Category: 2016 Cohort

Lawrence Yermack

2016 Cohort, Lawrence Yermack 0 Comments

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It’s probably best to preface these remarks with a brief statement of how I came to Jewish Spirituality because that will help to explain why I agree that the four concepts presented in the book quite accurately depict the aspirational side of today’s Jewish community. We will only succeed if we meet those aspirations with appropriate programming.

I was raised in a tribally Jewish family with only the most passing acceptance of Jewish customs and no interest at all in law. I have my own long personal journey from youthful indiscretion to responsible adult. On the long road to Judaism what was key for me was learning mindfulness meditation and getting connected to The Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS). It is in that context that the four principals hit close to my soul.

It is worth noting that my personal mindfulness practice made all the rest of this work possible so we ought to consider how paying attention is a pre-condition for any of this work being truly meaningful and long lasting. I see meditation and paying attention as a key practice that we need to teach to create the other pillars. The Institute sees Jewish spirituality in at least five dimensions: prayer, text study, embodied practice, meditation and Mussar. Already we can see the overlap. My sense is that this work is well aligned with three out of four of the themes outlined by Sid in Jewish Megatrends with a significant relationship to the fourth as well.

Chochmah: Wisdom of our sacred texts

For me the entry point was always text based but until I got involved with IJS it was mostly weekly Torah study. More recently it has been modern translations of the Chassidic masters. Art Green and Jonathan Slater to name just two have brought to the non-Hebrew reading world the wisdom of these great teachers.

Art writes beautifully about the vertical God that we grew up with and the horizontal God that we learn about from these texts. Everything is God. There is nothing beside God- Ein Od. In an odd way this is more consistent or at least not conflicting with much of the learning that my generation has derived from Eastern religions especially Buddhism. There is an opportunity here to broaden our reach. These are the teachings that I use in my weekly meditation group and these are the texts that we study with our Rabbi.

Tzedek: Social Justice

This is very important to my community but not a major focus of my personal practice. I was more politically active when I was younger.

However the work is reflected in compassion practices. A key Jewish spiritual practice is the blessings practice, which is quite similar to the Buddhist meta-meditation. The work is to develop feelings of compassion for others and to let those feelings guide actions. From a spiritual perspective the work is non-prescriptive. You need to figure out for yourself if you want to take action in the world and if so, what that action is.

Kehillah: Community

This is what brought me to the NPSCI Consultation. We (myself and rabbi Chai Levy) have spent the first two years at the Center for Jewish Spirituality at Congregation Kol Shofar developing our programming. We now have weekly meditation and regular alternative Shabbat services and periodic Kabbalat Shabbat. We brought in “name” guest speakers and have long had a very popular Musical Meditation High Holidays. The goal for this year was to move folks from the idea that “I go to that” to the sense that “I belong to that”: to create a sense of community. I would say that we have been moderately successful so far. However if that is what our participants want, how do we get there? These are open questions for me.

Kedusha: Lives of Sacred Purpose-holiness transcendent meaning

I believe this to be true but also very difficult to discuss with others. Let’s face it, talking about belief in God, even in a synagogue, is tough so infusing our lives with transcendent meaning is even more of a challenge. On the other hand we can discuss and practice spiritual activities that support this, perhaps unstated, goal.

In addition to members of the congregation we are trying to reach out to the Spiritual but not Religious (SBNR) Jews of Marin County. We think that there are thousands of them sort of waiting to tap into that side of their lives. The numbers suggest that there are 30,000 Jews in Marin and the total of affiliated is perhaps 5,000. How many of the others identify as Jews: have spiritual yearning but no interest in traditional services? We don’t really know.

The way we try to tap into the desire to live a life of sacred purpose is to offer spiritual practices. We incorporate meditation, chant, and non-siddur based prayer in our offerings. Our participation is encouraging: 25 at weekly meditation, 40 at monthly Shabbat services and overflow crowds of 500+ at High Holiday Musical Meditation. We have a base upon which to grow.

 

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Lawrence Yermack is on the Board of Directors as well as treasurer of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. He is the co-founder, along with Rabbi Chai Levy, of the Center for Jewish Spirituality at Congregation Kol Shofar, Tiburon Ca. The Center is seeking to create an intentional spiritual community in Marin County California using the modalities pioneered by IJS.

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Rob Weinberg

2016 Cohort, Rob Weinberg 0 Comments

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The work of the Experiment in Congregational Education (ECE), the nation’s first and longest lasting synagogue transformation project, aligns—to a greater or lesser extent— with all four propositions. How? ECE operates on multiple levels. At the p’shat level, our work is about transforming Jewish education including changing the Jewish learning goals, process, context, structures, and methods within congregational settings, i.e. re-imagining what Jewish education looks like and seeks to achieve. New educational models and practices are the product of what we do. At the remez level, the way we work to bring about transformational change with joint clergy/professional/lay teams, models and instills processes, skills and values of interaction, community building, innovation and change management, and Jewish leadership that often have profound and lasting effects on leaders and congregational cultures. This product/process dynamic is central to our work’s multi-layered impact on learners of all ages and on congregations as institutions. The work is not just about learning—the transformation process is also profound learning of a different kind.

Chochmah: At the heart of the ECE is a commitment to authentic encounter with our tradition through its sacred texts and finding relevance in those texts for our daily lives. Every ECE task force meeting in a congregation includes interactive text study, often in hevruta. We have seen the encounter with text—often among lay people with no prior personal experience of text study—as personally transforming and as a catalyst for organizational transformation. In the ECE, text study provides a Jewish context for organizational decision making, makes explicit the value of ongoing learning for adults as well as children, creates a clear connection between supporting Jewish education and participating in it, builds community through shared, reflective discussion (see kehillah below), and enhances familiarity and comfort with Jewish texts, a necessary tool for the Jewish journey. In ECE, every individual is able to access and study the tradition without over-reliance on experts or authorities.

