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(JTA) — Rabbi Arthur Inexperienced gave the graduation handle final week on the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative flagship the place he was ordained 56 years earlier.
His speak was largely a response to political turmoil in Israel, however he additionally urged the graduates to pioneer a “new Judaism.”
“I had the nice fortune, as a younger seeker, to run into the Jewish mystical custom, particularly the writings of the early Hasidic masters,” stated Inexperienced, who taught Jewish mysticism and Hasidic theology at Brandeis, the College of Pennsylvania and Hebrew Faculty. “I’ve been working for half a century to articulate what may merely be referred to as a Judaism for adults dwelling in freedom. I’m now close to the tip of my inventive course. However you younger persons are simply initially of yours. We want you to enroll — nonetheless you possibly can — within the process of the generations, that of re-creating Judaism.”
That’s the language of Jewish Renewal, with which Inexperienced, 82, is deeply recognized. Renewal isn’t a denomination, actually, however a motion that was born in and displays the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies counterculture. Child boomer Jews disillusioned with the big suburban synagogues that they thought-about soulless embraced Jewish follow that was non secular, egalitarian, environmentally aware and largely lay-led.
Child boomer Jews disillusioned with the big suburban synagogues that they thought-about soulless embraced Jewish follow that was non secular, egalitarian, environmentally aware and largely lay-led. Renewal’s signature establishment was the havurah — intimate prayer, research and social fellowships. Its soundtrack have been the liturgical melodies composed by the hippy-ish, “neo-Hasidic” Orthodox rabbi, Shlomo Carlebach. And its rebbe — to the diploma that an egalitarian motion had a central determine — was Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924-2014), a refugee from Hitler’s Europe and former Lubavitcher Hasid whose Judaism channeled the non secular “New Age” of the Nineteen Seventies.
These concepts and approaches could also be acquainted to you even in the event you’ve by no means heard of “Renewal.” Uncommon is the synagogue that doesn’t attempt to provide a extra intimate non secular expertise for its worshippers, to shrink the space between pulpit and pew, to include new Jewish music and, in non-Orthodox and numerous Trendy Orthodox synagogues, to extend the participation of girls in prayer and research.
These prayer shawls with rainbow stripes? That was a Schachter-Shalomi innovation.
How a counterculture motion got here to be absorbed by the mainstream is the topic of a paper in a brand new assortment, “The Way forward for American Judaism,” edited by Mark Silk and Jerome Chanes. Chanes is the co-author, with Shaul Magid, of the chapter on “Renewal” that claims it as one of the vital influential if not defining Jewish actions of the final 50 years.
“Whereas Jewish Renewal has by no means boasted numerous members, its affect on the bigger American Jewish group has been vital, when it comes to its liturgical experimentation, its revisions of formality and its general metaphysics,” they write. “It has additionally served as an ongoing conduit of knowledge and inspiration from its personal previous — the havurah motion, radical politics, feminism — to the following technology.”
I got here to the paper after giving a lecture at my very own synagogue on “The Disaster of the American Synagogue.” I spoke of declining affiliation charges, plunging enrollment in supplementary colleges, the shrinking variety of non-Orthodox synagogues. Most of my grownup life has been spent in synagogues, havurot and establishments closely influenced by Renewal. If the Jewish Renewal motion revitalized synagogue life within the final century, may it even be blamed for its struggles on this one?
Magid, a fellow in Jewish research at Dartmouth Faculty, and Chanes, an adjunct professor of Jewish Research at Baruch Faculty, introduced their chapter at a convention devoted to the discharge of the guide, held Tuesday and Wednesday at Trinity Faculty in Hartford, Connecticut. Magid made the declare — thought-about daring, at this small gathering of Jewish historians — that the three most necessary Jewish figures of the twentieth century have been Mordecai Kaplan, Menachem Mendel Schneerson and Shachter-Shalomi.
Kaplan, the founding father of Reconstructionist Judaism, downplayed the supernatural factor of Judaism and as a substitute referred to as it a “civilization” outlined by its individuals and tradition. Schneerson, the Lubavitcher rebbe, turned an insular Orthodox sect into an outreach motion that promotes ritual follow amongst secular Jews.
Rabbi Arthur Inexperienced delivers the graduation handle on the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan, Might 18, 2023. (Courtesy JTS)
Schachter-Shalomi mixed their visions and imagined a Judaism, stated Magid, that “is now not used as a instrument for Jewish survival, however fairly as a undertaking for Jews to turn into a part of the worldwide group, to contribute to the worldwide group.” Environmental consciousness grew to become an indicator of Renewal, as did absorbing influences from different religions, particularly Jap ones. “He actually did take Schneerson’s educating about bringing Judaism to the streets and expanded it additional to deliver Judaism to the mosque, to deliver Judaism to the monastery, to create one other manner of being Jewish which was not afraid of the world.”
