Category: 2018 Cohort

Craig Taubman

2018 Cohort, Craig Taubman 1 Comment

Rabbi Sid’s essay analyzing the state of the American Jewish community was thoughtful and on the mark.  I appreciated his perspective, agreed with most of his ideas and adored others.  His assessment that the 21st century cries out for a spiritual response is spot on and applies to the Jewish community as well as other faith communities.  Here are my observations:

We are not the first Jewish community to confront change, and certainly not the last. Furthermore, I see our current challenges as rather benign in comparison to other periods in our history.  For most of our 3000+ years, Jewish survival has been abetted by people hating us. Hey, it’s easy to stay Jewish when you’re confined to a ghetto. However, for many generations in America, we have been accepted, even embraced. During much of this time, we nevertheless coalesced around the idea that “they hate us” by self-defining around the Holocaust, the persecution of Soviet Jewry and the precariousness of the State of Israel.

Post Holocaust and 70 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, I do not see a Jewish community in crisis. If anything, we’ve won the birthright lottery. Crisis is war, dysfunctional families, abuse, disease, depression, poverty, genocide, hunger and the homeless. How Judaism responds to these real crises—mostly happening outside of the confines of the Jewish community–ultimately determines the spiritual health and relevance of our Jewish community.  

Being relevant is what has allowed us to thrive, evolve and transition.  It has been the key to Jewish survival: Constant adaptation to new circumstances, allowing ancient truths to keep being relevant. The Talmud was all about Judaism remaining relevant for a stateless people. This is the gift we are given, not a crisis we must confront. 

Temples and JCC’s once had a monopoly on doing Jewish – and they did it very well.  Today’s new media/digital reality allows everybody to reach anybody. Zuckerberg’s Facebook, like Gutenberg’s printing press, has leveled the playing field and returned power and responsibility to the people.

In order for religion to be relevant, the message must be heard, and that message must address the needs of the community.  Passion is the fuel of success and no one has a monopoly on passion. Not the Orthodox or the Reconstructing, not the left or the right. If Not Now has passion and so does AIPAC, JStreet, our synagogues and Federations.  Judaism is not science; it is art and spirit. If we want a renaissance, we need to address what matters to the people. The group that speaks to this, succeeds.

The best way to build passion is to find your truth by building relationships and spiritual connections. It may be a new Jewish world -and the only way to navigate it is with the Jewish values that we have inherited. Whether the focus be Wisdom (chochma), Sacred Purpose (Kedusha), Community (Kehillah), Social Justice (Tzedek) or some other yet-to-be-named proposition, the community that addresses the needs of its constituents will capture their hearts and determine the future.  

The focus and mandate of the Pico Union Project is less about building a specific Jewish community and more about living Jewish values. The ancient principle “love your neighbor as you wish to be loved”, is central to our mission and we are committed to creating opportunities for all people who seek help, inspiration, love, joy and support. 

Call it Abrahamic Big Tent Judaism, the Pico Union Project is open on all sides and strives to accentuate positive ways to be and to do Jewish. God knows (literally, as well as figuratively), there is plenty of positive in Judaism, so this shouldn’t be a stretch. But it requires exercising atrophied muscles and abandoning the current sinat chinam – bitter, petty rivalries – that tear our community apart.

As Rabbi Sid concludes: “It is just such spiritual leaders who will help usher in a new and vibrant era of American Jewish life. They will redefine the terms of Jewish identity and the structures of the institutions that guide the Jewish community. Their success will determine how well an ancient Jewish heritage can navigate the dizzying social changes that are destined to characterize the twenty-first century.”

The day is short and there is much work to be done! Let’s do it! 

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Craig Taubman’s music has been an inspiration to the Jewish community for over 40 years. In 2013, Craig purchased the first home of Sinai Temple in downtown Los Angeles creating the Pico Union Project – a multi faith, cultural arts center dedicated to the principle that we should strive to love our neighbors as we wish to be loved.

 

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Misha Shulman

2018 Cohort, Misha Shulman 0 Comments

The School for Creative Judaism was born in an apartment in the Upper East Side on a cold Friday evening in January around a decade ago. Around 60 people aged 4 to 80, most with very little Jewish knowledge beyond what I had been teaching them, were gathered in a living room for a Shabbat service and potluck. I explained the words “shiru l’Hashem shir chadash,” (sing unto God a new song) and taught them a simple melody I had composed. We sang and talked our way through Kabbalat Shabbat, most of the prayers led by the kids. Instead of a sermon, I had sent everyone a question to think about in advance, which we discussed as the center piece of the evening. It was Shabbat Yitro, and we focused on the commandment: “Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.” Honing in on this word, “zachor,” “remember, ” kids, adults, and grandparents contributed reflections about the question: Shabbat gives us the freedom to remember, but should we also be afforded the freedom to forget?

I was transported back to this moment as I read Rabbi Sid’s essay. I describe that Shabbat because so many of the details of the service were reflected in Jewish Megatrends. The search for a deep and challenging wisdom emerging from Torah; the primary place that the search for justice took in that discussion about memory; the bringing together of people to form a new type of participatory community; the insistence on an experience of spiritual significance that can be accessed by non-observant Jews.

While primarily an after-school Jewish program, the School for Creative Judaism (SCJ) is a home for unaffiliated Jews. We have a business model that allows us tremendous freedom to teach, explore and create. In the past decade we have grown from one teacher and a dozen students, to 120 students taught by ten teachers. We hold around twenty Bar and Bat Mitzvah ceremonies each year, along with Shabbatot, holiday events, field trips and social justice events such as protests or volunteering. Most events take place in one of the students’ homes. When we make a change in programming, it most often comes from the community making its needs and desires known. This year was our first Yom Kippur service, which resulted from the requests by members of the community. In turn, members of the community provided most of the sweat equity to make it happen. Next year we will have Rosh Hashanah services as well, the result of community demand.

