Categories
Rabbinic Reflections Statements

Remembering Rabbi David Ellenson, PhD, z”l: ‘At the Turning: Reflections on My Life’ (2014)

The Central Conference of American Rabbis mourns the death of our beloved rabbi, teacher, and friend, David Ellenson, PhD, z”l (1947–2023). The former president and chancellor emeritus of our Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi Ellenson was a mensch of the highest order who imparted wisdom and kindness in addition to sharing his voluminous knowledge and scholarship.

Rabbi Ellenson was a devoted and generous member of the CCAR and a friend to CCAR Press. His forewords or afterwords appear in three CCAR Press volumes: The Book of Blessings: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival, The Sacred Encounter: Jewish Perspectives on Sexuality, and From Time to Time: Journeys in the Jewish Calendar. In fall 2014, to mark the close of his first term as HUC-JIR’s president, CCAR Journal published “A Tribute to David Ellenson,” with articles by Rabbis Robert Levine and Rachel Adler. The issue also contained an autobiographical piece by Rabbi Ellenson entitled “At the Turning: Reflections on My Life.” We share excerpts of that piece in his memory.

The forces that have animated my life and work cannot be understood without recourse to my family and my past as a Jewish boy growing up in the South during the 1950s and 1960s and the multilayered world I experienced. Everything in my world talked about difference and exclusion. My grandparents had all emigrated from Eastern Europe to the United States in the early 1900s. My maternal grandparents had settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while my paternal grandparents improbably came to Newport News, Virginia. My parents, Rosalind Stern and Samuel Ellenson, met at Harvard Hillel in 1945, immediately after World War II, and they married in 1946. A year later, I was born, and six months after my birth, my father, a degree from Harvard Law School in hand, returned with my mother and me to Newport News, where he began the practice of law….

To this day, I cannot fully capture how very much I love the South and the Peninsula. The approximately 2,000 Jews located on the Peninsula lived peacefully and prosperously among more than 150,000 gentiles…. My entire extended family lived in the same pleasant neighborhood, and my childhood and adolescence were filled with family gatherings and events at which aunts, uncles, and cousins were present. …

I was and remain at some very deep level of my being a Virginian. However, I was also a Jew and that was “the rub.” I never felt I fully belonged. My being a Jew in a Christian world made me an outsider and different from the time I was a small boy, an observer even as I was an eager participant in the larger world. It left me feeling alienated even as I was overwhelmingly social and active.

In sum, the fabric of my identity was fraught with tensions. The inequities and evils I witnessed as a child and as a teenager in matters of race and gender and the sense of being an outsider as a Jew to the gentile culture in which I was raised all left a permanent mark on me….

* * *

I enrolled [eventually] in the Religious Studies Department of the University of Virginia, where I received an M.A. degree… There, for the first time, I read the works of Durkheim and Weber, where I was provided the beginnings of a vocabulary that would allow me to frame and illuminate my concerns. It was also equally clear to me that I had so much more to learn if I was to ever explore seriously the nature of what it was to be a Jew in the modern world.

This led me to move to Israel for two years. The first year I lived on Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek in the Jezreel Valley—where I worked in the fields and advanced my spoken Hebrew—while, in the second year, I enrolled in the rabbinical program at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem. Although I seriously considered remaining in Israel and making aliyah at the end of that year, I decided to return to the United States, where for the next four years I would pursue rabbinical ordination at HUC-JIR in New York and doctoral studies in Religion at Columbia University….

The precise character of my [doctoral] work was shaped by two men. Towards the end of my formal graduate education in 1976 and 1977, I came under the tutelage of Fritz Bamberger of HUC-JIR and Jacob Katz of Hebrew University, who was then at Columbia as a visiting professor…. [Professor Bamberger’s teaching made] me aware that the hermeneutic of tension I have employed in all my work is embedded in a narrative that emerged from my own childhood experiences as a Jewish boy in Virginia…. Professor Katz provided me with the content and even more importantly the methodology that would guide and inform my work for decades to come. [He] pointed out that Germany was the crucible in which modern Judaism was born. It was here that the conflict between an inherited Jewish tradition and a highly acculturated Jewish community first played itself out… Indeed, it is a primary reason that I wrote my dissertation on Rabbi Hildesheimer, an Orthodox Jew completely committed to Jewish tradition, who received a doctorate from a German university and who was completely comfortable in Western culture. A study of his life would indicate precisely how Jewish religious tradition could be and was adapted to the demands of the time and place in which he lived. In so doing, I could hold up a mirror to my own being and provide a case study of how Judaism could be adapted to the modern world….

My decision to employ his model to study Rabbinic responsa and prayer book compositions in Western Europe, North America, and my beloved Israel reflect my deepest personal commitments to Judaism and the State of Israel. It also led me to believe that academic scholarship was a vital means to illuminate an understanding of life for myself, my Jewish community, and others in the larger world…

* * *

As a Jew who is commanded every day to remember my bondage and my exodus from Egypt… I cannot forget the books of my Jewish past, nor do I want to. Instead, I hope that my children and my students and their descendants, as our daily liturgy phrases it, will be “yodei sh’mecha v’lomdei toratecha” (knowers of God and students of Torah). My years as president of the College-Institute have been an extension of my entire life and all my values. I have aspired as a Jew born in America and connected deeply both to Israel and the larger world to place myself and my students in a chain of Jewish tradition that is humane and inclusive. Rabbi Leo Baeck provides me with a language for that aspiration…:

Every generation by choosing its way, its present way, at the same time chooses an essential part of the future, the way of its children…. Ways bind, wind, and wander. When a man forms his life, he begins to create community. He is not only born into community as if by fate, but he has now been called to the task of molding it.

