JTA: Rebbe's Army Soldiers On

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Rebbe's army soldiers on

By · November 30, 2008

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg, the Chabad emissaries brutally murdered last week in Mumbai, ran the Jewish center they established in that Indian city on their own. But the young Israeli-American couple were part of a worldwide network of Chabad-Lubavitch shluchim -- more than 7,000 men and women who devote their lives to doing Jewish outreach in more than 73 countries.

The outreach effort has become the hallmark of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, set in motion 55 years ago by their late rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. In the 15 years since his death, "going on shlichus," or becoming Chabad emissaries, has been a point of pride with young Lubavitchers -- the best and the brightest, they say, become the rebbe's emissaries.

Chabad has become so ubiquitous that Jewish travelers around the world, no matter how far they stray, have come to expect a Shabbat meal, a holiday celebration and a warm welcome from one of these Chasidic couples, no questions asked. All that's required is a knock on the door.

An online tribute to the Holtzbergs posted recently at http://www.chabad.org is filled with postings from American, British and Israeli travelers who passed through the Mumbai Chabad center the couple established in 2003.

People recall 29-year-old Gabi's broad smile and 28-year-old Rivkah's efforts to make every guest feel at home. Some write of playing with the couple's 2-year-old son, Moshe, and wondering who will raise him now. One traveler called the Holtzbergs "a beacon of Judaism" in a world that often made him feel alone and alien.

Over the past decade, both during and after my research for "The Rebbe's Army," my 2003 book about Lubavitch shluchim, I have heard similar stories from countless American Jews. They talk of spending Shabbat with Chabad in Venice, Italy; Hong Kong; Anchorage, Alaska; Bangkok. They marvel at the fortitude and commitment of these young couples who leave comfortable lives in New York, London or Jerusalem to take up residence in Russia, Brazil, Zambia and, yes, India -- countries where they live to serve their fellow Jews, where they raise their children in a language and culture not their own.

Often I meet these Jews at fund-raisers for other Jewish organizations. As we munch on hors d'oeuvres and sip wine in fancy banquet halls from L.A. to Miami, those who relate these stories don't seem to realize that the Chabad centers they have come to expect around the world don't pop up by themselves, and certainly they don't continue to function without the tireless work and endless fund-raising by the emissaries who run them.

At the Passover seder I spent in Bangkok in April 2001, the Chabad center on Khao San Road had been completed just hours before the dinner began; the rafters were still unpainted. Nearly 300 tickets at $15 a pop had been pre-sold to Israeli backpackers who filled the nearby guesthouses.

Some 700 young travelers tromped happily up the stairs to the seder, more than half brushing past the Lubavitch yeshiva students who were quietly collecting tickets and smiling at every arrival whether they had paid or not.

A free dinner! Of course, it's Chabad. It's always free. It's always there.

During my visit with the Chabad emissaries in Salt Lake City, Utah, I listened as Sharonne Zippel spoke of the sadness she felt as she and her husband prepared to send their 11-year-old son off to Montreal for yeshiva, in accordance with Lubavitch custom. When the couple, as young marrieds, decided to spend their lives as shluchim, Sharonne told me, they hadn't realized it meant dragging their future children into the same lifelong commitment.

Did Rivkah and Gavriel Holtzberg think about that when they decided to move to India? As her three children were born -- one died young, a second was in Israel with Rivkah's parents last week -- did  Rivkah look into their tiny, perfect faces and wonder whether they might have been happier growing up in Brooklyn or Israel? When the gunmen burst into the Mumbai Jewish center on Nov. 26, did Rivkah or Gabi waver in their resolve to see it through to the end?

The weekend before the attack, 3,000 Chabad emissaries gathered in New York for their annual convention. They danced, they networked, they took their famous roll call during the closing-night banquet, standing up country by country to celebrate the movement's continued growth.

The number of Chabad institutions has doubled in the past decade from 745 to 1,326. According to a 2001 survey by the American Jewish Committee, one-tenth of the synagogues in the United States are Chabad congregations. The movement's Web site receives 75,000 unique visitors every day.

The growth is qualitative, too. More sophisticated adult educational programs have been created and emissaries have become involved in a wider range of activities, from prisoner rehabilitation to new media development.