The quick growth and transformation of the School is a testament to the tremendous need in the community for meaningful alternatives to the synagogue system, both with regards to community and education. We are designed as an entity that responds to needs that arise. Our earlier educational model, still functioning for approximately half of the students, has small groups learning together once a week in one of the students’ homes. Our second model, now in its fourth year, brings 20-30 students together to a branch of the school, where classes are split by age for most of the time, and everyone comes together at the end for a communal ma’agal, or circle. Both models adapt to the needs identified by parents, teachers and me, in my role as school director. One of the things people most appreciated about the community events we added just under a decade ago, was that there was an open offer to actively build community, but no guilt or negative pressure to take advantage of that offer.

This is especially true of interfaith families, which make up a significant percentage of SCJ. At a recent Bar Mitzvah, the Jewish father of the Bar Mitzvah came up to me to thank me for one thing I told his son during the service. “You are not half Jewish,” I said, “you are Jewish”. You may be other things as well, but that does not take away from the fact that you are a Jew.” Having grown up in an interfaith family himself, going to synagogue and Hebrew School as a kid, this father told me no one had ever told him such a thing.

I have no idea how my work will impact on the future number of Jews in the world. I do know that I provide a positive Jewish experience for many who would otherwise have none. I am reminded of a transgender Bar Mitzvah I led last year, in which the exuberant Bar Mitzvah said in his dvar torah: “Studying my Torah portion made me think that maybe God doesn’t hate me for being Queer.” He specifically mentioned the religious Right as one source of his previous thinking on religion and gender.

These are experiences, which deepen my belief in the work. But to me they are about the present, not about Jewish survival or renewal in the future. If there is a renewal, it is within the moment itself. We have to trust in the eternity of individual moments, toward the greater goal of overcoming what Rabbi Sid terms the “spiritual malaise” of our times. I often tell parents that we are using the frame “teaching through Judaism”, but that the far greater challenge – and opportunity – lie in delving into the great questions and mysteries of life with people who are taught to place an enormous value on what they call “science.”

What I have found is that the way to open people up to Yiddishkeit is not only through thinking, ritual and action, but also through art: a type of spiritual expression that non-observant people are not afraid of. What we are looking for in particular at SCJ is the place where three elements overlap: religion, politics and art. Or in the language of our tradition: emet (truth), tzedek (justice) and yetzira (creativity).

Recently we held a Shabbat event at the performance of a Palestinian play from Jenin. It brought people together in community on Shabbat to confront our pre-conceived notions, support people whose resistance is art, and talk about what our faith and theirs’ demands of us in the context of the conflict in the Middle East. This was, to me, one example of the three elements coming together.

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Misha Shulman is the founding director of the School for Creative Judaism, a religious school and community for unaffiliated Jewish families in New York City. Born in Israel and currently studying for the rabbinate, Misha is a playwright, theater director and actor with an MFA from Brooklyn College.

 

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Ruth Schapira

2018 Cohort, Ruth Schapira 0 Comments

What Jewish spiritual practices will help bring my life meaning? What in our Jewish tradition can help me get over life’s hurdles? What can I do to increase engagement with holiness in my community? These questions often prompt a journey that may lead to the discovery of Mussar[1]. The purpose of Mussar is to help one learn about their traits (middot), become aware of their ‘interior life’[2], their soul, their inclinations, their resistances, and to engage in practices (including meditation) that help cultivate positive change and a deeper connection with God and Judaism.  

Of the four propositions that Rabbi Sid enumerates in Megatrends, the three that resonate with The Mussar Institute (TMI) in terms of our history and our future is Wisdom/Chochma, Community/Kehillah and Sacred Purpose/Kedusha. TMI helps seekers form a kehillah in order to gain the chochma that Mussar offers, to help them overcome life challenges in order to gain a sense of kedusha.

The Mussar Institute’s very name belies its unstructured beginning as a grassroots organization interested in spreading Mussar, inspired by the passion of Alan Morinis. He first began facilitating groups and developed a path of courses that would meet the growing hunger to ‘do Mussar’. When he founded TMI in 2004, there was no formal structure in place to disseminate this knowledge other than the dedication of its adherents to bring this awareness to others. Alan trained facilitators with skills to lead Mussar groups. By now, thousands of individuals have been impacted by the study and practice of Mussar including rabbis, lay leaders, heads of Jewish Federations, and spiritual seekers. Yet, despite the national and international reach of the organization, what amazes me is that most people I encounter on a daily basis have never heard of the practice of Mussar[3], let alone the Institute that is devoted to it. Only very recently has TMI added professional staff to respond to the growing interest in Mussar.

Within TMI, there are multiple avenues to explore Jewish texts in the area of character development, ethical behavior, and spiritual growth —all in the context of today’s cultural sensibilities. People can learn individually, in chevruta (paired learning) or in groups at synagogues, in private homes, at JCC’s or anywhere that there is interest. Some TMI-trained facilitators have adapted what they’ve learned and brought Mussar to twelve-step groups, homeless shelters and prisons. There are also online courses ranging from beginner to advanced that can be taken independently or in groups. Finally, there are real-time groups that convene people all over the world. TMI’s popular program Middah a Month, can be learned as an individual, in chevruta or in a group, and can continue on a monthly basis for several years.

