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Considering the interest of Judaism and making it accessible

The focus of rabbinical school training has often been on how we can attract more Jews to Judaism. But the secret is this: Jews are attracted to Judaism — the unadulterated, complex and nuanced, powerful Jewish tradition. We just don’t have enough teachers out there who can speak their language and transmit the beauty and intricacy of Jewish tradition to those hungry for some meaning in their lives. We have been working so hard to pull people back from complete repudiation of Judaism — or worse, apathy — that we don’t know how to meet the demand of those finally interested in the conversation and looking to own it themselves.

Elie Kaunfer, “The Real Crisis in American Judaism”, The Jewish Week (7 April 2010), 14.

“The American synagogue, like so many other institutions, was dramatically affected by the economic downturn of 2008-2010…”

The American synagogue, like so many other institutions, was dramatically affected by the economic downturn of 2008-2010. It had a deleterious impact on almost every area of synagogue life, as budgets were cut significantly all over the land. But rabbis, arguably felt the impact more than any other professional in the synagogue community, as congregations released, rather than renewed, assistant and associate rabbis, reduced full-time rabbis to part time, and canceled searches that were under way to provide assistants to senior rabbis.

Orthodox rabbis were less affected than rabbis of the other branches, as only a small number of those ordained had planned to enter the congregational rabbinate. But even Orthodox rabbis, especially those who wanted to make a career of teaching in Jewish schools, saw the opportunities shrinking and their career goals placed on hold. It is, however, in the other branches that the high unemployment took hold.

In the spring and summer of 2009, as Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform rabbis sought jobs, there were approximately three rabbis available for every opening. There were older rabbis whose congregations encouraged them to retire so that they could hire a young rabbi with a much smaller salary; there were assistant and associate rabbis whose positions disappeared when their contract expired as congregations sought to balance their budgets; and there were newly ordained and recently ordained rabbis who had not yet found jobs. When the dust settled, two out of every three non-Orthodox rabbis seeking a job in 2009 remained, at the end of the calendar year, unemployed, with little opportunity for meaningful or gainful work opportunities in the near future in their profession.

Marc Lee Raphael, The Synagogue in America: A Short History (New York & London: New York University Press, 2011), 205-206.

Online dating can “put people into boxes…”

Someone who views life and romance holistically (not focusing inordinately on surface criteria), or who is not photogenic, or does not present a desirable dating resume (because of something like age, weight, height, income level), may have better luck meeting dates in real life, especially if she/he has confidence and charisma.

“Online dating puts people into boxes,” says Will Winter, a Manhattan psychiatrist and singles expert. “It strengthens people’s perfectionistic tendencies when it comes to superficial criteria, and that’s not the way to go into relationships.”

Younger women who try online dating frequently complain about inboxes flooded with hundreds of notes from eager suitors who haven’t read their profiles. The men writing those messages probably fantasize that these 20something women are looking for a relationship with them; in reality, many younger women are just trying online dating as a lark or an ego boost. Meanwhile, many 30- and 40something men who claim to want meaningful connection don’t search for women who are in their own age range or slightly older — and those are the women most likely to be looking for true love online.

Heather Robinson, “Boxed-In By Online Dating”, The Jewish Week (29 November 2013), 49.

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“Instead of focusing on new ideas, the Jewish community would be better served by connecting to the original “big ideas” of our heritage…”

The Jewish community is obsessed with the “next big idea.” But the crisis is not one of theory — the power of Judaism is clear to those truly engaged in its complex struggles and searchings for truth and divinity. Instead of focusing on new ideas, the Jewish community would be better served by connecting to the original “big ideas” of our heritage: Torah, avodah (rituals) and gemilut hasadim (acts of loving kindess), for instance. To put it another way: there is no “new big idea.” There is just investment in the old, but in a serious, meaningful, and thoughtful way.

Elie Kaunfer, “The Real Crisis in American Judaism”, The Jewish Week (7 April 2010), 14.

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“What is growing today is ‘nondenominationalism’, the increasing number of Jews who call themselves seculars, cultural Jews, or ‘just Jewish'”

What is growing today is “nondenominationalism”, the increasing number of Jews who call themselves seculars, cultural Jews, or “just Jewish”. Just as significant numbers of those raised as Catholics and Protestants now define themselves as seculars and an increasing number of voters call themselves “Independents”, so, too, the number of Jews raised in one of the four branches, but not identifying with any of them, is increasing. The number of adult Jews who would not identify themselves with one of the sectors increased from 20 to 27 percent from 1990 to 2000, and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey of 2007 found that the number of Jews following the practice continued to grow. Thus, many worry that Jews, especially those of Generation X, have abandoned community for a host of more individual alternatives. These alternatives have, in common, a profound interest in the self and its redemption and in one’s own spiritual journey and personal fulfillment.

Marc Lee Raphael, The Synagogue in America: A Short History (New York & London: New York University Press, 2011), 204-205.

