particular genius of Ramah: camp is a place where education for the staff at every level is given pride of place, where they keep growing and learning Jewishly well into their twenties and beyond. Now, thanks to new programs like Ramah Service Corps, the staffers of Ramah are bringing the spirit of camp, and especially of the kind of learning that goes on there, to schools and communities around the continent, and by doing so they are interesting more young people in signing up for the Jewish magic of summer.

I’ve learned from my colleagues in JTS’s Experiential Learning Initiative, sponsored by the Jim Joseph Foundation, that school classrooms where you sit in rows and spend time studying texts until the bell rings can be sites of Jewish learning no less experiential than what goes on at camp. But it’s harder. Experiential learning requires engagement of multiple faculties, it demands reflection of the whole self, it thrives on passion. It takes long twilight hours, benefits from raucous dining halls, and makes good use of swimming and baseball.

Camp is not the only venue where valuable learning of this and other sorts takes place. Day school is the next best thing in terms of creating Jewish social realities, and has the advantage over camp that it is school, which for kids is the heart of social reality, 5 days a week, 10 months a year. Congregational schools have to work extra hard to create community and transmit meaning. Many good congregational schools accomplish this now, despite the obvious difficulties raised by afternoon fatigue, competition with soccer and music lessons, uneven quality of staff, and lack of total support from the parent body. Congregational as well as day schools will benefit, JTS believes, from a healthy dose of experiential learning that we hope to transmit from its home at Ramah. Jewish camps can’t do the job of making Jews all by themselves. Educators, community leaders, and donors in the world beyond camp need to show that they also care about living Jewishly, building communities, and learning Torah. But what a difference a good camp makes!

As the chancellor of JTS, as a scholar of contemporary Judaism, and most of all as a caring Jew, I thank the Jim Joseph Foundation and Foundation for Jewish Camp and everyone else who is helping us build camps, sustain camps, and bring Jewish kids and counselors to camps in ever-increasing numbers. I’m grateful in particular to everyone who has played a role in building and sustaining Ramah over the past six decades. The difference camps are making to the Jewish future is incalculable—and well-demonstrated by the difference they have made to the Jewish present.

We need to take advantage now of possibilities and resources that are available at this moment for camps, other educational venues, and training grounds for ideas, personnel, and innovation, such as JTS. We won’t want to look back a generation hence having missed what everyone recognizes as a tremendous opening. The investment we make in camps will repay itself many times over.

A friend wondered aloud, as we sat in a Jerusalem restaurant on a mild winter day in mid-February, why it is that books continue to be written, and reviewed in Ha’aretz, asking whether Israel has a future.

“Is there any other country in the world where this could happen?” she said.

None came to mind. Nations routinely worry about all sorts of things: political divisions, economic stagnation, ethnic conflict, and the like. Few, even if they were born more recently than the Jewish State, seem plagued by anxiety about their very survival. Israel will turn 64 this May—the age that had the Beatles asking, “Will you still need me? Will you still feed me?” —and it’s not uncommon to read or hear of dire warnings that if something is not done soon about this problem or that (settlements, Haredim, Palestinians, lack of a constitution, divisions between “religious” and “secular,” divisions between “right” and “left”), the country will not live much past 70, whether needed or not and no matter how well-fed.

“Oy,” one wants to exclaim. “Enough with the doom-saying already. Let apocalypse remain a genre of ancient text and only that. Israel has so much going for it right now. Couldn’t we just get on with the daunting business of facing today’s problems, and appreciating tomorrow’s possibilities, undistracted by worry about whether there will be a tomorrow?”

Two very real threats, one emanating from outside Israel’s borders and one from within, seem primarily responsible for the latest bout of fear for Israel’s future.

First and most important, there is Iran—a subject much in the news right now, of course, but one about which I heard much less during this visit than I had expected. I suspect that worry about Iran’s acquisition of nuclear capability is ubiquitous among Israelis and never far from the surface of conversation or consciousness. How could it not be? Everyone understands the threat Iran poses; they know too that, should Israel attack Iran’s enrichment plants, thousands of missiles would almost certainly rain down on Israeli population centers. Casualties would be enormous. Why then so little talk about it? For several reasons, I believe: the danger is too great to ponder, and so it is not pondered; the average Israeli will not have much say in how events unfold and so sees no point speculating; the matter does not lend itself to insertion into ordinary conversation. (“How has your trip been so far? We may lose entire neighborhoods or cities to Iranian missile strikes, you know. What did you think of the restaurant in your hotel? We need these rains, you know. ”) It is assumed that a way will be found out of the current impasse, because it must be found. What is more, Israelis generally seem to rely on America to resolve the Iran crisis, with the assistance of Israeli talk about a possible attack. Here in America, by contrast, it seems that Israel is driving events, with the US in a supporting role.

Whatever the reason, the Iranian threat has become part of the so-called matsav, “the situation,” which has been the subject of hourly news bulletins for as long as anyone can remember. Israel has rarely known moments of real peace. Everyone agrees that its problems with Palestinians and its neighbors are serious—and no one expects to see a solution any time soon. The matsav is therefore not permitted to interfere with the joys, cares and satisfactions of daily life. Existential danger to the country, for everyone but soldiers on active duty, constitutes one more hassle one learns to handle . This is perhaps as it should be, or needs to be.