TMI also conducts formalized facilitator training programs for different audiences, including rabbis, clergy, lay leaders, and others who have had Mussar coursework. Soon to be piloted is a Mussar training program for those with little background in Mussar who are interested in learning Mussar facilitation and adapting it for their own specialized interests (Mussar within the context of Yoga or other spiritual practices).

The content of the courses offered by TMI contain modernized translations of original texts. Since Hebrew knowledge is not required, they are accessible. TMI has individualized its courses to meet the needs of early childhood programs; leadership programs at Hillel and Jewish Federations; and programs that reach millennials. A recent grant from The John Templeton Foundation is supporting the scaling-up of our program in supplementary schools, camps, and youth groups.

These areas relate to the proposition of Community/Kehillah. since there are communal ramifications of Mussar practice. Participants who gather at TMI Mussar retreats especially value the pluralistic nature of the kehillah that forms there. While there has not been the funding to document participants’ deepening connection to their respective communities though the practice of Mussar, we know anecdotally that this is happening.

Helping people live a life of sacred purpose/kedusha infuses everything that TMI pursues. Every group (va’ad) meeting, every training, every retreat enables participants to reach a higher level of connection with the One Above. In finding your soul’s center, you tend to connect with the greater purpose for which your life is intended. In a time when there are so many barriers to participation, there are no restrictions on how a person might decide to participate in learning Mussar.

One of TMI’s challenges moving forward is how to increase our capacity to keep pace with the demand for content. We need to train more people in Mussar group facilitation skills, develop training for online facilitation, intensify the support for our congregational facilitators, and provide more real-time online courses. TMI has responded to this need consistent with the Mussar tradition; we focus on the individual’s capacity for renewed awareness, their desire for learning, and their capacity to experience transformation.

[1] The word “Mussar” derives from biblical sources, Proverbs 1:2, being one, and means “discipline or instruction”, in this case, instruction on how to be a better person, to reach the inner essence, the ‘neshama’ (pure soul).

[2] Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, a modern Mussar master wrote in Alei Shur that spirituality is ‘building the interior world’

[3] The wisdom of Mussar was brought to life in the yeshiva world by Rabbi Israel Salanter in the 19th century as a response to the gap between one’s knowledge of the law and ethical actions. The Mussar movement developed through Salanter’s disciples and remained in the yeshiva world until modern times, when individuals such as Rabbi Ira Stone and Dr. Alan Morinis began writing about Mussar for wider audiences.

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Ruth Schapira is the Director of Leadership and Training of the Mussar Institute. Based in Holland, PA, she blogs about leadership development and outreach strategies related to the Jewish community at www.ruthschapira.com.

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Rabbi Regina Sandler-Phillips

2018 Cohort, Rabbi Regina Sandler-Phillips 2 Comments

A quarter-century has now passed since I was first introduced to the vital Jewish principles known as “ways of peace” (darkhei shalom) during a five-year sojourn in Israel. Having emerged from the 1991 Gulf War during that sojourn, I found the practical orientation of “ways of peace” both compelling and timeless. Here were 1800 years of spiritual guidance for cooperation across many lines of diversity and potential conflict—between different kinds of Jews, as well as between Jews and other peoples:

“In cities of diversity…we organize ourselves and our money…and sustain the poor…and visit the sick…and bury the dead…and console the bereaved…for these are ways of peace.” (Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate Gitin)

WAYS OF PEACE Community Resources was created in August 2012 to advance these transformative priorities—which represent the core cultural challenges of money and death, respectively. As such, our work is aligned with all four propositions identified by Rabbi Schwarz in Jewish Megatrends.

Wisdom / Chochma: The hevra kadisha (sacred burial fellowship) embodies deep, practical wisdom for facing death that can be found across world cultures—as highlighted by today’s nonsectarian “green burial” movement. Similarly, the wisdom of tzedakah as “just-giving” through the ancient sh’mita (release) cycle corresponds to global spiritual principles of proportional sharing, and brings distributive financial power into our own hands—regardless of how much or how little we may earn.

Social Justice/Tzedek: In a world struggling with climate change and extreme financial inequality, Jewish practices of simple, participatory burial and “just-giving” are vital tzedek actions. Bringing together concern for the poor and vulnerable with concern for the earth, WAYS OF PEACE reclaims these practices of fairness and sustainability. And given the diverse and sometimes conflicting definitions of social justice within our Jewish communities as noted by Rabbi Schwarz, “just-giving” offers an ongoing process of action/reflection that can transcend ideological impasses.

Community/Kehillah: We are taught that the world stands on a tripod of study, worship, and caring actions (Avot 1:2). When our Jewish communities run on the two business-as-usual legs of study and worship, the third leg of caring actions is usually shortened for efficiency. Yet this third leg is the only one that can support us reliably “on one foot” (BT Shabbat 31a). WAYS OF PEACE advocates a paradigm shift from tripod to tricycle—inspiring our Jewish communities to move forward with caring actions as the leading wheel, while the wheels of study and worship move back to supporting roles.

Lives of Sacred Purpose/Kedusha: Rabbi Schwarz is especially perspicacious in his call for engagement of the capitalist marketplace in the service of kedusha. This, indeed, is the founding premise of WAYS OF PEACE as a social microenterprise—administratively frugal, holistically committed—in which at least 10 percent of all net staff compensation is shared forward with other organizations that uphold our core values of justice and kindness across lines of diversity.

The transformation of our cultural attitudes toward money and death is a profound, incremental process—as challenging to measure as to market. Even so, WAYS OF PEACE program service revenues have brought in about 70% of our growing budget over the past two years, despite the absence of established institutional funding since inception. Now we seek modest grant support for our work on the broader challenges of cultural transformation, so that we can increase the demand for our fee-for-service programs without being unnecessarily restricted from functioning in their absence.

