Building a bridge to the future

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the Shapiro Family Lecture Series at Temple Beth Jacob in Concord, where the featured speaker was Rabbi David S. Wolfman, a consultant, long-time Reform rabbi and avid observer of Jewish life in America today. During his talk Rabbi Wolfman offered observations and insights into the ways in which Judaism has changed over the millennia, highlighting key shifts in modes in Jewish thought, worship and identity from the time of Moses to the present day.

The central theme of his presentation seemed to be that Judaism has gone through a number of evolutions and iterations, and he outlined these changes by taking the audience on a journey through time and space, labeling the period of Moses as "Judaism 1.0" and laying out a timeline that includes the present, which he called "Judaism 4.0." The conversation about  "Judaism 4.0" took us, naturally, to a discussion of what "Judaism 5.0", the next stage of Jewish life, might look like. On this last point Rabbi Wolfman emphasized the notion that just as the grandparents or great-grandparents of those in the audience might have found it impossible to envision Jewish life in 2013, that it is likely that current older generations of Jews may find future modes of Jewish expression equally opaque and inscrutable.

Over the course of the evening there were many things he said that rang true for me, others with which l disagreed and many questions which arose throughout it all. For example, Rabbi Wolfman suggested that however Jews in their 20's and 30's choose to express Jewish identity, that older generations will need to take a completely hands-off approach, allowing Jewish young adults to essentially create their own version of being Jewish. Speaking only for myself, but as someone who is part of this generation of Jewish young adults, I have to say that I think this is terrible idea and one which is not only unlikely to bolster Jewish continuity, but rather accelerate an already troubling trend of cultural atomization, which I believe is fueled in part by an intensely post-modern approach to identity.

A few years ago I wrote a piece for the website e-Jewishphilanthropy.com about a similar way of thinking about the next generation of Jewish donors and lay leaders, arguing essentially that to look at the next generation as divorced from previous and current leaders, creates a gap - a yawning chasm where there should be a bridge. The whole story of the Jewish people, I would argue, is one of continuity, of transmitting ideas and values from one generation to the next. Yes, each generation can and does make its own determinations when if comes to what their communities look like in for. And practice, but to suggest that there should be a break between generations, as opposed to a bridge, feels like capitulation  to me. Instead, I would argue that every generation needs to work hand-in-hand to assure the continuation of the Jewish community, so that no one is left out of the process. Of course this is much more easily said than done, but I believe this is one of, if not the most, important challenges facing American Jewry today.

As I said, this is just one example of an idea that came up during the evening, and I really enjoyed listening to both Rabbi Wolfman and Rabbi Nafshi, as well as members of the audience, during a spirited and important conversation about the past, present and future of Jewish life. We need more of these conversations in the New Hampshire Jewish community, to provide opportunities for people to come together in community and have honest discussions. These events are vital because they give everyone a chance to talk about what being Jewish means  to them, on both an individual and communal level. In my mind such discussions are absolutely vital and we will only succeed in strengthening Jewish life in the state if we can continue to talk about the common challenges (and joys) that we all share together.

Copyright Daniel E. Levenson 2013.

In the middle of it all

As I write this I am sitting at a small table in the center of one of the halls set up during the Jewish Federation General Assembly to showcase a dizzying variety of programs, initiatives  and  organizations from across Israel and around the Jewish world. All around me are Jews from the US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, France, Israel, Ethiopia (and probably more places) who have come to this crowded bazaar of Jewish life to learn about the important work being done to strengthen not only world Jewry, but to make the larger world a better place as well.

One such organization I came across this week is the American Friends of Kishorit, an organization dedicated to supporting the amazing work being done at this kibbutz located in the Western Galilee where adults with developmental  disabilities  and mental health issues live, work and socialize. One resident of the Kibbutz whom I met at the GA told me about the toy shop, dairy and organic vegetable garden they have there. I thought this sounded like a really innovative approach to inclusion and a great example of how a key element of Israeli culture -life on a kibbutz- has been made available to all Israelis.

Another very interesting project I learned about is an initiative called Takdim, a project started by local governments in Israel, in collaboration with several Jewish Federations in North America to help develop a culture of local giving and allocation within Israel. This seems like a great way for Federations in the US to lend a hand to Israel through the sharing of best practices and knowledge gained over decades of helping to build and sustain Jewish life in America. I suspect we will hear more about Takdim in the coming years.