I am always struck most by continuity rather than crisis when I visit Israel. The announcer on the morning radio news show was the same one who has been doing the program for decades. Traffic, as always, was worse than ever. The government has been slow in responding to the social protests of the summer. Ministers are under investigation. The sun shone in clear blue skies after drenching rains. Jerusalem, its light rail system finally operating, was magical as ever on Shabbat. Tel Aviv throbbed all the time, except by the sea. Life for my friends, despite all the problems they face, seemed good indeed.

The principal internal threat to Israeli democracy, if not to Israeli survival, seemed uppermost on people’s minds this winter: the growth in Haredi numbers, power, and assertiveness. The issue is not so much recent offenses by ultra-Orthodox extremists as the long-term questions of Israel’s democratic and pluralist character. Will the State be ruled by the laws passed in the Knesset or by halakhah as interpreted by ultra-Orthodox “Torah sages”? Will soldiers wearing kippot obey orders from their commanders or their rabbis? Will Israeli public space be made to conform with Haredi convictions, a move that infringes particularly on the rights of women? (Buses segregated by gender with women forced to the back, streets divided down the middle like an Orthodox synagogue, women’s voices silenced within range of Haredi men’s hearing.) The questions are still rhetorical in 2012 when posed by me or those with whom I spent time on this visit. For many Haredim—the fastest growing segment of the Israeli population by far—the desired answer to all the questions I posed might well be different.

A professor of Jewish law at Hebrew University who once headed the office of the chief rabbinate recently published an opinion piece that bemoans and excoriates the recent wave of outrages committed by Haredi extremists. “The time has arrived for radical change.” “The only solution that seems plausible, for the good of religion and the good of the State . . . is separation of religion and state.” I think he may well be right—but the chance of that happening any time soon is close to nil. There seems broad agreement outside Orthodox sectors that Israel desperately needs a written constitution, but I doubt the American model of separation between church and state is fully applicable to Israel in any case. Judaism is not Protestantism; the relevant unit of covenant and faith in our tradition is not the individual but the family, the community, the Jewish people worldwide. Israel in my view should be the arena where competing visions of Judaism are peacefully contested and consensual ideals of Judaism are put into practice in public life. Restricting Torah to private space and time is not a possibility compatible with the Sinai covenant.

A new survey of belief and practice among Jewish Israelis released last month by the Guttman Center of the Israel Democracy Institute reveals just how complicated the situation is. Only 7% defined themselves as Haredi, and only 3% as “secular, anti-religious.” 15% said they are Orthodox, 43% are “secular, not anti-religious,” and another 32% eschew those labels and call themselves “traditional.” Asked “to what extent do you observe tradition,” 26% said to a great extent, 44% to some extent, and only 16% not at all. Detailed questions about observance confirmed this pattern. 94% said circumcision of newborn boys is important, nearly as many said one should sit shivah and say kaddish for deceased parents and have male children bar mitzvahed. Sabbath observance to varying degrees is nearly universal.

The main take-away? Neat divides between “religious” and “secular” are woefully off the mark. I think the categories should be dropped entirely in Israel (as among Diaspora Jews). They tell us little that is important—and turn our view away both from commonalities that should not be missed and from divisions that are all too real and will not be healed any time soon. Israelis are bound by a “covenant of fate” that links them powerfully to the Jewish people and the Jewish past. Questions of faith are not easily avoided.

In Ein Karem, a former village now on the outskirts of Jerusalem, I watched a dozen young Israeli men and women—students at the “secular yeshiva” recently established there—discuss the meaning of words such as secular, holy, Torah, obligation, freedom, and rabbi. Two founders of a project devoted to reviving piyyut—ancient Jewish liturgical hymns—told me of the many choirs that have sprung up all over Israel in the past few years to sing music that crosses and re-crosses the boundary between “secular” and “religious”—just like the members of those choirs. I learned about a “secular prayer” group that has been meeting for some time and about the Friday night service that has taken root at the “secular” moshav of Nahalal, once home to Moshe Dayan. I discussed a new program that explores Jewish values with a range of Israelis drawn from all different walks of life and religious leanings. An Israeli general explained how his entire life, like that of many Israelis, has been shaped by faith that the country he serves evinces a divine purpose. Rationality must loom large in the nation’s decisions and the authority of the government, he believes. The army cannot be undermined in the name of Judaism. But neither can the state be separated from God and Torah.

Because of individuals like him and the others I met this visit —thoughtful, dedicated, idealistic, free with jokes about Israel’s inadequacies, quietly lending new meanings daily to the word Jewish—I never come home from Israel depressed about the challenges facing the country, even knowing full well just how euphemistic that word “challenges” is in this context. One final example: the soldier who gave a tour of an IDF robotics lab to the “Nachshon” group from Chicago of which I was happily a part for several days. The man was so competent, so bright, so naturally and un-self-consciously proud of his unit and his country. “Look at the talent this country has at its disposal,” I said to one of the guys with me on the tour. “It’s hard to worry about Israel with that reserve of character and brain power.”