In addition to the four propositions above, WAYS OF PEACE upholds the multigenerational dialogue that is essential for learning the lessons of history—and for healing the wounds of ageism, perhaps the most neglected of intersectional concerns. As Rabbi Schwarz indicates, those who “believe we invented the generation gap”—known academically as age segregation, often revealing invidious comparisons between old and young—may still not have clarity about the limitations of a youth-centric approach to Jewish community renewal. Nor are the blind spots limited to particular generations.

Relationships among generations can be only partially defined by historical epoch. As a Jew born in 1959, I am as close in age to the oldest Generation X members as I am to Rabbi Schwarz. Although I am classified as a boomer, I came of age in the 1970’s, not the 1960’s. Similarly, the oldest millennials are biologically old enough to be parents of the youngest millennials.

Healing the wounds of ageism fosters a shared acknowledgement that there is no future without a past. Knowingly or not, today’s Jewish giving circles follow in the footsteps of tzedakah collectives such as those of the Highland Park Minyan and Fabrangen; the latter has collected and disbursed more than $2 million dollars over four decades of egalitarian, participatory, grassroots funding.

More broadly, these havurot and other alternative organizations that have long engaged Jews in study, prayer, and social action are the forerunners of many of today’s Jewish innovations. Pardes Institute—the egalitarian prototype for Mechon Hadar—was established in 1972, and the National Havurah Committee has been organizing pluralistic, multigenerational Jewish gatherings since 1979.

As with every ecosystem, the ecosystem of Jewish ideas and institutions involves a continuous life cycle of birth, growth, disintegration, death and rebirth. Each ecosystem component impacts and influences all the others. Where certain components are in ascendancy, others will characteristically show decline—as when potentially divisive tzedek issues are deferred for the sake of greater unity in kehillah, or when the boundaries of kehillah are more narrowly drawn for purposes of a particular approach to kedusha. And, as Rabbi Schwarz demonstrates in his penetrating analysis of Birthright Israel, the timing and scope of financial arrangements are often the determining factors.

WAYS OF PEACE bears witness to these ecosystem paradoxes, and engages them for optimal sustainability, spirituality, and social justice.

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Rabbi Regina Sandler-Phillips, MSW, MPH is the founding executive director of WAYS OF PEACE Community Resources, the editor of Generous Justice: Jewish Wisdom for Just-Giving, and author of Counting Days: From Liberation to Revelation for Jews in Recovery. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Forward, Tablet Magazine, The Jewish Week, and Newsday.

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Irene Lehrer Sandalow

2018 Cohort, Irene Lehrer Sandalow 2 Comments

“I see the American Jewish community of five million as being like an enterprise with two, roughly equal divisions: one healthy and engaged in all aspects of Jewish life—religious, cultural, political; the other division is near bankruptcy and challenges the health of the overall American Jewish venture.” Rabbi Sid Schwarz in Jewish Megatrends

When I consider the engagement opportunities for the Jewish community today, I am optimistic and inspired. I have the privilege to be part of communities with creative, talented, introspective Jewish leaders promoting new ways to advance Jewish life. My professional life has given me the access to communities promoting a “healthy and engaged” Jewish life. Unfortunately, this reality is not visible and accessible to all Jews seeking meaning and community.

This reality inspired me to create a physical space where Jewish professionals can come together and experience the Jewish propositions of kehillah, chochma and tzedek. Today, SketchPad: Chicago’s Jewish Innovation Space, is home to professionals from 16 Jewish organizations.

Kehillah

SketchPad seeks to create a physical embodiment of the diversity of Jewish engagement opportunities. Because the synagogue is no longer the primary institution through which Jews seek to express their Jewish identity and find community, the Jewish community needs alternative spaces for community building and engagement. SketchPad represents a new vision for kehillah for Jewish professionals and the broader Jewish community.

Since its founding in December 2017, sixteen organizations have joined as SketchPad members, with missions ranging from Jewish identity and community building, to social justice and community advocacy, and everything in between.  Our growing kehillah comes from every segment of the Jewish religious spectrum. In the digital age, it has become even more necessary to create spaces that facilitate community building and engagement — face to face.

An eruv creates a physical boundary that bind Orthodox families to live in close proximity with one another and therefore facilitates the development of a supportive and close-knit community. When Jewish organizations and professionals work in a shared physical space, it forces a closeness and intimacy between professionals. Members are encouraged to share what they are working on, their challenges, and questions and we see it as our responsibility to cultivate trust between members.  Facilitating Jewish professionals and organizations to work alongside one another will lead to stronger relationships and more collaboration. The end result is a more positive impact on the Jewish community in Chicago and beyond.

Through the diverse Jewish engagement offerings provided by member organizations and professionals at SketchPad, our space can be a physical representation of a new paradigm for Jewish life for the broader Jewish community. We feel that we are manifesting an aspirational goal that was issued by the Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, in their “Statement on Jewish Vitality:”

We [also] need the institutions and programs, many of them begun outside the mainstream, that are engaging Jews through their passion for social justice and a sustainable world, their love of the arts, their desire to create new forms of ritual, and their yearning for welcoming communities that support their personal growth with inspiration and resources and without judgmentalism.

SketchPad is the home for many of these institutions that offer these opportunities including Yiddish classes, Jewish mindfulness meditations, discussions on the weekly Torah portion, social justice campaign strategy meetings and art activities. SketchPad represents a community, a kehillah that embraces a future of optimism and possibility.

