This is not the moment for full-scale evaluation of David Hartman’s legacy. That will come in time. Today, we are still too close to the man and to the shock of his death. But I do want to reflect briefly on why David was, and will always remain, so important to me and to many others.

One factor is the sheer power and force of his mind. David was a brilliant thinker. Ideas flashed through his brain so fast that he did not always have time to process them before sharing them with the rest of us, and we, his students, did not have the time to consider them before straining to keep up with the next insight David presented. He was famous for speaking in two or more languages simultaneously and not finishing sentences in either of them. I first encountered this as a graduate student in the 1970s at Hebrew University, where I had the good fortune to take a course on the halakhic and philosophical issues surrounding the concepts Children of Noah and ger v’toshav (resident alien). It helped me a lot that a Hartman class, though officially conducted in Hebrew, always featured a good measure of English. It helped me even more that I, who had come to Israel both for academic reasons and to deepen my relationship as a Jew with Judaism and with Israel, had a teacher who embodied those commitments. Talmud and Maimonides, for David Hartman, were not subjects in a curriculum, but challenging guides for individual and collective Jewish lives. Never was a teacher more passionate. Few could command the material as David Hartman could—and command his students by means of the material. He made it speak to their hearts and souls as much as to their minds. David took me aside more than once that year for conversation, and then never stopped taking me aside. He did this for countless people. Our devotion to Judaism and Israel are inseparable from our relationship to him.

That is so, in large part, because of David Hartman’s message. Just look at the titles of several works in English, so expressive of the man and what he stood for. In 1978, he published Joy and Responsibility: Israel, Modernity and the Renewal of Judaism. Every single article in that collection both teaches and preaches. The learning is marshaled to the cause of moving the reader to accept the challenge of making Judaism come alive in a sovereign State of Israel and a Diaspora where almost every door is opened before Jews. He envisioned halakhah not as a set of dos and don’ts, but as the “ground for creating a shared spiritual language.” He warned of the tensions between “Sinai and Messianism,” a matter of great urgency, given the rise of Gush Emunim. He wrote about and personified “The Joy of the Torah.” The closest thing to a Hartman magnum opus is perhaps A Living Covenant (1985), which bore the Hartmanian subtitle The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism. Once again, Hartman exposited halakhah in a fresh, dynamic way, drawing upon his teacher, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, but applying his methods—and applying them to Israel—in ways that the Rav had not done. The book is deep, honest, piercing. It wrestles as much as it asserts. That is all the more true in two more recent collections: A Heart of Many Rooms: Celebrating the Many Voices Within Judaism (1999; the title says it all, I think) and The God Who Hates Lies: Confronting and Rethinking Jewish Tradition (2011), as direct and powerful a dose of Hartman as one could hope for.

I conclude with a final aspect of the gift that was David Hartman, one I will try to capture with two reminiscences. The first is Hartman on stage before thousands at a General Assembly of the Federations in the 1980s or early ’90s. He stood far away, on a dais, yet touched people as much during the lecture as he did before and after when he moved through the crowd and literally put his hands on hundreds of shoulders. The glasses came off and on, the talk was punctuated with laughter and—it seemed—tears. I felt like the man on stage was talking to me personally and, from the faces all around me, I inferred that others too felt this way. How David Hartman did this again and again I do not know. I saw him reach people even more directly in smaller rooms of 50 or 100: same effect, same remarkable ability to move people and get their minds working at the very same moment.

And this was the David Hartman that we got to know one on one, and to whom I last spoke in his living room this past November: the man who not only loved the Jewish People in general, wished so much for it, was so frustrated at what it could achieve but failed to achieve, but who also loved individual members of the Jewish People (and many others too). David always wanted the most from the people he befriended—demanded it by urging them on—and gave us the charge to give all we could to the task, lest we fail those who count on us and fail ourselves. I was not privy to the medical details of David Hartman’s illnesses in his final years (though I did hear enough to get me worrying about his survival), but I do know that he was a man who just did not hold back. He threw everything he had into the projects he built in Israel (often in the face of concerted opposition from Orthodox authorities), just as he threw himself into every class, every speech, every conversation. He was larger than life because he poured all of his substantial gifts—his nefesh, his life force—into being David Hartman.

May his family and all who mourn him find comfort among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem, on both of which he has left a substantial mark. May all of us who care about the life of the Jewish People, and the vitality of Torah, strive to do our best for those causes, and so not let David down.

Rituals like Hanukkah are wonderfully simple in their directives. That’s the beauty of ritual. Say the prayers, light the candles, put them in the window, and you’re done. We treasure ritual in part because we have the chance to get it right—unlike life, which is so complex that we sometimes feel hopeless about the chance of getting anything right. Can we figure out how to keep guns out of the hands of individuals who cannot be trusted to use them properly? Can we get troubled minds and souls the care they need? Can we cure ourselves—especially, it seems, our young men—of the violent streak that, according to the Torah, is as old as humanity itself? Questions are many, and it’s difficult to sort through the answers proposed.