My own Jewish way has wandered. Surely, the ways of my own children and grandchildren as well as my students will wander as well. Nevertheless, I and they are also bound, and my way, just as theirs, emanates from those who lived before us. I have tried—through my researches and through my work as a teacher and as president of the College-Institute—to honor the way I have inherited even as I have struggled to mold a direction for a way that reflects who I am. I look forward with confidence to how the students and graduates of HUC-JIR… will mold their own directions for the Jewish people and humanity in the days ahead.

Read the entire piece here.

Rabbi David Ellenson, PhD, z”l (1947–2023), served as president of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion from 2001 to 2013 and again from 2018 to 2019. He was a prolific scholar of modern Jewish thought and history.

Categories
Israel Rabbis Organizing Rabbis

Only at Night Can One See Stars: Rabbi Barry Block on the Israeli Spirit

On Shabbat morning, November 18, 2023, CCAR Chief Executive Rabbi Hara Person, Rabbi Judy Schindler, and I visited Elana and Eyal Kaminka at their home in Tzur Hadassah, a town not far from Jerusalem. Their son, Yannai, of blessed memory, was killed by Hamas terrorists on October 7, and we were paying a condolence call. The Kaminkas are members of K’hilat Shir Chadash, a Reform congregation where Yannai celebrated his bar mitzvah seven years ago. On our visit, which followed Shabbat morning services at Shir Chadash, we were accompanied by Yael Schweid and Naomi Ben Ari, two Israeli Reform rabbinic students who are also members of that congregation and friends of the Kaminka family. Yael had trained Yannai for his bar mitzvah.

Yannai was a lieutenant in the Israel Defense Force. He would have turned twenty-one during shloshim, the thirty-day period of mourning after his death.  

On October 7, Yannai was serving at the Army’s Zikim training base, adjacent to a kibbutz by the same name. Guard posts on the base that morning were staffed by basic trainees under Yannai’s command. Yannai quickly perceived the danger, and he ordered all the trainees to shelter. Officers and sergeants would take their places. One of the sergeants was hit, and Yannai rushed to her aid and to provide backup. Yannai was killed, alongside six others, only one a trainee. Ninety trainees and thirty civilians on the base were saved by their heroism, as was the entire population of Kibbutz Zikim.[i]

My teacher, Micah Goodman, says that on October 7, the State of Israel did not exist. Israelis were there, but the state was not. Soldiers were there, but the Israel Defense Force was not. The state broke its contract with its citizens—above all, those who have bravely made their homes and built their lives within and near Israel’s internationally recognized borders, including communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip.[ii]

Civilians waited in their safe rooms for hours—in some cases, more than a day—for the Army to arrive. Too many were killed or kidnapped as they waited. Where was the IDF? In the Occupied West Bank, protecting Israeli settlers, including extremists who established their settlements illegally. Where was the government? Consumed with a tactic previously well-known only in Latin America, intent on an auto-coup,[iii] transforming their democratic election into an autocracy, free from judicial review. Where was Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose longstanding promise to Israelis has been that he and only he could keep them safe? He was and remains consumed with keeping himself out of jail, despite several indictments on corruption charges, and now he’s also busy deflecting responsibility for the October 7 catastrophe from himself to his subordinates.

But soldiers like Yannai were there on October 7, and they saved lives. Imagine how many more lives could have been saved if brigades had not been moved from the Gaza border to the West Bank in the days, weeks, and months leading up to what Israelis are calling “that black Shabbat.”

I had been in Israel twice in 2023 before my visit in November. In February and in July, I was inspired by the Israeli protest movement. From January through September, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the street every Saturday night to protest the Netanyahu government’s antidemocratic judicial coup—or, put another way, to stand up for the democracy of the Jewish State. Throughout those nine months, Israelis demonstrated that, if the government would not protect the State of Israel, the people would. It was the most powerful demonstration of Zionism I had ever seen.

Now, the protest movement has transformed itself into a massive civilian aid society. In so many ways, throughout the last two months, Israelis in need have been able to turn to their “family,” to the extraordinary Israeli people if not to their government, and to our Jewish people around the world.

On October 7, before the Army even reached some of the communities that had been attacked, and with Hamas terrorists still in the country, the protest movement mobilized to meet the needs of survivors. It has never stopped. Onetime protestors now provide the infrastructure, the organizing capacity, and much of the human capital behind the extraordinary effort to keep the hostages at the top of the nation’s agenda, apparent government indifference notwithstanding.

Our little group was privileged to join our Israeli Reform rabbinic colleagues at Moshav Beit Ezra, not much more than fifteen miles from the northern border of the Gaza Strip. There, we spent a few hours pruning and weeding in a hothouse filled with tomato plants. We had responded to an “agricultural emergency call-up,” an effort styled after military mobilizations, this one intended to save Israel’s farms and the state’s food security from the disaster of losing their workforce after October 7. That work will need to be sustained for many months to come. In 2023, first with democracy demonstrations and now with volunteerism, Israelis have demonstrated that they can do it.