In an interview with Magid earlier than the convention, I requested if he and Chanes is likely to be exaggerating Renewal’s affect.
“I’m positive there might be individuals who will declare that case however I don’t assume so, no,” he stated. Magid acknowledges that few individuals regard themselves as direct disciples of Schachter-Shalomi, and but, like Kaplan, his affect is felt broadly and deeply. “Every considered one of them had a futuristic imaginative and prescient,” he stated. “They have been capable of domesticate a mind-set about Judaism that was earlier than their time and that finally got here into being in some ways.”
A type of skeptical of Schachter-Shalomi’s affect is Jonathan Sarna, professor of Jewish historical past at Brandeis, who gave the keynote speak on the convention. In his response to the panel on Renewal, Sarna doubted Schachter-Shalomi was as influential as Carlebach, the Conservative theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel or the Trendy Orthodox thinker Joseph Soloveitchik. “I don’t assume we must always delude ourselves into considering that each innovator is a brand new Moses,” Sarna stated.
Benjamin Steiner, a visiting assistant professor in faith at Trinity, additionally puzzled if Renewal had unfold “in all places within the nation, or solely in massive city areas with vital plenty of educated Jewish college students.”
Listening to Magid’s response to such caveats, I considered the quote typically attributed to music producer Brian Eno: “The primary Velvet Underground album solely bought 10,000 copies, however everybody who purchased it fashioned a band.” Renewal’s affect unfold past its founding havurot as a result of lots of their principals went on to necessary positions in academia and Jewish organizations, together with Inexperienced, Rabbi Everett Gendler, Sharon Strassfeld, John Ruskay and Rabbi Arthur Waskow.
Small however influential Gen X and millennial establishments additionally bear Renewal’s fingerprints: the “Jewish Emergent Community” of unbiased congregations; New York’s Romemu and B’nai Jeshurun synagogues; egalitarian, traditional-style yeshivas like Hadar. Bayit, with numerous principals related to ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, is a web based artist’s collective and writer of Jewish books, together with a forthcoming Shabbat prayer guide.
One in all its contributors, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, who was ordained by ALEPH, has argued that the affect of Renewal is felt even inside Orthodoxy. “For those who take a look at the Open Orthodoxy motion, in the event you take a look at the ordination of girls as ‘maharats’ [by Yeshivat Maharat, a women’s seminary], the way forward for girls as rabbinic leaders in Orthodoxy is already right here,” she stated on an episode of the “Judaism Unbound” podcast. “It’s not in all places, however sometime will probably be.”
Magid and Chanes equally declare numerous main Jewish feminists as merchandise of Renewal — they point out Paula Hyman, Eva Fogelman and Judith Plaskow — though some within the viewers at Trinity insisted they gave Renewal an excessive amount of credit score for a motion by and for girls. In there essay within the Silk/Chanes Ebook, Sylvia Barack Fishman of Brandeis College affords a counter-narrative of Jewish innovation over the previous 50 years. In her chapter, she credit the “lively partnership” of girls in revitalizing American Judaism: Ladies’s spiritual expressions, she writes, “create social contexts and are distinguished by a communal dynamic, fairly not like the remoted, customized Jewish expertise, which some have claimed defines up to date Jewishness.”
I got here away satisfied that Renewal has had an outsize affect on Jewish life, particularly for child boomers like me. However I additionally puzzled if its outward-facing, syncretic Judaism didn’t instill a way of obligation to Jewish kinds, establishments and peoplehood — not like, against this, Orthodoxy in all of its booming present-day manifestations.
I requested Magid in what methods Renewal may need fallen brief.
“A part of its failure is that it is vitally, very anchored to a sure sort of American counterculture that now not exists. It hasn’t actually moved right into a 2.0 part,” he stated. “There are college students and employees members which are nonetheless very tied to [Schachter-Shalomi’s] imaginative and prescient, after which there’s a youthful technology, Gen Z, who’ve learn a few of his work and so they’re influenced by it, however they are surely considering way more about, properly, how does this translate right into a post-countercultural America?”
Magid additionally feels the concepts of Renewal will turn into extra necessary as American Jews’ attachment to Israel wanes, and the dwelling reminiscence of the Holocaust recedes.
If Rabbi Inexperienced’s speech on the JTS commencement was any indication, then the beliefs of Jewish Renewal nonetheless maintain their enchantment.
“We want a brand new Judaism in America… the place we even have the recent air wanted to create it,” he stated. “How will we transfer ahead… in articulating a Jewish theology for right this moment that’s each intellectually trustworthy and spiritually rewarding?”
The viewers of future Jewish leaders and academics leapt to its toes.
is editor at massive of the New York Jewish Week and managing editor for Concepts for the Jewish Telegraphic Company.
The views and opinions expressed on this article are these of the writer and don’t essentially mirror the views of JTA or its mum or dad firm, 70 Faces Media.
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