New emissary couples are taking up postings around the world in ever more remote locations. Chabad centers were established last year in South Korea, Serbia and northern Cyprus. Four new Lubavitch couples every week, on average, set out to somewhere around the globe, intent on spreading their rebbe's message to do good, study hard and love one's fellows.

The word from Lubavitch global headquarters in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y., is that the Mumbai tragedy will not slow down the movement nor deter new emissaries from taking up their postings.

Next week, Rabbi David Slavin, 27, and his wife, Chani, 26, head to Yassi, Romania, a city with 7,000 Jewish families on the Ukrainian border.

Speaking by phone from their current home in Kiryat Malachi in Israel, David said the news from Mumbai has not affected their plans.

"We are not afraid at all," he said. "We can't understand why this happened to the Holtzbergs; it's very hard, of course. But we are sure this is the right path for us."

Like other emissaries, the Slavins will bring their children with them: 2-year-old Dovi and 2-month-old Chaya Mushka.

David, whose American-born parents were sent as Chabad emissaries to Israel by Schneerson, noted that Dovi and Chaya Mushka will be third-generation shluchim. That's quite a responsibility to lay on the shoulders of two toddlers. But it's the life they have chosen.

Rabbi Menachem Creditor
-- www.netivotshalom.org
-- www.shefanetwork.org
-- menachemcreditor.org

from The Jew and the Carrot: "Change from Within: An Interview with Rabbi Gordon Tucker"

- The Jew and the Carrot - http://jcarrot.org -

http://jcarrot.org/change-from-within-an-interview-with-rabbi-gordon-tucker/

Change from Within: An Interview with Rabbi Gordon Tucker

Posted By Nina Budabin McQuown On December 1, 2008 @ 11:22 am In Books, Community Agri., D'var Torah, Hazon, Interview, Interviews, Jewish Culture, Jewish Learning,Spirituality, Synagogues, Tuv Ha'Aretz | No Comments

Rabbi [1] Gordon Tucker is the Senior Rabbi at the [2] Temple Israel Center in White Plains, New York. He served as the Dean of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTA) from 1984 until 1992, and on the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly from 1982 to 2007. His most recent published work, [3] Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations is a translation with commentary of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's three volume work in Hebrew.

Right before Thanksgiving, I had the chance to speak with Rabbi Tucker about his thoughts on [4] Hekhsher Tzedek, how food and social justice connect, and where change comes from in Conservative Judaism (hint, read the title of this post)

Read all about it below the jump (plus - a special, candid photo of Rabbi Tucker on [5] Hazon's New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride!)…

What do you see as the most important food-related issues in the Conservative movement today?

I actually don't even use that phrase, food issues.  In the Conservative movement institutionally, it is related to Hekhsher Tzedek.  That's what's on the agenda now: the extent to which our religious concern with food is primarily a matter relating to the rituals of the preparation of food or the moral qualities that are reflected in the production and distribution of food.   The premise of Hekhsher Tzedek is that they are essentially of coequal status - something that is not taken as obvious by everyone.

Do you have a position on that?

I am a complete supporter of Hekhsher Tzedek.  In fact, I see it as just beginning with food.

Food happens to be an obvious and convenient place to start.  First of all, there was a real life poster child for the violation of these things in Agriprocessors, though they're by no means the only culprits, nor is this the only industry that produces and distributes its products in ways that aren't associated with the ethics and ideals that Judaism associates itself with.  But it sort of starts with food because Judaism already has a religious concern with food (kashrut), so it was an obvious place to make the argument that the religious concerns are even bigger than one might think. But that should be true of clothing and textiles and everything else, including Wall Street, I suppose.

Do you think Jews are concerned about these other industries?

Yeah, I think so, I mean, you're familiar with the [6] Jewish Funds for Justice? They're very concerned about living wage issues and other kinds of workers rights, the role of Unions, protecting workers. They do their work and promote these ideas very much out of a Jewish context, so there are certainly lots of people who are concerned with these ideas outside of just food.

Do you think the focus on social justice is recent?

