Get to the chicken without breaking eggs: how to grow Masorti Judaism without being Chabad

Lately the press has been full of stories about the demise of Conservative (Masorti) Judaism in the USA.  I suspect the reports are premature: Conservative Judaism is still very much alive and kicking.  But whereas the American movement - once the largest synagogue body in the world - is wrestling with shrinkage and the search for a new mission, here in the UK Masorti has a different challenge.

We’re the youngest stream of Judaism in this country and, despite rapid growth over the past twenty years, still the smallest by far.  I believe our unique approach to Judaism has the power to inspire people, connect them with other Jews, give their lives meaning and, in the process, counter the dominant trends of social atomisation, consumerism and assimilation which concern us all.

But we’re stuck in a chicken and egg situation: in order to reach out, we have to grow.  We need to found more communities to accommodate additional Jews in new areas, and we need to use the resulting growth in membership to gather the resources needed for further outreach and growth.  In an ideal world, this would form a virtuous circle where the flood of dues-paying members to our movement would enable us to train and recruit the rabbis, educators and community leaders we need to achieve our goals.

But the strategy has one major problem: it’s very difficult to found new communities. 

One organisation in the Jewish world seems to have hit upon a solution to this problem: Chabad/Lubavitch.  The Chabad model is to send ‘shluchim’ – rabbinic emissaries – into the farthest reaches of the world (anywhere from Manila to Birmingham) to set up institutions, draw people in and create community life.  And Chabad are amazingly successful: according to Wikipedia they are the largest Jewish religious organization in the world today, maintaining 3600 institutions in over 1000 cities across 70 countries, with tens or even hundreds of thousands of adherents.

But this model can’t work for Masorti – and not because as religious liberals we don’t have the religious passion to attract the masses (for a comment on this from the Christian world see http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2014/jan/18/church-growth-theology-evangelical-lesson-liberals).  Our problem is twofold and very practical: 1. We don’t have the financial or human resources to rapidly deploy enough new rabbis; 2. We are ideologically committed to a bottom-up, grassroots, lay-led model of community development.  We can’t afford to plonk down rabbis and, even if we could, we probably wouldn’t want to.

Our strategy has been different: find groups of people who are attracted to Masorti Judaism, identify potential leaders among them, and then support them to begin creating community life.  When they’re ready, they’ll grow, attract members, develop financial resources and become ready to employ a rabbi, rent a building and then embark on more serious growth.  At the same time it’s the movement’s job to identify candidates and train rabbis, and to develop the community development expertise that will enable us to support these nascent groups. 

Here are three recent, real-life examples.

1. Muswell Hill – I’m a member of New North London Synagogue (NNLS), a fantastically successful community which now has close to 2000 adult members.  But this success breeds problems of its own – it becomes harder for some people to find the kind of intimate community life which the shul once provided.  About two miles down the road is Muswell Hill, a neighbourhood with only one (Orthodox) synagogue, a cross-communal Jewish school, and lots of Jews – including many who are unaffiliated or in mixed families (my evidence for this is anecdotal but Haringey, Muswell Hill’s local authority, does have over 7000 Jews according to the 2011 census).  Informal conversations with NNLS members who live in the area revealed lots of enthusiasm for some more local, intimate Jewish activities.  So we identified some potential leaders, advertised in the shul newsletter, held an initial planning meeting with a handful of local people, and are now planning a launch activity for Saturday night, April 8^th (contact me for details).  

The initiative was started by Laurence Jacobs, Masorti’s small community fieldworker, but almost immediately other volunteers stepped forward to take on leadership roles.  The plan is to build on a core of Masorti members to draw in other people from the neighbourhood and to go from there.  This group might end up as a minyan or chavurah (informal prayer or community group) affiliated to New North London Synagogue, paying membership to the shul and using its facilities but holding its own, local activities; or it might take a different, more independent path.  Less than one meeting in, the time is not yet ripe for mapping out the future.

2. Noam and Marom graduates – Noam and Marom are, respectively, Masorti’s youth movement and young adult organisation.  Over the years Noam has been phenomenally successful at inspiring young people and connecting them with Judaism, but has not necessarily had the effect of building a relationship between them and synagogue life.  Marom’s aim is to continue to engage young adults with Jewish communal life when they’re done with Noam but are at a stage of life where synagogue does not yet appeal.  

Recently, the first groups of Noam graduates / Marom members have reached an age where regular Jewish involvement has become an issue.  Some of these people (again, despite our commitment to volunteerism, led by a professional – this time Naomi Magnus, our Marom director) have initiated a series of regular, monthly Friday night dinners, sometimes preceded by a kabbalat Shabbat service.  The events are hosted by members, in their homes.  As some of these people begin to get married and have children, we wait to see which direction this group will take – will some of them join other local Masorti shuls?  Will they want to sustain their own, independent group existence and grow into a more permanent community?  Or will some other path emerge?