Chochma

At SketchPad, we seek to provide wisdom and learning opportunities through the creation of a beit midrash space. Ultimately, our goal is to offer regular Jewish learning opportunities for our members and the broader community.  Jewish nonprofit professionals, for the most part, are motivated by their values and their passion for Jewish life and people.  However, the reality is that these professionals carry busy work loads and are not often enough experiencing the reasons why they became Jewish communal professionals in the first place: to be part of a community motivated by Jewish wisdom. The convenience of having Jewish learning take place in a professional’s workplace removes a significant barrier for professionals to take time to dedicate to Jewish learning. We benefit from being led by professionals who are immersed in a culture that values continuous learning, especially in Jewish texts, tradition, and Jewish thought. These learning opportunities provide our professionals with language and knowledge to inspire their respective communities.

At the Intersection of Chochma and Kehillah

At SketchPad, we facilitate the connection between kehillah and chochma. We see a natural connection between the concept of coworking and Jewish learning. Coworking is commonly defined as a membership-based workspace where diverse groups of independent professionals work together in a shared, communal setting, promoting interaction and exchange. While coworking is a workspace model, it is also fundamentally a learning space model, nurturing an environment of exchange and learning that pushes the work of its members toward new ideas. We see in this model an analogue to the beit midrash, a space of open exchange and conversation, one that hinges on collaborative learning among peers. What brings the coworking space and beit midrash together are their shared emphasis on building community by sharing knowledge and facilitating conversations that enrich the community.

Tzedek

SketchPad houses four organizations whose primary mission is to promote social justice from a Jewish perspective. All these organizations host meetings and events at SketchPad and, with time and the right opportunities, will grow their collaborating muscles.  We are familiar with the buzzing sounds of Jewish learning. At SketchPad, we also seek to facilitate the buzzing sounds of people organizing for justice.

SketchPad is still in its nascent stage, open since December 2017, and we have ambitious goals and a big vision for what is possible. Our unique value proposition is in its ability to connect three, if not all four propositions mentioned in Rabbi Sid’s essay. These propositions are a very helpful a framework to evaluate our progress as a Jewish institution that seeks to play a vital role in the changing face of Jewish identity in America.

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Irene Lehrer Sandalow is the founder and director of SketchPad, Chicago’s Jewish Innovation Space. Irene has been a Jewish communal professional for over 15 years including working for the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, The Jewish Education Project, the Union for Reform Judaism.

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Rabbi Jan Salzman

2018 Cohort, Rabbi Jan Salzman 0 Comments

Wisdom/Chochma: We are a new community that has built a presence in the context of Vermont over the 1.5 years we’ve been operating. Most of our families are intermarried and the great outdoors takes precedence over a family’s time (along with music lessons and so much else). I struggle with a foundational question: How am I supposed to transmit Jewish heritage or, more to the point, how can I help folks fall in love with being Jewish?

Some tactics include my own personal charisma, but that will only go so far, and will fall short when it’s time to hand the reigns over to the next rabbi (something that I hope will happen in 5 years or less). So, I ask myself, what do I mean by, “fall in love”? Fall in love with what? A place to begin is when I start with what I call the three noble truths of Judaism, riffing on Reb Zalman’s organicity model: Shabbat, kashrut, and how we read/study texts. Can I help create sacred time? Can I help to imbibe food with kedusha? Can I teach that the next question is more valuable than the previous answer? Can I influence others with the deliciousness of the dissonance? We try to integrate these three themes into all that we do.

Social Justice/Tzedek: We create almost zero solid waste. We purchased silverware at thriftshops and everything can be washed and re-used; we have a compost bucket at every event; we model, through our own behavior, how we can reduce our footprint. On a larger scale, I am involved in Vermont-wide efforts at protecting the planet. Connecting with other faith leaders over these issues strengthens our voices when we approach the state level of legislation.

Community/Kehillah: We find that folks are non-liturgical and most are intermarried, but they show up for events more than they do liturgical services. We had a pot luck, vegetarian 1st night seder that was very successful in our first year of operation. Almost every event involves a pot-luck meal; we provide toys for the kids, who stay in the sanctuary with the grownups, so that there’s no age-based separation. As a new community, with a lot of young people and young families, we are just beginning to develop opportunities for bringing people together outside of the 2x month Kabbalat Shabbat services. And we have begun to plan events that are sponsored by many of the northern Vermont-wide Jewish synagogues/chavurot: a very successful Purim in a local bar last year, which we will do again; a grown-up Chanukah dance (in a local bar..hmmm, you might notice a trend here); and a region-wide Rosh Chodesh Elul is now being planned for this coming August. This collaboration is the growing edge of the Vermont Jewish communities: joining together for celebrations. This raises ‘all of our boats’ back in our home communities, and reduces the impermeable cell walls that can stifle our expansiveness.

Lives of Sacred Purpose/Kedusha: By building opportunities to join together, I and the other Jewish leaders instill (and install) a sense of kedusha. But I’m not sure how to answer this question with specifics, other than assert that everything I do, I do with taxonomy of the Four Worlds of assiyah, yetzirah, briah and atzilut.

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Rabbi Jan Salzman received smicha through ALEPH and created Ruach HaMaqom in Burlington, VT in 2016. She has been a long-time Jewish educator and resource person in rural Vermont and is a certified organic farmer.