This manner of infusing deliberation with text often informs a congregation’s vision and re-imagined models of Jewish education that ground experience and learning in our tradition through sacred texts.

Kehillah: Perhaps the second most powerful alignment in the ECE’s work is with kehillah. Over the years, we have focused considerable attention on community building and meaningful social connections as a critical part of both the educational process and the change process. Every ECE task force meeting in a congregation follows a six-part meeting structure, at least four parts of which build community and—by modeling—teach community building as a Jewish leadership practice. Every meeting begins with a Welcome, a small way to help each person feel their presence is recognized and their contribution matters. The welcome includes framing the meeting and its place in their overall journey; this helps task force members recall that they are engaged together in work that matters.

Connection, a second community building meeting strategy, enables members to learn about each other’s lives—more than just name, hometown, and family circumstances. By sharing personal memories, experiences, perspectives, and opinions about matters of importance to them and to the synagogue, task force members forge relationships with one another that enable them later to reach consensus and take necessary risk. As mentioned above, Text Study also becomes a vehicle for learning to appreciate how others think, which forges connections and prepares them to make the difficult and complex decisions they ultimately will face in the process of innovation and attendant change. Finally, Reflection near the close of the meeting allows the reflective conversation to happen in the room, in community rather than in the parking lot, taxi, or via phone or text. This forges a sense that healthy communities reflect together, not behind one another’s backs.

In one of our projects, Express Innovation, conducted jointly with The Jewish Education Project in NY, we highlighted social connections as one of the so-called change “boosters,” advising congregations to tap into social networks and expand relationships among participants in order to graft Jewish experiences into the narratives of their lives.

These all are aspects of ECE process; we also emphasize community and relationships in the content and product of our work. We have taught congregations that today Jewish education must go beyond knowledge acquisition to address the whole person—head (knowledge), hand (actions and practices), heart (beliefs and values), and feet (sense of belonging). One of four design principles for “Powerful Learning” asserts “Learning will be anchored in caring purposeful relationships.” Many congregations’ new models intentionally privilege educational experiences that foster caring, purposeful relationships as a way not only of strengthening the learning experience itself but also modeling the vital importance of community building in Jewish life. With The Jewish Education Project, we developed survey tools to measure the formation and growth of personal relationships in congregations’ new educational models.

Kedusha: From its inception in the early 1990s ECE has cultivated the sense among those who are re-imagining congregational education (and congregational life) that they are doing holy work. Our commentary on our mission speaks of creating communities of meaning in which what is being taught and learned is actively practiced. In such communities Jews live meaningful lives by: connecting to others and giving and receiving g’milut chasadim (acts of lovingkindness); structuring and sanctifying time through prayer, holy day, and life cycle observance; and deepening their understanding through substantive Jewish learning and grounding their practice in Jewish values and tradition. In practice, something as simple as saying a b’racha before text study reinforces that Jewish learning is necessarily more than an intellectual exercise.

Tzedek: Finally, although tzedek is not a central focus of our work, a number of the models that have emerged engage children and families in the work of tzedek and tikkun olam, such as Mitzvah Corp at Congregation Emanuel of NYC.

ECE’s primary focus is Jewish learning—which aligns with the chochmah proposition; we also work on a meta-level with congregations’ capacity to change, adapt, and innovate. The Jewish people have needed and displayed that skill set throughout our history. So-called legacy institutions including synagogues particularly need it now if they are to adapt to the realities articulated in the Schwarz chapter. The question remains whether “old paradigm” spiritual communities can shift their paradigms or whether they must be replaced by “new paradigm” ones that start from scratch. You can guess what we believe based on where we put our energy.

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Rob Weinberg, PhD is an independent consultant and coach. From 2001 through 2016 he served as Director of HUC-JIR’s Experiment in Congregational Education, prior to which he spent 18 years as an organizational change and effectiveness consultant with Hewitt Associates and the Carlson/Nathanson Group. Rob is the consultant to NPSCI’s Communities of Practice.

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Karla Van Praag

2016 Cohort, Karla Van Praag 0 Comments

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I believe that our work aligns with all four propositions.

Wisdom/Chochmah

There is a middle ground between giving people what they want and giving people what they need. Organizers, like rabbis and educators, need to meet people where they are if we want them to be responsive, but we can’t just encourage them to sit satisfied where they are, we have to help them move somewhere else.  This proposition encourages us to think deeply about how we bridge this gap thoughtfully. JOIN wants to share the wisdom of Jewish organizing: the texts, traditions, stories, old and modern history of Jewish leadership and change-making. Our traditional in-person training has limitations in terms of scalability and financial viability. We wanted to figure out a way to introduce these important Jewish frameworks to many more people in a way that fit into people’s busy lifestyles, and that is familiar to people not yet ready to jump into organizing, yet we didn’t want to sacrifice substance over style. We wanted it to be a commitment as well.

In September 2015, we launched a national online course called Don’t Kvetch, Organize! (DKO) that enabled the large-scale mobilization of Jews across the country to shift the cultural understanding around inequality and act for justice. In consultation with people experienced with online learning, we developed an innovative hybrid online/offline model that included asynchronous video learning, synchronous online learning sections (with in-person sections in LA, Philadelphia and DC), online discussion forums and weekly course assignments, and opportunities to participate in justice actions on the ground in participants’ communities. The work load was approximately three hours per week for seven weeks, and students were supported in small groups by experienced Course Instructors.