Eyal Kaminka, the father of Yannai, of blessed memory, is a management consultant who formerly served as Director of the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem. He is also a poet. Yannai had turned the last line of one of his father’s poems into his personal motto: Rak balaila ro-im kochavim, “Only at night can one see stars.” An ironic smile creeps across Elana Kaminka’s face as she describes that she has always urged her four children never to get a tattoo. Now, though, she receives constant WhatsApp messages from Yannai’s friends and supporters, sending photos of his motto now tattooed on their arms.

We are living at what has become a dark time for the Jewish people in Israel and around the world. Thankfully, we can see the stars. They are the people of Israel. Am Yisrael chai. The people of Israel live. Let the people of Israel continue to shine through this darkest of nights.

Amen.

[i] My recollection of conversation with Elana and Eyal Kaminka is supplemented here by Nikolas Lanum, “Mother of fallen Israeli soldier recounts how her son died protecting others: ‘We still love him so deeply,” Fox News, October 23, 2023, https://www.foxnews.com/media/mother-fallen-israeli-soldier-son-died-protecting-others.

[ii] Paraphrase of Micah Goodman’s comments to the Union for Reform Judaism North American Board, October 29, 2023.

[iii] Noga Tarnopolsky, speaking to our group, November 20, 2023.

Rabbi Barry H. Block serves Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, Arkansas. A member of the CCAR Board, he is the editor of  The Social Justice Commentary and The Mussar Torah Commentary, CCAR Press.

Categories
Books CCAR Press Social Justice

Guarding and Tending the Land: Rabbi Andrue Kahn on ‘The Sacred Earth’

Rabbi Andrue J. Kahn, editor of The Sacred Earth: Jewish Perspectives on Our Planet, reflects on the inspiration behind the project, the unique approaches taken by the book’s contributors, and why Jews can play an essential role in the fight against climate change.

How did you get interested in the topic of climate change?

I have always found nature to be a source of spiritual richness. Growing up in Tacoma, Washington, a particularly beautiful part of our country, I sought out the sense of gravity, mystery, and wonder in our parks and beaches. As I grew older, I maintained that sense of connectedness to wild spaces, but never really considered the place of Judaism within that nexus. As associate rabbi at Temple Emanu-El, I was approached by a particularly passionate congregant, the indefatigable Peg Watson, who wanted to push our community to get more involved in environmental justice. She connected us with Karenna Gore at the Center for Earth Ethics, and through many conversations and much planning, it became clear to me that the best way to awaken our community towards greater commitment to and involvement in protecting our ecosystem was to cultivate resources for individuals to connect their Jewish identity and practice more closely with the more-than-human world of plants and animals, mountains and oceans, and forests and deserts.

What can readers learn from The Sacred Earth?

The most important lesson within The Sacred Earth, reiterated throughout every page, is that Judaism has always seen humanity as part of the intricate web of intermeshing life on this planet, and that God is the creator of the entire system. Many have posited that Judaism has no Earth-based ethic due to our exile from the land of Israel, the geographic locus of our genesis as a people. In reality, this volume helps us see that our state of exile has given us a valuable viewpoint on humanity’s relationship to the planet. Our presence in every ecosystem—and our ability to be contributors and partners with others in guarding and tending the land—has given us a global perspective well before globalism became the norm.

Can you describe some of the different approaches taken by contributors to The Sacred Earth?

The Sacred Earth is as full of approaches as it is of contributors! From poetry, to reflective biographical essays, to halachic thought, to kabbalistic mysticism, to practical guides for ritual practices, each chapter is its own gateway into more deeply understanding our role as Jews on our shared planet.

Why is it important that we, as Jews, engage in environmental activism? 

Just as is true with so many other justice causes, environmental activism is deeply important for the Jewish people to engage in both for our own interests, and for the wider interests of the world. We are part of the wider network of communities that links all people and places throughout the planet, and are therefore responsible for maintaining that system. Beyond our universal commitments, the truth is that Jews all over the world are and will continue to be deeply impacted by the ongoing climate shifts. Even our ancestral and spiritual homeland itself is at deep risk of being uninhabitable within my lifetime if we continue trending towards greater rise in global temperature. Finally, our Torah teaches us that humanity was charged with the responsibility of guarding and tending the world, and there is no better way to maintain our connection to this mitzvah than to join with our fellow humans in working to protect against further destruction.

What gives you hope that we can rise to the challenge of addressing climate change?

When I look at the history of our people and our resilience in the face of thousands of years of challenges, it becomes clear that the Jewish people’s ability to survive and thrive everywhere and everywhen is undeniable. The unsustainable practices that have led to climate change will inevitably lead to their own demise. Our beautiful planet is incredibly resilient, if on its own timeline rather than a human timeline. Ultimately, the question is whether we as a species are willing and able to change how we approach our planet, our relationship to its inhabitants, and our modes and methods of consumption before we are forced by the ongoing shifts to make the changes under duress. What gives me the greatest hope in the face of these challenges are the many people who are devoting their lives to changing minds, hearts, and systems. The Sacred Earth is full of the thought and passion of just these kinds of people, tzaddikimin our midst, and I believe that whether we change by choice, or change by force, these tzaddikim will continue to work towards a better, more just world.

Rabbi Kahn and select contributors to The Sacred Earth are available to visit communities for speaker events and book clubs. For more information, please email bookevents@ccarpress.org.