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Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein

2018 Cohort, Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein 1 Comment

They were older than me, by at least five years, and I was afraid. Though my Satmar Hasidic neighbors were my friends, their cousins usually approached me with disdain whenever I’d go over for a playdate. On one occasion, they bullied me and lifted my shirt up. He asked “where are your tzizis?” Feeling uncomfortable, I stammered, they said: “you call yourself a yid!? Gai ahein you goy!” I tripped as I begged my feet to carry me towards the door, but then it got worse. They poured cold water on me, and repeated the abusive slurs. I walked home crying to never tell a soul, until over a decade later. –How?!

This is a true story, and it happened to me, but how? I learned, from a very young age, how complicated modern Jews and Judaism are. I grew up in a mixed-race Chabad-Lubavitch family in Monsey, where I was exposed to all walks of Orthodox Jewish life. My mother, a convert into the Orthodox community, my father a “Ba’al Teshuva,” someone who sees themself as a returnee to higher levels of spiritual consciousness and Jewish practice, made a point to educate us on our rich Jewish and African history, and always encouraged us to be dorshei chochma, those who see the deep wisdom, the diverse wisdom, found in our world.

To this day, I wonder how could society have produced teenagers who saw it as their right to put me down for how I looked or dressed? Was this race related, though I pass for white? Was this due to the homogeneous reality of my zip code? Maybe it is because my family background challenged the assumptions of what a Jew looks like. I don’t have answers.

What I do know is that they were not what Rabbi Sid would call “seekers of wisdom (dorshei chochma), seekers of social justice (dorshei tzedek), seekers of community (dorshei kehillah), and seekers of lives of sacred purpose (dorshei kedusha). On a good day, I see my neighbor’s cousin’s as those who were a product of a society that did not see me in my Jewishness, and because of their upbringing, it would be hard for them to see my Jewishness and my family history as a form of wisdom worth exploring.

My parents, my heroes of meaning, purpose and justice, raised us with eyes toward the Divine in all and that there is a Divine wisdom that fills all peoples. They taught us, they guided us, with the mission of bringing redemption, not just to the Jewish world, but the world as a whole. They saw this not as a fanciful and nice idea, but as our integral mission as Jews.

They raised us this way knowing full well the prophet’s words “days are coming when there will be a hunger in the world, but not for bread or water, but to hear the words of the Living God,” and they did so knowing that redemption would come through the multitude of wisdoms of the world, as their marriage represented to some extent.

I went to a Haredi-Yeshiva as a youth, and I enjoyed celebrating civil-holidays with my deeply-spiritual and deeply religious non-Jewish uncles and cousins. I sang the Alter Rebbe’s Niggun (song) while chanting the freedom songs that celebrate my existence. My mother cried a thousand tears from the TV room of our Monsey home when Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first Black president in American history.

My childhood home was a representation of what a 21st Century Judaism should look like. Our home was a haven for many of my peers when looking for a place to be themselves. My father would hang out with what we coined as the “Monsey rebels,” and teach us from his heart and from his mind the lessons of Judaism. With his encyclopedic memory he would offer us kernels of Torah and recount how it related to the spheres of science and literature. My mother would do the same with her deep love for the Jewish nation and Jewish people, driving the mission of Sinai forward all through the rhetoric of a freedom fighter and woman of color.

My vision as a Jew of color, as a rabbi, as a member of the millennial generation, and as a social-activist is to create platforms within Jewish life that foster and cultivate belonging and visibility for those who are unseen. One great model and leader of this work is the organization Be’chol Lashon. Be’chol Lashon is an 18-year old organization that celebrates the racial, ethnic and cultural diversity of the Jewish people. Its mission is to create platforms for our collective wisdom as Jews to be heard because, for too long, the wisdom of our diverse Jewish community has been silenced. The vision is a Judaism that sees everybody with their own wisdom, where nobody is left out, and where everyone’s voice could be heard.

We need to create a community where people can hear their voice and smile because they know that who they are is enough and how they practice is enough, a community where they will be supported and sheltered in Abraham’s tent. To quote Rabbi Sid once again: “The future vibrancy of the Jewish community depends on leaders of the Jewish community reaching out to this constituency and finding ways to reach them, even as it will challenge many long-standing assumptions of what the Jewish community should look like.”

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Isaiah Rothstein is the Rabbi-in-Residence at Hazon and Be’chol Lashon. With his spare time, Isaiah is writing a musical on Judaism and the Bible, inspired by Lin Manuel Miranda’s Broadway Musical “Hamilton.”

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Jon Adam Ross

2018 Cohort 1 Comment

Wisdom is a word that makes me uncomfortable. I think it’s because it sounds proprietary. Wisdom is something that can be acquired and dispensed. It’s an asset. I feel more comfortable with the words ‘context’ and ‘perspective’ instead. If the aim of the first proposition in Rabbi Sid’s essay is to give people access to their inherited (sacred) texts and a toolkit to place those texts and their teachings in context with modern global thought so as to provide people perspective, then I’m all in. And, indeed, that completely defines my work as an artist.

I am the founding artist of The In[heir]itance Project, which is a devised-theater company that puts communities’ lived experiences in conversation with their inherited sacred texts. We define sacred text as any story that holds meaning for the community. They could be ancient religious, mythic, cultural or patriotic texts, personal and universal stories, attitudes and archetypes, local lore (current or historical), or popular media and culture. The Torah fits in there. So does the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran, the Constitution of the United States, and the lyrics of Bob Dylan. Each micro and macro community has its own sacred texts. For Jews, those texts are the Tanach, the Talmud, the niggunim at seudah shlishit and liturgy, among other things.