This online course has the potential to be a game changer for this field, opening new ways of understanding a faith-based model for social change that can be useful in a variety of other contexts and training and mobilizing leaders on a much larger scale than we have previously accomplished. One hundred and ninety-three people took the course the first time it was offered, almost half of them young adults under 35. We plan to provide two more rounds of DKO in 2016 and to train 1,000 leaders over the next two years with this program.

Social Justice/Tzedek

JOIN for Justice envisions a revitalized Jewish community that plays a powerful role in this country’s social justice struggles.  We train and mentor Jewish leaders, rabbis, and community organizers through our yearlong organizing fellowship program, our seminary leadership program, our Clergy Fellowship, online classes, and consulting work with organizations.

When we decided to expand our mission from our Jewish Organizing Fellowship to become JOIN for Justice, there was a vigorous debate by the board about whether the word “Justice” was required in our name. Couldn’t we just be the Jewish Organizing Institute and Network (JOIN)? Justice, in truth, is only a part of what we teach. Often in our leadership and synagogue training it is off in the distance, and not an explicit outcome, at least initially.

Yet the board and the organization decided it is crucial both to our mission and to our messaging to include the word Justice in our name. Justice is part of the vision people resonate with. Justice is what the methods we teach is moving towards, even if it is not explicit.

This quote from the book resonated tremendously with me: “Because next generation Jews more closely identify as covenantal Jews than as tribal Jews, the only way to reach them is to make sure that the Judaism they experience as youth reflects Judaism’s millennial commitment to tzedek, justice.” Young people come to our organization for the justice, and sometimes only reluctantly explore their Judaism. Our work is moving them from “despite being Jewish” to “because I am Jewish.” Without explicitly committing to it, we lose the opportunity to engage what is already intrinsic to who we are. Why not embrace that which can be claimed already?

Community/Kehillah

The definition of community has changed. Young people don’t think they need physical spaces to build community anymore; online communities seem sufficient. Yet when people have intensive experiences of physical community building, these communities can have lasting effects on their lives both in specific and how they engage going forward. In our Jewish Organizing Fellowship, Fellows spend a year working with secular and Jewish social justice organizations and receive high-level training in leadership and community organizing skills. At the same time, JOIN Fellows are engaged in intensive Jewish reflection and study which connects their passion to build a more just world with Jewish values. As a community, we focus on teaching the idea that community requires commitment. Our Fellows spend a significant amount of time learning about covenant as a concept, building one with each other, and then using it to hold each other accountable throughout the year. I would argue that the Jewish community will be stronger if we don’t just simply bring likeminded folks together for learning and fun, but that we include deep learning about how to listen and how to struggle when we disagree. These lessons will be transferable to future Jewish communities they are part of. They learn how to build relationships and see changing one’s community as part of the obligation to be part of a community.

Lives of Sacred Purpose/Kedushah

Sacred purpose is perhaps the least concrete and measurable outcome of relational organizing, yet it is its most meaningful. I believe it is the reason people “drink the Kool Aid” of our work, the reason people keep coming back. When people learn to relate to others, to hear their stories, to figure out their own stories, to figure out what they can actually do about it, what they are actually doing is finding meaning in their own lives, their sense of purpose. They discover the agency to do something about the problems they or others are experiencing. They do not feel alone. I have heard more than one person say that they first felt the presence of God in a one on one, a key organizing methodology.

Synagogues and their leadership must be radically transformed to understand how to engage people around the challenges of their lives. Listening to their congregants is key. We have the ability through teaching people to relate and act to help people navigate our current society’s malaise.

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Karla Van Praag is the second Executive Director of the Jewish Organizing Initiative, re-named JOIN for Justice in 2012. The organization trains thousands of Jewish leaders across the country in how to use community organizing to strengthen Jewish communities and create social justice. Karla holds a Master in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

 

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Rabbi Rachel Timoner

2016 Cohort, Rabbi Rachel Timoner 0 Comments

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When I was hired as the new senior rabbi of CBE in Brooklyn, I was asked by my board of trustees to write up my vision for the congregation. All four of the propositions in Rabbi Sid’s book, JewishMegatrends appeared in my vision.

In order to accomplish any of them, however, our first work must be to surprise people with Judaism. We are not starting from scratch. Many of our people have had negative experiences with synagogue life and Judaism, whether scarring or boring, and do not think we have what they are looking for. Even if we succeed at all four of these priorities, we will not reach them until we first surprise them by: a) finding them where they are; b) using creative media for our message: and c) juxtaposing Judaism with elements not associated with Judaism. Examples of this are bringing the architecture and design world into the sukkah, as was done with Sukkah City and as we did at CBE this fall; beginning a communal seder in the Egypt gallery of a major museum, as we’ll be doing this spring. There are endless possibilities here. Once we open minds with surprise, we must provide substance as described by the four propositions:

  • In school and university, our people are exposed to, and gain respect for, wisdom traditions from around the world. Our task is to help them think of themselves as inheritors of one of the greats among these traditions, and to engage in a deep translation project through which the chochmaof Judaism becomes both accessible and contextualized in relation to other traditions. This cannot be facile – we have already tried the pithy quotes approach. It must be related to the real, big human questions that our young people and adults are asking, and it must mirror the process of reflective inquiry our tradition models. At CBE we are re-thinking our entire K-12 and adult education system from this perspective, with the goal of offering our people their tradition as their own lens of wisdom through which to understand their lives and world. This is what it was always meant to be.
  • I believe that community organizing and the full array of social justice approaches, from direct service to advocacy, are the single most relevant and compelling means to engage the next generation of Jews in Judaism. And the blood of our brothers is crying out from the earth to us. The earth itself is crying out. This is the centerpiece of my rabbinate and of my life and always will be. What’s important here is not to bifurcate social justice and spirituality, and not to allow this work to be a secular activity that Jews do through their Jewish institutions, but to push ourselves to dig deep to embody the interrelations between the different forms of avodah, to pray with our feet, to consciously, explicitly live Torah through our action. I am working toward building a spectrum of entry points, from one time social service activities, to relationship building opportunities across lines of race, class, religion, and neighborhood, to sustained partnerships across those lines, to community organizing and advocacy campaigns in coalitions, to movement building for real, significant legislative and justice victories. In Reform CA, we did this work at the state level as a movement in coalition, winning the Trust Act, which now protects 1.5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, winning $1 billion in affordable housing, and winning new legislation requiring California’s police departments to keep detailed data about racial profiling. The work not only can make a significant difference in the world but also builds deep, trusting relationships.
  • Lo Tov Heyot HaAdam Levado– People are increasingly bereft of community. Millennials are the canaries in the coal mine, writing as they do about the isolating qualities of social media. We have what everyone needs – each other. Everything we do, from tefilla, to talmudTorah, to tzedek, is ultimately about relationships. Everything we do should be intentionally designed to deepen relationships of trust among our people. Community organizing is a powerful means to do this through storytelling in one to one settings. That mode can be brought into services, into classes, into committees. The ultimate test of our work is not how many Jews we have in our programs but whether, in good times and bad, those Jews show up for one another. Whether, beyond particular friendships and age cohorts, they feel they have a home with one another.
  • I returned to Judaism as an adult through a spiritual search that first brought me to Buddhism. Our people are disproportionately represented in that world. When our synagogues failed us, we looked elsewhere. It is time for our synagogues to provide for the spiritual needs of our people. This is where the deep translation work is perhaps most needed – to make the language and concepts of the siddurspeak to contemporary Jews, to adapt the mystical stream of our tradition to contemporary needs, to teach neo-Hasidut to those who have been seeking meaning, holiness and purpose in other traditions. This work must not be separated from tzedek or chochma or kehilla (relationship building). All four of these priorities must be viewed as fractals, all within each. The first class I’m teaching at CBE is “What is it to Pray?”, using the work of Mike Comins and Making Prayer Real. Given that services are the primary way our people interface with shul, we must figure out how to make services speak directly to the spiritual needs of our people, and we must give people a way into the experience of prayer as a spiritual practice. That’s step one. Some people will never want to pray from the siddur. My goal at CBE is to create a calendar of Shacharit, Mincha and Maariv every day of the week, with each one a different spiritual way in to Judaism. On Tuesday, Shacharit might be yoga and on Thursday Ma’ariv might be chanting nigunim. On Wednesday, Mincha might be study of Likutei Mohoran, and on Friday it might be meditation. Regardless, each will end with kaddish yatom, so that mourners will have a minyan. People can pick up the calendar as they would at a gym, and try new things each week or commit to a single regular group that they get to know better and better over time until it becomes their community.

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Rabbi Rachel Timoner is the senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where she’s interested in exploring the edge of what synagogue can be. She previously served as associate rabbi at Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles. Before that, she worked for fourteen years in social justice non-profits and as a consultant in organizational development and strategic planning.

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Ilana Sumka

2016 Cohort, Ilana Sumka 0 Comments

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In Rabbi Sid’s four propositions, I recognized many key elements of my own personal Jewish identity: a Dorot fellowship in Jerusalem & studies at Pardes (1/Chochmah), my work with American Jewish World Service (2/Tzedek), the Hadar minyan (3/Kehilah), a summer internship at Elat Chayyim (4/Kedusha) are just a few examples.   I name these to ground my experiences and background in the heart of this work before I step off the ledge, because the topic I’m going to address is controversial: Israel-Palestine.

Jewish activists who speak out regularly on the injustices of Israel’s discriminatory practices and nearly 50-year occupation are often brushed aside by the mainstream Jewish community. Whether or not these anti-occupation Jewish activists went to Pardes or attended Kehilat Hadar, they have an important voice and a legitimate place in Klal Yisrael.   As someone who has strong ties both to the American Jewish mainstream community that Rabbi Sid lays out, and to the Jewish anti-occupation and Palestine solidarity activism community, I feel a responsibility to play a bridging role.

I’d like to suggest that Israel-Palestine, with all its thorns and thistles and also its joys and moments of profound partnership across an otherwise huge divide, could be more directly and actively incorporated into a global analysis of Jewish Megatrends. I frame my comments through the lens of my specific work directing the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, but I think this analysis can be applied to other Jewish anti-occupation activist organizations that are often cut off from the Jewish institutional world.

Many elements of the work I do already overlap with points Rabbi Sid makes in this analysis. We focus our work on tzedek, and we incorporate elements of the other three arenas: together we study Jewish Nonviolence; we are in community together – both virtual community and in-person community; and we seek to embrace the holiness in our work in our relationships.

Perhaps surprisingly, we also have something in common when it comes to a shared critique of Birthright. Rabbi Sid asks, “might the largesse of the Jewish community in making the programs free come back to haunt us? … The next generation of Jews is learning by experience that someone else will pay them to ‘do Jewish.’ ”

As someone who works in the field of getting folks over to Israel – and to the Occupied Palestinian Territories – the “free trip to Israel” phenomenon that stems from the Birthright generation has turned into a plague. One of the first questions I receive from prospective participants on my program is: will my plane ticket be paid for? Regardless of our political positions, I doubt any of us who run Jewish nonprofits love spending our time raising money for plane tickets.

