Categories
Healing

Rabbi in Crisis: How a Community Conspires to Care

Imagine having to make this decision: to fly home to hold your wife’s hand as she buries her mom on the West Coast or to remain on the East Coast to oversee the diagnosis and care of your mother who just had a major stroke. What would you do?

Nothing could have prepared me for the emotional tumult of having to decide whether to skip my mother-in-law’s funeral to remain at my mother’s bedside. Nothing.

Not five years co-teaching rabbinic pastoral counseling at HUC-JIR. Not 28 years as a rabbi, holding countless congregants hands and broken hearts as they navigated through their own pain. I am the rabbi, a human being regularly called to care for others; but I am also a husband, son, and son-in-law, struggling to figure out how to keep my head above the rising waters.

An Impossible Choice

This impossible choice, at the unfortunate intersection of two painful events, pushed me to my emotional edge. For the first time I was the one needing a community to help me through. Our communal values – henaynu (being there for one another) – were again being put to the test. Was the community really up to the task of caring for the caretaker?

Thank God that our synagogue, Congregation Or Ami (Calabasas), had for years been practicing the art of Henaynu. Thank God for the healthy relationships between our lay leadership and clergy that allowed us to see each other as partners and humans. Thank God for the Central Conference of American Rabbis’ (CCAR) deep commitment to caring for rabbis and teaching us how to care for each other.

When I, a community leader, was adrift, they all stepped in.

I skipped the funeral. My wife made the decision easy by making it for me. With the enthusiastic though saddened agreement of her father, whose wife died on the same day that my mom had the stroke, my wife and our family decided that I needed to remain in Florida to care for my ailing mother and help direct her treatment. It was the right decision for us.

Yet in my mind’s eye, I kept seeing my wife’s hand, the one I’ve held for almost thirty years, whose every freckle and fine line I have memorized to the touch. There was that hand, at the funeral, hanging there unheld. I imagined her sitting at the funeral, needing the hug that I couldn’t give her. This thought almost destroyed me. 

What got me through?

Even Rabbis Need A Rabbi (Part 1)

To survive, I had to reach out and let go, falling into the arms of my Rabbinic community.

Four rabbis separately conspired to take care of me. This one walked through the hospital doors, wrapped his arms around me, and held me as I cried like a baby. That one held onto my hand as tears ran down my face and gave me the space to talk through the tortuous journey of the last few days. A third one took over our pulpit, no questions asked, thus allowing me to get lost in the incomprehensible. The fourth sent a text, then took my call, and walked me through the painful process of accepting the choice I had no choice but to make.

The first two are former Rabbinic interns of mine, now full grown rabbis themselves. They sensed my need and just showed up. The third pair are my rabbinic and cantorial  partners at the synagogue, who immediately became caregivers and rabbi to my family who haven’t had one beside me for years. The fourth, an older colleague, is a rabbi’s rabbi who instantly became my rabbi, helping me figure it through.

In unspoken partnership, these four rabbis – each a gift from the Divine – along with so many other colleagues who phoned and texted – carried me through this particularly difficult period.

Fortunately I had known enough to reach out by myself. But if I didn’t or couldn’t, the CCAR, my rabbinic organization, was prepared to find me some rabbis to care for me. Rabbi Betsy Torop, the CCAR’s Director of Rabbinic Engagement and Growth, called and offered.

As Rabbi Torop and other CCAR leaders explain, according to a professionally administered self-study of our Conference, we rabbis experience a unique and deep sense of isolation and stress that is compounded during times of crisis. The CCAR is addressing these challenges of being a rabbi during crisis.

Thanks to my colleagues and the CCAR leadership’s continued intentionality and caring, I made it through the first week of crisis. With their help, I shall endure. (Among the greatest investments in rabbinic excellence would be to endow the CCAR’s Department of Rabbinic Engagement and Growth, so that all rabbis will always have a rabbi to help them through.)

Can the Synagogue Care for its Caregiver? (Part 2)

To be a clergyperson is to make oneself available 24/7 to meet the unending pastoral needs of the community. Rabbis show up when people are in need, no matter how it hard affects our own families. We are born to be caretakers. But what happens when we rabbis are the ones in crisis?

From its earliest days, Congregation Or Ami embraced the Jewish value of henaynu(radically being there for each other) and placed it at the center of our community. We believe this fulfills the vision of what God and Torah expects of us: to be a community that cares. Integral to that vision is a commitment to extend that same communal caring to the clergy who cared for us.