It’s clear to me that we can’t protect ourselves and our children from every danger and expect them to grow into independent adults. It is also clear, however, that we must do something—obligation is heavy in the face of murdered children—and are prohibited from throwing up our hands in the face of the task’s enormity. Moses, facing his own imminent death, tells the Israelites that he has set before them life and death, blessing and curse, good and evil—and commands them to choose life. I believe that Moses knew that such choices are often the very opposite of simple—and yet his Torah commands us to make them, and Jews have struggled to do so for many centuries.

Ours is a tradition that has always prized life, valued every single life, taught that if we save a single life it is as if we save the whole world. We need to figure out, as individuals and communities, how to do so in each individual circumstance. We will not find definitive answers to tragedies like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School, much less to the profound questions of morality, social policy, and even theology (“where was God?!”) that it provokes. But we know too, as truly as we know anything, that saving one soul makes infinite difference.

I offer three suggestions—three imperatives for communal and social policy—that seem to me to emerge from the Torah.

First, let us redouble our efforts to perform the two actions at the very heart of our tradition: building strong face-to-face communities and filling them with Meaning to live by. Community has the ability to hold us tight in the face of suffering. It overcomes the isolation that is often one of the ingredients that leads to violence. Meaning with a capital M sustains us when heartache seems too great to bear. It has proven capacity to ward off despair. We should extend these gifts to one another without stint in coming weeks. There is no better way to heal broken souls than to gather them together in bonds of solidarity and reach out to them with ageless Truth and wisdom. Let’s offer testimony in word and deed that one choose good, choose blessing, choose life.

Second, let’s do the hard work on social policy that will allow us to figure out how to take guns—and especially assault weapons—from those who should not have them. I believe, along with President Obama and many individuals from across the country and the political spectrum,  that we as a society can find a way to respect the proper use and possession of firearms for hunting and defense and still make it harder for individuals with a history of violence or mental illness to get hold of them. Jewish tradition requires us to secure the conditions that allow for proper functioning of society, and the American Constitution too orders us to “provide for the common defence and promote the general Welfare.” Weapons laws should not remain a matter of right vs. left, urban vs. rural, Republican vs. Democrat. Honest national conversation on this matter at this time stands a good chance of leading to an outcome that saves lives.

Third, let’s provide treatment for those whose vulnerability in mind or soul makes them more prone to violence. I know that our understanding of mental illness is woefully incomplete. I recognize that our resources are too few to care for everyone who needs medical care for body, mind, or soul. I certainly do not mean to imply that every violent crime results from illness or neglect. Our sages teach that there is evil in the world that we need to punish and from which we need to protect ourselves. They also instruct us that the matter is not simple. That said, it does seem that in case after tragic case in America of late, signs of severe disturbance have been ignored and cries for help have been ignored.

I don’t think that the Torah has an answer to the question of “where God was” at that school that day in Connecticut. But it does suggest directions for human answers to such tragedies, and commands us to work at finding and implementing them the best we can. Action of this sort is its own comfort at moments like this one. We owe it to the kids who perished and to those who are back at school.

At Eshel Avraham in Beersheba (left to right): Dr. Ehud Zmora, Dr. Irit Zmora, Rabbi Mauricio Balter, Chancellor Arnold Eisen, Yizhar Hess, and Executive Vice Chancellor Marc Gary

I am leaving Israel for America in a few hours, along with JTS Executive Vice Chancellor Marc Gary. We have spent the day visiting Masorti communities around the country, including Masorti Congregation Eshel Avraham in  Beersheba, capping a week that for me included the usual round of JTS meetings and time with old friends, but now against the background of Israel at war. I feel relief to be heading home later this evening, but also strong regret at no longer being a direct part of what is happening to my people in the Land of Israel at a time of trouble. I am full of admiration for the discipline, confidence, and good spirit with which Israelis are handling the latest matsav to come their way. Marc and I have not encountered much jingoism or bluster this week, just recognition that missiles must be stopped from raining down on Israel, and pervasive sadness that the suffering and casualties are mounting on both sides. When will it end? The news today is about continued exchanges of both fire and negotiators. Hillary Clinton is on her way to the region. It might be that on this, the seventh day of the current conflict, Hamas will agree to cease from the work of destruction and permit an interval of rest. Like many Israelis, I am hopeful. But like all we have met, I do not count on it.

On the drive to  Beersheba, we get instructions from our Eshel Avraham host, Rabbi Mauricio Balter, president of the Rabbinical Assembly of Israel, about what to do in the event of an air-raid siren. Park the car, and run to the nearest structure to take cover. If on the open road, lay flat on the ground with hands over head to protect from shrapnel. We get to  Beersheba not long after a missile had penetrated the Iron Dome, mercifully with no loss of life. We would learn a couple of hours later that another rocket had landed not long after our departure.

The news on the car radio features interruptions every few moments announcing where in Israel the sirens are sounding. One announcer reminds us to follow instructions, and assures us that with God’s help all will be well. Even sober newscasters, reporting missiles that fail to injure life or limb, add the words todah la-el (thank God). This is Israel at a moment when the normal boundaries between dati and hiloni are meaningless. Schools have been closed in  Beersheba all week. Stores are closed. The streets are eerily empty of pedestrians, there is almost no traffic, and inside shuttered homes parents are comforting children and one another, making sure TV or radio are playing loud enough to keep track of what is going on elsewhere in Israel—but not so loud as to muffle the sirens. Sixty seconds only to reach a safe room. Mauricio himself had a narrow escape several days ago, crouching under cover of a truck as the rocket soared straight overhead. It’s a serious time for the people of Israel.