Rabbi Andrue J. Kahn is Associate Director of Yachad and Adult Education at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, NY. He is the editor of The Sacred Earth: Jewish Perspectives on Our Planet (CCAR Press, 2023).

Categories
High Holy Days

Finding Joy, Purpose, and Hope in 5784’: CCAR Chief Executive Rabbi Hara Person’s High Holy Day Message to Reform Rabbis

Rabbi Hara Person, Chief Executive of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, shares her gratitude for the unending work of CCAR members, and shares her hope that they find joys both big and small as the new year 5784 begins.

To the Reform rabbis of the CCAR,

These High Holy Days are full of joy, reflection, and gratitude. The ability to be reflective, to write ourselves anew, is an incredible gift that we get to re-experience every year at this time.

The Psalms exhort us to “worship God in gladness, come into God’s presence with shouts of joy” (Psalms 100:2). As part of my personal High Holy Day prep, I’ve been reflecting on the idea of joy, which, though so profoundly central to our personal and professional lives, can be a challenge. Perhaps it’s because of the stress of the world that bears down on us; perhaps it’s because of all the many things wrong in the world and in our lives. Perhaps it’s because it can be so hard to live up to the best versions of ourselves to which we aspire. Perhaps it’s because our internal monologues tell us we’re not good enough, or deserving enough.

Additionally—and on so many levels—these are difficult times we are living in. As rabbis, we take so much upon ourselves. Because we take seriously the mandate to help heal the world, and there is so much healing to be done, it can feel overwhelming. Joy can often feel out of reach, even unattainable. There are so many reasons to struggle with experiencing joy.

Yet with all the uncertainty around us, I see what you are doing. In all the ways that you are serving the Jewish people, in congregations and communities around the world, in the military, in hospitals and healthcare settings, in schools and at camp, on college campuses and in all kinds of mission-driven organizations, in the early days of your rabbinic career and in retirement, I know that you are giving all you’ve got to bring inspiration, hope, and healing.

I am so grateful to you all. And dare I say that seeing all that you do as a rabbinate brings me more than a small amount of joy, and hope.

I recently came across a piece in the Washington Post by Richard Sima about something he calls “joy-snacking.” He writes, “By mindfully tuning into the pleasant, nice and sometimes routine experiences of every day, we can transform an otherwise mundane moment into something more meaningful and even joyful.” Apparently, there are scholars who study joy—who knew? One of their findings is that when people experience the small joys of everyday living, they find greater meaning in life, feel more connected, have a sense of purpose, and are more likely to flourish.

So, as we enter this new year with our hearts open and our souls determined to chart a positive and purposeful path in 5784, I invite you to consider this concept of “joy-snacking.” We each have the agency and indeed the responsibility for the care and feeding of our own souls, not only the souls of those we serve. Finding the small quotidian joys in the course of our daily lives is part of that process. Even as we focus on the heavy lifting that we each individually have to do as our part of helping to repair this very damaged world, this divided society in which we live, our beloved Israel in such pain, and in some cases the very communities in which we serve, we also have to push ourselves to find those moments of joy that uplift us, give us meaning, and help us keep going so that we have the energy and motivation for the hard work that lies ahead.

And there is much hard work ahead. As rabbis we are called to heal, to speak out loudly and courageously against injustice, to give voice to the voiceless and hope to the hopeless. We’re asked to do so much, and we ask a lot of ourselves. That work can’t be done without properly nourishing our own souls. Finding those glimmers of gladness and joy is also part of our mandate as rabbis, for it not only helps ground us and gives us purpose, but it also helps us connect to the Divine and reminds us of why we do this work.

The poet Rahel points us to finding those tiny joys, which add blessings to our days.

Tiny Joys
Tiny joys, joys like a lizard’s tail:
a sudden sea between two city buildings in the west,
windows glittering in the setting sun—
everything blessed!
Everything blessed.
A consoling music in everything,
in everything mysteries and hints—
and everything waiting for corals of beautiful words
to be strung by the imagination on its string.

[Tiny Joys, by Rachel Bluwstein, Found in Translation, transl. Robert Friend
(Milford, CT: Toby Press, 2006]

In this new year, may you find the tiny joys—and maybe some big joys, too. May all of those joys bring meaning and help you focus on what matters. May you find blessings and purpose in all that you do. May you have the strength to be a voice for justice, and may you continue to be a blessing and an inspiration.

Wishing you and yours health, happiness, and hope in 5784.

Categories
Books CCAR Press

A Universal Call: Interview with Rabbi Bernard Mehlman on ‘The Way of Humanity’

Rabbi Bernard Mehlman is one of the translators of the recently published  The Way of Humanity: According to Chasidic Teaching, from CCAR Press. In this interview, he shares new discoveries made during the translation process.

Why did you feel a new translation of The Way of Humanity was needed?

The first English translator of Der Weg des Menschen is unknown. That translation is overly literal and made little attempt to reshape the long, nested German sentences of the original for the English reader. We felt this literary gem deserved a translation which considered the sensibilities of English readers.

What was the research and translation process like for this book?

The research for the book centered mainly on the Martin Buber Archive of the Hebrew National Library, located at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. We were able to read correspondence relating to Buber’s work. Most importantly, we discovered a series of radio talks that Buber gave in the autumn of 1945, in Hebrew, for Kol Yerushalim, the British Mandate radio service. These enhanced our work greatly.