We have all heard horror stories of congregations and clergy, locked in battle over finances and failure, roles and responsibility. At Or Ami we focus instead on intentionally building up trust and practicing partnership. Hard as it sometimes is, the rabbis and cantor practice vulnerability, sharing our stresses big and small with our leadership in order to teach them how to help and support us. The community has learned to accept the humanness of their clergy and to intentionally allow us have moments of fragility.

Just as the clergy care for others compassionately, the congregation has long practiced caring for clergy through a variety of challenges: when a family member is struggling, a spouse has the flu, caring for older parents, and multiple periods of parental leave. Along with deep conversations about congregants who are struggling, we talk openly during our board and staff meetings about the rabbis’ struggles, most recently with trauma and burnout following the devastating SoCal fires and a mass shooting not far from the synagogue. We teach that compassion is a muscle that must be exercised.

So when, on the same day, my mother-in-law died in California and my mother had the stroke in Florida, I leaned on our time-tested partnership and made just four calls:

  1. To my clergy partners – a rabbi and cantor, telling them I was wasn’t coming home and I was stepping aside
  2. To our synagogue president sharing the tsuris (problems) so he could inform our leadership and partner with our clergy to envision the way ahead
  3. To our Shabbat dinner coordinator asking her to take over arranging the communal seudat aveilut (shiva meal) and meals for my family
  4. To two communal leader friends, asking them to “be me,” watching over my wife and family since I could not.

They all took over and played their parts. They supervised staff and made decisions. They checked in with me only on the most important issues. They arranged for the funeral to be live-streamed and for graveside to be FaceTimed so I could witness it from afar.

They took care of my family and me, insisting, in the most compassionate way, that I release control. And I did. Mostly.

Then they endured my moments of wanting to micromanage, listening patiently to my concerns, responding with openness, and then holding me metaphorically as they moved me once again to release control.

My partner rabbi and cantor sometimes channeled me – asking WWPD (what would Paul do) – and other times doing whatever they deemed appropriate. I trusted them as they sent explanatory emails to the congregation, sharing with them first about the death of my wife’s family’s matriarch, and later about my mom’s stroke and the reasons why I would be absenting myself from the funeral.

Our synagogue president and Shabbat dinner coordinator ensured that meals were delivered, that the large communal shiva meal was taken care of by the community, and that the staff and clergy understood that volunteers were prepared to do everything and anything to help.

One community leader texted me throughout the funeral service, narrating whatever the video would not pick up, ensuring that I felt the unseeable sense of the room. My rabbinic friend walked my wife into the chapel, holding her up, and he read my eulogy of sadness and loss.

Surviving Crisis and Trauma

We know that most clergy will experience intense crisis, trauma, or burnout a few times in their careers.

Pastor Wayne Cordeiro, in his book Leading on Empty: Refilling Your Tank and Renewing Your Passion, describes how he overcame his struggle with crisis, burnout, and depression by facing it honestly and by engaging his leadership and church. By allowing them to step up, he allowed himself to step away and face his struggles. When they do it compassionately, without stigma or retribution, the healing comes quickly and recovery is possible. Pastor Cordeiro encourages all religious communities and clergy to prepare for these eventualities.

I am proud and appreciative that Congregation Or Ami accepted the challenge and embraced it fully. I am so thankful that my rabbinic colleagues reached out and continue to do so

They all held on. And we survived. My family. My synagogue. And me.

[Note: Once his mother was stabilized, the author returned home for the last few nights of shiva (memorial services). As his wife embraced the true sadness that surrounds her mother’s death, he skipped the CCAR national convention, and headed east again to settle into a few weeks of caretaking. But that’s another story.]

—

Rabbi Paul Kipnes serves Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas, CA.  This blog was originally posted on paulkipnes.com

Categories
Death Healing

Mourning My (Unknown) Child

It was one of the happiest moments of my life. Holding my wife’s hand in the ultrasound room, we heard that rapid thump thump thump of newly created life. My wife was about 8 weeks pregnant with our next child. We left the room smiling and filled with a glow. I watched as my wife rested her hands gently on her abdomen. I smiled at her, and for the briefest of moments, felt a twinge of envy, knowing that I would never know our child as she would. It turned out, however, that life had other plans.