Rabbi Sid’s related point, that American Jews will pay for programming that they find meaningful, is also essential. To provide free plane tickets to Israel – and free programming and free Shabbat dinners – even to those who come from well-off backgrounds, only serves to entrench a system of entitlement rather than cultivate a sense of shared responsibility.

But this is another place where I find alignment in the analysis, though in a different way. Despite an entrenched culture of entitlement when it comes to Israel tickets, I am also finding that Jews from all different backgrounds are willing to come up with the money for a ticket to Israel to do something they deeply believe in: to join in the Israeli and Palestinian nonviolent movement to end the occupation.

Through online crowdfunding and hosting grassroots house parties, activists with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence are soliciting their friends and families to raise money for their own plane tickets to Israel, through $18 gifts at a time.

Rabbi Sid does acknowledge the role of Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and subsequent human rights violations, which is an important step. However, I see missing an acknowledgement of the historic and contemporary role that the State of Israel played and continues to play in the dispossession of Palestinians from their land, both inside Israel and in the occupied territories, and the subsequent response by thousands of Jewish activists to these injustices that are done in our name. Thousands of Jews – younger and older generations alike – are deeply concerned about the discriminatory practices and oppressive policies by the Israeli government against Palestinians.

As Rabbi Sid wrote, young Jews want to learn with and from people of other faiths: “They explore those faiths not because they want to convert, but because they refuse to live and learn in an intellectual and cultural ghetto.”

This desire to be exposed to others of different backgrounds is just as true and applicable for Jews who want to learn from, work alongside and stand in solidarity with Palestinians.   For many of us, it is precisely because we know that our collective people’s history – one that was life-saving for European Jews on many layers – was simultaneously devastating and utter catastrophe for another people. We’re not just working alongside Senegalese farmers for global economic justice or supporting Burmese refugees to advance rights of self-determination. We’re acknowledging the role and responsibility that our actions, as a Jewish people in the name of Israel, have had and continue to have on Palestinians.

We have an understanding of the inextricable interconnectedness between the Jewish people’s well-being and the Palestinian people’s well-being. We have a vision for the future based on values of tzedek and chochmah. We shine a light on the incongruence between American Jewish support for equality and democracy on one hand while also supporting Israel’s discriminatory practices on the other. And we shine this light for the sake of a just and peaceful future for all the inhabitants between the River and the Sea. For many of us, advancing justice and peace in Israel-Palestine is an essential component of our Jewish identity.

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Ilana Sumka is the founder and director of the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, cultivating a practice of creative Jewish Nonviolence in support of Palestinian and Israeli nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation. She previously served as Encounter’s Jerusalem director and has worked with American Jewish World Service, NY’s Working Families Party and SEIU 32BJ. She also teaches Jewish conversion classes in Brussels, Belgium.

 

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Rabba Kaya Stern-Kaufman

2016 Cohort, Rabba Kaya Stern-Kaufman 0 Comments

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The philosophy, activities and offerings of Rimon: A Collaborative Community for Jewish Spirituality utilizes all of the four propositions described in Jewish Megatrends. Since our initial launch in 2012, we have offered an ongoing variety of programs and classes that explore the wisdom of Jewish spiritual teachings. We have consistently offered classes in Jewish mysticism, Torah study through the commentaries of the Hasidic Masters, Kabbalah as well as Talmud for today’s seekers. Rimon’s classes are always grounded in the kavanah that they will not only expand consciousness but also offer spiritual tools for becoming a more conscious, kind and compassionate human being. Our classes regularly offer parallel teachings from other spiritual traditions including Buddhism, Native American wisdom, Christianity, and Hinduism. Rimon’s classes are well-attended and draw Jews and non-Jews from diverse backgrounds. Additionally we have created an Interfaith Forum which brings together faith leaders from major world religions to share their spiritual beliefs and wisdom with one another and the greater community.

The propositions in Jewish Megatrends referred to as chochmah and kedushah are described as discreet entities with different goals. It is my experience with Rimon that one should not separate these categories. A Jewish educational experience that hopes to have a lasting impact must include both elements. Teaching our wisdom traditions as an intellectual practice will not revive Jewish life. Classes in Jewish wisdom must themselves be experiences of kedushah if they are to penetrate the heart and have lasting value. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways. At Rimon we weave together Jewish teachings with similar teachings from the world religions and with spiritual practices such as Jewish meditation, chanting and experiential exercises. In this way, classes become more than an intellectual pursuit. They become a place for spiritual development.

Rimon embraces sacred work. We have created the first community-wide liberal Hevra Kadisha in our region. This Jewish Burial Society serves all Jews in the area and has provided a uniquely powerful vehicle for community members to engage in a profound experience of sacred service. From my perspective, the Hevra Kadisha provides the spiritual foundation for Rimon.

Understanding our zeitgeist is critical for all innovation. There is a worldwide growing awareness of the interconnectedness of all life on our planet. The environmental crisis, economic globalization and the internet have all contributed to the development of global consciousness. The inherent pluralism of Judaism, its concern for the environment, for the welfare of the oppressed as well as its strong universalist message position it as a source of wisdom and a critical spiritual resource at this pivotal junction in the story of humankind. Tzedek– yes- must be a part of every Jewish community, but not just for the sake of attracting millennial or covenantal Jews. Communal Jewish life must include social justice work and environmental tikkun not just to strengthen a Jewish future, but to ensure a future for all. Tzedek– yes- because that is the mission statement of the Jewish people. The world needs Judaism’s teachings and it needs a generation that is committed to pursuing and living these values through action. The vision needs to be broadened and deepened. What is at stake is more than just a Jewish future. What is at stake is the future of all children and the earth itself.

