Friday, December 30, 2011

In The Wilderness


The Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Torah and it covers 37 years and 9 months out of the 40 years desert experience. While the book is called “Numbers” in English, its Hebrew name BeMidbar means “in the desert” or “in the wilderness.” The desert or wilderness period of our people’s history was a period of transition. God realized that the generation which was raised in slavery was not yet ready to live the life of an independent nation.

It is interesting to note that in the Torah, God learns. He changes his mind twice in the story of Noah and the Flood. First, he regrets having created humanity and brings the flood; then after the flood, he realizes that there is nothing which can be done to change human nature and promises not to destroy humanity a second time.  After the sin of the Golden Calf, God realizes that he should have given the Israelites more concrete rituals to follow so he institutes the sacrificial system. After the incident of the spies, wherein the people become disheartened about their ability to conquer the Promised Land, he realizes that the people are not yet ready to enter it. It’s a legitimate question how an omniscient God needs to learn or is capable of doing so, but the Torah is not a Greek philosophical treatise and the Torah clearly has no problem with God learning.

One of the things we discussed last year as part of the Rabbis Without Borders fellowship is the culture of Jewish institutions. Jewish institutions, deservedly or not, have a reputation for being slow to change. Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman once wrote that most synagogues have the saying “Know Before Whom You Stand” written over their Ark, but they really should write “We Have Always Done It This Way.” 

Companies and institutions which thrive tend to be those which encourage experimentation. Companies which punish their employees for failed experiments create a culture which discourages innovation. For every successful idea there are going to be many that don’t pan out well. Malcolm Gladwell recently wrote a very interesting article in the New Yorker on the historic relationship between  Xerox and Apple. Xerox actually invented the personal computer, the laser printer, and the computer mouse; but because they didn’t fit into what they perceived as their business model, they never perfected them to the point where they could become mass market consumer products.

In the Conservative movement and perhaps beyond, we are at the point I think where we know what doesn’t work. The synagogue that was an ethnic club, or the child-focused suburban congregation that was fueled by Hebrew school, Bar and Bat Mitzvah and youth group -- these models are no longer viable.We don’t yet know what will work and part of that is the fact that there is no consensus on what we want to be working towards. We are in a wilderness period. But the lesson of the Book of Numbers is that this is a necessary period that cannot be skipped. We need time to figure out what our next iteration will be; but we also need to be brave enough to try things out, to be experimental, and not create a culture which chokes off creativy.

Michael Walzer ends his seminal book “Exodus and Revolution” with what he calls three truths about Exodus politics. One, wherever you are, it is probably Egypt. Two, the Promised Land does exist. Three, the only way to get there is by marching together through the wilderness; there are no shortcuts.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai and the New Paradigm


The story is told that Rabban Yohanan Ben Zakkai and Rabbi Joshua were walking by the ruins of the Temple. Rabbi Joshua said, "Woe to us that the place where the atonement for the sins of Israel was made has been destroyed!" But Rabban Yohanan Ben Zakkai replied, "Do not be grieved, my son. Do you not know that we have a means of making atonement that is as good as this? And what is it? Gemilut hassadim - acts of loving-kindness, as it is said, 'For I desire hesed - loving-kindness - and not sacrifice!'" (Hosea 6:6). Avot d'Rabbi Natan 4:21.

This story takes place shortly after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, which both Rabban Yohanan and Rabbi Joshua witnessed. It is an important text to consider in the ancient (and contemporary) Jewish-Christian disputation. The argument Christian missionaries make is that, lacking a Temple, we Jews have no way of gaining atonement for our sins, and therefore need the atonement which Jesus’ death provides. Rabban Yohanan’s answer says no, the Temple was not the only means of atonement. We don’t need to be sad that we have no Temple -- and therefore by implication we have no need of Jesus either. What we have instead of the Temple is loving-kindness, hesed, which can also be understood as covenant faithfulness. As long as we have hesed -- our hesed to each other -- then we have divine hesed as well, since God is faithful to the divine promises.

