by LastTrumpet [➚] · Monday, April 16th, 2007
Jewcy’s got a post on why Chabad has been so much more successful than the Reform movement in Russia. The statements about the situation in Russia are, as far as I know, true. I take issue, however, with some of the more general descriptions of the Reform Rabbinate .
Russian Reform leadership is trained on a western model of Jewish community and religious pluralism. Since there are no Reform seminaries in Russia all Russian Jews who get trained as Reform rabbis end up in one of three places—the U.S., Israel or England (and recently the Reform movement began ordaining rabbis in Germany). This means that Russia’s Reform rabbis are trained as western rabbis and then “sent back.†…
Reform rabbis are trained to be educators and to give pastoral care, but ultimately many of them see their primary role as CEOs of the Jewish community, appointed by wealthy boards of donors, and charged with the operations of the community. For Reform Judaism, at least in its American and British forms, the rabbinate is a job, not a calling.
Now I grew up in the Reform movement, and work in a Reform synagogue. I have been blessed to work with dozens of Reform Rabbis who are a product of the Reform seminary, and I think each and every one would take issue with that last sentence. They are trained as educators and pastoral care-givers, and they do exactly that, as well as social justice work, outreach and a host of other things. The fact that they are the heads of large organizations (my place of work for example, has 800 families, 13 full-time staff people, a nursery school, etc.), and that their positions in terms of their shuls sometimes resemble that of CEO does not, in my mind, mean that they’re approaching it as a CEO, and not as a teacher and pastoral care-giver who also needs to do that other stuff, in order to teach Torah.
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by David Kelsey [➚] · Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
Failed Messiah has uncovered some interesting news on the career of Rabbi Matt Tropp, who lied to the court, attacked Lanner’s accusers, and pulled all sorts of foylashtick in order to protect his boss at the Orthodox Union’s NCSY because…well, we know why. Because Baruch Lanner — who abused girls and kneed boys in the groin FOR DECADES — made kids Orthodox.
So where does such a person go? Well, obviously, he stays in kiruv! If it ain’t broke, why fix it? And one guess where.
Shmarya notes,
“[Rabbi Tropp] works for Aish HaTorah in NYC (where he teaches outreach skills) and he speaks for the OU, and he recently shared a platform with major OU leaders, including Rabbi Herschel Schachter.”
Rabbi Tropp is also the director of Project Inspire, a site so silly and lowest common denominator that only Big Aish could come up with it. But hey – at least the Orthodox Union knew better than to get involved with that, and with Rabbi Tropp again.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Sunday, December 31st, 2006
TO start with, let me say that I hate calling them “messianics.” They’re not messianics (at least no more than Judaism is) they’re Christians. But mainstream Christians don’t for the most part, and especially not in Germany, engage in this kind of evil nasty behavior. So what to call them to distinguish them from real Christians and real Jews? I’m up for suggestions.
Anyway, so the point is reported by JTA, that Jews are being targeted in Germany by these folks, and as usual the vulnerable are, well, vulnerable. Russian immigrants, who are lonely and who don’t know much about Judaism are targets because they don’t feel welcomed by the Jewish community, and they don’t see why they shouldn’t join these communities which seem to treat them well.
As the article comments,
“The answer is to be more attractive than the others,” said Anat Bleiberg, head of the Jewish community of Berlin’s social work office. “Look at Chabad: They make themselves attractive and they get lots of members.”
Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, agrees.
“If Jewish communities are not attractive enough to keep people inside the community, neither a law nor any movement will help,” he said in a recent interview. And if the messianic groups are finding lonely people, “Why are they left alone? Why are the Jewish members of the community not helping each other?”
This is a very good question – and not just in Germany. This problem has been cropping up for quite some time in Israel, where Russians feel discriminated against, where many of them are not halachically Jewish, and no one has been able to get the Orthodox hegemony to work successfully with the other movements to create a program to help them.
But this isn’t just an immigrant problem. In fact, it cuts to the heart. Despite the constant navel gazing about losing numbers (not something that I feel all that worried about personally, given that I think quality is more relevant than quantity, and moreover that quality leads to quantity, but it does seem to be the primary concern of many of our institutions), we just can’t seem to get our act together.
There’s whining about birthrates among Jewish women, but we can’t get our institutions to provide maternity leave; heck, many of them don’t even provide a living wage! There’s moaning about few people coming to services, and what do we do? We focus on the content of the services (either by doing nothing , or getting rid of whatever seems inconvenient at the moment) instead of thinking, “well, maybe there’s nothing wrong with the content; maybe it’s the culture?” Chabad actually does pretty well with this (as noted by the article) – they make sure there are friendly faces at every service, they make sure there are meal invitations, and not just once or twice. There’s tons of other things that could be done too…
I have to admit, I feel tired reading this all the time. We have plenty of money to build Holocaust museums ad nauseum, but where is the money for the day schools outside of the Orthodox community? Where is the money for those who can’t afford the unbeliveable costs of schools, camps, shul memberships, what have you?
What else can I throw into this boiling pot? I could go on, but I won’t; I’m sure readers can help out by filling in the other relevant problems, but I will close with this: When I was in high school, I knew two Jews who came from working class families. I don’t mean middle class. I mean working class. They were friends, we lived not far from one another. One of them, is still Jewish-identified, but doesn’t do anything Jewish. He and his mother never felt welcome in any synagogue, and were too proud to go through all the hoops of proving their need to ask for a handout of free membership and the like. So he doesn’t really know anything much about being Jewish, interestingly, lots of his friends were Jewish in high school, but that never became anything deeper.