GA attendees also had the opportunity to visit local institutions of learning in the city, followed by field visits to programs that American Jews are participating in around Jerusalem. I chose to visit the Shalom Hartman Institute first, an important think tank and education center non around the world. One of the speakers this morning was Dr. Tal Becker, a research fellow at the institute and a long-time Israeli diplomat, who offered an overview of some of the contemporary challenges facing Israel, when it comes to tensions between the ultra-orthodox and the rest of Israeli society. Our next stop was the Bezalel Arts academy on Mt. Scopus, an art school with a world-class reputation, where we met several American Jews studying at the school, in part with a Jewish Agency funded MASA scholarship, who shared their art with us and told us how how coming to Israel had made a difference in their lives.

Over the course of the last few days I've also had countless conversations with people who are thinking very seriously about the present and future of the Jewish people. I look forward to sharing some of these ideas here in this blog in the weeks ahead.

Copyright Daniel E. Levenson 2013.

A conversation between people and across time in Jerusalem

This weekend I was reminded that Jerusalem is a city of marvelous paradoxes, at once ancient and modern, secular and religious, quiet and loud. The streets of the city on Shabbat offer a perfect snapshot of the ways in which the old and the new blend together: while some Jerusalamites walk to synagogue with their Tallit draped over their shoulders others fill the few cafes and restaurants open on Shabbat and others still fill the parks and playgrounds along with their children. And of course there others out and about as well, Arab families going for walks, tourists visiting the old city alongside Israelis from other parts of the country who have simply come to see and experience this place.

Earlier in the day I visited a spot where the old and new have been joined together in an exciting and progressive way, in a recently renovated area around the old Jerusalem train station, a bustling center of activity in the early to mid-twentieth century which by the  beginning of the 21st had been abandoned. Now the city has revamped the area entirely, adding a playground, restaurants , shops and space for events, all with a bike path running along the outer edge. Visitors can also learn about the history of the place through photographs and informational signs (in both Hebrew and English) which chronicle the role that the British governmment played in expanding and improving rail service in the country during the Mandatory period. With this strategy the desgners of this new space have managed to weave together a narrative that combines seemingly dsparate parts of the history of a Jerusalem in a seemless way.

The idea of Jerusalem as a unifying place for Jews is one I think I have mentioned here before - it may seem a little paradoxical, given how much the media reports on strife within the Jewish world centered around things like acccess to the Kotel plaza and other points of friction between the Ultra-Orthodox and other Jews, but in fact it can also serve to unify people, because regardless of denominational differences,  Jerusalem holds a deeply-rooted place in the history of the entire Jewish people. I was reminded of this again at the Jewish Agency Assembly Shabbat dinner last night, where I had the pleasure of sitting with a pretty diverse group of people, including lay leaders from the  Orthodox community, an American studying in Israel for the year and an Irish Jew who had made alyah and served as a lone soldier. Despite our differences in background,  we were able to have a wonderful conversation about the role of the Orthodox Rabbinate in Israel when it comes to marriage, the beuaty and spirituality of the melodies given to the world by the late Shlomo Carlebach and the role that art can play in Jewish education. Throughout the evening ee shared pieces of our own stories with one another, noting the places where our experiences had overlapped or diverged in the Jewish world and discovering we had more in common than one might think, and while I suppose it's possible for such a conversation to happen in other places, to me there was something special abouut having it in Israel, in the capital of the Jewish State.

Copyright Daniel E. Levenson 2013.

Friday in Jerusalem

On Friday afternoons in Jerusalem the entire city buzzes with activity as residents and visitors alike hurry to do last minute shopping and prepare for Shabbat. This Friday I found myself in the amazingly diverse and vibrant Jerusalem neighborhood of Nachlaot, along with other attendees of the Jewish Agency for Israel Annual Assembly. In a fun departure from the traditonal mode of many big conferences which often keep attendees cooped up all day and night in windowless hotel ballrooms, the organizers of this year's Annual Assembly presented us with several choices for Friday morning activities in and around Jerusalem.