We study this text on Shabbat mornings very early in the service, and I think we sometimes fail to realize how revolutionary and important it really is. We don’t really appreciate, I think, the tremendous impact that the destruction of the Temple had for the Jews of that era. It was at least as devastating to them as the Shoah is for us, if not more so. The central religious act of ancient Judaism was the ritual of animal sacrifice in the Temple, which could no longer take place. Not only was the Temple in ruins, but the Romans had built a pagan shrine in its place and forbidden Jews even to approach the Temple Mount. And of course tens of thousands of Jews had been killed and many times that sold into slavery and exile. Imagine if during the Holocaust every Torah scroll in the world had been destroyed, and that it was impossible to replace them -- which would of course mean the end of the Torah reading ritual in every synagogue throughout the world. Perhaps through that thought experiment we may begin to understand the magnitude of what happened in 70 CE.

The destruction of the Temple could well have meant the end of Judaism as a religion. How can a religion continue when its main ritual can no longer be performed? There is no doubt that after 70 CE, some Jews gave up their Jewishness. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that most Palestinian Christians are, ironically, descendants of Jews in the Land of Israel who converted to Christianity at some point during the Roman Empire.

But Judaism did not disappear. What it did is transform itself. From a religion centered around Temple, priesthood and sacrifice it became a religion centered around Torah study, prayer at home and in the synagogue, and gemilut hasadim. From a historical point of view it is accurate to say that Biblical and Rabbinic Judaism are two different, though of course related, religions.

It was Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai more than anyone else who made this possible. Some of you may be familiar with the story of how he was smuggled out of Jerusalem in a coffin shortly before the destruction of the Temple. He went down to Yavneh, a small city on the coast south of present-day Tel Aviv, and set up a yeshiva there. It is the sages in Yavneh who codified the Mishnah and established the structure of our prayers as they remain to this day. Others fought in vain against the Romans. Rabban Yohanan saw the writing on the wall and began the act of rebuilding even before the destruction had occurred. If not for his foresight and his recognition that Judaism could evolve, Judaism would indeed have vanished from the earth.

Rabban Yohanan realized that the paradigm of Temple and sacrifice was dead. He set about constructing a new paradigm and reminded Rabbi Joshua not to mourn excessively for the old.

The parallel for our generation, it seems to me, is clear. The paradigm of the suburban synagogue-center is dead. It is not working for the majority of Jews except those who are truly Orthodox, who express their opinion by not joining and not paying dues. It is not working even for the majority of our members, who faithfully pay their dues but rarely participate in synagogue activities other than High Holiday services and life cycle events.

Judaism in the United States will survive outside of Orthodoxy only if, like Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, we find a new paradigm that is more meaningful than the one we are leaving behind. Deliverance will not come through grieving for the past, nor by trying to recreate it. It will come through hesed.

Friday, December 23, 2011

Joseph Dines Solo

Joseph's brothers have come down to Egypt a second time, this time
bringing with them their youngest brother Benjamin. Joseph of course
knows who they are but they still do not know who he is. The brothers
are invited to a festive banquet at Joseph's house. The seating
arrangements are odd. The brothers are at one table, Joseph's staff
and household at another, and Joseph eats by himself. The text tells
us that Joseph's Hebrew brothers had to sit separately from everyone
else because the Egyptians will not dine at the same table as Hebrews,
because "it is an abomination to the Egyptians."

But the text does not tell us why Joseph has to eat by himself. We
know why, as the viceroy of Egypt, he can't eat with his brothers who
are foreigners. But why can't he eat with the other Egyptians?

Both our current Etz Hayyim commentary and the older Hertz Chumash say
that it has to do with social status -- that it would have been
demeaning for Joseph to eat with his staff members. But I don't think
this necessarily has to be the case.

I think rather that Joseph has to eat by himself because he
exemplifies the existential dilemma of the first Diaspora Jew. Joseph
was of course born in the Land of Israel but wound up living in Egypt
where he attained fame, fortune, and power. And so he is different
than his brothers, who are not immigrants but merely visitors. But he
is also different than the other Egyptians because he is a Hebrew.
Presumably, he keeps kosher and needs different food, different
utensils, and so on. Just as he is somewhat alienated from his
fellow-Hebrews because of his status as Egyptian nobility, he is
somewhat alienated from the other Egyptian nobles because of his
Hebrew origins and especially his religious practices.