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“…the legacy of American Judaism in the 21st century — a Judaism that has been undersold and watered down”

American Judaism is in crisis. But it isn’t the crisis that mainstream American Jewish leaders would have you believe. It is at once much better and much worse.

The false crisis — declining Jewish continuity, caused by assimilation and an intermarriage rate of 52 percent — has become the rallying cry of institutional Judaism. But fundamentally, it is a red herring. The real crisis is one of meaning and engagement. For the first time in centuries, two Jews can marry each other and have Jewish children without any connection to Jewish heritage, wisdom or tradition.

Part of the problem is that there are very few places that offer Jews an opportunity to experience the power and mystery of Jewish tradition firsthand. Even people who are in-married by and large have little connection to Torah, Jewish practice and values. They are dependent on others to translate Judaism for them, and they trudge to High Holiday services to receive the requisite “Be good!” sermons, only to return to their lives unchallenged and unchanged.

They have been sold a world in which Judaism is a bunch of platitudes, at best matching their existing modern liberal values (but adding nothing beyond what they already know), and at worst completely irrelevant to the struggles they experience day to day. Who can blame these Jews for disengaging from Judaism?

This is the legacy of American Judaism in the 21st century — a Judaism that has been undersold and watered down. It is a Judaism where those who know its beauty are often unable or unwilling to connect to the larger Jewish community, and those on the front lines of the welcome wagon to Judaism have little skill or facility with Jewish texts to elucidate the beauty to others. People want deep meaning and connection, but they move through life thinking of Judaism’s contribution to the world as “Seinfeld” and guilt. Many would be shocked to find out that Judaism has vigorous debates about the most central existential problems facing people today.

Elie Kaunfer, “The Real Crisis in American Judaism”, The Jewish Week (7 April 2010), 1, 12.

More independent Jewish communal professionals due to the economy?

Jewish communal professionals and clergy nearing retirement who have jobs cannot afford to stop working, closing off opportunities for the next generation of leaders. Meanwhile, the professional preparation institutions continue to graduate teachers, educators, communal service workers, cantors, and rabbis, who enter a shrinking job market, often laden with significant student loan debt. What shall these people do? Some will have no choice but to hang their own shingle and offer their services to an increasingly savvy population of Jews who, whether forced by the economic circumstances or because they do not see the value of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars over a number of years, decide to forgo “membership” in Jewish institutions and hire single practitioners, eager for their “business”.

Dr. Ron Wolfson, Relational Judaism: Using the Power of Relationships to Transform the Jewish Community (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2013), 32.

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When Jews left their communities and moved to the suburbs in the 1940s-1960s, they “usually abandoned their synagogues”

When Jews left communities such as Lawndale in Chicago or the near east side in Columbus, Ohio, and moved to suburbs either inside or outside the city, they usually abandoned their synagogues (just as white Christians abandoned their churches). Of course, there were exceptions. As the black population exploded in the Hyde Park-Kenwood area of Chicago in the 1940s and 19505, K.A.M. made a commitment to remain in the neighborhood and worked vigorously to create a fifty-fifty balance of whites and blacks. Rabbi Jacob J. Weinstein could claim, at the end of the 1950s, that “this temple was the single most effective anchorage in holding the white people here.” This was no easy task, as he also noted in a Yom Kippur sermon, for the “movement to the suburbs is, in the framework of our social and economic mores, almost as natural and instinctive as the flight of the birds to Capistrano.” And, in postwar Philadelphia, rather than flee the city, Mikve Israel and Rodeph Shalom reinvented themselves and remained in the city center as their congregants (and other synagogues) left North Philadelphia for the northern Philadelphia suburbs and beyond the city limits. Such congregations, however, were the exception.

Most abandoned synagogues became black churches, and Jews, in their new communities, either built new buildings with the same synagogue name as the old or started over with new synagogues with new names.

Marc Lee Raphael, The Synagogue in America: A Short History (New York & London: New York University Press, 2011), 125.

“Judaism, to be a thick identity,… is not part-time commitment with full-time benefits”

Judaism, to be a thick identity, in the words of philosopher Charles Taylor, is not part-time commitment with full-time benefits. It is the framework and the lens, the core and the vision. Why would you “affiliate” with anything that demands less of you? It’s not about affiliation. It never has been. It’s about meaning and wisdom. And our language must change to reflect this.

Erica Brown, “Part-Time Judaism”, 2013-2014: The Year Gone By…The Year Ahead, A Special Supplement to the Florida Jewish Journal and the New York Jewish Week (27 December 2013), 7.

Ruth Calderon on Encountering Talmud and Becoming Enamored with it

…I contained — a void. I did not know how to fill that void, but when I first encountered the Talmud and became completely enamored with it — its language, its humor, its profound thinking, its modes of discussion, and the practicality, humanity and maturity that emerge from its lines — I sensed that I had found the love of my life, what I had been lacking.

Ruth Calderon, “‘The Time Has Come To Re-appropriate What Is Ours’”, Israel Now: A Special Supplement to the Jewish Week, trans. Elli Fischer (31 May 2013), 13.