Respite at Eshel Avraham

Marc and I made this trip to be with Mauricio, to stand with him physically, so he would not doubt the fact that Israeli Jews do not stand alone. The hug he gave me—and I gave him—carried more than the usual message. He thanked us for being there. I thanked him for being there, and not just for a visit. Two American Jews, accompanied by the head of the Masorti Movement in Israel, Yizhar Hess, reinforced the conviction among the members of Mauricio’s family and his congregation that there really is a Jewish People out there and a Conservative Movement that cares for them. One by one, they tell us the stories of being under fire, having children and grandchildren under fire, comforting teenagers who seem to be taking things especially hard. A bar mitzvah is cancelled because of the matsav. A mourner is denied a shi’vah minyan. A vibrant synagogue that normally teems with life is empty. It was not a time for speeches, but for presence. Marc and I were proud to bring the JTS family with us to the Eshel Avraham family. Later, we went with Mauricio and two members of his congregation to a hotline-shelter in which they are volunteering—a center that is getting far more calls than usual, most of them the direct result of the conflict. Post-traumatic stress. Difficulty coping with kids who cannot leave the house for a week. There, too, we did not give speeches, but simply thanked the staff, composed largely of volunteers, for their hard work. They thanked us for coming. At normal times the exchange would count as pleasantries. Not this time.

In Kfar Saba, our next stop, the street outside the Masorti congregation of Hod Ve-Hadar is bustling. Kids boarding busses from school. Stores open. Not quite normal, since everyone has family in a place of danger. Sirens again today in Jerusalem and no doubt soon in Tel Aviv. But not the same as in the south. Two weeks ago, there were two Manhattans, north and south, and now there seem to be two Israels, north and south. I finish this letter at Kibbutz Hannaton in the Galilee, where the quiet at sunset is truly remarkable. “Desert to mountains in one day,” says Yizhar. War zone to quasi-normality. Except that the radio and TV take one live to the front. It is a small country. I get the sense that Israelis are hopeful something will soon change in the rhythm of the conflict, but they don’t know what, and are not really sure what to hope for.It has been quite a week. Here is a brief day-to-day account:

Marc and I arrived Tuesday, had a quiet dinner, and began taking in the pleasure of once again walking the streets of Jerusalem. I went to bed early to manage the jet lag and had a good night’s sleep. There would not be a lot of good sleep on this trip.

Wednesday begins with routine: meetings with JTS rabbinical students who are studying at the Schechter Institute for the year and with faculty and staff involved in JTS’s Schechter program. The day is like many others I have had in Israel since becoming chancellor. The streets and stones are as I remember them. The air is mild and fresh. A first hint that this trip will not be like all the others comes with a visit, in the evening, to friends who are worried about their grandsons doing army service or in reserve units already called up for duty in Gaza. The conflict has begun. TV and radio are providing nonstop coverage. My friends have been through this drill many times before. I can see they are beginning to steel themselves for what may come. To live in Israel is to bear with tension and come to terms with tragedy. There is no choice. Weeks like this one come with the territory.

At lunch with Donniel Hartman (president of Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute) on Thursday—day two of Operation Pillar of Cloud—we cannot but talk about his kids in the army, the risk of widespread loss of life, and the apparent lack of any prospect other than more operations like this one, year after year. We talk about army discipline and the obligations accepted by the IDF to minimize civilian casualties. Donniel tells us about conversations with IDF commanders about the ethics of warfare. I tell him about the conference I attended at Stanford last week, where I heard from a US Air Force officer sent by the Pentagon to investigate ethical lapses committed by American soldiers. Both armies can boast officers of exemplary thoughtfulness—and must deal with others who are callous. The IDF’s will be weighing the gains of targeted attacks from the air versus collateral injury to civilians a lot in coming days. Donniel, Marc, and I hope our soldiers will not also have to weigh the lives of Gaza civilians versus their own safety in the course of a ground invasion that takes them into urban areas. The prospect is chilling. No one is sure it can be avoided.

My friend Ari is more weighed down than usual when we meet. Every time I visit Israel, he and I sit over coffee or a meal. Our friendship began in 1975 when I was doing graduate work in Oxford and Ari was taking a break from Israel after the fighting in the Yom Kippur war. Each of us has decided to live in the country where we were born. I am worried this day about my son, because he is making a nine-hour drive, alone, from Ohio to Manhattan. Ari is worried about two sons, because they are in the army: one in an elite unit that might already be in Gaza, the other in an officer’s training course. He and I both study and teach Judaism. Our names are differentiated only by the n and e in mine. Ari has bet his life and that of his family on the future of Israel. I have done the same in America. We sit in that coffee shop and reflect on lives long joined together and set apart. Our friendship seems something of a parable of Israel and Diaspora.