We are nearing the end of the Book of Genesis and will soon begin the
Book of Exodus. We will read of a new king of Egypt "who knew not
Joseph." There is a difference between the derivative power of Joseph
and the sovereign power of Jews living in their own land. The stranger
and sojourner always lives at the sufferance of others, and what is
given can be taken away. Are we American Jews Joseph? I think not, but
nevertheless this is a cautionary tale of the difference between
Diaspora and sovereignty.

Friday, December 16, 2011

What Is Chanukah?


What is Chanukah?

Interestingly enough, the Gemara in Tractate Shabbat introduces its discussion of the historical background of Chanukah by asking precisely that question. It seems odd; one could assume that the meaning of Chanukah was well known. But in fact, the Gemara's discussion of Chanukah demonstrates that what Chanukah means for one generation is not necessarily what it means for another. The Gemara's discussion almost entirely ignores the Maccabees defeat of the Seleucid Empire and focuses instead on the miracle of the oil.

Prof. Arnold Eisen, the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary wrote about the meaning of religious ritual in his seminal work "Rethinking Modern Judaism." Professor Eisen described certain of our religious observances as "regular performances which lend performers the conviction that they are carrying on the essence of their ancestor's faith and practice even while they alter both belief and observance to suit their new circumstances." Or in less academic prose, we convince ourselves that we are doing precisely what previous generations of Jews did, even while we modify both the practice and the significance we ascribe to it. That is why for Israeli Jews, Chanukah is about the Maccabees and their restoration of Jewish national independence, while for American Jews, Chanukah is about freedom of religion.

A classic example can be found in the Chanukah song which in Hebrew is called "Mi Yimallel". The first verse is "mi yimallel g'vurot yisrael, otan mi yimneh?" which means "who can recount the heroic acts of Israel, who can count them?" The verse is based on a Psalm verse which might be familiar to you as it is part of Birkat HaMazon, the Grace after Meals; Ps. 106:2 -- "mi yimallel g'vurot adonai?" "who can recount the heroic acts of God?"

Do you see what has happened here? A verse from Psalms which talks about God's saving powers has been transformed into a secular Zionist paean to Jewish heroism. This is perfectly in keeping with the Zionist ethos which emphasizes, not reliance on God but rather reliance on our own actions.

So the psalm verse has been transformed once by its emended inclusion in a secular Zionist Chanukah song. But coming to America it has been transformed again because in English the song begins "Who can retell the things that befell us, who can count them?" The emphasis is not on the heroic acts of God nor those of Israel, but rather on "the things that befell us." This is in accordance with what the great historian Salo Baron called the "lachrymose theory of Jewish history" which sees Judaism primarily as a series of tragedies and oppressions perpetrated against the Jews by others.

Every generation and every Jewish community creates its own meaning. What is the meaning of Chanukah that we will create? What legacy will we leave to future generations?

Friday, December 2, 2011

Deconstructing the Controversial Israeli "Come Home" Videos

The hot topic of the week within the Jewish world is an ad campaign by the Israeli government designed to convince Israelis living in the United States to come home. Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was probably the first one to publicize the campaign widely in this post. I posted something I wrote a couple of years ago about a similar campaign here and it is by far my most-widely read blog post as a number of people have linked to it from their blogs or their Facebook pages. Yesterday the Jewish Federations of North America communicated their distress to the Israeli government.

I don't want to rehash all the points I made in yesterday's blog post but let's take a look at the videos and the message they are trying to communicate.

The first one deals with Yom HaZikaron, the Memorial Day for those who have fallen in Israel's wars. It is set in New York, and a couple is coming into their apartment. The young woman seems sad and her boyfriend puzzled. The dialogue between the couple is in English so I don't need to translate. She sits down in front of a computer and from what she is seeing, it's clear that tonight is Yom HaZikaron. The voice-over says in Hebrew: "They will always remain Israelis. Their spouses will not always understand what that means. Help them come home."

The factual assumptions in this ad are not wrong. If you are in Israel Yom HaZikaron is a major event. The radio plays sad music and the TV stations present documentaries about Israel's wars. Restaurants and cafes are closed. In the morning a siren sounds throughout the country and everyone stops what they are doing and stands at attention. In the United States, Yom HaZikaron is barely noted and in cities where a Yom HaZikaron event is even held, almost all of those in attendance are Israelis.