No, I think it's been that way for a long time. We've been a little late to pick up on it. But [otherwise] we're not going to really inspire people who are not already initiated into [Judaism], and that certainly includes the entire younger generation, who because of their age are not fully initiated into anything.

They've been taught things at home, but to the extent that they're making up their own minds as young adults, it's a question of where they're going to put their allegiances. Religion has to be able to present a face that is concerned with justice and fairness because that's very important to people, rightly so.

How has food awareness changed for the congregants at your synagogue, The Temple Israel Center in White Plains? Do your synagogue members belong to CSAs? Do they want their shavout cheesecake to be made with grass-fed milk? If not, where is the support for a focus on food in the Conservative movement coming from?

This last year we still got cheesecakes from S&S… but it's something that little by little is being thought about more. One of the things you probably know from hanging around Hazon is that we're one of the congregations here in White Plains who formed a Tuv Ha'Aretz, we just had our last delivery from Hudson Valley Farm, and we have every reason to think that will continue next year. So we've got a lot of people's awareness up here in the community about the importance of supporting local food production and keeping transportation costs and the carbon footprint down.

We just had our centennial, and looking into our second century, if we pull out of this economic crisis and are able to think about raising some significant funds for some initiatives in the synagogue, one of them is going to be greening the synagogue in some significant ways.

Do your congregants ask you for advise about food not just related to kashrut but to ethics?

Not a whole lot, but the CSA is certainly a launching pad. It's not specifically people coming to me to ask questions about it, but getting into conversations about it, "why is the synagogue doing this, why this specific thing?" Those are great questions, opening up educational opportunities.

How do you answer?

I start taking them back to the very beginning. There are two interweaving accounts of human beings at the very beginning of our literature. One has us being handed the world on Friday afternoon, God saying, "Here, enjoy it, take charge of it, control it, bend it to your will."  Then there's another account of us as having been created to take care of the garden. They don't always sit comfortably with each other, but I think they accurately reflect the two moods of human beings.  One is sort of naturally ingrained in human beings - to sort of go out and conquer and exploit things.  The other is the kind of super ego which says to us, "Uh-uh, this is not all about you."

That's a very instructive tension that's built right into the Hebrew bible. If all we had was to this "to till and to tend" it would sound very goody-two-shoes. The fact that the Torah very frankly tells us, "Y'know human beings are built in a certain way, but they also have to recognize a responsibility that comes from something larger than them," I think is more realistic, more accurate and more honest.

So is your community excited about Hekhsher Tzedek?

Well, they're concerned.  We do get asked questions in terms of what is our local butcher carrying here, can we be sure that its not products that are coming from the worst offenders etc.  I wouldn't call it a mass movement, but there's an awareness right now that didn't exist at all a year ago.

Do you think that comes mainly from the news coverage?

From the news coverage and from my talking about it and from my co-rabbi Neil Zuckerman talking about it as well.

A report from PBS's "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly" that was posted on the Heksher Tzedek blog stated that around 20 percent of Conservative Jews keep kosher while about 90 percent of Orthodox Jews do. Do you think that Hekhsher Tzedek will be able to have a real impact on Kosher producers without the support of the Orthodox movement, or is there a possibility that producers will just rely on their larger market share?

First of all, twenty percent of the Conservative movement is probably equivalent in numbers to fifty percent of the Orthodox movement, so it's a lot larger than it sounds, but keeping kosher has a lot of definitions, in home, outside the home.

So it's not really a concern among Hekhsher Tzedek to increase support among Orthodox Jews?

Oh, I think it's a concern to increase support among everybody. We certainly aren't happy if the Orthodox movement as a movement pooh-poohs Hekhsher Tzedek, but they're not doing that at this point.

Is there a hope in the Conservative community that Heksher Tzedek will lead more Conservative Jews to commit to kashrut in their homes and daily lives?

Lets put it this way -  it can help remove one of the excuses for not keeping kosher, and will give kashrut a better name.

When you ask people what they think religion should be concerned with, they won't necessarily point to some of the symbolic and ritual kinds of things that many of us would associate with religion.  They're just not into that and they don't get it. But most people will say that religion should be concerned with ethical and just action, and if kashrut is more fully defined as something that's concerned with those things, then it will be understood as an important and legitimate religious act and religious concern.