Friday starts off with a meeting that our Israeli host has to leave early. He lost a son to war 20 years ago, and now the reserve unit in which another son serves has been called up. His wife is not taking the news calmly, he explains apologetically. We continue the meeting without him.

The air-raid siren that took Jerusalem by surprise Friday evening caught me on my walk to shul. I was not sure it actually was a siren, and had no idea what I was supposed to do. The young men playing ball to my left kept playing. The couples walking ahead of and behind me on the sidewalk continued walking. Cars did not stop. So I kept going too, and even paused to tie a shoelace. I arrived at shul just in time to see Kabbalat Shabbat interrupted by order of the police: any gathering of 80 or more (some said 100) had to disperse. No angels of peace were gathering around us this Shabbat—or perhaps they were, and caused the missile sent to Jerusalem from Gaza to fall harmlessly in a few pieces somewhere outside the city. The Iron Dome had done its job.

My Israeli friends told me at dinner that they had gone to the shelter in their building, only to find it locked. Now they had the key ready for the next time. No one expected a missile in Jerusalem. The TV news had been left on, and we watched a good long time before dinner. Split screen coverage of the major cities, with live sightings of Iron Dome interceptions of incoming rockets. Endless speculation by the commentators on the IDF’s achievements and options, the political calculations and ramifications, the likely course Hamas and Egypt will follow, the reactions of Obama and other world leaders. I go to sleep wondering whether I will get dressed if a siren sounds in the middle of the night or go down the hotel stairs in my pajamas.

Shabbat morning, the “egalitarian minyan” in the neighborhood of Baka, largely composed of young Israeli families, is missing men called up to Milu’im. The wife of one of them takes his place as gabbai. I am struck that the prayers for Israel and for the IDF are recited quickly and quietly with no special fanfare. Perhaps the woman leading prayers wants to will into existence a “routineness” that we all know is not there. An old friend is in shul. Rabbi Michael Graetz (rabbi emeritus of Congregation Magen Avraham) is in shul, visiting his son Tzvi in Jerusalem. “I am a refugee,” he says not entirely in jest. “I thought I would flee the war by coming north, but it followed me.” I can’t help but think—as we read in Parashat Toledot about Isaac’s negotiations with Avimelekh, the king of Gerar—that the story of our ancestor occurred in the neighborhood of present-day Gaza and perhaps even inside its borders. “Why have you come to me,” Isaac asks the king, “seeing as you hate me?” They reply that they see he is blessed, and want to make a deal to share in his good fortune. Hamas hates us too, but maybe they too will see advantage in making a deal. Some things never change for the Children of Israel in this Land.

Sunday, Marc and I travel to Tel Aviv for meetings, and a few minutes after we get off the freeway, the siren sounds. “What do we do?” we ask the driver. “Nothing,” he says, then: “If you want to get out, get out, take cover somewhere.” We do so—cover being the shadow made by a large truck parked at the curb. “What’s happening?” I ask someone. “Look up,” he points to the southern sky, and I follow the gaze of everyone around us to a white circular cloud that has just formed in the azure, trailed by the kind of white stream that jets leave behind.
“That’s it,” my informant says. “That’s the Iron Dome.” A Pillar of Cloud indeed. Within minutes life is back to normal. We drive away. Cafes are full. Shorts and sandals are as ubiquitous as the sunshine. Tel Aviv as per usual—except that, around 6:00 p.m., the sirens sound again. “This is new,” my friend Eilon says. “Two attacks in one day.” We leave our window-table in the café for the kitchen, where the customers and staff are gathering. This is the “safe area.” I comfort an old woman who tells us she is upset, her heart pounding. We urge her to sit, get her a glass of water. Then comes the boom, and that is that. Later, on the radio, we learn that Israelis should wait 10 full minutes after hearing the boom before returning to normality. Sometimes incoming missiles are sent in waves.

Eilon says his eight-year-old daughter is frightened by the air raids. Today, in school, the children had to move quickly to the shelter. Eilon and his wife made aliyah many years ago, and stayed. My wife and I made aliyah in 1984, stayed two years, and came home. Israel is not home for me—and yet it is not a foreign country either. These streets are mine somehow, the people on the streets belong to me, the history of the Jewish people happening at this moment in the Jewish State, where half of the world’s Jews are concentrated, is my history. I know this even at “normal” times, and certainly feel it keenly today.

“We each make a bet on history,” I reflect with Eilon before dinner, and I value the way Israeli friends like him are content with their life-choice as I am with mine. I yearn for a Zionism free of the need to “negate Diaspora,” and an American Judaism that holds the State of Israel and its people close. “I expected a lot of things when I came here,” says Eilon, “but not missiles being fired at Tel Aviv.” Neither of us sees a lot of options for Israel right now when it comes to long-term peace, though we wish the government would explore them anyway with as much imagination as it can muster. But that is for next week, not for now. Politics has nothing to do with the present moment, when incoming missiles are threatening Tel Aviv and several have done real damage in the south. Without the skill and resolve of the Israeli army, we could not sit in peace at Eilon’s dining room table. It is good that Amir Peretz pushed for the “Iron Dome” when he was minister of Defense (the city of Ashkelon honored him today), and it is good that America is backing Israel so resolutely, both militarily and politically. Jerusalem, tonight, is indeed a refuge. No sirens expected.