It should be noted that Yom HaZikaron is the day before Yom HaAtzmaut, Israeli independence day. In many parts of the US, Yom HaAtzmaut has become a movable feast and independence day celebrations are often held on the nearest Sunday rather than on the actual day. Yom Hazikaron becomes an appendage and the independence day celebration will start with a five or ten minute symbolic observance before the falafel is served. (The inevitable serving of falafel on Yom HaAtzmaut would strike Israelis as strange. No true Israeli eats falafel on Yom HaAtzmaut. On Yom HaAtzmaut, all true Israelis eat בשר על האש.)

As an Israeli colleague noted in a discussion of this ad which took place on Ravnet (the e-mail listserv for Conservative rabbis), it is ridiculous to think that you can raise Israeli children in America. A child who grows up in the US with one Israeli parent and one American Jewish parent is going to be an American Jew, not an Israeli. That's a simple statement of sociological fact. The Israeli government is going to see this as a bad thing, the American Jewish community is not going to get particularly worked up about it. The ad may be problematic to us because we have been raised to believe that identity is a matter of choice, but that's a question of perspective and I already addressed that yesterday.

The second video is much more problematic. An Israeli couple, living in the States, has their young daughter in their laps. They are Skyping with Grandma and Grandpa (Savta and Saba) in Israel. The entire conversation is in Hebrew. It's snowing in the States; behind Grandma and Grandpa, a Chanukah menora is lit. Grandma asks the little girl, in Hebrew, if she knows what holiday today is and she responds, in English, "Christmas!". The parents and the grandparents exchange worried glances, and the voice-over says in Hebrew: "they will always remain Israelis. Their children won't. Help them come home."

Here the problem is the conflation of "Israeliness" and "Jewishness." The assumption that American Jews don't really "get" Yom HaZikaron and that children of Israelis who grow up here won't really "get" it either, is probably not wrong. U.S.-raised children of Israelis won't be culturally Israeli but the ad here implies that they won't be Jews, either. Obviously, assimilation is a problem in America but the implied assumption that American Jews celebrate Christmas rather than Chanukah is off-target and offensive. If the creators of this ad really believe that, then they really are clueless about American Jewry and we have a big problem.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Protestant Jews and Catholic Jews -- why Israelis and American Jews Don't Understand Each Other

A new blog post by Jeffrey Goldberg (with whom I almost always agree) called attention to a current campaign to get Israelis living in the United States to return home. You can read the Goldberg blog post here.

A couple of years ago I gave a sermon addressing a somewhat similar campaign and used it is a starting point for a discussion of the differences in Jewish identity between Israeli Jews and American Jews. Here it is, for your reading pleasure:


  Some years ago, during the "troubles" in Northern Ireland, a gunman broke into the home of one of the few Jewish families in Belfast. He proceeded to ask the inhabitants of the home whether they were Protestant or Catholic. They of course did not know whether the gunman was Protestant and would kill them if they said they were Catholic, or if the gunman was Catholic and would kill them if they said they were Protestant. So they decided that the safest course of action was probably just to tell the truth and say they were Jewish.

    The gunman seemed stumped, but not for long. "OK," he said, "but are you Protestant Jews or Catholic Jews?"

    I used to think that joke was kind of silly, but in the last couple of weeks I am beginning to think that there are indeed Protestant Jews and Catholic Jews.

   Project Masa is an Israeli-government funded project which works in conjunction with birthright Israel to connect young Diaspora Jews to Israel and presumably through that, to Judaism. Birthright brings Jews 25 and under to Israel for a free ten day trip; those who want to come back for a longer period, from three months to a year, are offered support and volunteer placement through Masa.

     At the beginning of September, a TV commercial for Masa ran a few times on Israeli television, sparked a crisis  between Israeli and American Jewish leaders and merited coverage on CNN and in the British newspaperThe Guardian, among others. Since it's a holiday I can't actually show you the commercial, but I'll describe it to you. The first thing you see -- in sepia tones -- is a railroad bridge with a train running underneath it. Taped to the bridge's guardrail is a poster with a picture of a young man and it says LOST -- Joel Fine. There is mournful music in the background. Then the commercial cuts to another lost poster taped to a wall. LOST -- Nathan Jacobs. Then several more such posters, in various locations, most in English but one in Russian and one in French. Then the commercial cuts to a subway station with a train running through it. More posters and a voice-over in Hebrew which says "more than 50 percent of young Diaspora Jews assimilate and are lost to us. Do you know a young Jew from abroad? Call Project Masa, and together we will strengthen his ties to Israel. Project Masa -- a year in Israel, a life-long love."