I know, I know: there is ample cause for worry; Israel had better face up to the looming threats from within and without, and do so sooner rather than later; complacency will hurt us; time, if we are passive in the face of danger, is not on our side. But it would be helpful, as we face difficulties and seek solution, to stop dividing Israelis into “religious” and “secular,” as if those categories are homogeneous or explain much of anything, and it would help still more to cease apocalyptic warnings at every turn that the end is near.

I expect the traffic will still be bad next time I visit and, with luck and skill and Providence, the morning news will sound much the same.

Prayer and Learning in the JTS Courtyard

/ 24 Tevet 5772

I spent much of last week in the company of about 70 Conservative rabbis—participants in the annual workshop sponsored by JTS that is known informally as “rabbi camp” and formally as RTI, the Rabbinic Training Institute. The schedule includes text classes in the morning offered by faculty from JTS and other institutions (I co-taught a course with Rabbi Gordon Tucker on the nature and authority of mitzvah and halakhah). In the afternoons there are professional skills workshops offered by experts in the relevant fields (e.g., psychology or management). The evening program features small groups aimed at spiritual growth and intensely personal discussion. There is a lot of study, eating, praying, and talking, interspersed with a little exercise or rest. I don’t know how the rabbis felt about RTI this year (buzz was good, I think) but I know how I (one of the few non-rabbis on the premises) felt about it: energized, inspired, and more confident than ever about the future of Conservative Judaism.

The two major reasons for that optimism are the quality of the young rabbis who were there—recent graduates of JTS and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles—and the mentoring that these young rabbis get from more seasoned rabbis who are likewise an impressive group. The latter have been around the block more than a few times with synagogue dilemmas, communal issues, and religious angst. They nonetheless retain a great deal of joy in what they are doing and maintain the belief, humbly held, that rabbinic work serves the Jewish people, the cause of Torah and, yes, God.

I like hearing the way Conservative rabbis speak about all three of those subjects. No posturing, minimal defensiveness, and few illusions about what is not working in the synagogues, schools, or communal organizations that employ them. The rabbis I meet at RTI and elsewhere exhibit a real sense, in the best sense, of calling or vocation. They know enough about budgetary realities not to risk extravagantly on pie-in-the-sky dreams. They love Jews and Judaism enough not to cease dreaming or to rest content with anything less than excellence. At RTI, rabbis exchange good ideas with one another (and with me) about good things they are doing or hoping to do for and with the Jews they serve. These ideas are matched in my estimation by the skill and determination needed to accomplish them.

I value the rabbis’ achievements all the more because—let’s face it—rabbis do not have an easy job. There was not a lot of kvetching at RTI (though I picked up some weariness with budget shortfalls and anxiety about lay-offs by boards that in some cases seem to focus on the bottom line rather than the quality and devotion of their leaders). The demands on rabbis—especially but not only in synagogues—come from many directions and on most days come without pause. Rabbis have to provide pastoral care and many other kinds of care. They have to attend more meetings each week than many business executives and still manage to give good sermons regularly and produce good programs all the time. They have to be good with young people and old people alike; be good at inspiring, teaching, managing, and fund-raising. Indeed, good is rarely good enough in any of these areas. Synagogue members, like college students attending Hillel or parents sending kids to Jewish schools, decide at least once a year and sometimes more often than that whether they want to keep coming or go elsewhere. Given that reality and the perennial need for members, the standard to which rabbis are accountable is not goodness but excellence. There is little room for failure.

Why then choose this career as a young person or cling to it with true enthusiasm in middle age? Because rabbis have a chance to help people when help is most needed and to offer guidance that influences the course and quality of people’s lives. Rabbis have seen people make profound turnings in their lives and seen themselves play a part in those life-restoring moves. They get great satisfaction from building communities and filling those communities with meaning, celebration, and joy in the life of Torah. Rabbis love learning—this is obvious at RTI—and the rabbinate gives them the chance to teach and learn the sources they love; not infrequently, they have the added satisfaction of watching the light come on in students’ eyes in the course of learning, whether those students are 13 years old or 43 or 83. I enjoyed seeing the light in rabbis’ eyes as they delved into texts and issues about which they care deeply—or reported on experiences of learning with professors who once taught them at JTS or Ziegler.

One of the highlights of RTI for me was a set of conversations with newly minted rabbis already sobered by the realities of the profession but still excited by what they can achieve or already have achieved. One told me proudly of a trip with teens to Israel; another about new outreach initiatives at his campus Hillel; a third about a course he is putting together on Judaism and science. I confess that my greatest satisfaction came from the quality, honesty, and passion of discussion in my classes with rabbis of all ages about issues with which these men and women have wrestled long and hard and that for them—as for me—go to the very heart of what they believe and practice. The rabbis’ love for Torah is palpable. More than once I was stunned by insights that cannot be produced by book learning alone. Years of “fieldwork” experience are required. The same is true of moving tefillah. The Conservative rabbinate remains a profession in which wisdom counts for a lot. At RTI there was a lot of wisdom on display.