Within the following two weeks, my wife kept repeating to me that she felt something. She knew that there was something wrong with our child. Back to the ultrasound room we went, and, instead of that familiar and comforting sound of that thump thump thump, we heard silence, deafening silence. The life growing inside of her stopped growing; her cradle of life, my wife’s womb, now held lifelessness. The following week, after nurturing life for almost three months, my wife underwent a procedure, known as a “D&C”, to remove the silence.

There is so little in our literature, in our tradition, to guide the women who go through such tragedy, and less to offer wisdom to their partners on how to support in these moments of terrible loss. Over the ensuing weeks, I watched my wife mourn for the child we would never come to know. I sat silently as she would break out crying for no apparent reason, then run to hug our one and a half year-old son so tightly, and tell him how much she loved him. So often I wanted to say “something,” but I never knew the right words to say to her. What was I, a partner who could not carry life inside himself, who could never know life on that intimate of a level, what could I say besides that I grieved with her, and mourned with her.

But I’m a rabbi, aren’t I supposed to know what to do? I’ve been through chaplaincy rotations, studied the halakhot of mourning, pastored to people, shouldn’t I have been able to find something to comfort her? I soon realized that I was at a loss. There is almost nothing for a mourning of “the could have been.”

The Rav taught that the mourning of the intimate lives we know, this is aveilut hadashah – new mourning. This label has a double meaning for a situation such as this – it is new not simply because it is not the aveilut yeshanah of the Temple and ancient tragedies, but also because until very recently, Judaism has failed to recognize the need of the parents to mourn for what could have been.

My wife and I were experiencing a form of this aveilut hadashah, and even with the small collection of new material and liturgy, it felt so foreign. We didn’t discuss it in seminary, and it’s a small section of the rabbi’s manual. However, we are now living in a world where the marvels of medicine allow us to look at the fetus earlier than ever before, to hear the heartbeat of life sooner than ever before, and, we are having children later than any previous generation. Taken together, this is changing our understanding and attitudes of mourning for the loss of a life that could have been.

Standing nearly a year removed from this terrible moment, I cannot believe how completely unprepared I felt as a husband and a rabbi. It is time, I believe, that we begin to change our understanding of mourning beyond years 0 – 120. Unlike our ancestors, we live in a world where the hidden is not so hidden. Talking about and preparing our spiritual leaders, from rabbis-to-be to those already ordained, this too I believe is a part of our obligation as rabbis when we pastor. Our Mishnah, Niddah 5:3, goes so far as to say that a child one day old can be counted for mourning; perhaps it is time to take this halakhah one step further.

—

Rabbi Jeremy Weisblatt serves Temple Ohav Shalom in Allison Park, PA.

Categories
Convention

Writing Our Rabbinic Histories

As a rabbinical student, I spent a lot of time studying and working with Dr. Gary Zola, and so I am never that surprised to find myself unconsciously mimicking him by referring to, “the historic Cincinnati campus of HUC-JIR.”

HUCinci was historic well before I stepped onto the campus, but today, as I returned to 3101 Clifton Avenue for the first time since I was ordained in 2014, I realized that I had become a part of my school’s historic identity.

This understanding was cemented for me during the class “roll call” which highlighted more than 60 years of ordination classes that are present at our convention. As each year was called, I watched as rabbinic classes demonstrated their diverse personalities. Some shouted and clapped, others stood calmly and with little fanfare, and still others sprung up from their seats, waving joyfully.

As we made our way back in time, we eventually reached the classes that had been ordained more than 50 years ago. It was very moving to see how the entire conference stood for each of these groups, applauding the colleagues who have served the Jewish people for so many decades.

Hours later, at the Women’s Rabbinic Network dinner, we repeated the roll call. Once again, each class showed their unique style. Some moved across the room to stand together, others high fived enthusiastically, and upon standing, some discovered that their new vantage points allowed them to see classmates that they had not realized were in attendance. And then 1972 was called, Rabbi Sally Priesand stood with a smile and wave, and all of us who came after her rose as well, applauding in gratitude for her leadership and spirit.

While both of these roll calls were joyous and fun, they also prompted moments of introspection. I couldn’t help but think about what my classmates and I would look like when we celebrated the 50th anniversary of our ordination. This May will mark 5 years since we stood on the bimah of Plum Street Temple and received our blessings from Rabbi Aaron Panken, of blessed memory. But, even though it has only been half a decade, it feels as if we have all changed and grown so much already. Who will we be in 10, 20, and 60 years? What kind of rabbis will we have become? What history will we have written for ourselves and our communities?