    Thanks to Youtube, of course, you need not be in Israel to watch Israeli commercials, and I will send the link out so you can see it yourself after the holiday.  When I saw the commercial with the mournful music and the flyers, I thought of Manhattan in the days and week after 9/11. For JJ Goldberg, editor of the weekly Jewish newspaper The Forward, the images of trains reminded him of the Holocaust.

    And so American Jews -- and some Israelis who are more familiar than most with the Diaspora -- protested to Project Masa that the commercial was inappropriate and offensive. At first Masa officials defended the ad as aimed at Israelis, not Diaspora Jews. They pointed out, correctly, that roughly a third of Jews in the United States have relatives in Israel with whom they are in contact (many more no doubt have relatives that they don't know or with whom they have lost contact), and the purpose of the ad, after all, was to get Israelis to recruit their Diaspora relatives for Masa. Eventually, however, the advertisement was taken off the air and replaced with one touting the virtues of Project Masa in strengthening the ties between Israel and Diaspora Jews.

    What I found most interesting was the utter bafflement of the Israelis who put together the ad campaign. But I think I understand the reason for their bafflement. Yes, for those of us with ties to New York the "Lost" posters reminded us of 9/11 -- and that was no doubt exacerbated by the fact that the commercial began running in early September, when the tragic events of eight years ago were already on people's minds. I don't think the commercial was intended to stir thoughts of 9/11 or of the Holocaust, but that is what it did.

    But there is something deeper at work here than just unintentionally offensive imagery. This commercial and the responses to it exposed a fault line between Israel and Diaspora Jews, one that is deep and growing.  What this controversy reveals, I think, is that American and Israeli Jews see the fundamental nature of Jewish identity in radically different ways.

    What does it mean to say, as the Masa commercial does, that fifty percent of Diaspora Jews "assimilate" and are "lost to us?" How does one measure assimilation? The commercial makes several assumptions, all of them questionable. First, that assimilation is something which can be defined and measured. Second, that it is an either/or situation -- a particular person can be defined and quantified as "assimilated and lost to us" or not. And third, that several months or a year in Israel are able to prevent assimilation, however defined.
    
    A young Jerusalem Post reporter named Haviv Rettig Gur, who covers the Jewish world for that English-language Israeli newspaper, wrote an excellent analysis of the whole debacle. I am proud and at the same time a bit astonished to tell you that I knew Haviv when he was in pre-school in Israel. Both of his parents are American-born but made aliyah with their entire families in their late teens. Both his parents had American elementary and high school educations but then served in the Israeli army and went to the Hebrew University. When Haviv and his brothers were pre-teens and teens, the family spent several years in the United States while their father, now Rabbi Edward Rettig, went to rabbinical school and then briefly worked as a rabbi in this country. Today, Rabbi Rettig is a Jerusalem-based expert on American Jewry for the American Jewish Committee, while his wife, Haviv's mother Martha, works as an Israeli tour guide. This is by way of saying that both father and son are among the very few who are capable of understanding American Jewry as American Jews but also understanding Israel as Israelis.

    His analysis was entitled "Masa is clueless, but is not alone." And in it, he helped me to understand that the joke with which I began this sermon has some reality behind it. There really are Catholic Jews and Protestant Jews. American Jews are mostly Protestant, while Israeli Jews are mostly Catholic -- or even Muslim.

    Haviv writes that "Israelis are a product of their heritage and experience. The vast majority of Israelis hail from countries untouched by the Protestant Reformation and the identity-shifting aspects of modernity. In both Eastern Europe and the Muslim world, religious identities are fundamentally collective and couched in familial terms. Meanwhile, for 60 years incessant wars and hostile borders have added an element of collective fate to that Middle Eastern and East European structure of identifying." In other words, for Israelis being Jewish is not a choice, it is an immutable fact. It is about the family, the tribe, the collective that one belongs to because one is born into it. 

    "American Jews, too," he writes, "are products of their broader environment. Like their surrounding culture, they are radically individualistic, believing that the source of authentic identity, of religious authority and of life decisions, lies within the individual. Where Israelis are profoundly Eastern in the overarching structure of their Jewishness, Americans understand identity in radically individualistic and essentially American ways."