At Rimon we foster an environmental ethic through our own behavior. We compost and recycle all of our waste, organize support for the People’s Climate March, and partner with our local 350.org activist group on events. We offer prayer hikes that bring together Jewish spiritual practice with the natural world. Our interfaith healing services bring together partners of other faith traditions to raise consciousness and offer spiritual support to the wider Berkshire community regarding issues affecting our community. Rimon is a connector. We do not do Jewish in a silo. We are a member of Berkshire Interfaith Organizing, a community organizing group and I am an active member of the Interfaith Clergy Council of S. Berkshire.

In 2014, the Rimon Board reassessed the mission and vision of our organization. We originally launched as a ‘resource center’ but it became clear that this model did not fully capture the work we were doing. A community had emerged with the strong value of collaboration and the need to connect with one another more frequently. This resulted in Rimon’s first High Holiday services, designed to offer community members a strong voice in leadership and offerings. Rimon also increased the frequency of Shabbat services and has offered more social gatherings like Music Jams in members’ homes. Accordingly, our organization’s name was changed from ‘Rimon Resource Center for Jewish Spirituality’ to Rimon: A Collaborative Community for Jewish Spirituality. In all these ways, Rimon embodies the values described in Jewish Megatrends under the rubric of kehillah.

Another aspect of the zeitgeist that fuels Rimon’s vision is the voice of feminism and feminine archetypal values which stress a shift from competition to collaboration, from hierarchical power to shared leadership, from domination to sustainability. This paradigm shift must be echoed and supported in our spiritual life. At Rimon we believe that our spiritual leadership and institutions must model these critical values in they way we ‘do Jewish’. Rimon seeks opportunities to collaborate and build connections with local synagogues, churches and community organizations. We also seek to develop leadership from within our membership so that events are internally collaborative as well.

Overall, we do not view any of these guiding principles outlined in Jewish Megatrends as discreet categories. Chochmah, kedushah, tzedek and kehillah are all integral elements of the Rimon ethos and are woven together in most all of our programs.

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Rabba Kaya Stern-Kaufman is founder and Director of Rimon: A Collaborative Community for Jewish Spirituality. She was also a co-founder of The Berkshire Minyan. Ordained by The Academy for Jewish Religion, prior to working in the Jewish world she served clients as a psychotherapist and Feng Shui consultant.

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Rabbi Rebecca Sirbu

2016 Cohort, Rabbi Rebecca Sirbu 1 Comment

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RWB Vision Statement

Rabbis Without Borders envisions a world where Jewish wisdom is a source for wellbeing for anyone anywhere. The rabbis in the RWB Network, are committed to pushing the borders of what it means to be a rabbi today. We seek to share our Torah in pluralistic, innovative ways grounded by a sense of service to all. While Rabbis Without Borders does not define itself by these four propositions, our work is aligned with each of them in some way.

Lives of Sacred Purpose/Kedusha

Everything we do is infused with sacred purpose or kedusha. As rabbis, the individuals involved in RWB have committed themselves to a life of scared purpose and see their jobs as helping others to do the same. Our goal in sharing Jewish wisdom, traditions, and practices is to help each individual where ever they are on their spiritual journey to use Judaism as a source for deeper meaning and purpose in their lives. (See also Flourishing below)

Wisdom/Chochma

RWB challenges rabbis to use Jewish wisdom to speak to contemporary needs and trends. Sharing Jewish wisdom outside of the context of people’s lived experiences will not help them find meaning in the tradition. To that end, we educate the rabbis about the sociology of religious identity today so that they can understand the larger American and global context in which they are working. We introduce the rabbis to advances in communications through technology so that they can make the best use of the tools available to them to share Jewish wisdom. We train them in adopting a pluralist approach to issues so that they can speak, teach, and learn with people on opposite sides of ideological divides. In addition, we familiarize rabbis with new methodologies like Positive Psychology to explicate Jewish wisdom and practices. After introducing each new concept or idea, the rabbis work on integrating their new knowledge with the Jewish wisdom they already have in order to share it in innovative ways. An incredible number of new communities, nonprofits, programs, curricula, and writings have emerged as a result of their RWB experience.

Community/Kehillah

RWB provides a community for the rabbis who are a part of the RWB network. They rely on each other for support, inspiration, necessary challenges, and questions. They help each other move forward in their quest to share Jewish wisdom in more meaningful and accessible ways. The sense that they are pioneers testing new ideas holds them together and allows for experimentation and growth both personally and professionally.

As a result of the community the rabbis have created for themselves, they are better able to create community for others. Several report strengthening their own synagogue communities or creating new spiritual communities after learning from their RWB experience.

Social Justice/Tzedek

RWB is not a social justice organization in the traditional sense of the word. However, we have a commitment to lift up the voices of the unheard in our communities and practice true pluralism in hearing their voices. This can manifest in different contexts in different ways. In a liberal community it would be instructive to lift up conservative voices and vice versa. Lifting up these voices, we believe will bring all of us closer to understanding each other and solving some of the problems which are inherent in our society.

In addition, we are committed to serving the underserved Jewish population. There are many communities across the country that do not have access to a rabbi for a variety of reasons. As a group, the RWB rabbis committed two days of time a year to volunteer their services to these communities. The RWB Service Corp was just launched this fall, and seven matches have been made so far.

Pluralist Leadership

There are at least two areas where we are working outside of the four propositions. The first is leadership development. RWB by design is a program for rabbis to increase their efficacy as communal leaders and organizers. To move the Jewish community forward, we need leaders who can act in many different spaces with a pluralist and open mind set. The rabbis in RWB are trained to have this mindset and how to use it. Pluralism is promoted in everything they do, and this is why they can be effective in so many different areas. They focus on the human being in front of them and meet him or her where they are. They do not try to make them over in their own image. This pluralist, human-centered approach we believe is crucially needed in the Jewish community today.