I spend Monday preparing for my talk in the evening at the JTS Schocken Library in Jerusalem, across the street from the prime minister’s residence. My host, Professor Shmuel Glick, director of the Schocken Institute, opens the evening with instructions about where to find shelter in the event of a siren, followed by a prayer for the soldiers of the IDF. I am speaking about relations between American Jewry and the Jews of Israel, on the basis of Torah and Covenant. But I, too, feel compelled to start out by stressing the solidarity Jews the world over feel right now (not all of them, some in the room stress in the Q&A period; true, I reply, but many more than you think). We recognize that the future of the Jewish people depends on what happens in the Jewish State, including what happens this week. The very meaning of my life is bound up in what Israel achieves, how it conducts itself, the new interpretation its facts on the ground contribute to the study and the practice of Torah. I love the place dearly, and feel the love acutely at this moment. The talk is in Hebrew because I want to address Israelis directly on this subject—and I am all the more thankful to be giving it here, now, in this language. A solidarity of speech, as it were.

I am thinking as I get ready to go to the airport about the first verse in this week’s Torah portion. Ya’akov departed  Beersheba for Haran, the other center of his extended family. Marc and I have left  Beersheba, and are en route via Kfar Saba and Hannaton to New York, the other center of my extended family, who treasure and carry on Ya’akov’s story. May we do so wisely, and in peace.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and JTS Chancellor Arnold Eisen

Children of Israel have not always been kind to their leaders. In last week’s parashah, Aaron and Miriam complain about Moses’s marriage and his unique relationship to God. This week, we read about the gloom-and-doom report of the spies that thwarts the plans laid by God and Moses for conquest of the Promised Land. Worst of all, perhaps, is the full-scale rebellion fomented thereafter by Moses’s cousin, Korah, and 250 of the tribal princes. “You have over-reached,” Korah tells Moses. “All the people are holy.” God has to intervene in every case—and in other cases too—to establish authority and restore order. Such tales are immediately recognizable to leaders of any sort in any age among any people. The Torah’s first lesson to prospective leaders seems to be that popularity and leadership rarely go hand in hand.

I’ve had numerous occasions to reflect on leadership in the past few weeks. The Commencement at The Jewish Theological Seminary sent 103 future lay and professional leaders out into the world bearing talent, idealism, and heartfelt hopes for their success. Several of the women recently ordained as rabbis by JTS have shared their concerns in this blog space about unequal working conditions, respect, and prospects. I have held dialogues about leadership with the governor of Michigan and the mayor of Chicago. Hebrew Union College President David Ellenson and I spent a moving evening in conversation with fourth-year rabbinical students from our two schools that have studied and acquired professional skills together over the past three years, thanks to a grant from the Schusterman Foundation. And, of course, I got to visit the White House on May 29 to speak with a president under siege from many quarters, including Jewish quarters. I thought of Bemidbar (In the Wilderness) and Moses at that moment—and wondered if the President did too.

This post introduces a series of blogs that will be devoted to the nature and dilemmas of Jewish leadership. My concern today is a pair of issues that come up all the time in the voluminous (and far from unanimous) literature on leadership, and bear special importance for Jewish leaders: (1) the need to have and display integrity (i.e., to know who you are, know what you stand for, and never to depart from those commitments), and (2) the difference and connection between management and leadership.

I will begin with the latter distinction, which happens to be the subject of a smart piece in the June 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review by Michael Watkins. The move from management to leadership, Watkins writes, requires “seven seismic shifts of perspective and responsibility,” most of which involve the move from small to big picture thinking, part to whole, short- to long-term planning, and the like. John Kotter takes a somewhat different approach to the distinction in his piece, “What Leaders Really Do,” originally published in 1990. Managers cope with complexity, order, and status quo consistency; leaders deal with change, uncertainty, the future. Managers plan and budget, leaders set direction and offer inspiration and vision. I find the manager/leader contrast extremely useful indeed. I have experienced it from the inside in my attempt over the past five years to change elements of the culture and direction of JTS. That task has challenged me to think long-term, keep the big picture in view, and do my best to motivate and inspire JTS’s diverse constituencies.

But something troubles me about the distinction, I confess. One can push it too far, put too much value on change, and fail to appreciate existing beliefs and practices. Rabbi Ami Hersh, a JTS alumnus and a winner in this year’s Jewish Futures Competition for innovative leaders, recently reminded me of this when he said, “Sometimes people feel that in order to be innovative and creative you need to be part of a startup . . . there are ways to do that within an established organization.” The great sociologist Max Weber put too much emphasis on change and ascribed too little value to continuity in his famous distinction (which bears a close family resemblance to the contrast between management and leadership) between two “ideal types” of authority. “Traditional”authority is identified by Weber with rote habit, conformity, and “the eternal yesterday.” “Charismatic” authority insists on going its own way in the face of the existing order and getting others to follow. “Here I stand,” declares the charismatic leader, “I can do no other.”