The epilogue presents a unique discovery that you and Dr. Padawer made while working on this translation. How does this discovery change how we think about this work’s origins?

When we found the Hebrew radio talks he delivered, and a handwritten outline by Buber of the content in both Hebrew and English, we learned that Buber was already thinking about The Way of Humanity as early as 1945 and perhaps earlier. His invitation to speak at a gathering of a Dutch Protestant religious and socialist workers organization, the Woodbrookers in Bentveld, the Netherlands in 1947, became the setting in which Buber presented his “lectures.”

What can contemporary readers learn from The Way of Humanity?

This book is filled with wisdom told with a rhythm and melody created by Martin Buber. It has an urgency cloaked in the world of Chasidic storytelling that begs the reader to probe the meaning of life on multiple levels. It urges the human reader to affirm the world and the self. It is at once a specific and a universal call to be present and affirm life.

 The Way of Humanity: According to Chasidic Teaching is available at CCAR Press.

Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman, DHL, senior scholar at Temple Israel in Boston, Massachusetts, teaches midrash and homiletics at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. Formerly, he was Distinguished Lecturer in Judaics at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Along with Dr. Gabriel E. Padawer, z”l, Rabbi Mehlman translated the new English edition of Martin Buber’s The Way of Humanity, now available from CCAR Press.

Categories
gender equality Social Justice

Creating Workplace Equity that Reflects Jewish Values

Rabbi Mary L. Zamore, executive director of the Women’s Rabbinic Network, reflects on ethical employment practices and offers a variety of resources to help Jewish workplaces achieve these standards.

In the Jewish community, many frequently describe our places of employment as having cultures like family. However, if we really want to honor the dedicated people who serve as the backbones of our institutions, we must develop the most professional and equitable employment policies and procedures possible. We must ensure equitable hiring, supervision, and promotion; we must create safe, respectful communities. This will honor not only our employees, but also our volunteers, members, and participants. In this manner, we will create cultures in which all can flourish.

For secular employees in the United States, the gender-based wage gap persists. According to a Pew Research Center report, it has barely narrowed in the past two decades. In 2022, American women typically earned 82 cents for every dollar earned by men; this ratio has remained almost the same since 2002, when women earned 80 cents to the dollar. The gap is much wider for women of color. For example, in 2022, Black women earned 70 percent as much as White men, and Hispanic women earned only 65 percent.

Unfortunately, the wage gap also persists in Reform Jewish congregations. The Reform Pay Equity Initiative (RPEI), a project of the seventeen organizations of the Reform Movement and led by Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ) and Women’s Rabbinic Network (WRN), gathers data from the five professional organizations of the Reform Movement. This aggregation reveals a gender-based wage gap consistent with secular data.

Professional and lay leaders in each Jewish workplace should examine the RPEI data in order to ascertain if their female-identified employees, as well as those of other protected identity groups, are treated fairly and equitably. The question is not just “do we pay our employees fairly?” but “how do we know for sure that we are creating equity in our workplaces and thus living up to our Jewish values?” This drive for equity also requires that hiring, supervision, and promotion are conducted in the most professional manner and result in unbiased employment practices.

To ensure equity in our Jewish workplaces, we must guarantee that all employees have access to paid family and medical leave. With federal laws failing to provide paid leave, the secular American workplace is an outlier among developing and developed countries. Although the situation is improving at the state level, religious institutions are exempt from these laws. Therefore, the moral imperative is on Jewish leaders to provide clearly communicated, robust paid leave for people of all genders who are growing their families or whose loved ones are experiencing medical challenges. WRN’s paid family leave resource provides accessible information and model language for employment contracts and employee handbooks. This free resource explains that every employee should receive twelve weeks of paid leave.

Finally, our congregations and institutions must be safe, harassment-free, respectful communities for employees and all who interact with these organizations in any capacity. Every congregation and institution should have an ethics policy, which is constantly broadcast to all who gather either virtually or in person. In addition, staff and board members must be trained in the procedures that support the policies. Admittedly, upholding good-quality ethics policies can be difficult. It may require standing up to individuals who otherwise are valued in our communities and letting them know that their harmful behavior will not be tolerated. It may even mean asking these productive perpetrators to leave our communities.[i] It is vital that boards and leaders plan and practice procedures and are prepared to act. The Union for Reform Judaism has a complete resource, as well as professionals and lay leaders, to help congregations study and write an ethics code. Sacred Spaces, an organization dedicated to preventing institutional abuse in the Jewish community, has created Keilim, an online, self-guided policy toolkit. In addition, the Central Conference of American Rabbis’ “The Clergy Monologues” and ARJE’s “The Educator Monologues,” with accompanying study guides (Clergy and Educator), are conversation-starting tools to reflect on gender bias in Jewish spaces.

When we describe our Jewish workplaces as “like family,” we unwittingly send the message that our synagogues and institutions do not need to uphold the highest professional standards for ethical employment as informed by our Jewish values and secular laws. As Reform Jews, we can apply our communal passion for egalitarianism and social justice to safeguard every Reform Movement employee and ensure their access to safe, harassment-free, respectful workplaces. Dedicating ourselves to this goal is the greatest way to honor and celebrate our workers this Labor Day.

Rabbi Mary L. Zamore is the executive director of the Women’s Rabbinic Network. She is the editor of The Sacred Table: Creating a Jewish Food Ethic and The Sacred Exchange: Creating a Jewish Money Ethic, both published by CCAR Press.