Flourishing

In addition, RWB focuses on human flourishing. We do use Jewish wisdom to help all of us flourish in our lives, to be better humans, parents, children, bosses, workers etc. Jewish wisdom is not just limited to the Jewish community. Anyone should be able to access it and use it. In our increasingly multicultural world, for Judaism to remain meaningful it must be seen as a valuable resource to all. We are embarking on experimentation and research to test our theory that different Jewish practices and pieces of wisdom can be useful in helping people be more themselves and live fuller, more meaningful lives.

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Rabbi Rebecca W. Sirbu is the Director of Rabbis Without Borders at Clal. She is also the manager of the Rabbis Without Borders blog on myjewishlearing.com. Previously she was the Director of the MetroWest Jewish Health and Healing Center providing mind, body, and spiritual services from a Jewish point of view.

 

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Sara Shalva

2016 Cohort, Sara Shalva 1 Comment

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My work in building alternative Jewish community exists both inside and outside the trends laid out in Sid’s book. In any attempt to seek meaning by superimposing structure, the structure limits the opportunities to see creativity in the cracks between.

The Lev B’Lev community I helped create exists outside traditional Jewish institutions, but was created through them. The families that gathered at family camp in the summer of 2012 and decided to continue meeting outside of camp, came together with a desire to create something new on our own. Sid rightly identifies and describes this DIY mentality in his book.

The dual constructs of covenantal verses tribal identity types feels antiquated or perhaps merely inadequate in our group. None of us fit into either category, in fact, in our group, many of us straddle both. Our struggle is bridging those identity priorities in our own lives, of feeling both inside and outside the Jewish community at once. All of us have interfaith couples in our lives as family members or friends. Ideas of what constitutes inside or outside our circles feels more fluid. We identify and articulate with both the universal and particular values in nuanced and sophisticated ways.   This attitude is mirrored in our various relationships with Israel.

Sid’s thorough review of the state of the Jewish community today and trends emerging from thriving “youngish” alternative Jewish communities is illuminating and incomplete.   In the three years since the book has been published and perhaps even before, I would suggest other trends and themes coming out of these nascent groups that could use similar analyses. These alternative ways of parsing lead to other interpretations of what young Jews are looking for in terms of community and meaning.

One such trend could be characterized as interest in embodied spirituality. More and more Americans are feeling stressed out and out of control. Simultaneously, breakthroughs in science are showing us that various forms of stress make us sick.   A general trend among Americans is an increased interest in reducing stress through movement and meditation. Young Jews are also seeking opportunities to reduce stress through movement and meditation.   As Jews connect to Judaism through these practices more communities are working to integrate these ideas and infuse their ritual experiences with these spiritual approaches.

For the most part, my work echoes the trends Sid so beautiful describes. I too have found young Jews are committed to social justice, seeking meaningful communities, looking for wisdom and exploring spirituality.   I am so trying to bring these trends into the context of creating space for young families.   From the field, I am finding more and more Jews looking for non-institutional Jewish space. I am so interested to see how all these expressions of Judaism and new Jewish groups will sustain themselves over time.

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Sara Shalva is the Director of Jewish Innovation at the DCJCC. For the past fifteen years Sara has interwoven her skills enhancing lives, strengthening organizations and transforming communities. Sara is also a Bikram Yoga teacher.

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Beth Sandweiss

2016 Cohort, Beth Sandweiss 1 Comment

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I have had many opportunities to experience spiritual community: at summer camp, at Buddhist and Jewish retreat centers, in my twenty year old women’s ritual group, and among the close circle of family friends with whom we celebrate Jewish Holidays and life cycle events. What these communities have in common for me is a visceral experience of interconnectedness, commitment, aliveness, and joy.

For many years that feeling was missing for me at my home shul, B’nai Keshet. (BK) Sitting in the sanctuary it often felt as though all us were single light fixtures rather than bulbs in a chandelier; dullness pervaded a sacred space that I knew could feel vital and dynamic. I had energy that I wanted to share and grapple with in community, and I was eager to introduce the practices of chant and meditation that I had learned through years of training to BK.

Luckily, the rabbi agreed with me. Both graduates of the IJS Jewish Meditation Teacher Training Program, we had experienced the ways that Mindfulness Meditation can bring awareness to moment-to-moment experience, free us from habitual patterns of thinking and behavior and cultivate wholesome qualities of mind. I had come to see Mindfulness as a radical practice of non-violence, a way of turning toward our own experiences with acceptance and compassion. Framed in a Jewish context, Mindfulness practice can deepen the experience of prayer and enrich our capacity to connect to our own wisdom and the wisdom of our traditions.

With the rabbi’s support I started a weekly chant circle infused with Mindfulness Meditation. Almost immediately there was interest from the congregation, with a couple dozen people coming week after week. We sat in circle and shared our thoughts. Many were surprised at how connected they felt sitting in silence and how quickly they were able to engage in something larger than themselves. After some weeks, one woman said that she had never been able to connect to Judaism in traditional services and that she had found a genuine spiritual practice.

It was clear to me that this class had tapped into a desire for new spaces for contemplative Jewish practice. I collaborated with a couple of friends (also IJS graduates) who had experienced something similar in their own synagogues and we co-founded the Jewish Meditation Center of Montclair at a local yoga center. We choose that space because we didn’t want to be governed by a synagogue board and wanted to welcome the many Jews in our community who were unaffiliated to synagogues and other Jewish institutions. The classes were drop-in, donation based and with a constantly evolving structure. After some time, a core group of practitioners formed an advisory council that met to encourage their own study and practice, develop new organizational leadership and introduce new teachers to the center.