The other one, was welcomed very strongly and today strongly identifies as Jewish. Her congregation welcomed her and her mother, never asked them for money, helped them out when they needed it, and they have many close friends there. Oh, yeah, did I mention, they believe in Jesus?
by YehuditBrachah [➚] · Thursday, December 21st, 2006
I just got back from the Matisyahu concert in Boston. Like, the I’m still sweaty kind of just got back. I am totally blown away. And not necessarily by what you might think.
I felt a little weird going tonight because of the whole Jdub break. But I’m pulled to any places that have some twinkle of reaching upward. So tonight I left my history paper on second Temple period apocalypticism and ventured over to Lansdowne St in Boston.
I witnessed a deeply puzzling phenomenon: the Pseudo-Jew.
Walking into the Avalon ballroom, first thing I noticed was this was not your Moshav Band crowd. This was not Jewish hippies. There were few kippot and lots of pointy-toed shoes and frat t-shirts. That “us-ness,” that camaraderie I feel at Jewish gatherings, was distinctly absent. Because what creates a collective is a shared understanding of what you are participating in. I expected people to not quite get it, many to not be Jewish, but I was disappointed by the depth of it. It’s one thing not to know how to sing along to “yibaneh beis hamikdash, bimheira b’yameinu.” It’s another to be freak dancing with your girlfriend to the lyrics of a song describing the Jewish people’s survival of the Holocaust.
After two experiences at the concert tonight, my question is this: what makes people pretend to be Jewish at a Matisyahu concert?
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by David Kelsey [➚] · Sunday, November 19th, 2006
I previously questioned whether NCSY was providing a gateway to ultra-Orthodoxy, and not just restricted to the fun and educational Modern Orthodox activities for secular Jewish teenagers it presents itself as. Since then, it has become clear that not only does NCSY allow promotion of full-time studies at ultra-Orthodox institutions as an option to our teens in NCSY, but NCSY staff at least sometimes actively facilitates their recruitment to these ultra-Orthodox institutions, because full-time Jewish studies are often considered by NCSY to be the ideal program for NCSY teenagers immediately following high school, and they’re what are most readily available.Â
The Orthodox Union’s publication (the Orthodox Union is the parent organization of NCSY), the Jewish Advocate, actually boasts of their role in Charedi recruitment of a secular Jew in their fall issue. Within a feature of a former NCSY teenager featured in “Keeping the Faith in Iraq,” the Jewish Advocate notes,
“Rabbi Dave presented him with a full scholarship to attend Ohr Somayach’s Derech Institute for Torah Studies in Jerusalem.”
Who is Rabbi Dave?
Rabbi David (“Rabbi Dave”) Felsenthal was “then-New Jersey NCSY’s director of recruitment and [is] currently director of NCSY alumni.”
How often is this happening?Â
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by Rooftopper Rav [➚] · Thursday, August 31st, 2006
Nearly 20 years, 9 addresses, and 3 states later, NCSY has found me. Ironically enough, I belonged to NCSY for one year long ago, mostly because the USY chapter in my town represented a gathering of some of the meanest and most cliquish kids I’d ever met. However, my NCSY tenure was brief. Even back then I was asking too many questions about women and Judaism and egalitarianism.
I hadn’t thought about the experience in years, when all of a sudden a few months ago I started receiving mail from NCSY at my current address (again, 9 addresses and 3 states removed from my NCSY days!). They all start “Dear NCSY Alumnus…” and end by asking for money. The tone of the letters has become increasingly ridiculous, as evidenced by the letter I received at the beginning of this week. Here are two excerpts:
Today’s average Jewish public school teen believes Israel really belongs to the Palestinians and that the stories of the Holocaust are greatly exaggerated. Needless to say, they date non-Jews almost exclusively.
Once they’re out of high school, we’ll never be able to find them, and their children may never know that they’re Jewish.
The hyberbole is striking. As someone else who saw this letter remarked to me, in two sentences NCSY manages to manipulate the Holy Trinity of the Jewish community’s fears (Israel, the Holocaust, and the existence of Jewish babies). The text also implies a direct connection between one’s politics on Israel/one’s knowledge of the Holocaust and one’s choice of romantic partner, as if someone with different ideas about Israel will, “needless to say,” wind up partnered with a non-Jew. (I’m not sure that my acquaintances are a representative sample, but virtually all the post- or non-Zionists I know are active, religious Jews who are in– or seeking to be in– relationships with other Jews.)
Anyway, even if the above statements were all true, I’m still not interested in giving money to an organization whose pedagogical goals seem to include fostering a totally uncritical support for Israel, basing one’s Jewish identity on the Holocaust and victimization (anyone remember those tearful NCSY seudah shelishits?), and producing Jewish children early and often simply for the sake of producing Jewish children (and not, say, for the sake of the good those Jewish children might do in the world).
Please, before you jump down my throat, let me be clear: Israel is very important to me, I believe all Jews should be competently educated about the Holocaust in specific and genocide in general, and I also believe that Jewish babies should continue to thrive. However, using hyperbolic scare tactics to catalyze people into giving to an organization like NCSY is doing really annoys me. It’s the same thing Chabad often does, and it’s one of the reasons that lots of secular Jews, many of whom don’t give to other Jewish causes that more represent their values, give to Chabad.
by Mobius [➚] · Monday, June 12th, 2006
Rabbi Pete Stein has written us in response to Cole’s recent post on Conservative proselytization, and asked that we share his remarks with our readers.
[Update] UJ’s former dean of rabbinic studies, Aryeh Cohen, asked that I relate this message to R’ Stein.
***
Dear Cole,
I am sorry that you chose to write an entry on your blog without first contacting me to learn more about my outreach efforts in New York. Had you taken the time to write or call me (and, these days, it’s not so hard to find people when you really want to) you would know that your characterization of my outreach effort as “proselytizing†that “talks ‘to’ people†instead of listening to them bares no resemblance to what actually went on this year at the corner of 112th Street and Broadway.
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