[i] Productive perpetrators are professional or lay people who contribute to our communities through time, talent, money, knowledge, or social capital. Yet they harm others through bullying or harassment. See Harassment-Free Jewish Spaces: Our Leaders Must Answer to a Higher Standard (RavBlog).

Categories
CCAR Press High Holy Days Prayer Technology

‘Opening Your Heart with Psalm 27’: What Will Season Five Bring?

It’s been four years since the publication of Opening Your Heart with Psalm 27: A Spiritual Practice for the Jewish New Year by CCAR Press. I have not only been blessed to engage in this work myself, but I also have been able to share it with my congregation and students around the world, sometimes in person, and more often and regularly, online. As Elul’s 2023 season of reflection and renewal begins, I am preparing to see this psalm and myself as new, yet linked eternally to the past. This is your invitation to the practice.

The month of Elul begins on Friday, August 18, and with it the daily practice of reading Psalm 27 for seven weeks—from the arrival of the month to the close of the festival season on Simchat Torah. With only fourteen verses and 149 Hebrew words (roughly two hundred in English depending on the translation), it’s a psalm to savor. Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav understood the danger of the twenty-first-century binge when he wrote, “…But even if you are not motivated to t’shuvah”—the spiritual work of turning, changing, being at one with oneself, others, and God—“. . . the regular recitation of Psalms will lead you to awakening; you will come to the gates of t’shuvah and find the key to open its closed gates. In this manner you will attain complete t’shuvah.”[1] It does not matter if we read or sing, in Hebrew or English. What matters is that we engage with Psalm 27 slowly over the seven week season; in this way, the psalm holds the keys to open the gates of the heart.

At this season of the year, I try to be a strict adherent of the poet Wendell Berry’s advice, “Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air … stay away from screens…”[2] It’s not easy to stay away from the phone or computer screens, but I am successful in staying away from television screens. I don’t watch much TV to begin with, but there are times when I miss an entire season of a show and binge-watch it to catch up. The seasons of TV shows, going back to school, even vacation, have become linked to frenzied rushed behavior rather than an embrace of the unfolding evolution of seasons in nature or the healthy pace of this sacred High Holy Day season in our Jewish tradition. Each season of the year is different, just like each year is unique, and so too our experience with Psalm 27, year after year, or for the first time.

Opening Your Heart with Psalm 27 was published in 2019, and Season 1 began with celebratory singing and chanting[3] at each private reading and public gathering. Season 2 launched in Elul 2020 as the COVID pandemic pushed us apart. Words of Psalm 27 shared weekly online were a light and a salvation,[4] and in those moments we were not abandoned.[5]

The Psalm 27: Opening Your Heart app arrived in time for of Season 3 in 2021, bringing photographs, music, multiple voices, and gentle guidance to the sacred work. There were still enemies roundabout[6] and each day was chaotic[7] but from our Zoom boxes we saw God’s face[8] in each other; this gave us hope and courage to continue to wait[9] until we could be together in person again. By the start of Season 4 we were confident that we could make our way along an apparent path[10]; each of us and each word of Psalm 27 could be new each day.

And what to expect in Season 5? Surely the original characters of fear and doubt will reemerge from their hiding places[11], and alongside them, courage and hope.[12] Season 5 is also Season 1, meaning it doesn’t matter whether you’ve been reading the psalm for five years or fifty years. In this 2023 season, it is: fresh and new, an invitation to rest on a rock[13], seek shelter in a sacred place[14], lift the head and raise the gaze[15], to offer an offering[16] in song or deed, to seek out a new upright road[17] and to continue to wait and hope, to do the spiritual work and find the keys to open the heart in this new year.

Any season was and is a great time to begin the practice, and any day is great. It is never too late and never too early, and there’s no need to catch up or cram. This season is a gift of our tradition, a time to lounge and linger with the language of Psalm 27, finding in it the keys to open the gates of memory and tears, of gratitude and faith, of t’shuvah and transformation.

Rabbi Debra J. Robbins serves Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas. She is the author of Opening Your Heart with Psalm 27: A Spiritual Practice for the Jewish New Year and the app that accompanies it, Psalm 27: Opening Your Heart. Her second book, New Each Day: A Spiritual Practice for Reading Psalms, will be available from CCAR Press in December 2023.

[1] Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, Kitzur Likutei Moharan, PartII 73:1. Poetic translation by Rabbi Jonathan P. Slater.

[2] Wendell Berry, “How to Be a Poet (to remind myself),” in Given (Washington, DC: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005), p. 18.

[3] Psalm 27:6

[4] Psalm 27:1

[5] Psalm 27:9

[6] Psalm 27:6

[7] Psalm 27:5

[8] Psalm 27:8

[9] Psalm 27:14

[10] Psalm 27:11

[11] Psalm 27:11

[12] Psalm 27:14

[13] Psalm 27:5

[14] Psalm 27:5

[15] Psalm 27:6

[16] Psalm 27:6

[17] Psalm 27:11

Categories
Israel Poetry Prayer

Praises in Peril: Singing Hallel during Israel’s Judicial Crisis

Liturgist and poet Alden Solovy discusses the challenge of praising God during a period of political distress and uncertainty.