200 years ago, the founder of American Reform Judaism, Isaac Mayer Wise, was born. 144 years ago, the Hebrew Union College was created by Rabbi Wise, and 130 years ago, he established the Central Conference of American Reform Rabbis. 47 years ago Sally Priesand became the first woman ordained by a rabbinical seminary, and 44 years ago, female rabbinical students created the Women’s Rabbinic Network. Five years ago, my classmates and I were ordained, and in that moment, we were written into the history of the CCAR and (for my female classmates and I) the WRN.

It has been wonderful to spend several days praying, talking, and learning with rabbis of so many generations. At moments, it has felt as if I could see both the past and future of our movement reflected in the faces of the hundreds of colleagues who have gathered together for our convention. It has been a gift to have the time to reflect on the history of our movement, but I know that I will leave Cincinnati tomorrow focused more on our future than on our past.

I’m not sure what the next forty-five years will hold for my classmates and I, but I hope that when we stand together in 2064 and listen to someone call out, “the class of 2014,” we will rise with all the joy, pride, and contentment that comes from knowing that the history we’ve been writing has benefitted our college, our conference, our movement, and the Jewish people. It’s a tall order, but we’ve got plenty of time to make it happen.

—

Rabbi Rachel Bearman serves Temple B’nai Chaim and is the Marketing and Communications Vice President of the Women’s Rabbinic Network.

Categories
Convention

A Class Reunion Dinner at CCAR Convention

An Italian restaurant.  The pasta, pizza, atmosphere— all these things were lovely.  However, this particular dinner was not really about the food.  The dinner was a modality for bringing together a group of rabbis.  The CCAR Convention is a collection of a number of groupings: different interests, differing causes or issues, friendships created over time spent on committees, on trips, servings faculty at camps.  These various levels and sizes of cohorts add texture and meaning for the rabbis who gathering in our annual rabbinic conference.  I believe that these experiences can matter for those who attend regularly and for those rabbis who only attend occasionally or rarely.  These are among the ingredients that offer learning, experimenting, and visioning for our individual rabbinates and our Conference as a whole.

One such grouping is particularly unique. It is a gathering around the meal that I began describing.  The primary ingredient was and is rabbinic school classmates catching up.  Laughing, sharing stories, supporting one another; these are the spices.  Some of us talk or text often.  Others connect only at the annual CCAR Convention, or even less often.   Each time we gather around the table, we represent only a portion of our class.  However, the others are present as we tell old stories and catch up regarding our class.

Glancing around the restaurant, we realize that there are other classes gathered as well.  They connect over their stories, sadnesses, advice and laughter.  This year is special for our class.  We celebrate 25 years since our 1994 ordinations, across multiple HUC-JIR campuses.  We embrace those members who started with us or ended with us, but didn’t spend the full journey together.  Our rabbinic careers are spent largely apart from one another, but we draw strength in our gathering amidst a larger convention.

Sure, just a dinner.  However, a dinner of friends, who having started our careers together, still can draw strength, support, and mutual respect from each other. So the ingredients at this meal were special and we look forward to future meals together.

—
Rabbi Andrew Busch serves Baltimore Hebrew Congregation.  

Categories
gender equality

The Reform Pay Equity Initiative: Copy Us, Please

On this Equal Pay Day it is important to note that the gender-based pay gap is a #metoo issue, meaning the societal norms which deny women physical and psychological safety also lead to women being underpaid. The wage gap is the financial dimension of gender harassment. And, unfortunately, no community is immune from misogyny or pay inequity. Not even the Reform Movement with its foundational principles of gender equality and social justice. While our Movement has vocally advocated for equality in the national workplace for decades upon decades, we have not turned that critical eye on ourselves. Now, finally, a Movement-wide partnership to address the wage gap directly is making important progress, while creating a model and resources for all.

In its third year, the Reform Pay Equity Initiative (The beginning of RPEI’s work is documented here.) continues its comprehensive approach to the wage gap within the Reform Movement, striving to influence the employment practices of 900+ congregations and over 1.8 million Reform Jews. This partnership of the seventeen organizations under the Reform Movement umbrella supports the female Jewish professionals of the Movement, while at the same time it provides resources and trainings for our institutions and congregations to ensure unbiased hiring and contract negotiations. In addition, the resources and learning shared by this Initiative are open to everyone, not only one type of Jewish professional and not exclusively the members of the Reform Movement. RPEI is fueled by generous funding from the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York and women’s rights activist Audrey Cappell.