There is something “un-Jewish” about this dichotomy, I believe—no coincidence, given that it derives from Protestant polemics against Judaism and the Catholic Church. I call it un-Jewish because Israel’s prophets, kings, sages, tzadikim, and lay leaders—no matter how charismatic or innovative—never advocated rebellion against inherited belief, law, or ritual. Confronted with radical change in the conditions faced by observant Jews, our leaders sometimes pressed in one form or another for change in the ways that Jews served God and Torah. They also insisted upon faithful continuity in that service. Our prophets would never have come out in favor of “sovereign selves” who declare—as a matter of course—that they “can do no other,” obey no established order, submit to no text or history. We have, time and again, overhauled existing institutions and created new ones. But we are here to tell the tale, when other ancient civilizations are long gone, because our leaders respected continuity as well as change; short-term, small-picture, problem-solving management as well as long-term, big picture, posing-new-questions change.

Solomon Schechter, addressing the JTS graduates of 1912, declared that “humility and self-sacrifice” were the essential qualities of the rabbinate. He did not like the idea of Jewish leaders deciding whether they were bound to tradition, precisely because he himself, as the leader of Conservative Judaism, urged careful change in Jewish tradition. Leadership is about service, not about the leader. Change is never for its own sake, never a “positive” in contrast to a “negative” status quo, but rather an attempt—grounded firmly in past changes—that, like them, is aimed at preserving and strengthening tradition.

Jewish institutions and organizations today require a massive dose of change, to be sure. But they also depend upon established institutions that have known how and what to change (and not to change) over the course of many decades and, in some cases, many centuries. The balance between the two is everything. We need leader-managers and manager-leaders, serving communities—whether synagogues or schools, camps or Federations, youth groups or senior centers—that seek the proper balance between continuity of the status quo and constructive disruption of past practice. Jewish leaders must be schooled in the difference between what must be changed, in order to keep tradition vital or community compelling, and what must not change, lest all that we Jews stand for ebb away with the tide. This combination of skills is basic to Jewish leadership in our day—and has been true of Jewish leadership in many times and places. It requires not only humility and self-sacrifice, but great learning: knowledge of where Jews and Judaism have been and should be going.

The urgency and difficulty of striking that balance make integrity a crucial component of Jewish leadership. It’s not just a matter of authority (i.e., our desire to do the right thing as Jews and our need to trust that our leaders care about standing upright before God, Torah, and Israel). There is a practical requirement for integrity and honesty as well. Things are moving fast. The ground seems to be shifting under our feet. No institution or organization can carry on the way it has for many decades. In such a situation, we need leaders who do not choose direction by holding a finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing—the very definition of following, not of leading. (How do we know that Saul was a bad king? asks the Midrash. Because no one objected to his rule. He was very popular.) Nor can we put our trust in leaders who zigzag in response to circumstances, listing left and then listing right, drawing sometimes on this model from Jewish texts or history and sometimes on that model. A leader must come to the decisions that confront her armed with in-depth knowledge of Jewish texts, Jewish values, and the Jewish past. She must be a Jewish self, confident of who she is and where she stands.

Put another way: leaders must be predictable to themselves and to their followers. The rank and file members of Jewish communities and organizations must be able to take independent and creative initiative, knowing that their leaders will support them because they are walking further along the path the leaders have charted. The Midrash contrasts Noah, who “walked with God,” to Abraham, who “walked before God.” We want children, students, and followers, who, like Abraham, take our paths further than we could walk or imagine. Indeed, we want leaders who listen to and learn from followers, we want a shared process of mutual advancement rather than a top-down approach of wise-leader-dictating-to-submissive-followers. This, too, requires shared commitment: leaders with demonstrated loyalty to the normative agenda of the community. Jewish has to be more than an adjective describing the faith or ethnicity of the leader of a community. It must describe the cause we serve and the way we serve it.

The mayor of Chicago and the governor of Michigan belong to different political parties and exhibited very different body language and rhetorical styles when they spoke with me about leadership. They are active members of different religious groups. But both stressed pragmatism over ideology; compromise and conversation, rather than partisan fights to the finish; continuity as well as change. And both spoke about the need for integrity and truth-telling from political leaders and every other kind of leader. Jewish institutions need leaders and followers of similar commitment. Given where things stand with us in 2012, we really can do no other.

Chancellor Arnold Eisen at the White House

Today, I had the honor of sitting across the table from the President of the United States in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. President Barack Obama and his Chief of Staff, Jacob Lew, wanted to meet with Conservative Jewish leaders from around the country. Our group—which numbered about 20—wanted to hear them speak directly, and perhaps more candidly than is the case in public, about key issues on our minds.

It’s hard to judge how our hosts felt about the meeting, though it was clear we had their full attention and engagement from start to finish. We, for our part, were pleased with the fact of the meeting, with much of what was said, and with how it was said. There was no clowning, no cheap shots at political opponents, no pretense of easy answers to difficult questions, no demagoguery, not even much preaching to the choir. Speaking for myself, I wished I had the chance to talk regularly like this with the leaders of my country, at my dining room table or theirs. I got the sense that the President and his chief deputy would be open to every hard question I would throw at them—once we got to know each other better—would think about that question a lot, and would give good responses and reasons both when they agreed with me and when they did not. It was a worthwhile hour indeed.