Not every rabbi I encountered there was equally impressive, of course. Not every rabbi inspires equal confidence or has the confidence in himself or herself that I wish all possessed in great measure. Some seem beaten down a bit by experience; temporarily, I hope. But for most of them the sparks still fly—particularly when, as at RTI, they are removed from the suit-and-tie world, placed in the company of old friends or new colleagues just starting out, seated at tables where discussion of Torah is animated (and includes Torah’s relation to politics, science, TV comedies, and NFL playoff games). Rabbis are generally happy with the path that they have chosen, the path that—they will tell you—chose them. I too am happy at this match.

That’s why I left RTI saying: this Conservative Movement of ours is going to be fine and more than fine. Its future is promising because its achievement continues to be remarkable. One major achievement sat all around me last week. To attract men and women of this caliber to the Conservative rabbinate and keep them there is reason for confidence that good things are in store for the communities they guide and serve.

I read the responses to my December 21st blog posting on the topic, “Distancing from Israel,” in the wake of a spate of news reports from Israel that graphically illustrated one piece of the problem we face in trying to overcome such distancing. It’s upsetting to many of us here in North America to see pictures of Haredi kids dressed by their parents with yellow Jewish stars in order to liken Israeli police enforcing Israeli law to Nazi murderers of Jews. It’s hard to watch settler extremists torch mosques and break into army bases to protest government policies and law-enforcement that they do not like. It’s painful to Jews brought up to be proud of the Jewish role in America’s civil rights struggle to see images of Jews in Israel separating men and women on buses on religious grounds or hurling abuse at a little girl because she does not dress as they think she should. And sometimes—often—it’s very hard to find images of Israel in our media that counter those. Where are the positive stories that do make us swell with pride? Like the outpouring of outrage at such incidents by Israelis of all streams, including Orthodox Jews, major rabbinical figures, and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Or the amazing economy that continues to outpace the West, including an unemployment rate that has reached an all time low of 5%.

I know that “man bites dog” is news and not the other way around; media always favor the sensational and go for the bad far more than the good. The latter is often frothy rather than treated seriously. But it also seems that positive images and stories make their way into local or national news more often than into international coverage, especially about the Middle East.

This points to the crying need for our community to get coverage of Jewish matters more directly, fairly, and substantively to the average North American Jew. Digests of Jewish news of the sort that already reach Jewish leaders every day (and, even better, video coverage of Jewish issues) could easily reach every affiliated Jew in North America and many who are not affiliated. This would make a big difference in how Jews think and feel about Israel.

Of course negative acts by Israeli extremists and biased media coverage of Israel do not account for most of the distancing. Other factors too are operative—and the blog responses pointed to those factors clearly, as well as to actions that should be taken by the North American community—and by Israelis—to address them.

Simple, honest, face-to-face conversation would go a long way. I have to believe that if Susan—who is “sick of hearing nothing but bumper stickers from most of the pro-Israel organizations, including the leadership of those I support,” could talk in person with Rick, who writes that “those of us who support Israel should be very vocal about our feelings,” and if such conversation were multiplied by tens of thousands, we’d be stronger as a community and closer as a community to Israel.

If more Jews from North America had the chance to see Israeli society in action up close and at length—and, even better, to work closely with Israelis as Rabbi Moldo suggests, or the Partnership 2000 program achieved—there would be more positive images at work on this side of the divide to overcome the negatives. This is the case with those of us who came to be Jewish leaders in part because we did have such experiences in Israel over the years. Efforts at conversation among Israelis across wide ideological divides have proven significant to participants. I am convinced the same would be true of discussion and joint projects between Israeli Jews and North Americans.

We are working to ensure that this is part of the “basic training” of every Jewish leader trained at JTS. It’s one thing to think of people in categories like the “Haredim” in my first paragraph above or like “Israelis,” a word which to many Jews outside Israel conjures up immediate images of politicians or faceless soldiers. Those of us with close friends and family in Israel—including soldiers whose faces are very much on our minds when danger comes—think about Israel differently. We don’t whitewash the negatives. But we have the positives to match them. Knowledge of history and context likewise goes a long way in countering bad news from Israel as well as biased reporting.

I appreciated the reminder by one post that Jews disagree on Israel because we disagree on everything. True. We joke about that (“two Jews, three opinions”), and either shake our heads knowingly about the matter or don’t give it any attention. That’s not true when fundamental values or existential needs are at stake, as they are when Israeli rabbis with state power behind them do not count some of us as Jews, say so loudly and frequently, and make life difficult for Jews they do not count as Jews to marry in Israel or even get visas renewed. Several blog respondents raised this issue. Another such issue is when Israelis seem to disdain democracy—which for most Jews in North America is not simply one among many values but a basic moral commitment. Democracy guarantees our rightful places in the United States and Canada. We have been taught to believe—and do believe—that it is fundamental, good, and true. The fear that Israel might cease to be a democracy in the common American meaning of the term raises multiple specters that are truly frightening. When Israelis stand up for equal protection of the law and protect minority rights—and especially when Orthodox or right-wing Israelis do so—it heartens Americans and Canadians deeply. We treasure the fact that freedom of religion, freedom from discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity, and respect for people who are different, are unquestioned axioms in North America. We want them to be so in Israel. This, we are convinced, is not only best for Israel, but essential for its survival and certainly crucial to our relationship to it.