3. Shenley (Hertfordshire): we know that Hertsmere has one of the fastest growing Jewish populations in the country (over 14,000 Jews live there according to the 2011 census).  It was a no brainer to supplement what at the time was a fortnightly service held by the Elstree and Borehamwood Masorti community.  The fact that Laurence, our small community fieldworker, had recently moved to Shenley provided an ideal opportunity.  He decided to hold a Friday night Kabbalat Shabbat service and pot luck dinner in his home.  He leafleted his entire neighbourhood and advertised in local shops, cafes and online, as well as inviting his own personal contacts from the area.  

20 people showed up for the first event and future meetings are planned, with participants offering to host in their homes.  We’ve been careful to make everyone aware that there are two Masorti shuls in the area – Elstree and Borehamwood (which has now made a successful transition to weekly services) and St Albans – and for the foreseeable future we see the Shenley group as a recruiting ground for these fully-fledged communities.

So the model clearly works – at least in terms of seeding new initiatives.  And potential exists in additional areas: Manchester, Mill Hill and Primrose Hill are all in our sights.  Whether all these groups are sustainable remains to be seen.

But our approach faces one other challenge: while the movement wants to form new communities as part of our growth agenda, local synagogues are often – legitimately – focused on their own needs.  In particular, local shul leaders need to sustain or grow their membership in order to achieve financial stability and fund their important programmes, and are wary of new groups cannibalising their membership.  The last thing we want to do as an organisation is to damage our existing communities, but as the Jewish population becomes ever more concentrated, it’s harder to find areas with lots of Jews that aren’t perceived to be too close to an existing synagogue.  As a halachic movement, we’re also committed to setting up local shuls so people don’t feel they have to drive on Shabbat. 

To solve this problem, we’ve decided to go down the route of satellite communities: partnering with existing synagogues to set up new groups which will hold their own local services, learning and social activities but will continue to use the cheder, burial society, rabbinic services of the existing community and – just as importantly – paying it membership dues.  The model is an extension of what already happens at, for example, New North London Synagogue, where three minyanim share a synagogue and everyone is a member of one large community.  The only difference is that we want to enable new groups to operate off-site so as to draw in new, previously non-Masorti people.  And perhaps the model is sustainable into the more distant future as a new way of organising our community life – rather than basing ourselves around individual, self-reliant synagogues, a better structure could be clusters of small to medium-sized communities all sharing administrative, rabbinic and educational infrastructure.

It’s an exciting experiment and we’re confident in its chances of success – even if we don’t know for certain if it’s going to work  I look forward to reporting back on progress. 

Can Orthodoxy succeed where Conservative/Masorti Judaism has failed? Comments on Daniel Gordis's 'Cognitive Dissonance'

Daniel Gordis just published a fascinating follow-up to his critique of Conservative/Masorti Judaism in light of the Pew Report - http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/673/cognitive-dissonance/

Here are my comments (also posted on the site):

It seems to me that there's a disconnect between Gordis's diagnosis and his solution.  The solution - a cross-denominational, counter-cultural Judaism grounded in obligation and Jewish literacy - is something I can wholeheartedly agree with, and reflects the vision we are trying to work towards at Masorti Judaism in the UK.  But the diagnosis which leads to this remedy - the idea that Conservative Judaism fell apart because of lowering of standards - is deeply flawed.

If Conservative Judaism failed because Jews are looking for authority and commitment, how does Gordis explain that only 1% of young people (according to Pew) identify with modern Orthodoxy, as opposed to the 11% who still identify as Conservative?  The numbers don't back up his arguments.  Moreover, there's a strong case to be made that the relative vibrancy of certain Orthodox congregations is a result of their exclusivity - ideological commitment is much easier to sustain when anyone who does not identify simply leaves (or does not come in to begin with). Clearly this kind of exclusivity is not a recipe for mass Jewish engagement.  And where Orthodox communities are inclusive - for example in the UK - we see that they suffer from exactly the same kinds of problems that face Conservative communities in the US.

The flip side of this critique is the real elephant in the room missing from Gordis's analysis: the deep commitment of Conservative/Masorti Jews (and many other members of the liberal Jewish world) to diversity and pluralism as matters of principle.  The real challenge is not simply how to sustain a committed, literate Jewish community (which is hard enough) but how to do so in such a way that Jews of different beliefs, styles of practice, philosophical and political orientations, not to mention genders and sexual preferences will choose to join and be part of the conversation.  I would like to hear some intelligent views from contemporary Jewish leaders on this pressing problem.

“A misbegotten shambles perpetrated by an out of touch elite” – why is Michael Gove so sensitive to criticisms of first world war leaders? Some thoughts on history, ideology and politics.