Foremost, RPEI has educated the leaders of our organizations concerning the complexities of the pay gap and how it manifests itself in our Movement. In turn, each has openly shared the work of the separate entities, creating synergy in our efforts to narrow the wage gap. We have learned how to better collect and analyze the compensation data of our Jewish professionals; we have also recognized the limitations of data collection.

RPEI has sought ways to maximize transparency, which is a powerful tool against the wage gap. We have encouraged colleagues to share compensation data with each other and to better utilize the salary studies and surveys provided by their professional organizations. But most importantly, the placement commissions of these professional organizations are in the process of requiring or strongly recommending synagogues participating in the placement process list a proposed salary range, instead of leaving the information blank or saying, “commensurate with experience.” The Joint Commission on Rabbinic Placement (URJ and Central Conference of American Rabbis) has already made this mandatory, while the American Conference of Cantors (ACC) educates synagogues on Pay Equity issues, asking them to list a salary range. The ACC has not moved to a mandatory model due to the wide breadth of years of experience individuals bring to cantorial positions.

We have invested in educating professionals and lay leaders, speaking at Reform Movement gatherings: major organizations’ board meetings, social action forums, numerous conferences, and at our Reform seminary, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. RPEI has engaged experts to teach negotiation skills for women and Jewish ethical employment in many of these forums. We have urged our Jewish professionals to be active partners by educating their congregations by using their different expert educational modes: teaching, preaching, writing, singing about the wage gap, especially around Equal Pay Day. Many women have sought help navigating their personal wage gap; Reform congregations have reviewed their compensation structures. In addition, non-Reform Movement organizations, Jewish professional groups, and seminaries have requested input to understand the best practices of documenting and amending pay inequities.

RPEI has created important resources, all outward facing. Filled with information and guidance, the Reform Pay Equity Initiative website is hosted by the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) but is accessible to all. There visitors will find topical resource tabs, including on negotiation skills, teaching & preaching, and implicit bias, but more importantly, there are two curated portals, one for employees and another for employers, meaning for both Jewish professionals and lay leaders employment stakeholders. These portals direct the visitor towards the resources customized to their needs.

An important resource create by RPEI and found on its website is The Reform Jewish Quarterly fall 2018 issue. It contains a symposium on Pay Equity with twelve articles exploring the topic. There are study guides, providing instant lessons tailored to adult education, board training, or search/hiring committee training. The CCAR has generously made these articles and study guides open to the public without the usual fee.

In the coming months there will be an in-depth ‘negotiation skills for women’ tool and an implicit bias training for search committees. The website will continue to evolve to provide the best educational materials, interventions, and training materials for employees and employers. The seventeen organizations of RPEI will further educate our Movement and imbed Jewish ethical employment practices into every stage of hiring and employment.

The members of the Reform Pay Equity Initiative invite others, both within the Jewish community and beyond, to make use of our model and resources. Copy us, please.

—

This blog was originally posted on eJewish Philanthropy.

Rabbi Mary L. Zamore is the Executive Director of Women’s Rabbinic Network.  She co-leads RPEI with Rabbi Marla Feldman, Executive Director of the Women of Reform Judaism. Rabbi Zamore is on the steering committee of the SafetyRespectEquity Coalition. Her newest anthology is The Sacred Exchange: Creating a Jewish Money Ethic (CCAR Press: 2019).

Categories
Convention News

Prayer and Pancakes at CCAR Convention

A day that begins at a historic synagogue and concludes with lemon ricotta pancakes is an excellent one, if you ask me. In between these marvelous experiences came wonderful conversations with colleagues – on topics ranging from the CCAR Journal to rabbinic self-care to the Code of Ethics to the Shulchan Aruch to the malleability of halacha – and enriching learning sessions and a moving plenary honoring Steve Fox; but I’d really like to focus on the synagogue, and the pancakes.

One of the reasons I became a rabbi is my love of prayer. But since ordination, I have a hard time with communal prayer. Although I find great meaning and even inspiration praying with my congregation, I also feel on display, watched, and judged – and not (just) by the Holy One. Well-intentioned remarks like, “You have such a beautiful voice,” “Your hair looks so pretty pulled back,” and “I love seeing you pray – you seem so into it,” make me feel self-conscious, and unable to throw myself into worship as wholeheartedly as I once could.