A strangely festive undertone animates the weekly Saturday evening demonstrations against the so-called judicial reforms here in Jerusalem. I’ve attended many of these protests in the thirty-two weeks since they began in January.

The post-Shabbat protests outside the president’s residence have become a place to catch up with neighbors and friends, hear music, cheer for speakers, blow kazoos in call and response with a circle of drummers, and chant slogans with enthusiasm.

Most of the demonstrations across the country occur without incident, while some have been marred by police violence and attacks on protesters, typically when major news breaks about the government’s relentless attempts to eviscerate the Israeli justice system or when protesters seek out government officials at their homes or when they are out in the field on government business. Here in Jerusalem, the typical mood at the weekly demonstrations is a strange combination of upbeat enthusiasm and downbeat disappointment, anger, and fear.

This dichotomy is manifested by the costumes that some protesters wear. While some are humorous digs at the government—a clown on stilts and various wild animals, for example—others are deadly serious, like the women dressed as “Handmaid” characters from The Handmaid’s Tale, silently calling attention to the potential of the “reforms” to erode women’s rights.

Photo courtesy of Mike Sager

In spite of the onset of “protest fatigue,” people are still coming out to demonstrate. Each week, the protests take on a different tenor. Two weeks ago, around the country, the mood was more somber. In Jerusalem, the musical act was eliminated from the program in respect after a terror attack in Tel Aviv earlier in the day. We sang Hatikvah (“The Hope”), Israel’s national anthem, at the end of the rally and went home early.

The leaders have called the weekly protests a “festival of democracy”—a festival that comes hand in hand with dark fears for the future of the State.

Jews around the world will soon bring in the new month of Elul, beginning a forty-day period of introspection and change including the High Holy Days. Our traditional t’filah for Rosh Chodesh includes singing Hallel, psalms of praise and rejoicing.

How can we rejoice in the face of this deep fear, pain, and sorrow for the State of Israel? Much like the somber realities combining with the festive atmosphere of many of the protests, this year the traditional Hallel may need a more layered and nuanced set of emotions.

Two and a half years ago—in the heart of the pandemic—I asked a similar question in the context of COVID and the approaching Passover seders, during which Hallel is also recited. How can we sing Hallel with a full heart at socially distanced seders? I crafted an alternative called “Hallel in a Minor Key,” inviting singer-songwriter Sue Horowitz to compose music for the opening poem. Partnering with the CCAR, Sue and I offered the liturgy as a thank-you gift to the congregations, rabbis, cantors, and spiritual leaders who have used our work.

We offer this liturgy to you again in answer to a new question: How do we recite Hallel as we fear for the future of the State of Israel? You can download a PDF of the full liturgy, along with the sheet music. You can also download a recording of the music. Read about the spiritual and musical influences behind this liturgy in our original RavBlog post “Hallel in a Minor Key.”

We encourage you to add music or additional readings that would deepen the meaning of your worship. If you use this liturgy, we’d love to hear from you. Reach Alden at asolovy54@gmail.com and Sue at srrhorowitz@gmail.com.

Alden Solovy is a liturgist who made aliyah to Jerusalem in 2012. He is the author of This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day, This Joyous Soul: A New Voice for Ancient Yearnings, This Precious Life: Encountering the Divine in Poetry and Prayer, and These Words: Poetic Midrash on the Language of Torah, all published by CCAR Press.

Categories
Books gender equality Women in the Rabbinate

Eradicating the Concept of an ‘Ideal Rabbi’

The CCAR and the Reform Movement have recently celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of women’s inclusion in the American rabbinate, which began with the ordination of Rabbi Sally Priesand in 1972. As a part of this celebration, CCAR Press has published The First Fifty Years: A Jubilee in Prose and Poetry Honoring Women Rabbis, a heartfelt tribute to women rabbis and their indelible impact on all of us. The book features voices from across the Jewish spectrum—many of them pioneers themselves—reflecting on the meaning of this anniversary.

Rabbi Nikki DeBlosi, PhD, is one of the contributors to The First Fifty Years. In her piece, she addresses the term “woman rabbi,” discussing the beauty that differences bring to the Jewish community and why we should eradicate the notion of an “ideal” rabbi.

Simply declaring that I am “a rabbi, not a ‘woman rabbi’” does nothing to change the underlying structures and assumptions that continue to hold back our progress as a Reform Movement.

I want to be accepted and celebrated as a woman and a rabbi because I want to eradicate the notion that there is an ideal rabbi, a standard model—white, heterosexual, male, Ashkenazic, etc.— against whom all others are labeled lesser than, deficient, exceptional, strange. Erasing the specificity of my gender or any other aspect of my identity that does not fit a narrow stereotype of “rabbi” might open doors professionally. But at what cost? How much of myself must I leave at the threshold?

As Jews, we should know deeply that difference and distinction and variety are not the problem.

When we bless “separation” at Havdalah, we don’t say, “Thank God there’s Shabbat, so we only have to tolerate those horrible six days temporarily.” No! We say instead, “Thank God there are different kinds of time.”

I want to say: Thank God there are different expressions of sex and gender. Thank God for women rabbis, and nonbinary bet mitzvah students, and transgender cantors, and interfaith families, and folks who have chosen Judaism in myriad ways. None “lesser than.” None the “default.” None the “exception.” None the “distraction.” All feeling truly as though we belong.