Traditional theater begins with a script, written by a playwright alone in a room, typically in their pajamas. Devised theater ends with a script after time spent generating material with a community. But most audiences only experience art when it’s finished. And most artists only share their art when it’s finished. We invite everyone into the process from the first moment as participants, not just as witnesses. We want them wrestling with, engaging with, connecting with, sharing their sacred texts and their lived experiences. And we want them to feel empowered to help shape the art being made from those texts and experiences. We have found that through this work, people take ownership to the point of having full comfort expressing every opinion they have of the finished artistic product. We know that our job is done when someone can see the final product and say “Hey, thanks for including my idea in there. I still think you’re wrong about how you interpreted x!”

That tells us that they feel ownership enough over the ‘x’, the ‘sacred text’ (which, by the way, might be from the Torah or from a childhood memory) to advocate on its behalf. It gets really interesting when we put folks in conversation with each other. In Charleston we worked with the Jewish and black (Christian) communities. We were making a play about Rebecca’s womb, from the book of Genesis. A lot happened in that womb. We cast the play with two actors (one black, one white). We’d walk into an open rehearsal in a synagogue and people would look at the actors and point to the white actor and say, “You’re Jacob, right? And he’s Esau?” They just assumed the white, Jewish actor was playing the ‘good guy.’

When we walked into a church, a black Pastor looked at the actors and pointed to the black actor and said, “You’re playing Esau, right? And the white guy is Jacob?” He didn’t ask this because he thought the black guy was playing the villain. In the black church, they only have the pshat (plain meaning of the text). And in the Torah/Bible, Jacob is a thief and Esau is the forgiver. In fact, many families who lost loved ones in the Mother Emmanuel massacre in 2015 cited Esau in their inspiration to forgive the shooter. But rabbis have spent centuries writing interpretations to paint Jacob as a hero and Esau as evil. Christians don’t have access to that spin. When you put both groups in the same room to make art from their jointly inherited sacred text, you get growth, context, and perspective.

That is our work.

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Jon Adam Ross has performed in over 90 cities around the globe and is the founding producing artist of The In[heir]itance Project – a national devised-theater series inspired by sacred texts. Credits include: a dog, a 2,000 year-old bird, an elderly orthodox Jew, a spurned housewife, a horse, a British naval officer in 1700’s Jamaica, a goat, Jesus Christ, a lawyer, a hapless police chief, and a cyclops.

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Ahava Rosenthal

2018 Cohort, Ahava Rosenthal 0 Comments

Among the propositions Rabbi Sid outlines in the opening chapter of his book, Jewish Megatrends, two of them speak most directly to the objectives and outcomes of the Parenting Through a Jewish Lens program at Hebrew College: chochma, and kehillah. As parents are given the opportunity to view their world through the lens of chochma, they are learning alongside others who share their overarching goals of providing stability and meaning to their families’ lives. They develop deeper ties to one another and begin to recognize the value and even necessity of kehillah.

Rabbi Sid writes that Jewish institutions must “dramatically rethink the way they will engage in the enterprise of transmitting the Jewish heritage”, and that “Jewish educators must increasingly get into the business of imparting wisdom and not just knowledge”. PTJL’s raison d’etre is to contextualize the parenting experience through the lens of Jewish wisdom spanning the history of Jewish texts, teachings, and thought. Regardless of their personal Jewish background, participants find inspiration and guidance in the chochma of sages written centuries ago and reflect on how those teachings impact their personal parenting experiences. By studying 20th and 21st century Jewish wisdom alongside these older texts, parents begin to notice a continuum of consistent core values upon which Judaism is predicated. They invariably come away from this class experience with newfound respect and understanding for the universality, timelessness and prescience of Jewish wisdom as well as a hunger for more.

Studying sources of Jewish wisdom together with other parents who are going through similar life stages with their inherent challenges and rewards creates a powerful sense of kehillah for PTJL participants. Megatrends addresses the escalating drift away from traditional institutional Jewish settings that once provided de facto focal points of community membership and engagement. PTJL provides a refuah l’maka (an antidote to this malady) to this breakdown in communal affiliation and identification by offering opportunities for creating smaller kehillot or micro-communities. As the Pew study confirms, there is both room and need for re-imagining community engagement.

“Meeting people where they are” has become an overused trope in speaking of the necessity to reach out in increasingly creative ways to Gen Xers and Millennials. Becoming a parent, however, complicates that directive. In an age in which parents can be consumed with making the “right choices” for their families, traditional community membership, with its inherent promise to create a sense of belonging, can become appealing. Indeed, “institutional Judaism” has come to understand the need to revisit and adapt its original frameworks in an effort to stay (or become) relevant and vital. In that vein, traditional Jewish institutions will turn to PTJL to help them cultivate chavurot to nurture safe spaces for parents to learn, connect and support each other. Still, the appeal of “living room learning” can be strong, both for those parents who have chosen not to affiliate with traditional Jewish institutions, as well as for those yearning for the kind of intimacy and social interaction that the coziness of a home setting provides. PTJL is committed to working with families, synagogues, and organizations to provide those opportunities for meaningful engagement in non-traditional settings.

PTJL facilitators and students are tasked with creating a kehillah kedosha, a holy community. Participants establish bonds of trust through sharing openly and responding honestly to the texts and teachings within the curriculum. It is common for a group to continue learning or socializing with one another even when the structure of the class has been removed as a pretense for coming together. Oftentimes, the context for spending more time together continues around Jewish learning and traditions- a Jewish parenting book group, Shabbat dinners, or taking other Jewish learning classes as a group. PTJL satisfies a longing for Jewish communal connection that for some, lay dormant until the opportunity presented itself.