But it’s different at CCAR – and not only because of the majesty of Plum Street Temple, where I was ordained almost 21 years ago, or the incredible talents of our shlichei tzibor. It’s different because I’m among colleagues, friends, rabbis who get it. I can sing “Ma Tovu” as passionately as I’d like (with apologies to those sitting nearby, as my voice is not actually all that beautiful), remain standing during the Amidah as long as I want, get teary-eyed during the Mi Sheberach, bounce along to “Lo Yisa Goy” as the Torah is taken from the Ark – and no one comments. No one notices. No one is evaluating me – not my stance in prayer, not my engagement with the liturgy, not even my hair (which was not pulled back but still looked quite pretty, in my opinion). It’s just me, and God, and hundreds of colleagues, friends, rabbis who get it. And it’s amazing.

And about those pancakes. I don’t love pancakes as much as I love prayer, but it’s embarrassingly close. And while I do have close friends in my hometown with whom I can eat pancakes, I’m also wary of being watched and evaluated when I’m at a restaurant with new acquaintances. People comment on what I order, how much I eat or don’t eat, ask me why I avoid or indulge in specific dishes – and while I know I shouldn’t care, of course I do. And while I know logically that people’s opinions about my eating habits have exactly no correlation to my ability to serve as their rabbi, I still don’t order pancakes with people unless I know them really, really well.

But it’s different at CCAR. I went out to a meal with some new acquaintances – and I wanted lemon ricotta pancakes, so I ordered them. I didn’t worry about what my fellow diners might think, or if they would look askance at my meal, or if they would check out my figure and decide silently if I should be eating pancakes or not. Instead I enjoyed swapping stories from our Years-in-Israel, playing Jewish Geography, and seeing photos of some truly fabulous hand-sewn Purim costumes. It was just me, and pancakes, and a tableful of colleagues, friends, rabbis who get it. And it was amazing.

Of course the CCAR Convention is for rabbis – but in a way, it’s a break from being a rabbi. And that break makes me a better rabbi – more focused, more honest, more joyful, more dedicated, more in touch with my learning and my prayer and my self-care and my calling and my God.

I am really grateful for this day. I am really grateful for Convention. I am really grateful for CCAR.

—

Rabbi Elaine Rose Glickman is the editor-in-chief of the CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly.

Categories
Convention

Finding the 2019 CCAR Board of Trustees

In 1890, in his message to the first convention of the CCAR, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise shared the following:

“Whatever advances the spirit of Judaism in its true character …  it is the right and duty of the united rabbis in conference assembled to do, and do it well., in the name of God and Israel, for the sake of our country and our people, for the triumph of truth, humanity, and righteousness.”

Here we are, almost 130 years later.  This charge continues to inspire us, lifting our souls, grounding our mission, and igniting our values.

Andrea Goldstein and I were honored to co-chair the nominating committee for the next generation of the CCAR Board.  Our committee took very seriously the sacred task of finding those in our Conference who would not only perpetuate the vision inspired by Wise, but also those whose can propel us into the future.

What does that include:

  1. It was important that the board maintain a sense of continuity so that the new board felt they were able to hit the ground running right away (especially with the retirement of Steve Fox)
  2.  Diversity– specifically we were looking to create a more diverse board when it came to gender, LGBTQ colleagues and non-pulpit rabbis.  We were less concerned, this year, with geographic diversity or in looking at the size of the congregations or organizations that our colleagues served.
  3.  Dynamic Initiative– we were looking for colleagues whom we believed would not just fulfill the expectations of being a CCAR board members, but who would go above and beyond in working to improve our conference.
  4.  Finally, we were looking at an intangible quality that we referred to as “rabbis who make us want to be better rabbis” – rabbis who inspire us and continue to remind us of why our jobs are meaningful.

When the Conference unanimously affirmed our new slate, the Lamp that we are eternally lighting grew brighter, and the dream of Rabbi Wise transformed into the prophetic promise of our leadership.  MAZAL TOV to our new leaders, and THANK YOU to all who have served on this past board.

It was so meaningful being a part of this process.  Each and every member of the CCAR is a descendant of incredible vision.  We are also ancestors to those who will transform goodness.

—

Rabbi Zach Shapiro serves Temple Akiba of Culver City, California.

Categories
Convention

Dr. Susannah Heschel on Her Father’s Legacy

After a gracious introduction by Rabbi Gary Zola, Dr. Susannah Heschel took the stage at the 130th Convention of the Conference of American Rabbis. She started by telling us how she once wanted to be a rabbi not a professor, but we are so lucky that she choose the path that she did. Even though her father told her not to be an academic. For she is a brilliant teacher or scholar as was her father.