That’s the bottom line: the stakes are so high, all the time, making for heartache, worry, shouting, intolerance—and also great caring, and a special dimension to our love. Israel has to make it, has to succeed, cannot be allowed to fail, in the face of challenges that would long ago have overcome lesser states and despite enemies who would long ago have destroyed less resilient peoples. The State of Israel cannot afford to be torn apart by internecine struggle among Jews. It needs to find a way as well to accommodate its non-Jewish minorities and to live side by side with unfriendly neighbors.

Every Israeli I know, and many American Jews, used to tell me exactly how to achieve these goals. No serious person of my acquaintance claims to know in January 2012 how to get from “here” to any desirable “there.” We all want to do what we can in the meantime to help get there. Those of us who do not live in Israel cannot help unless we are involved, attached, and deeply supportive.

My father’s third yortseyt begins this evening, and to mark the occasion I repost here a piece written for Mentshen, a blog series sponsored by the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs. They asked me to reflect on my father’s influence upon me. I am proud to share my response with you.

Yortseyt candle, courtesy of Elipongo

It’s not difficult to recall numerous ways in which I have been shaped—as a person, a father, a Jew, a man, a friend, a husband, and much, much more—by my father, Alan Eisen (z”l), whose third yortseyt I will observe in early January.It is appropriate to write this particular recollection of him for the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs (FJMC) with a plaque and framed certificate nearby that testify to his “Man of the Year” awards from the Men’s Club of Congregation Emanu-El in Philadelphia. I got my musical ability from my father (my mother, a source of great influence and inspiration as well, could not carry a tune, though she did play the piano). I suspect the fact that I do not tell jokes very often, but appreciate good puns, stems from the fact that Dad told jokes all the time, and was known for a repertoire of bad puns. It gave me great pleasure, too, when my son was born, to observe that he had inherited the double-jointed thumbs that seem to go with my father’s genealogy and that of all Eisen males. The problem is not finding examples of my father’s influence on me, but identifying areas where that influence is absent. Let me mention three zones of his impact that are particularly relevant to my current work—and that of the FJMC.

First, my Dad was pious in a way I much admired and never scorned, even at the height of teenage rebellion. He had a love of life that ran deeper than deep. (I confess that I just typed “has” and “runs” in the previous sentence and then corrected the typos to put the words in past tense. Alan Eisen lives in me not least in the love of life, the sense of gratitude to God for being, that is perhaps the greatest gift he transmitted to me—a most important quality that he exuded from every part of his being.) He would often lead davening of birkhot ha-shahar at morning services, and I knew as I watched that he did so with great kavanah. He would say “the Good Lord willing” and mean it. He was not a simple person, despite his protestations that he was: part of a genuine humility that taught me to take the world seriously but not to take myself too seriously. He never did. I think that’s why little kids loved him so: this man who would get down on the floor with them and pretend to pound down on his double-jointed thumbs until he bent them back in a way that left kids wide-eyed, or who—as the kids got older—would entertain them with math tricks and word games. He was a character, my father, and a man of great character. I could always count on him. So could my mother and God.

Second, my Dad loved music. He had been training to be a pianist when the Depression took away that dream and others, too. Throughout his career as a salesman, he would take time whenever he could—and wherever he traveled—to walk into schools and offer a free program called “Fun With Music.” He wanted kids to appreciate Chopin, so he’d have them time him as he played the “Minute Waltz,” or he’d conjure up the images of a parade and enthrall them with Beethoven’s “Turkish March.” (The kids at the assemblies generally wrote thank-you notes afterward and sent them to him; usually they consisted of elaborate drawings of him at the piano or the scenes they pictured from the music. I recently pruned the collection down from hundreds to dozens, unable to discard them entirely.) I’ve told rabbinical students at JTS that once, in his early 90s (he passed away at 97), my dad sat down at the grand piano in the lobby of an apartment building and began to play a Chopin nocturne, transforming himself (or perhaps just our image of him) from an elderly gentlemen who had his share of physical ailments to a vessel of artistry that came, via his fingers, straight from the soul. “Everyone has a Chopin nocturne inside,” I tell the students. “It’s your job to elicit it and help it find expression in your community.” This is what leadership is about.

Third, he loved being Jewish. This love was not the result of theory, or even of a conscious decision. He simply loved family, friends, and shul and so many other things that were Jewish through and through. Men’s Club was his community inside a community. Taking his only child to tallit and tefillin on Sunday mornings, followed by breakfasts of bagels and lox, was a source of immense pleasure and pride, every bit as much as the duets we would do at the piano. I got that. I too was proud. He was at home in shul as almost nowhere else. I am at home in synagogues, I think, because I started out running up and down every hallway at Emanu-El—exploring every back staircase, checking out the boiler room, and investigating the choir loft—knowing that this was my parents’ home turf, and especially my father’s, because (this was the 1950s) he was the major macher in the family. The synagogue—and especially its Men’s Club—enabled him to be the father he wanted to be. His son was grateful then, and will always remain so.

The American Jewish Committee sponsored a consultation last week on the subject, “Are Young Committed American Jews Distancing from Israel?” I was asked to present my view of the matter—and to address the question of what needs to be done.