In a commentary on [7] Parashat Tol'Dot, Dr. David Kraemer says that "Judaism is not only a religion of formal ritual and Torah. It is, and has always been, a religion of the kitchen, a way of life in which the masters of the kitchen — usually the women — were real religious virtuosi, sustaining the body and soul together." How have changes in Conservative Judaism regarding gender and sexuality, like ordination for women in 1985 and for gays and lesbians in 2002 influenced the focus of the Conservative movement?

I understand the premise of the question, but I have to say that I don't feel like I have any evidence of that. Let me give you an analogy. When women were admitted to the rabbinical school at JTS, people noticed a couple years afterwards that there were different kinds of conversations, and openness to a whole lot of issues. Some people would ask me, "Don't you think that the fact that women are here now has sort of changed the terms of discourse and now certain things that weren't being discussed are being discussed because it's the nature of having women in the community to promote that?"

And again, I understood the premise behind it, but I felt that it was getting it backwards.  The terms of discourse had, for a variety of social and cultural reasons, begun to change.  The openess was not the effect of having women admitted, but probably the cause of opening up and being able to do that.

I would say it's something like that now: various more inclusive ways of looking at the sexes and at sexuality and different sexual orientation are not necessarily the cause of more ethical ways of looking at food production and consumption but that they are somehow related to each other organically and almost happening simultaneously as part of a large common cause and common effect.

It sounds to me that that's sort of how you feel that change happens in general, that change comes from the way that congregants are seeing the world, not from inside the institution.

Right.

[8] 

Below, Rabbi Tucker rided with Hazon during the 2001 New York Ride. Sign up for the New York ride [9] here yourself.

---

Article printed from The Jew and the Carrot: http://jcarrot.org

URL to article: http://jcarrot.org/change-from-within-an-interview-with-rabbi-gordon-tucker/

URLs in this post:
[1] Gordon Tucker: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Tucker
[2] Temple Israel Center: http://www.templeisraelcenter.org/
[3] Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0826418929?ie=UTF8&tag=hazon-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&
amp;creative=9325&creativeASIN=0826418929

[4] Hekhsher Tzedek: http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/hekhsher%20tzedek/hekhsher_tzedek.html
[5] Hazon's: http://www.hazon.org
[6] Jewish Funds for Justice: http://www.jewishjustice.org/
[7] Parashat Tol'Dot: http://www.jtsa.edu/PreBuilt/ParashahArchives/5759/toldot.shtml
[8] Image: http://jcarrot.org/wp-content/uploads/19_rabbi_gordon_tucker_on_the_roadsized.jpg
[9] here: http://www.hazon.org/go.php?q=/rides/2008NY/joinThePeopleOfTheBike.html

Click here to print.

Rabbi Menachem Creditor
-- www.netivotshalom.org
-- www.shefanetwork.org
-- menachemcreditor.org

To join Rabbi Creditor's email list, send a blank email to thetisch-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

LGBT Channukah Celebrations!

Latkes, Vodkas, and More Thursday, December 18 6:30pm The Roof Terrace at the LGBT Center, 1800 Market Street San Francisco $18 Tickets are available at the door. No one will be turned away due to lack of funds. Dear Friends, We are bringing together a few hundred people at our annual Chanukah celebration on Thursday, Dec 18 and we want you to be our partner in this extraordinary evening. Designed to be slightly decadent and created by the Lay Leaders of the LGBT Alliance and Congregation Sha'ar Zahav, this party's centerpiece features Lighting Justice with Fire: A Ceremony to Honor our Local Jewish Queer Hero's. Guests can taste fried-food delights, drink flaming cocktails and schmooze. We will also all enjoy the breathtaking Amelia Mae Paradise presenting a Queerly Jewish cabaret with Comedy, Burlesque, Drag with plenty of audience participation. Event partnerships are intended to foster positive and growing relationships within the organized Jewish community and the LGBTQ community. Let LGBTQ community members know again and in an additional way that your organization or group welcomes LGBTQ individuals and families! Event Partner Expectations: Commit to promoting the event via email Commit to an announcement in your blog, newsletter or website Commit one staff or board member attending Event Partner Benefits: One VIP entrance with a voucher for one free flaming cocktail Listed in our marketing materials Be part of a multitude of organizations that have already committed to partnering with us Materials can be distributed to our guests at the event You get "lots of bang for little effort" Please let me know if you are committed to becoming a partner with us on this event as soon as you are able. B'Shalom! Lisa Finkelstein     Online Auction to support LGBTQ Jewish Bay Area Programs! Let the bidding begin! Auction items range from exotic vacation getaways to donated items that are guaranteed to delight and surprise! So, tell your friends, family and community! We are a group of Bay Area LGBT Jews (and their friends and family) who are committed to passionately building a visible, vocal, and vibrant LGBT Jewish community. Join us on Facebook and get connected with our 200+ members. We dish out exclusive dates, events, articles, pictures and programs! LGBT Alliance 121 Steuart Street San Francisco, California 94105 415.369.2863 lgbt@sfjcf.org http://www.sfjcf.org