The subjects discussed included Israel, Iran, the economy, immigration, the environment, the recent decision on same-sex marriage. I knew that my colleagues would be covering those issues, and knew too that Obama and Lew would use the meeting to cogently restate the administration’s enduring support for Israel and its position that Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. So I devoted my question to something else: the role and special responsibilities of religious leaders in America today.

The President himself had said a few words about this in his opening remarks, and I expected—based on his writings going back to The Audacity of Hope—that he’d have more to say on the subject this afternoon. I reminded him of his writing in that book that he would not let political opponent Alan Keyes claim a monopoly on the teachings of Christianity, which was his faith, too. I said that I had particularly identified with that concept, agreed with him that America remains a profoundly religious country, and asked if there were particular issues that passionate moderates like those in the room needed to emphasize in his view—stewardship of God’s Creation? Protection of human dignity? Tasks that we especially need to perform?

The ground rules of the meeting prohibit direct quotation, and I wanted to keep eye contact with the President rather than take notes on his response, but it is fair to summarize that he answered by stressing that sometimes process is no less important than outcome. Religious leaders need to stress the common good, and teach that we all need to be part of and serve the common weal and not just our own communities. He again stressed, clearly from the heart, the importance of religious communities making a difference in the lives of their members, and also in the lives of members of other groups and our country as a whole. Nothing I had not heard before. Nothing that surprised me—except that it was the old, inspiring Obama that one does not hear as much of on the campaign trail after three-plus years in office as in years past, when both he and the country seemed more prepared to confess idealism.

I did not get the sense that the President has given up on that agenda, or on the peace process, or on stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The picture of Teddy Roosevelt’s charging up the hill on one wall may give inspiration. So, too, may Franklin Roosevelt’s portrait on another: he won not just a second term, but a third, and a fourth. It was a good meeting for this President, I think, and for Conservative Jewish leaders. He clearly cares what the Jews of America think of him. This has to be a good thing for us and for Israel; I believe it is also a good thing for America.

I asked two of the women being ordained by The Rabbinical School of The Jewish Theological Seminary this year to reflect on their hopes and aspirations for—and anxieties about—their new careers in the rabbinate, and on how all of their goals and emotions are affected, in their view, by being women in a field still dominated by men. The reply immediately below is from Rabbi Abbi Sharofsky (RS ’12), who will be serving this coming year as chaplain resident at the VA New York Harbor Health System and completing a CPE residency.

Arnie Eisen

Dear Chancellor Eisen,

You asked if the role of a newly ordained rabbi entering the field is different for a woman than it is for a man. I wish that I could say no. I wish I could be viewed simply as “rabbi” and not as a “woman rabbi,” as if putting my gender in front of my title explains everything about who I am and the Torah I teach. I wish I didn’t have to prepare the answers to questions about managing my family and my job or worry that a specific piece of jewelry I may wear will cause people to think I’m not serious about my work. But do I wish to be the same kind of rabbi as my male colleagues? The answer to that is also no, because I don’t want to be the same rabbi or assume the same role as anyone other than myself.

Every rabbi is different, and not just in terms of gender. Two men vying for the same post as rabbi are going to bring very different life experiences, abilities, and understanding of Torah to the interview. We should not expect the role of the rabbi to be the same for men and women, because the role of the rabbi is unique to every rabbi. The process of finding jobs is truly a shidduch: a match made between a rabbi and a community that are meant to be together. If the rabbi is the right fit for the community, the rabbi’s age, gender, sexuality, family status, and so on won’t matter. The community—whether it is a congregation, school, hospital, or organization—will value that rabbi for who he or she is, not the role that the rabbi is expected to fill according to some long-established paradigm of what a rabbi should be.

I wish I could say that every rabbi is treated equally, respected, and valued for all that he or she brings to the field. However, women are still at a disadvantage at this point in time. Due to the relatively short history of women being ordained as rabbis in the Conservative Movement, and the limited access that women have had to some of the top jobs in our communities, the role of women in the rabbinate is unlike the role of men. It is different because we still need to wage internal battles over whether or not we officiate at conversions and other legal situations. It is different because we know that even though our communities may accept us, love us, and give us nothing but the deepest respect, we are not even counted in a minyan if we venture into more religious communities, let alone given rabbinic authority. The role of women in the rabbinate is shaped by these external forces. I wish that would change.

Abbi Sharofsky

Dear Rabbi Sharofsky,

Thanks for your candid reply to my question. Clearly, we have a long way to go when it comes to acceptance of women rabbis in the Conservative Movement (and beyond) and appreciation of the distinctive skill set that women bring to the rabbinate. I, myself, believe that gender matters enormously when it comes to that skill set. Without “essentializing” on gender grounds—that is, assuming that “all men” share attributes A,B, and C, and “all women” share attributes X, Y and Z—I’d say from observation that women rabbis as a group do bring some different experiences, sensibilities, and concerns to their rabbinates. This is as it should be. One question is how our communities can best take advantage of the opportunities that female leadership brings.