Yom Ha’atzma’ut (State of Israel Independence Day) Celebration at JTS

I don’t have any doubt that our community has a problem when it comes to engagement with Israel. It has long kept me up nights and now occupies a large number of my waking hours. Like many of us who are active in Jewish life in North America, I love Israel deeply. The very meaning of my life is bound up in Israel’s existence and achievements. I believe the very survival of our community depends on these as well. It pains me to see connections between Israel and North American Jewry—the world’s two largest and most important Jewish populations—attenuating. American Jews can’t do a whole lot to bring peace to the Middle East but we can bring our community closer to Israel. It seems urgent to me that we do so.

Any measures aimed at solving the problem should recognize that it is not limited to young Jews and it is not new. Speaking at a similar symposium sponsored by AJC 20 years ago, I offered observations that in my view stated the obvious. “Attachment to the State of Israel has of late become far more problematic for American Jews—and, if present trends are not reversed, will become still more problematic in decades to come.” American Jews born after the Holocaust and the creation of the State lacked the profound feeling for it held by their elders. Israel is not associated in American Jewish minds exclusively or even primarily with larger-than-life images of a people reborn, a desert reclaimed, the weak grown strong, and the ideal made actual. These images must compete with what is read in the papers and seen on TV: messy complexities exhibited by any real-life society, exacerbated in Israel’s case by the conflict in which Israel has for so long been engaged.

There were and still are other factors making for “distancing,” beginning with the sheer fact of distance—we live here and not there—and the ignorance about Israeli life and culture widespread among most American Jews.

• The ethos of daily life there is different from ours, beginning with the impact of war and army service.
• The ethnic composition of Israel is very different from ours.
• The political system is alien in its workings and of late has tilted right, whereas American Jews remain overwhelmingly centrist or liberal.
• The religious system conflicts with our notion that the State should stay out of politics; it also discriminates against Reform and Conservative Jews and grants power to Haredim who do not grant the State itself legitimacy and certainly award none to many of us.
• American Jewish religious thought, aimed in the nature of the case at offering meaning to Jews in the here and now of their lives, has tended to make Israel a marginal concern.
• Zionism on these shores did not adopt the “negation of Diaspora” that played such a prominent role in Zionist movements elsewhere, and certainly in the thinking of Israeli leaders such as Ben Gurion.

Charles Liebman and Steven M. Cohen analyzed the gap in Jewish orientation and values in their book Two Worlds of Judaism (1990). Here, Judaism is located in the private sphere, there in the public sphere. Jewishness and Judaism are a matter of choice for American Jews. For Israelis, we might say, they come with the territory. American Jews seek universal values in our Judaism (“tikkun ‘olam”). Israelis seek validation of the Jewish distinctiveness they experience (and fight for) daily. Americans stress morality, Israelis the claims of history. I would add one more feature, expressed eloquently 60 years ago by Mordecai Kaplan when he wrote that Zionism needs to be re-imagined so as to secure a permanent place for Jews everywhere. American Jews want Israel to help us feel good about being Jewish as and where we are. The State and its citizens of course have other priorities.

Let me add quickly, lest there be misunderstanding, that a great deal unites North American and Israeli Jews—and, on the level of the larger-than-life story, that unity remains powerful. The “civil religion” of the Jewish people, the fact and creed that moves Jews deeply wherever they live, is “Am Yisrael Chai.” The Jewish people lives! Israel is the embodiment of that life, the most visible, effective, creative, influential, and dynamic Jewish collective that has existed in the world for two millennia. We in North America are blessed beyond measure that we get to be alive at the same time and to participate in its life to whatever extent we choose. Many Jews—largely but not exclusively Orthodox or leaders, lay and professional—take advantage of these opportunities. Millions more are stirred by Israel, proud of its accomplishment, heartsick that it has no peace. I hear testimony of love for Israel wherever I travel on this continent. There are ample signs of connection between the two communities, and in some sectors—e.g., Birthright—these connections are expanding. So the forum at AJC, and my remarks there and here, are not intended to portray the richness of the relationship but to focus in on its problematic aspect and what could be improved.

I think the problem has grown more intractable of late, exacerbating all the factors named above. Add to the mix a sense of hopelessness about the chance of peace anytime soon, which leads those weakly attached to withdraw (and, I think, helps account for the vitriol of much Jewish debate over Israel; the sad fact is that honest conversation has vanished from many of our synagogues and Federations, and even from many of our living rooms). Steven Cohen and Ari Kelman have pointed to another factor of major importance: “mixed married Jews score far lower than in-married or non-married Jews on scale of Israel attachment.”

So the current picture looks like this. Len Saxe and his team of sociologists report that they asked a representative sample of American Jews, “To what extent do you feel a connection to Israel?” Only a third answered, “very much.” 23% said “a little.” 14% said “not at all.” The rest said “somewhat.”

For young Jews the gap is wider still. Cohen and Kelman found that almost 40% of those 65 and older show high attachment, and about 30% of those 50–64 do so. Among those under 50, the figure falls to about 20%, and among those under 35, the percent showing “low attachment” rises to over 40%.