    There is an old joke that says there are two types of people in the world; those who say there are two types of people in the world, and those who do not. But what Haviv is saying -- and I think he is right -- is that for Israelis as a rule there are indeed two types of people in the world; "us" and "them". They tend to see identity mostly as innate, given, fixed, and collective. This is because most Israelis have roots tracing back to Muslim, Orthodox Christian, or Catholic countries which see identity in this way. You are born into a tribe and you identify with that tribe. To do anything else is an act of betrayal.

    The American Jewish view of identity is radically different. Frankly, it has more to do with the fact that we are Americans than that we are Jews. In America, and in other countries shaped by the Protestant reformation, identity is not a given, it is chosen. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, just over 40 percent of Americans currently belong to a different religious group than the one in which they were raised. Slightly under half -- 47% -- are members of the religion in which they were raised and never left it, while about 10% of Americans left their birth religion for another one but then came back to the group in which they are raised. 

    What I have said about religion-changing in America simply describes a situation, it takes no position for or against. But I think it is fair to say that most Americans believe that it is everyone's right to choose their own religion -- not just legally, but morally as well. So it is not just the questionable images in the commercial which are problematic. As Haviv writes in the Jerusalem Post: "For Americans, it is hard to hear the campaign (which the Masa ad was for) as anything more than a denial of individual autonomy and personal authenticity. The core assumptions behind the campaign seem, in an American cultural context, appalling."

    It is this American cultural context which makes us Protestant Jews while Israelis are Catholic Jews. But it is not just for Jews that this dichotomy exists. American Catholics, as strange as it may sound, are in this sense Protestant Catholics. The Catholic hierarchy is in constant conflict with Catholic universities, because the hierarchy wants to make sure that theology professors don't teach heresy, while the universities believe in academic freedom. The hierarchy doesn't want condoms available on campus, but the dormitory directors and student health center do. Notre Dame University gave an honorary degree this past spring to President Obama, despite his pro-choice beliefs. The majority of American bishops signed a statement asking Notre Dame to rescind the invitation, and the bishop of the diocese in which Notre Dame is located boycotted the commencement ceremony, but the university went ahead with its plans. All available data is that Catholics have abortions at the same rate or higher as non-Catholics, and they use birth control at the same rate as non-Catholics. Less than five percent of American Catholics under thirty agree with their church's official teaching on birth control. 
    While this is often referred to as a split between "liberal" and "conservative" Catholics, I don't think this is really the case. I think rather that the Pope -- and most bishops that he or his predecessor appointed -- believe it is enough to simply lay down the law and the people should follow. But that is just not the American way. We may, in the end, choose to do as our clergy would like us to -- but we insist that is our choice whether to do so or not.

    The roots of this "rugged individualism" are Protestant. Before the Protestant Reformation, the authority for religious practice was as much the tradition of the Church as it was the Bible. For Catholic theologians, the Bible is "the Church's book" and is understood in the context of its history of interpretation. Or to put it more simply, the Bible means what the Church says the Bible means. Sound familiar? To a knowledgeable Jew, it should. The interpretations differ, of course, but the insistence that it is the community which determines the meaning of Scripture is very similar in both Judaism and Catholicism.

    But Luther and his followers sought to strip away what they considered man-made accretions. They wanted to get back to "sola Scriptura" -- the Bible alone. The meaning of Scripture was no longer determined by the community but by the individual and his or her personal, subjective religious experience. This is one of the reasons why there are so many different Protestant denominations, because there are endless disagreements over points of scriptural interpretation. And thus, for example, in Reno Nevada, down the street from the Conservative synagogue, a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church and a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran Church are right across the street from each other.

    Protestants in America can afford this kind of fragmentation, perhaps, since there are over 150 million of them. Nobody is worried that the American Protestant community will cease to exist because of assimilation, and nobody is saying that it's no longer economically viable to have several Protestant churches of different denominations in the same town or county. The same is not true of the American Jewish community.

    Birthright Israel and its siblings like Project Masa are one response to the fears that the American Jewish community is crumbling before our eyes. The thought is that by offering a free trip to Israel for any Jewish young person under 25 who hasn't already been to Israel on a peer educational program -- the tide of assimilation can be reversed. 