Dr. Heschel spoke about her father’s legacy and the importance of tzedek v’shalom, justice and peace. She spoke powerfully about the walls we build, not only physically but within our hearts. Throughout her talk, Dr. Heschel connected her father’s words to our current lives. His legacy continues through each of us, who have been touched by his life and writings.

Rabbi Heschel lived his life during a period of turmoil in our country. His words are our inspiration as we figure out whether we never again for the Jews is the same as never again for everyone in our world. Her challenge to us, Reform Jewish leaders, was to figure out what is important to us and to work on that issue. For there is too much in our world that is wrong that without direction we will be frozen.

Rabbi Heschel’s legacy is a reminder that we have the power to make a difference in our world, that we cannot stay silent even in light of the divisions within our communities.

Dr. Heschel is a credit to her father’s legacy, but we must remember that she is an important scholar in her own right. She spoke eloquently about the fact that Zionism has always come in multiple strands, and we have a responsibility to dialogue with one another and with those outside of our community. These were powerful words in a room of diverse opinions.

A great thank you to the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives for sponsoring Dr. Heschel’s talk.

—

Rabbi Simone Schicker serves Temple B’nai Israel in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Categories
News

What Does “Brit” Mean to Liberal Jews in the 21st Century?

In 2015, my husband and I welcomed our 8-day-old daughter into a covenant with God.  We had a brit ceremony, using the Hebrew word for covenant. It was, for us, the way to bring her into sacred relationship with God and community. We created a special ritual to acknowledge her place in the Jewish people across time and space. But when I referred to this ritual as a “bris” for our daughter, even the most Hebrew-literate Jews reacted with shock. Of course, we had no intention of performing a milah (the Hebrew for circumcision) on our newborn girl, but I was not willing to surrender the concept of “bris” to an exclusively male realm.  Instead, this was an opportunity to expand meaning, something to which I am especially committed, as I am the Director of the Brit Milah Program of Reform Judaism.

I’m equally unwilling to surrender the bris – the covenant with God – to an exclusively traditional understanding of what a relationship with God looks like.  The exclusivity and specific style of religious observance that many liberal Jews believe is implied in the word “covenant” creates its own feeling of discomfort.  Many of our friends’ babies (and some of our own) have been welcomed into a covenant with God by a mohel that looked and sounded foreign to their own experience with and expression of religion.  Some experience the bris of their baby as alienating because the ceremony lacks the careful explanations and thoughtful inclusion of our values as liberal Jews.  Why would we want our babies to be brought into a sacred relationship with God and the Jewish people using language and ideology strange (and sometimes offensive) to our sensibilities?

My colleague, Rabbi Karen Thomashow (the Rabbinic chair of the Brit Milah Board of Reform Judaism and NOAM, the National Organization of American Mohalim) and I will be at this year’s CCAR conference in Cincinnati replete with stories from the mohalim we train.  From them we have learned that there is an alternative.  More than 50% of the families our mohalim encounter are as of yet unaffiliated.  And because interfaith couples today have little trouble finding a rabbi to perform their wedding, the choices made following the birth of a baby boy are now the first religious choices that many couples face.  It is more important than ever that we, as Reform Rabbis, seek to partner with Reform mohalim to be sure that families can embrace the bris– the covenant with God – in language and with ritual that feels both sacred and in line with their most deeply held values.

Egalitarianism, inclusivity, and diversity should all play a role in the first ritual encountered by a new Jewish family.  Just as we reclaimed b’nei mitzvah for our children as a ritual and imbued it with renewed meaning, we now need to reclaim the bris as a way to sanctify and celebrate the arrival of a new soul to the Jewish people.

At my daughter’s bris, much like that of her older brother two years prior, we invoked the language of covenant in its fullness – not just the covenant of circumcision – but rather many of the references to covenant in the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic literature. We offered blessings in Hebrew and English; explained the ritual to be certain that all of our guests understood and felt part of the sacred space; and, like the generations before us, we lit candles.  We found ways to include grandmothers as well as grandfathers, siblings, care-givers, and our child’s pediatrician as partners who would, with God’s help, support us as we raised our children in a Jewish context. We found ways to both innovate and hold tightly to our tradition.  

This is the legacy we want to leave for the next generation of Jews: to know that our Jewish community embraces them, in the fullness of their being.  Ours is a God that creates a covenantal relationship with Jews of all races, nationalities, sexualities, gender identities, and family constellations. The mohalim we engage as partners must share these values and help us to impart the sacred nature of the brit to those we serve.