I chose to join the group going on a two-hour scaveger hunt throughout Nachlaot and the nearby open-air market, Machaneh Yehuda. Each group of 4 or 5 participants was paired up with a young adult currently spending a year in Israel on a MASA (Jewish Agency-affiliated) program who used a smart phone to read QR ccodes posted around different points in the area. Using these codes as signposts, along with laminated maps provided by the organizers, we had a great time learning about the history of this neighborhood which is home to Jews of practically every denomination and every corner of the globe, from Syria to Poland to the United States. In these winding alleys and narrow roads we stopped to learnabout synagogue built by Jews from Allepo, the generosity of Sir Moses Montefiore who funded much of the early settlement of Jews in the immediate vicinity outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, and much more. We also explored the shuk (marketplace) of Machaneh Yehuda, a winding labyrinth of vendors where visitors can buy everything from hard candy and hallavah to fresh-ground spices and cow feet.

After the scavenger hunt was over all of the teams met up at a the Nachlaot community center, where we had a chance to meet some local entrepreneurs who had been given loans by the Jewish Agency to start small businesses. The enterprises included a micro-brewery, as well as a  jeweler whose family had once provided their services to the royal family of Yemen many generations ago, and a catering company. It was clear from these presentations that the Jewish Agency assistance had mad a big difference not only in the lives of the individual business owners, but in helping to bolster the base of the local economy.

As we headed back on the busses I thought about the diversity of Jewish life and expression in the city, something very much on display in Nachlaot. It is interesting that for all the points of conflict in the city (and really, in the country) between different groups of Jews, that there are places of remarkable unity that are defined much more by the ways in which people come together than he ways in which they try to pull away from one another. This was also a theme of the opening session of the assembly, which was held Thursday night at the Mamilla Hotel, where President Shimon Peres spoke about the diversity of the Jewish community within Israel, and was followed by two very moving speakers who recounted their own involvement with efforts to rescue Jews from Ethiopia, an effort that represents a remarkable chapter in Jewish history.

It can be tempting to see Jerusalem only as a place of conflict, where tensions simmer and threaten to boil over on a daily basis, but I think the Jewish Agency has done a pretty good job so far in showing us the other side of things and emphasizing the role that Israel can play in uniting world Jewry. It's a valuable lesson and one I look forward to bringing back and thinking about further in New Hampshire in the months ahead.

Shabbat Shalom.

Copyright Daniel E. Levenson 2013.

On the road: A dispatch from Newark, NJ

OK, so I'm not quite in Israel yet - technically I'm still in the airport in New Jersey, waiting for my El Al flight to board, but I'm already thinking about all of the great speakers, conversations and opportunities that these two conferences - the first organized by the Jewish Agency for Israel, tthe second by the Jewish Federation of North America - will offer.

One topic that seems to be at the top of the agenda for a few different sessions is the recent Pew Poll on American Jewish life, which I have written about in a previous entry. While I have taken a little time to read some of the commentary on it by other leaders in the Jewish community, I am particulalrly interested in seeking out Jews from outside the US to see if they are even aware of the poll and if so, how its conclusions track with their own communal experiences in Europe, South Africa, etc.

I am guessing that in some ways the findings of the study will be seen as uniquely reflective of American Jewry - after all, no other country (save Israel, of course) has such a large population of Jews to begin with and likely much less diversity within the communities when it comes to denominatins and modes of Jewish expression. Nonetheless, I would personally love to have an opportunity to see  the results of a similar survey done in Australia, the UK and South Africa - other anglophone countries where Jewish immigrants  have made homes and built communities. There is no question that this current snapshot of American Jewish life is thought-provoking and will spark debate and conversation in the years to come, but I think if we really want to have a good sense of where the Jewish people, as whole, might be heaed, then we need to widen our focus and take into acount the trends, changes and demography of Jews around the world, from New Hampshire to Israel and everywhere in between. I am hopeful that this current trip to Israel will afford me the opportunity to begin to expand the margins of this discussion, all of which I intend to write about here on the Director's Chair blog.

Copyright Daniel E. Levenson 2013.

Next Week in Jerusalem

Image courtesy of the Israeli Ministry of Tourism 

 
In a little less than a week I will be in Israel attending the General Assembly of the Jewish Federation of North America, as well as the annual meeting of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Aside from the chance to hear from some great speakers, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres, one of the things I am most excited about is the opportunity to meet  other Jewish leaders from across North America, many of whom are working to address challenges similar to those facing Jewish communities in New Hampshire.