The catfight – I prefer not to dignify it by calling it a debate – between Michael Gove, Tristram Hunt, Boris Johnson, Nick Clegg et al about the history of the first world war is truly fascinating: who’d have thought that (mis)interpreting a complex, controversial historical event could be enough of a reason to demand the resignation of a shadow cabinet minister? 

But that’s what Boris Johnson said this week in response to Tristram Hunt: “I can hardly believe that the author of this fatuous Observer article is proposing to oversee the teaching of history in our schools.  If Tristram Hunt seriously denies that German militarism was at the root of the First World War, then he is not fit to do his job, either in opposition or in government, and should resign.” 

The article by Hunt which provoked this reaction was in some ways no less partisan.  He said: ‘The reality is clear: the government is using what should be a moment for national reflection and respectful debate to rewrite the historical record and sow political division.  In the very paper that so grotesquely called into question Ralph Miliband's wartime service in the Royal Navy, the education secretary has sought to blame "leftwing academics" for misrepresenting the First World War.’

And Gove’s initial foray was also explicitly political: “Our understanding of the war has been overlaid by misunderstandings, and misrepresentations which reflect an, at best, ambiguous attitude to this country  and, at worst, an unhappy compulsion on the part of some to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage. 

“The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. Even to this day there are Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths.”

It should be clear that there are actually two separate arguments.  One is an argument about history: what actually happened?  Who was to blame for the war, why did it break out, was Britain’s decision to enter the conflict correct, and how should we evaluate the conduct of the war? 

The second argument is one about politics and ideology, over ideas of patriotism, nationalism, militarism, imperialism, pacifism and democracy.  When political leaders argue about history, they’re really arguing about something else: contemporary debates over Europe, immigration, the welfare state, education policy.  But the same leaders are also convinced that it’s possible to separate between the ideological and the academic – hence the outrage each side experiences at the other’s ‘abuses’ of history.

This conviction reflects a distinction made by historian Bernard Lewis in his book, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented.  Lewis defines three kinds of history.  Remembered history is essentially collective memory: past events which a particular community or nation chooses to remember, whether as reality or symbol.  Recovered history is the history which has been forgotten, in other words rejected by collective memory, and which is subsequently reconstructed by academic scholarship (for a brilliant discussion on the relationship between memory, history and identity see Zakhor by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi – Yerushalmi argues that critical, modern Jewish historiography arose in the 19^th century as an ultimately failed attempt to replace the traditional identity that had collapsed along pre-modern Jewish collective memory). Invented memory is designed for a new ideological purpose, whether this is conservative, radical, nationalist or multicultural. 

Lewis draws a clear line between recovered and invented history, claiming that whereas recovered history is characterised by an honest attempt to identify and neutralise the prejudices of the historian in pursuit of the truth, invented history reflects nothing but its authors’ ideological positions.  But aside from the fact that the current debate shows that it’s all too easy for one person’s recovered history to be dismissed as invention, the distinction itself is nowhere near this neat. 

In his classic book What is History?, E.H. Carr convincingly showed that ideology and scholarship can never be separated.  Our naïve faith that historical interpretations emerge in a straightforward way from the facts is disrupted by the insight – obvious once you consider it - that historians inevitably choose which facts to present – based on which are most relevant or important.  The problem is that relevance and importance assume a frame of reference, one that by definition cannot be derived from facts.  In other words, facts are a product of interpretation no less than interpretations are products of the facts.  While Carr refused to submit to relativism – the idea that any subjective historical narrative is as good as any other – he was clear that history is not objective in a simplistic sense, but consists of an interaction or dialogue between the historian and his or her facts.

But if the lines between history and ideology are inherently blurred, in another sense, the approaches of Gove, Hunt and the rest are all resolutely ideological.  Gove and Johnson are not only using the war to argue for their own political opinions.  Their underlying view is that there is one, objectively true version of history which has to be defended in the face of ideologically motivated mendacity. 

Hunt and Clegg understand, against this, that history is inherently pluralistic, with diverse interpretations vying for our attention.  Yet this nuanced approach is also a principled position which needs to be vigorously defended.

Thus the real debate is a philosophical one, between an objectivist, monistic epistemology (Gove and Johnson) and one which takes a more complex, sophisticated view of historical interpretation and knowledge in general.  And it’s no surprise that epistemological pluralism should go along with more accepting attitudes towards social and cultural diversity.

So when MPs argue about history, it’s not just a cover for a political debate.  Real historical and even philosophical positions are on the line – and debates over distant events, freed from the demands of political correctness when talking about more contemporary issues, are often where these views come into the open. 

A cynic might not be surprised, in this light, by a Tory politician’s sensitivity criticisms of the war as ‘a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite.’  It all sounds a bit too contemporary.  But this kind of unintentional honesty provides a rare opportunity for voters to judge politicians not by what they say, but by what they actually think.