What to do? The major causes of distancing, if I am right, go a lot deeper than Haredi extremism or government policy on settlements, though these do exacerbate matters and, for some, confirm the tendency to distance that would have operated in any case. We need to reverse those dynamics in a big way, with the kind of major (and expensive) effort that Birthright represents. Distancing can only be overcome outside of Orthodox and leadership circles when many more Jews outside Israel are persuaded to embrace their Jewishness, including the substantial element of distinctive religion or culture that we call Judaism. Distance from Israel would decline if more Jews married Jews—or more mixed-married Jews and their spouses engaged in some of the following activities.

We need to address widespread ignorance of Israel on this side of the divide. We need to match the larger-than-life “myth” of Israel with images and facts of what the place, the society, the culture, are actually like as well as the facts of Israeli history and Zionism. A “birthright” program for adults would have huge impact, and follow-up programs for all ages would likewise change the picture dramatically.

We need more extensive opportunities for Jews to work together across geographic boundaries, whether initiatives like Partnership 2000 or volunteer programs for young people. Here and there, at every level, Jews are engaged in the twin tasks of building new sorts of Jewish communities without precedent in our history and revitalizing Judaism by developing forms that our ancestors could barely have imagined (including forms of Orthodoxy suited to a sovereign state and an open Diaspora society). Lay and professional leaders in particular need to study Israel up front and in depth—and learn how to transmit the knowledge and passion they have acquired to their communities. American Jewish young people put off by this or that faction or policy can be teamed with Israeli young people who share their commitments and are working on the ground—with much more at stake—to move Israel in the right direction.

None of this will work unless Israelis, too, accept the importance of the undertaking and labor to build their side of the bridge.

I’ve written about this matter from the perspective of Conservative Judaism and JTS in the latest issue of the movement magazine, CJ: Voices of Conservative/Masorti Judaism. Future blog posts will carry forward the discussion of what needs doing and detail what JTS has been doing lately to address the issue and will be doing in the future. Clear thinking and resolute action on this matter can make an enormous difference. The AJC has my thanks for focusing attention on it again and again—and celebrating the progress that has been made.

Now that the Israeli government has wisely (but, so far, only partially) withdrawn from its website the videos meant to discourage Israelis from settling in America, marrying Americans (Jewish or Gentile), and ending up with children who can’t tell the difference between Hanukkah and Christmas, American Jews too should step back from the skirmish and coolly appraise just what the flap was about.

One thing it was not: a misunderstanding. For as long as there has been a modern Zionist movement, “negation of Diaspora” has been a leading theme in its ideological arsenal. It has never been enough for Zionists to proclaim the virtues of life in Israel. Rather, from Theodor Herzl onwards, theorists of Jewish national return have argued (at times with great cogency) that the only fate awaiting Jews in the golah was assimilation or anti-Semitism or a combination of both these evils. Golah was often translated not with the neutral term “Diaspora” but the pejorative term “exile.” Zionists, we might say, consistently sought both to “accentuate the positive” (Land and Statehood) and to “eliminate the negative” (exile and Diaspora), compensating for perceived weaknesses in the positive arguments for life in the Land of Israel with heightened emphasis on the negatives of life outside the Land.

A. B. Yehoshua carried on this tradition proudly several years ago when, addressing the 100th anniversary banquet of the American Jewish Committee, he told his hosts that of course the Diaspora they were celebrating has no future. Shimon Peres’s extraordinary new biography of David Ben-Gurion casually refers to the latter’s conviction that return to Zion would enable Jews to transcend their “long and sterile years of Diaspora” and enable a new Jewish worker to escape from the “spiritual poverty” of the old. The great historian Gershom Scholem, critical of Ben-Gurion on many counts, famously shared his belief that American Jews were self-deceived about our ability to avoid the tragic fate of previous exilic centers. Hillel Halkin’s book, Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist’s Polemic, eloquently made the same case in the 1970s, with special reference to the self-deceptions practiced at The Jewish Theological Seminary.

And now we have the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption—whose job it is to persuade Jews outside Israel to “go up” to the Land and to convince Israelis not to “go down” to the Diaspora or to remain there—not surprisingly drawing on this same tradition by summoning up the usual litany of horrors awaiting Jews in the Diaspora. One is still less surprised by the tactic when one recalls that the ministry is controlled by the secular, right-wing party of Israel’s foreign minister. Religious Zionists have to give Diaspora Jews credit for religious belief and practice, and can tout the religious virtues or commandments tied up with aliyah to Israel. Secular Zionists can do neither—and have historically been the most vociferous critics of Diaspora life. Consider the way things look from the point of view of the ads’ sponsors. “Bad enough to be born in America and put up with it, seduced by the material comforts, blind to the assimilation or worse that awaits you. But why give up ge’ulah (redemption) and settle in—settle for—galut (exile)? Why would any right-minded Israeli citizen want to do that?” The ads are meant to recall Israelis currently living in North America to their senses as well as their home country.

The question that surfaced in Israeli newspapers after the A. B. Yehoshua incident was whether he was wrong in his denunciation of the American Diaspora or simply impolite in stating the matter as and where he did. Israelis disagreed on this point. I think that the recent ad campaign raises this question anew—as well as a related issue: can there be Zionism without negation of Diaspora? And should there be?