VaYeira 5769/2008: “Which Fire Will It Be?”

VaYeira 5769/2008: “Which Fire?”

© Rabbi Menachem Creditor

 

In honor of Joe Meresman

 

When we tell the story of the Akeidah, the Binding of Isaac, how do we tell it? 

 

Do we dare question the God who commands the unthinkable?  Do we allow the text which portrays God this way to push us completely away from faith, rejecting the troubling image?  Do we hold Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only remaining son, his entire future, as admirable?  Do we see and acknowledge Sarah’s absence from the narrative ?  Do we discuss God never speaking to Abraham again after the Akeidah?  Do we point to Isaac’s complicity in the story? (He is old enough to hold the wood for the sacrifice on his back, and so he is strong enough to resist, we suppose.)

 

So many questions.  And so important to us, to our world that we ask them. 

 

Too often we fall into apologetics (“God was only testing”, “Abraham knew it was a test”, etc… ) but we lose the awfulness , the compelling tension, the struggle of the story when we do not ask the questions that demanded these responses.  Abraham is willing to question God’s justice during the Sodom and Gemorrah story, so why not here?!  Martyrdom for the more-distant other but not for his own son, his own soul?  When we forget our own worth, what does advocacy for the other truly represent?  This literal self-less-ness is a confused goodness at best.  Halacha, Jewish tradition, teaches us that tzedakkah begins in the most immediate geographic and familial range and then emanates further.  In contemporary terms: How can I help Darfur if my unattended home crumbles?

 

What is the story of the Akeidah?  What positive direction might we gain from encountering it over and over?

 

There is an incredible soul-song, a meditation before prayer, found in the Book of Tremblers (Sefer Chareidim), that reads:

 

“In my heart I will build a dwelling-place to amplify the Glory of God,

And in that dwelling place I will make a place for the flowings of God’s Beauty.

And as the eternal light I will take for myself the fire of the Binding,

And I will offer as the sacrifice my soul- my only soul.”

 

The words of this poem suggest that the fire from the Akeidah is the light of a spiritual life.  And while I believe and teach that seeing beyond the self, sacrificing self-centeredness is crucial to authentic spiritual journeying, this is not – must not be – the Eternal Light of a faithful path.  A healthy Judaism, a healthy Jewish relationship with God, demands engagement, not surrender.  We are God-Strugglers, the very meaning of the name Yisrael.  We argue, contest, reach, and grow with God.

 

I believe that the Torah sees God as a Learning Creator, One who regrets every failed generation of humankind (Adam and Eve, Kain and Abel, the Flood, the Tower of Bavel), and measured the success of Creation by the horrible demand of Abraham to give it all up.  To suspend his sense of what is right (for a second time, including sending Hagar and Ishma’el into the wilderness) out of obedience.  This is a Cosmic Parent who sees the measure of success in the conformity of the child.  This is a God who doesn’t know what will come next, who is emotionally engaged with – and therefore vulnerable to – the decisions and fate of humankind. This is a God who needs us.