Around the same time, interest in Mindfulness Meditation exploded across the country. In Montclair, more people began to attend retreats and return home eager to continue their practice. We started filling several iterations of an eight-week introductory course in “Mindfulness in a Jewish Context” in synagogues throughout Northern New Jersey. With a number of different Jewish meditation spaces available in Montclair, the graduates of our introductory course now had regular opportunities to cultivate and support their practice.

Today, the Center and most of the organized Jewish meditation practices in Montclair are housed in synagogues. For one, synagogues offer free space and are often eager to host mediation classes. More broadly, throughout my work I have learned that the synagogue is still a sacred space for so many Jews and that with a little push and sustained leadership, there is a willingness to embrace change and experiment within the confines of the familiar. Likewise, many Jews who have avoided affiliation because they feel disinterested, wounded, or marginalized, are still hungry for spiritual community and the connection of our shared traditions. Framed in Jewish language and wisdom teachings, Mindfulness Meditation can be a portal into authentic, alive, and connected Jewish spiritual practice.

I shared Sid Schwarz’s piece with my son, a current AVODAH corp member in New Orleans, who discussed the chapter with his housemates. Many saw themselves accurately portrayed by the analysis and recognized the ways in which the conversation about “Tribal Jews” and “Covenantal Jews” has recently taken form. He pointed out that one aspect that he found missing in the chapter is a discussion of race. As a student, he learned about the recent shift toward a discourse on race and white privilege in the larger American meditation community, and wondered why a similar discussion has not emerged in Jewish meditation contexts. I have begun to explore how the Jewish meditation community can prioritize such a conversation, and unpack our own privilege, history of oppression, and the racial and ethnic diversity that exists within our own faith. It is fortunate that we have arrived at a moment in time when meditation and psychology have converged in significant ways. One promising entry point into engaging with issues of race and racism is the use of Mindfulness to explore our unconscious and implicit biases.

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Beth Sandweiss is a psychotherapist who is fascinated by the intersection of psychology, Jewish spiritual practice, mindfulness meditation and social justice. She co-founded the Jewish Meditation Center of Montclair NJ and serves as Director of Mindfulness Programs at the Jewish Wellness Center of Northern NJ. In that capacity she leads workshops and trainings for hospitals, universities, summer camps, synagogues, the CCAR, Jewish Family Services and the Jewish Federation.

 

 

 

 

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Shamu Sadeh

2016 Cohort, Shamu Sadeh 0 Comments

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My work at Adamah is well aligned with your four propositions.

Chochmah: When I teach Jewish creation stories I pair Rashi’s commentary on Genesis 2:7 with secular philosophical writings. I teach the Book of Job together with Aldo Leopold. The majority of my students feel very engaged in this approach to Jewish learning. (How to be authentic Jewishly while putting texts in the context of other cultures can be a challenge.) In parallel to your example of EPU Project, for the past two springs we have welcome a group of Christian seminarians to share a week of classes, prayer, field work and conversation with the young Jews of Adamah. The depth of engagement from both sides, the opportunity to explain Judaism to someone from the outside, the sense of difference and solidarity made for a very meaningful experience for the Adamah Fellows.

Tzedek: While we are more ecologically focused at Adamah than traditional social justice work we are aligned with the tzedek proposition. The passion for repair, the desire to find synthesis between Judaism and current ecological and social issues is one of the main reasons young Jews come to us.

Kehillah: A central piece of the work we do is creative inclusive, supportive pluralistic Jewish community. Participants are able to engage deeply in all the spiritual and leadership work: to find themselves, to grow and change their identity, and to build close relationships because of the very particular and unique nature of the Adamah and Isabella Freedman community. The community is egalitarian (and even anti-authoritarian) with significant women’s leadership, it is queer friendly, accessible to those with little Jewish background, and has a creative, DIY vibe while still engaging authentically with Jewish tradition.

Kedushah: For sure the ability to frame and provide (as much as this experience can be ‘provided’) holy experiences is central to the work we do at Adamah. We are all about experience first, concepts and specific practices later. We find a lot of inspiration in Rabbi A.J. Heschel and the original and ‘neo’ hasids (Rabbi Arthur Green) for the emphasis on heart not just intellect. Farming, food and outdoor work centers on the experience of awe, gratitude and interconnectedness that happens when you pick a carrot out of the soil, watch a sunset, sign ‘Modeh ani’ as the mist rises on the lake. All the Jewish and ecological and community work we do follows from these core experiences.

  • In what ways does your work advance an area of Jewish life or practice that is outside of the four propositions?

I do not have time to elaborate at present. Here are some quick notes on this huge question that might be better elaborated on in conversation with others.

  • Pluralism
  • Creative approach to the evolution of Jewish culture and ritual (eg. creating new rituals)
  • Additional Thoughts

For some young Jews Israel is a barrier to Jewish engagement not just “anything but a unifying force”. Some young Jewish leftists, particularly some who fit within the universalist/justice seeking perspective you discuss, feel alienated from Jewish communal institutions because of what they see as the categorical “We Stand with Israel”; the inability to criticize Israel, and the lack of true dialogue.

I found ‘covenantal’ Jews a confusing term despite your explanation. The points of reference and implications of the word covenant suggest or at least imply an identity formed around a binding relationship to God and/or fundamental tenants or Jewish law/practice, as well as the sense of chosen people. Your description of a universalist, justice-oriented identity is accurate but I think you need a better name for this.

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Shamu Sadeh co-founded Adamah and has been its program director since 2004. He has been a farmer, teacher, writer and wilderness guide. Drawn to the integration of soul and soil, he works for the creation of a fruitful ecological landscape that builds confidence, mindfulness and community among participants.

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