Let’s face it: there is a lot of truth in the Zionist claim that Jewish life in the Diaspora is still plagued by the twin evils of anti-Semitism and assimilation. Anti-Semitism has resurfaced with a vengeance almost everywhere in the world in recent years, assisted by Muslim propaganda and left-wing attacks on the legitimacy of Israel. Assimilation is proceeding apace in North America, and the organized community has as yet found no way to arrest its spread. We can and should face up to these threats to Jewish life without flinching. It’s good to have Israelis remind us of facts we’d sometimes rather forget. We should do the same for them.

That’s why we should get out the word to Israelis and North American Jews alike that Jewish life in the United States and Canada can be rich, satisfying, joyful, and deeply meaningful; that Jewish communities on this continent are flourishing in numerous places and in numerous ways; that living as a partner to the age-old Sinai covenant in these most blessed of Diasporas is truly a gift—not least because Jews in North America also have the chance to participate in the amazing project of renewed Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. Jewish leaders on this side of the ocean have long tolerated with affection (if also with irritation) Israeli denunciations of our community and our convictions. We have made allowances for remarks that we would never accept from the leader of one Diaspora community speaking about another. We roll our eyes knowingly and think nothing of it when Israelis so totally ignorant of Judaism that they make fools of themselves when visiting a synagogue have no hesitation in lecturing us about what it means to be a Jew. And—most serious of all—we quietly forgive Israelis who live under constant threat of terrorist attacks, missiles, and (soon, perhaps) Iranian nukes for telling us how insecure the American Jewish future is.

I treasure honest conversation with Israelis; all of us can only benefit from greater partnership with Israelis in building various sorts of Jewish communities and revitalizing Jewish tradition in a whole host of ways. It would be great if we could use the occasion of the ad campaign to promote frank discussion between Israeli Jews and the American Jews who love them and their country in a spirit of constructive criticism, Jew to Jew, community to community. Let’s debate the virtues and liabilities of our disparate paths “for the sake of Heaven”—and we may well find that our disagreement draws us closer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP3gJN_YScM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glQDf8vXvkQ&feature=related

My posting about the visit I made to West Point in early November garnered a lot of response—and two comments in particular got me thinking more about the points I had raised.

The first, from Kenneth Katz, made the valid point that “there is in fact plenty of interaction between civilians and the military in our country these days, just not in the social and professional circles you inhabit.” True. As it happens, the Pew Research Center came out with a report on November 23 entitled, “The Military-Civilian Gap: Fewer Family Connections.” It turns out that “a smaller share of Americans currently serve in the US Armed Forces than at any point since the peace-time era” between the world wars, meaning that “the connections between military personnel and the broader civilian population appear to be growing more distant.” What is more, “Americans who have family connections to the military have different views from those who don’t on a range of topics related to patriotism, the military and national security.” My cousin served, and was wounded, in Vietnam. That may be why I am sensitized to the gap to which I pointed in the blog post and which Pew probed in its study. I don’t know what it will take to bridge the gap—but awareness is a start. Look for programming and curriculum at JTS along the lines of the useful ideas suggested on this blog in the last couple weeks.

The second comment that grabbed my attention was the post by Gary Goldberg, a physician working in the polytrauma rehab program of the VA. He talked about the long-term spiritual and psychological impact of war and guiding recovery from war-related injuries beyond physical wounding, “as much a spiritual concern as a medical one.” Goldberg concludes with a direct challenge to those of us who head religious institutions and training programs: we “need to be deeply sensitized to these important needs” so as to motivate and prepare individuals who will address them. By chance, I read his comment while at Harvard, where I had spent a fascinating day talking to various university faculty and administrators about the teaching of religion at Harvard—and, by extension, elsewhere. One of our conversation partners, a noted physician-anthropologist, eloquently made the point that issues of purpose in life, meaning, spirit, soul, find their way into the medical school and hospital primarily when varieties of what we called “religionists” bring it through the door. What he was saying went beyond the need for hospital chaplains and intellectual cross-pollination. He was getting at something broader: the trouble many people in our society have in discussing religious and spiritual matters outside of church or synagogue, in a way that crosses the so-called “religious-secular” divide. I am not a big fan of that divide. I think it misrepresents the nature of human beings, who search, mourn, go deep, ward off death, treasure moments of insight often linked to pain or crisis, find courage to love and believe, et cetera, et cetera—all part of a world I would not call “secular” or limit to “religion.”

That’s what I found so appealing about the military chaplaincy, in part: the dedication to “being present” for soldiers of all faiths or none, serving those who serve without regard to denomination or creed, finding a language that can be heard by those who need to hear it, doing it sensitively—skills that are connected to those that Gary Goldberg urges us to employ. I think those of us who train religious leaders have a responsibility to help them draw on their learning, passion, and care for broader communities than the synagogues or organizations or schools that employ them. Judaism has something to say to the world, and to learn from it. “The process of rehabilitation and re-integration” that wounded veterans need is cognate with other wounds that need healing. It may begin with a language of faith that reaches beyond what we normally associate with “faith” and “religion”—even while reaching deep into resources that faith and religion make uniquely available.