 

This is the Torah’s view, I believe.  What is ours?  What fire belongs in our holiest of places, in the Eternal Light of the Jewish soul?  Is it the fiery devotion of obedience when the command is wrong?  Is it the sense that God’s command overrides human morality?  Is that fire so manifest that I can absolutely know what God demands of me?  In a careful read of the Torah’s text, can an image of a Vulnerable God invite us back into an honest, healing, relationship?

 

The fire of our souls, of our authentic Jewish identity in living, growing relationships with our Divine Partner in Creation, demand that we acknowledge the wrongness in Abraham’s choice, in God’s command, in the Torah’s text.  This story demands brave hurt and determined healing.

 

The Akeidah calls us to reaffirm and establish our faith in a just world, in our trust that God has learned the pain from this story and demands a healthy, maturing spirituality.

 

May that world come to be through our loving, passionate work.

 

Amen.

NAASE Kashrut

Dear Chevreh,

 

NAASE, the Conservative Movement's North American Association Of Synagogue Executives, has a yearly international convention.   This year's convention (November 15-20,  2008) is being shared with NATA, the Reform Movement's corresponding organization.  That's a wonderful synergy.  But the conference catering isn't Kosher.  (There is something like a "kosher option" for those who would choose.)  I hope you are as outraged as I am to discover that a professional association of Conservative synagogue leaders chose to forego kashrut at their national convention.  USCJ withdrew participation of its national and regional staff in reaction to the decision.  Both NAASE and your particular Executive Director should hear from you on the subject.  

 

Please contact the NAASE office to voice your response:

 

NAASE Office

Rapaport House

820 Second Avenue

New York NY 10017

phone: 212-533-7800 Ext 2609

fax to (631) 732-9461

email: office@naase.org

 

The NAASE homepage is  http://www.naase.org/meet.htm, and the list of NAASE Committee Chairs and Special Project Coordinators (2008-2009) is here: http://www.naase.org/meetcomm.htm.

 

We have too much holy building to do to leave our sacred foundations behind,

Menachem

 

This Shabbat at 10:30am: National Prop 8 protests are the "tipping point"

 

"No one in California political circles has ever seen such a speedy response to a single political event. And it's spreading across the country. More than 10,000 rallied in New York City on Wednesday evening..." --  San Jose Mercury News, November 13

Dear Chevreh,

Will you be a part of "The Tipping Point" on marriage equality?

In 2000, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a best-selling book exploring how small events can catalyze seismic shifts in culture. Eight years later, you can participate in what could be one of the most profound "tipping points" in American political history.

On Saturday morning, at the exact same time across the country, thousands of people will march, rally and protest the passage of Prop 8.  This Shabbat at Congregation Netivot Shalom, at precisely 10:30am we will mark that moment during services as well.

Incredibly, this volunteer-run national event was not organized by a well-known institution or coalition of organizations. It was sparked just a few days ago by Amy Balliett, a Seattle woman who turned a blog post about protesting Prop 8 into "Join the Impact," a bottom-up internet phenomenon attracting tens of thousands of people.

Will you join this unprecedented national protest against Prop 8 and march for marriage equality on Saturday morning? Please click here to find "Join the Impact" rally locations at City Halls across California and then let us know if you're going to be there at 10:30 a.m. PT.  This Shabbat at Netivot Shalom, at precisely 10:30am we will mark that moment during services as well.

Amy Balliett didn't need anyone's permission to call for a nationwide protest against Prop 8. Instead, she posted a blog entry that is helping birth a new Marriage Equality Movement -- a technology-driven civil rights movement for the 21st Century. As 365gay.com reported:

"This past Friday, Nov. 7, 'Join the Impact' hit the web. Five hours later, the site logged 10,000 visitors... By Monday morning, a plan had emerged: Cities around the country would organize their own efforts to coordinate a synchronized protest for Sat., Nov. 15, 10:30 a.m. PST. The movement became officially global with hits from the UK and France, and by Nov. 11, over one million visitors had come to the site."

Organized from the ground up by thousands of ordinary people just like you, this people-powered protest movement is growing exponentially by the minute, online and offline.

Can you help make this grassroots event the tipping point for marriage equality in America? This Shabbat at Netivot Shalom, at precisely 10:30am we will mark this moment during services.