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Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler is the Director of the Brit Milah Program of Reform Judaism and NOAM, the National Organization of American Mohalim.  She also serves as the rabbi at Congregation Beth Shalom in DeKalb, IL, which is located near the campus of Northern Illinois University.  

Categories
Death

A Moment of Awe, Beauty, Courage, and Death

There is awe, beauty, and courage in so many things, and I encountered them at the moment of death of someone who had chosen to end his life before illness and infection took control.

“Jeremy” was one of my synagogue’s members who had, for the last 40 years, suffered from muscular dystrophy.

Dealing courageously with his disease, he became frustrated with the constant deterioration of his body: confinement to a wheelchair; increasing limitations of his upper body; inability to swallow food; and then, 12 months ago, complete reliance on a ventilator to breathe. This most likely led to a recent bout of pneumonia which no antibiotic could conquer.

We watched with great angst as Jeremy’s condition worsened over the last few years. As his rabbi, I felt completely helpless. There was very little else I could offer him, and all we could do was to give comfort.

Jeremy and his wife “Diana” had learned to accommodate the many indignities of his infirmity, but this recent infection placed them at hope’s end. Jeremy was now unable to move his limbs or speak. He could be fed only by fluids, and the incision for his tracheotomy had become distended and could no longer properly accommodate the breathing tube.

The couple realized that the likely result of the current crisis was a certain death from the pneumonia, and only God knew when. What was their next step?

Atul Gawande, in “Being Mortal”, suggests two kinds of courage when dealing with serious illness. “First is the courage to confront the reality of mortality, the courage to seek out the truth of what is to be feared and what is to be hoped…But even more daunting is the…courage to act on the truth we find.” (page 232)

Jeremy and Diana sought courage at this moment in their lives, and they determined to seize control over Jeremy’s limited life path—a control which, according to Gawande, terminally ill people crave—and decided that they would remove the respirator and let nature take its course.

During the afternoon leading up to this procedure, Jeremy and Diana had proper briefings from his doctor. Procedures were explained; consents signed; the bureaucracy satisfied.

In the final hour, Diana and I came back to the hospital. Also in attendance were Jeremy’s niece and her husband, plus two good friends of Diana who had been with her over the years.

Over the unceasing din of his respirator—a constant companion for the last 12 months—we spoke with Jeremy, we sang songs of hope and wholeness (Debbie Friedman’s “B’yado” helped a lot), I offered, on Jeremy’s behalf, the Vidui, the prayer of confession to be said on one’s deathbed, and Diana sat by his side, stroking his emaciated arms and his withered scalp and face. Comforted in this way, Jeremy dozed between wakefulness and sleep, sometimes conscious of the people in his room, sometimes not. Yet when he was awake, he was absolutely focused on Diana’s loving face.

I interacted with Jeremy and Diana as needed, but most of the time they simply did what two people in love would do. They maintained their connection through touch and glance.

At the appointed hour, the nursing staff administered a first medication to relax Jeremy. This accomplished its goal, and he leaned back on his pillow. But he kept his eyes fixed on Diana.

A second injection was given in anticipation of Jeremy’s discomfort when the ventilator would be removed. His eyes remained immersed in the eyes of his wife.

A nurse then removed the tube which led to his tracheotomy. She turned off the ventilator, and the room went silent. Jeremy’s and Diana’s eyes remained focused on one another. I was standing behind Diana and looking directly at Jeremy, and he silently mouthed the words “I love you”. Diana repeated this back to Jeremy. Then Jeremy’s eyes lost their focus, and he was gone.

I cried: in the room, silent tears while we recited Sh’ma and I attended to my rabbinic duties. Later, in the elevator on my departure, I sobbed uncontrollably, and I hoped that no one would enter the car with me. I cried in sadness for a life that was lost, and I cried at the beauty of a love that was strong before Jeremy’s death, and that remained after his passing. I wondered whether I would have similar amounts of courage were I in their situations.

Atul Gawande’s words echoed in my ear: I witnessed today the “courage to act on the truth we find”. For this couple, they understood the reality of their situation, and acted to relieve pain and accept the reality they faced. But the truth of their love for one another seemed a stronger verity, a genuineness that only they could share. At Jeremy’s moment of death, there was courage, beauty, and awe. Would it be that way for each of us as we pass from this world to the next.

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Rabbi Jonathan Biatch serves Temple Beth El, in Madison, Wisconsin.