    These programs are relatively new, and it is not yet possible to measure their long term effects. Anecdotally, it does seem that birthright participants come back from Israel more connected to their Jewishness. Haviv writes in the Post: "What is it about Israel that makes young Americans, who are utterly and proudly American and sometimes only conditionally Jewish, react so positively? Americans, too, are befuddled by this gap. Americans fund and encourage their children to go to Israel by the hundreds of thousands, but rarely consider clearly and rationally why a mere ten days in a foreign country can so affect the identity and lifelong affiliation of an ordinary 19-year-old.
    Here's a theory: Israeli society has a profoundly different and deeply moving way of defining the very notion of Jewishness. . . It is that organic, rooted nationhood, a radically different notion of what it means to be a Jew from anything Americans have ever experienced, that so impresses young American Jews, and makes programs such as Masa and birthright Israel transformative experiences for Americans. The vast majority do not become Israeli or adopt Israeli identity structures, but do seem to come away with a more complex Jewishness; an understanding that there are aspects and layers to Jewish affiliation which they had not experienced before."

    The question is how we translate this "more complex Jewishness" to the American scene. It's not an easy task, and if it is to be accomplished at all, it won't be through attempts to define who is "lost" and who is "found", who is "in" and who is "out." And it won't be accomplished by Israelis mobilizing to "save" their "lost" American brethren  as they did for the Ethiopian and years before the Yemenite and Iraqi Jewish communities. 

    The solution to the "crisis of Jewish continuity" won't come only from Israel, and it surely won't come from defining the majority of American Jews as "lost" to their people. As Haviv writes: "Speak to the Americans, whose existential crisis is indeed assimilation, but who understand this as a call to fashion new worlds of personal meaning and individualistic affiliation, and you'll find real anger at the callous Israeli attempt to define who is "lost" and who is "found." 

    The real solution to the crisis of continuity, I believe, will be achieved in a synthesis of the "American" and "Israeli", or, if you will, Protestant and Catholic notions of identity. In today's world, Jewishness is not something that is taken for granted just because you were born into a Jewish family. Yes, Judaism may be our "birthright" but we stubbornly insist it is our choice whether or not to claim it. But ultimately, while we insist on our right to fashion our own identity, what we most lack in American society is a sense of community. This Israel provides in abundance, but very few American Jews will choose to live in Israel, even as we care deeply about her.

   The source of Jewish connection in the fragmented society in which we live is the community. I go to shul because someone else is saying kaddish, and they can't do so without a minyan. I go to shul because my friends expect to see me. I have a kosher home so that other people will be comfortable eating there or attending my simcha. I come to synagogue programs that don’t necessarily interest me so much, so that they will be successful. Our challenge is not to convince more Jews that God wants them to live a certain way. Our challenge is not to denigrate those Jews who make different choices than we do about how they are "assimilated" and "lost." Our challenge is to show more Jews the joy of our tradition and the meaning they can find by participating in our community.

    In an address to Rabbinical Assembly Convention in 2000, Chancellor Eisen – at the time a professor at Stanford and a lay leader of his Conservative synagogue – said: “Our shared life together -- the meaning we hold and are held by inside a framework of palpable community -- is all we need in order to face the future with confidence. And this we have. All of us encounter people fairly often who sap our energies by painting incredibly bleak pictures of what awaits us in that future. We resist their gloomy forecasts, in large part, thanks to the counterexperiences of encounters with Jews of all ages newly excited by their Judaism and alert to its transformative possibilities. Such people, young or not so young, constitute a human spiritual resource of immense importance and potential. We best draw forth that potential, I think, if we approach them with transcendent meaning unavailable elsewhere, translated without loss of authenticity into the language in which they speak and work and dream -- and offer them this meaning inside a community which need not be preached or exhorted because it is palpably experienced.
If we do so, we have nothing to fear from the unpredictable challenges that undoubtedly will beset us in coming decades, and we will have the added comfort of doing what Jews in any generation are meant to be doing. The work and the reward will be more than sufficient.”
    What will enable us, then, to build a stronger and more vibrant community? The idea that Judaism represents an opportunity to bring us closer to each other – and through being closer to each other, we become closer to God as well. Our obligations to each other are no less sacred than our obligations to God; and in discovering our connection to each other, we discover our connection to God and to our people.