This is our moment to stand strong together -- gay and straight -- and say that we refuse to accept a California where discrimination is enshrined in our state constitution.  We hope you will take this stand on Saturday and encourage your friends to show up as well by forwarding this message and asking them to come with you.

Thank you for helping make Amy's brilliant idea the tipping point on marriage equality in America.

Rabbi Menachem Creditor

The Courage Campaign Issues Committee is part of the Courage Campaign's online

organizing network that empowers over 200,000 grassroots and netroots activists

to bring progressive change to California.

JTA: "Op-Ed: Denominational bickering hurts outreach efforts"

Op-Ed: Denominational bickering hurts outreach efforts

By · November 12, 2008

NEW YORK (JTA)—There is an old saying, made popular by Hillary Clinton, that it takes a village to raise a child. As people grow, their future is impacted not only by family, but also the society as a whole. This includes teachers, mentors, bosses and the institutions in which they reside. Everyone, the saying implies, has a hand in developing who a person is and what he or she becomes.

The same can be said about raising a Jew – it takes the whole community, the diversity of every aspect of Judaism, to shape a Jew. It can also be said about Judaism itself, from Reform to Orthodox, that we all have a hand in shaping the future of the entire Jewish community. That's why it is up to us, here and now, to make sure the community will grow, will thrive and will become more dynamic as we raise the next generation of Jews. It is our responsibility to lead the way, to come together and work for the sake of the entire Jewish community.

Unfortunately, this is much easier said than done. Fundamental questions must be answered before we can move forward. Can we ever move past our denominational differences? What can we do on an individual level, as either professionals or lay leaders, to help bring together the disparate sects of Judaism? Will we be a more complete community if we open our doors and welcome in everyone who has chosen to affiliate with the Jewish people rather than create barriers that keep them away?

These are not questions with easy answers. Some believe that Judaism is a privilege, and one must work hard to earn that privilege. That means keeping kosher, observing Shabbat and either marrying a Jew or making sure that your spouse will convert. These folks believe Judaism is open to everyone, as long as you follow a few basic ground rules. For its efforts, the Orthodox movement lays claim to the fastest growing segment of the Jewish population.

Others, however, believe that holding people to a rigid set of rules will only push folks away. The Reform movement also claims to be the fastest growing movement in Judaism, in part because it allows people the freedom to celebrate Judaism in a way that is meaningful to them and with those most important to them. With intermarriage rates rising and more adult children of intermarriage than at any point in Jewish history, many families are looking for a home that respects the choices they have made.

We should look at what the Reform and Orthodox movements have in common and apply that to the entire Jewish community. Both are growing because they are reaching people on an individual level, providing meaningful content and bringing in charismatic leadership. While it's inspiring to see both movements benefit from employing the same basic tactics, it's discouraging to see continued ideological quarreling.

This is not to say aligning oneself with one movement creates division – quite the opposite. In identifying so vigorously with a set of beliefs, each movement in Judaism has the ability to speak to a part of the community and their concerns. Interfaith families raising Jewish children need to know that there is a segment of the community that welcomes them, that will support them as they pursue a Jewish life. While their lifestyle might not be accepted by some, it's the responsibility of the entire Jewish community to encourage these families to explore their Jewish heritage, no matter what their background.

We won't reach that point, though, if we waste our time bickering on what divides us. It would serve us better as a Jewish community to act like a community and not a group of warring factions. Jews, whether born or converted, from an intermarriage or inmarriage, are inextricably linked through a shared history. With the respect each part of the community deserves, we should be asking questions of each other that will help us find and celebrate our common ground. After all, the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

Judaism is our child. It has survived because we as a community have done our best to ensure continuity and relevance. But there is always the fear that assimilation and integration will lead to our demise. It's time to quash that fear. The Jewish community is much too strong and much too determined to ever let that happen. Halcyon days lie ahead, and as we embark on a new year, let us all think about what we can do to make sure we prosper as a vibrant and meaningful community.

(Adam Bronfman is the managing director of The Samuel Bronfman Foundation. Rabbi Kerry Olitzky is the executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute.)

Rabbi Menachem Creditor
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