The foundational principle of Parenting Through a Jewish Lens is the belief that Jewish wisdom can profoundly inform parenting and, by extension, impact the kind of home we create for our family. The concept of the home as the mikdash me’at, or “small sanctuary” is at once universal but also particular to Judaism. Cultivating shalom bayit, peace in the home, enriches our daily family lives. Learning about the custom of affixing a mezuzah to the doorpost of our homes provides a Jewishly rich manifestation of that concept. The explanation that the slanted positioning of the mezuzah represents a compromise between Rashi (who thought it should be hung vertically) and Rabbi Tam (who thought it should be hung horizontally) resonates with parents yearning for both inspiration and practical advice on cultivating a more harmonious household. Framing Shabbat as an opportunity to reconnect and recharge makes it accessible and appealing to all. Exploring rituals that enhance its kedusha (defined in this context as both holy and set apart) provides inviting and tangible entry points for families to create their own meaningful Jewish family traditions. PTJL’s proposition holds that empowering parents with chochma, nurtures an eagerness to bring both practical and symbolic expressions of Jewish values and practice into their homes.

Taken together, chochma, kehillah, and mikdash me’at, provide the three pillars upon which Parenting Through a Jewish Lens is built. It inspires parents to seek more–more learning and sharing, more ways of transmitting the riches of our heritage, and more ways of helping their families and communities flourish.

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Ahava Rosenthal is the Director of Parenting Through a Jewish Lens at Hebrew College in Newton MA. She is a lifelong educator who has worked in a variety of settings including public, supplementary and day school education.

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Kasey Passen

2018 Cohort 0 Comments

My work at OneTable advances Jewish life by providing a sense of community for Jewish millennials. At a time where most young Jews are turning away from traditional temple memberships, we know that they wish to connect and build Jewish identity and a sense of community. The weekly moment of unplugging and connecting with intention, which happens to be deeply rooted in tradition, is a cure for millennial stress and malcontent.

Millennials need Shabbat to experience the comfort of ritual and to find a sense of community. According to the Pew Research Center, millennials “have fewer attachments to traditional religious institutions, but they connect to personalized networks of friends, colleagues and affinity groups through social and digital media.”

OneTable offers a variety of innovative ways for participants to expand their social networks and build a sense of community. Users can host private in-home Shabbat dinners to invite their friends to gather for an intimate experience. They can also host “open” or “host-approval” dinners, allowing strangers to join their Shabbat dinner tables as an opportunity to meet new people and forge new networks.

These intimate dinner experiences provide an outlet for young Jews to explore and share good and difficult times. Hosts organize Shabbat dinners through OneTable to celebrate birthdays, marriages, Jewish/secular holidays, camp reunions and their favorite world cuisines.  Participants also host Shabbat dinners to deal with the difficult times. Following the events in Charlottesville, in which we witnessed white supremacists and neo-Nazis marching openly, we decided to raise our voices and rise up, not just in opposition but in unity.  The campaign, “Together at the Table”, saw 748 individuals pledge to participate in a Shabbat dinner that Friday, August 18. OneTable, in partnership with 76 organizations, came together to mobilize a grassroots movement of Shabbat dinners across the country dedicated to celebrating diversity, equality, and inclusion in the face of fear, division and hate.

In addition to private and community Shabbat dinners, OneTable hosts community events to attract new members and help participants make new social connections. These “Nosh:pitality” workshops focus on teaching hosting skills tied to Jewish learning to enhance the Shabbat dinner experiences. Nosh:pitalitys are especially attractive to unengaged and under-engaged young adults because of their focus on trendy food and hospitality topics. These gatherings offer a great opportunity for users to make new social, romantic and professional connections.

Besides the four themes outlined in the Schwarz article, OneTable advances Jewish life by encouraging Jewish individuality. We offer a radical shift away from the traditional, prescriptive ways of thinking about religion. Most young Jews are taught there is a certain way they “should” practice or observe Judaism.  Most shy away from temple because they don’t find it applicable to their lives.

OneTable gives millenials an accessible way to explore Jewish identity through Shabbat dinner. Young Jews are empowered to customize their experiences in ways to make it meaningful for them. Hosts can get creative with menu ideas, dinner themes, and curate specific conversation topics.  They can use traditional and alternative forms of ritual to sanctify these special moments. Dinners can be in the home, at a restaurant or anywhere in the community. We encourage our users to make Shabbat mobile and incorporate it into what they love to do. OneTable Shabbat dinners are hosted on the top of ski mountains, at campsites, at the beach, at concert venues and spin studios. OneTable provides all of the resources to make Shabbat dinner possible, including supplementing food costs, coaching guidance and ritual guides.

OneTable Shabbat dinners have changed my life. A year ago, when I started working for the organization, I was one of least Jewishly engaged members of the staff. As a child and young adult, I was never exposed to Shabbat so I assumed it had to be a religious, formal experience. Through my work at OneTable, I have learned that Shabbat can be anything I want it to be.  Most important I realize that Shabbat is a precious time at the end of each week to pause, to reflect and celebrate the fact that I am part of a larger community rooted in a meaningful tradition.

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Kasey Passen Z”L was the Associate Director of Hubs for OneTable, coming from 14 years in the food culinary and hospitality world. After studying psychology at the University of Michigan, she began her career at a catering company in Chicago and attended Kendall College to study culinary arts. Her career as a chef took her to San Francisco where she cooked in farm-to-table restaurants and ran a large food and wine event space. Her deep connection to family brought her back to Chicago where she started her own culinary business focusing on custom dinners and culinary education. Kasey loved hiking mountains, taking bubble baths, going to farmers markets, going to dinner parties, salsa dancing, and traveling the world. 

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