Rabbi Nikki DeBlosi, PhD, is a freelance rabbi dedicated to connecting folks to the breadth and depth of Jewish tradition through inclusive, innovative, and insightful Jewish teaching, speaking, and ritual. You can learn more about her work at www.rabbinikki.com. Rabbi DeBlosi currently serves as Vice President of Varied Rabbinates for the Central Conference of American Rabbis. She is a contributor to The First Fifty Years: A Jubilee in Prose and Poetry Honoring Women Rabbis.

Categories
Books CCAR Press

Translating Martin Buber for Today: Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman and Gabriel E. Padawer on ‘The Way of Humanity’

Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman

Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman, DHL, and Gabriel E. Padawer, ScD, z”l, are the two translators responsible for the new English edition of Martin Buber’s Der Weg des Menschen nach der chassidischen Lehre (The Way of Humanity: According to Chasidic Teaching). In this excerpt from the book’s introduction, they discuss the origins of Buber’s classic work and why they decided to undertake this translation project.

In April 1947, Martin Buber (1878–1965) delivered a six-part lecture with the title “Der Weg des Menschen nach der chassidischen Lehre” (The Way of Humanity: According to Chasidic Teaching) to the Woodbrookers at their convention center in Bentveld, Holland. The Woodbrookers (Vereeniging Arbeidersgemeenschap der Woodbrookers, Association of Workers Community of Woodbrookers), a Dutch religious-socialist workers’ organization with connections to English Quakers, and Martin Buber were no strangers; Willem Banning (1881–1971), Protestant pastor, cofounder, and some-time leader of the Woodbrookers Workers Community, had known Buber for many years and had been influenced by Buber’s socioreligious and philosophical outlook. When it became known in 1947 that Martin Buber would visit Holland as part of a seven-country lecture tour organized by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Woodbrookers invited him to be their featured speaker at a specially organized educational conference…

From his earliest years, Buber had been fascinated by the legends, traditions, and mystical teachings of the eighteenth-century Eastern European Chasidic rabbis. He chose a legendary tale from the Chasidic masters as a theme for each one of his six lectures and then expanded on these six tales to show their relevance to mid-twentieth-century thinking and sensibilities… A “Notice to Members,” found in the archives of the Woodbrookers Workers Community (now housed at the International Institute of Social History, in Amsterdam), notes that Martin Buber delivered his address on Sunday, April 20, 1947, in two sessions (at 10:30 in the morning and 4:00 in the afternoon) to an appreciative audience of about 150 listeners.

Martin Buber
The David B. Keidan Collection of Digital Images from the Central Zionist Archives

One of these auditors was Henri Friedlaender, who was a skilled calligrapher, graphic designer, and some-time poet who previously had published his writings on his own small press, Pulvis Viarum. Friedlaender was so much taken by Buber’s lectures that he approached Buber and was able to persuade him to let Pulvis Viarum publish the lectures as a German-language monograph with the title Der Weg des Menschen nach der chassidischen Lehre (The Way of Humanity: According to Chasidic Teaching). Friedlaender augmented Buber’s German lecture notes with a glossary explaining lesser-known terminology and place names and published it at the Pulvis Viarum Press in 1948.[1] To this day it is the only one of the sixty-odd lectures delivered during Buber’s seven-nation tour to have been published (and later translated into many languages) as a stand-alone monograph…

We decided to undertake a new English translation, based on the Pulvis Viarum 1948 German-language publication, for several reasons. The first was that the original (1950) English translation had been all too faithful to its German urtext, frequently resulting in complex and overlong sentences, with many nested clauses and parenthetical modifiers that were difficult to comprehend. One of us has had firsthand experience teaching the 1950 English text to young adults; they frequently had difficulties with the material and soon lost interest.

The second reason for a new translation was that we believed Buber’s work deserved a more scholarly presentation, including numerous notes about historical figures (included in the notes and glossary), references to biblical quotations, and explanations for some of Buber’s literary allusions based on themes from early twentieth-century Western European culture that would be unfamiliar to contemporary readers.

Third, we gave due regard to the importance of making our text gender-neutral, while preserving the literary and stylistic character of the work. To do this, we adopted the simple device of eliminating every occurrence of the pronouns he, his, or him, by transposing the sentence structure from the third person singular to the first or second person singular or else from the singular to the plural. Only direct quotations from external text sources were allowed to retain their gender-specific pronouns.

This translation developed over time. Our understanding and appreciation of Buber’s ideas deepened in the process. Our aim was to make the text and its ideas accessible to readers with an English sensibility by employing colloquial American English speech and usage. At the same time, we made every attempt to find English words or phrases that mirrored as closely as possible the meaning, both explicit and implicit, of Buber’s original German, so that Buber’s poetic melody and rhythm would not be “lost in translation.”

[1] Martin Buber, Der Weg des Menschen nach der chassi- dischen Lehre (The Netherlands: Pulvis Viarum, 1948).

Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman, DHL, senior scholar at Temple Israel in Boston, Massachusetts, teaches midrash and homiletics at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. Formerly, he was Distinguished Lecturer in Judaics at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Gabriel E. Padawer, ScD, z”l, who emigrated to the United States as a refugee from Nazi persecution in 1938, was a registered professional engineer, a Fellow of the National Science Foundation, and a lifelong student of Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy.

Rabbi Mehlman and Dr. Padawer are the translators of the new English edition of Martin Buber’s The Way of Humanity, now available from CCAR Press.