I invite you to check back frequently during the first two weeks in November, when I will be posting regular updates from Israel in an effort to share some of the ideas and insights about Jewish identity, culture and community which will inevitably rise to the surface during these two conferences.

Copyright Daniel E. Levenson 2013.

A call to Action on Jewish Identity

As I’m sure many of the readers of The Reporter are aware, last month the Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project released a report which has troubling implications for those who care about the present and future of Jewish life in America.  And while there were a few findings that seemed downright odd, such as the claim, for example, that some 34% of respondents (and by implication 34% of American Jews) say that one can believe that Jesus was the Messiah and still be Jewish is difficult for me to wrap my head around, there were other conclusions that were all too familiar. These other conclusions, about a slipping sense of Jewish identity, the impact of intermarriage and a declining sense of communal connection, resonated and are in line with many of the concerns that members of the Jewish community in New Hampshire have shared with me these last few months.  I read the media coverage of the poll results, but I decided that it would also be a good idea to go to the Pew website and look more closely at the report itself to better understand the challenges it elucidates and begin to look for possible solutions.

The report present an image of American Jewish life in decline over the last 40 years, and this, in and of itself, is troubling enough, but the implications for the future may be more so. Whether or not Jewish communal leaders accept the exact numbers presented in the Pew poll as an accurate reflection of the community as a whole, the logical outcome of such a profound decline in both religiosity and Yiddishkeit (Jewish peoplehood) paints a bleak picture.  Hand in hand with this decline in strong expressions of identity seems to be a rapid increase in assimilation among American Jews. The authors of the report state that “… intermarriage rates seem to have risen substantially over the last five decades. Among Jewish respondents who have gotten married since 2000, nearly six-in-ten have a non-Jewish spouse. Among those who got married in the 1980s, roughly four-in-ten have a non-Jewish spouse. And among Jews who got married before 1970, just 17% have a non-Jewish spouse.^”  While the authors offer a caveat that the exact implications of this rise in intermarriage are not completely clear, it is hard not to assume a continued decline when one considers that the same survey reports that , “Jews who have non-Jewish spouses are much less likely than those married to fellow Jews to be raising children as Jewish by religion and much more likely to be raising children as partially Jewish, Jewish but not by religion, or not Jewish at all. Furthermore, Jews who are the offspring of intermarriages appear, themselves, to be more likely to intermarry than Jews with two Jewish parents.”

Of course everyone has a right to make their own decision about whom to marry and how to raise their children, but at the same time this part of the survey got me thinking about the kinds of resources JFNH provides to all Jewish families when it comes to raising children with a strong sense of Jewish identity, including our pre-school, summer camp, the PJ Library program (which sends Jewish books and activities to homes with young children across New Hampshire),  funding for children to attend Jewish summer camp and visit Israel, and yearly funding for synagogue Hebrew Schools across the state. These are important programs, but as I’ve been discussing this survey with members of the community there is clearly a desire to do more, to provide more resources for all different kinds of Jewish families, including families in which only one parent may be Jewish. At one time such an idea may have been seen as controversial; today I would argue that this approach is absolutely essential.

It’s also important to note that while the report suggests that intermarried families face additional challenges when it comes to raising their children as Jews with a strong sense of Jewish identity, that there are places where communities and Federations have made it a priority to be inclusive in a real and robust way.  Combined Jewish Philanthropies (the Federation in the Greater Boston area) for example, has made a serious effort to reach out to families in which only one parent is Jewish and has had great success in providing support to those families to ensure that both parents and children feel welcome in the community. Individual synagogues throughout New England also do a wonderful job of being inclusive in this way, and over the next few months the board of JFNH and I plan to look more closely at these models of inclusion to improve our efforts in this area. 

I firmly believe that in order to ensure the future of Jewish life in America that organizations such as JFNH need to continually adapt to changing circumstances and trends within the community. In this respect I think we can see the results of the Pew poll not merely as bad news to be received with resignation, but as a call to action, reminding us that we cannot take the idea of Jewish identity or community for granted.

This column originally appeared in the November 2013 issue of The Reporter.

Copyright Daniel E. Levenson 2013.