My colleague at JTS, Assistant Professor Emerita of Jewish Literature Anne Lapidus Lerner, points out one such opportunity in “The Impact of Feminism on Conservative Synagogues,” the essay she wrote for the 2008 anthology by Elyse Goldstein and Anita Diamant, New Jewish Feminism: Probing the Past, Forging the Future: “The importance of women clergy as accessible role models for women and girls in congregations cannot be overestimated.”

Steven M. Cohen and I discovered in the course of our research for our book, The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America, that role models make a tremendous difference to the choice for (or against) substantive Jewish commitment. I became chancellor of JTS in part because several of the most important influences on my own Jewish formation were male Conservative rabbis who taught and mentored me as a teenager. Several of the most important influences on my thinking about rabbis, synagogues, and Torah have been female rabbis and scholars whom I have known and been privileged to call friends as an adult. These men and women did not speak, teach, and act primarily as men or as women—I am not sure what that could mean—but neither was their gender incidental to who they were and the influence they exerted.

I don’t see how it can be otherwise, and would not want it to be. Judaism goes as deep as deep can be. Torah is lived heart, soul, and mind and speaks to heart, soul, and mind. God is conceived, encountered, and served with all that we are: sons or daughters; mothers or fathers; male or female friends to other men or women; husbands or wives; and, yes, beneficiaries of gender bias in the workplace or victims of that bias; objects, on the bimah, of differing transferences by congregants; teachers or counselors or leaders to whom people react differently because of gender, among other things.

An essay that has much influenced me, Max Weber’s “Scholarship as a Vocation,” recommends that we think about any vocation from the outside in; that is, that we start with what he called the “externals” of how one makes a living and advances in each given profession, and only afterward take up issues of meaning. I appreciate your answering my question about the externals that women rabbis face, Abbi, and appreciate, too, your wish that those particular externals were no longer significant enough for discussion. May the rewards you experience make up for the obstacles on the path.

Arnie Eisen

The following reply is from Rabbi Annie Lewis (RS ’12), who will serve as the new assistant rabbi of the Germantown Jewish Centre in Philadelphia.

Dear Chancellor Eisen,

Thank you for your thoughts on the unique perspectives that women bring to the rabbinate. I am glad to be part of this conversation with you and Abbi. When I encounter sacred texts authored by men through the lens of my experience as a woman, I come with a willingness to question and a thirst to imagine all the stories that might spring out from the silence. My ear is attuned to the voices on the margins, to the truths buried beneath the surface, and to the power of holy words to injure and to heal. In this way, my gender identity fuels and enlivens the way I study and transmit Torah.

On the cusp of ordination, I felt immense gratitude for a sense of connection to a community of women that spans time and space. At last week’s Tekes Hasmakhah, I wore a strand of pearls that belonged to my grandmother Ann, for whom I am named. She was an active member of her synagogue in the tiny town of Hamilton, Ohio. She cared passionately about Jewish continuity and the flourishing of her congregation. She died in 1964 and never knew a woman rabbi in her lifetime, but I have no doubt she would be pleased with the way things have changed. As I walked across the stage, I thought of the women of Ezrat Nashim who raised their voices at the Rabbinical Assembly Convention in 1972, advocating for full and equal participation for women in ritual life and leadership in the Conservative Movement. When I received my tallit, I remembered how Rabbi Karen Reiss Medwed invited me to a special oneg at Camp Ramah in the Poconos for girls and women who wore kippot, tallitot, and/or tefillin the summer after I became a bat mitzvah, and I carried the stories of the women who have come before me and who carved out the space for my colleagues and me to become teachers of Torah.

I am grateful for the courage of the women and men who spoke out for the inclusion of women in rabbinic leadership, who wrestled with the tradition and found openings for change. I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to carry on their legacy, to continue to push for more just and egalitarian institutions in my rabbinate, both in terms of ritual life and in terms of the “externals” of how clergy make a living and the ways in which we are able to sustain ourselves and our families. As a woman rabbi, blessed to be a Jew in America in 2012, I feel called to continue to work for a Movement that is fully inclusive of Jews of different sexual orientations and gender identities.

Stepping into the title “Rabbi,” I pray that the women of our class, with our different voices and visions, will continue to weave a tapestry of deep and supportive relationships; that we will speak our truths with confidence; that we will dream big.

Bivracha,

Annie Lewis

Dear Rabbi Lewis,

Amen!

What you are saying flows, in my mind, from Torah’s command to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind―all rather than a single part―which means that all of all of us is needed. Last week’s ordination and investiture ceremonies were, as always, very moving to me―in part because the new rabbis and cantors are bringing so much idealism to the task, and so much experience: law, business, childbearing, summer camp, coming out, Hillel work, studying Talmud, education and synagogue internships, service in the IDF, being an insider, being an outsider, more Talmud. The combination bodes well for the future of Judaism, and particularly for Conservative Judaism.

I trust that both you and Abbi Sharofsky are ready for the hard labor that awaits all women and men who want to serve Torah and the Jewish community. I hope we can meet a decade from now and look back contentedly on what has been accomplished.

Arnie Eisen

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.