Fighting for the Jewish people’s soul: Masorti Judaism at the 2020 World Zionist Congress

It’s natural to be preoccupied with local events – what’s going on in our own family, community, country. When we poke our heads up we tend to notice only the most dramatic international events (the US elections spring to mind). But it’s also important to be less parochial about our Jewish lives and realise we’re not only part of our synagogue or even the UK Jewish community, but members of the worldwide Jewish people.

And for the Jewish people, last week saw an important, if generally overlooked, event: the World Zionist Congress.

The Congress was established by Theodor Herzl in 1897 and led indirectly to the founding of the State of Israel just over 50 years later. Today, Congress meets every five years and is the ruling body of what are known as the ‘National Institutions’ – semi-governmental bodies governed by representatives of Israeli political parties and Diaspora Jewish organisations. They include the World Zionist Organisation (WZO), the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet L’Israel or KKL). They have responsibility for settlement and environmental activity in Israel (KKL is Israel’s biggest non-governmental landowner), promoting aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel), combatting antisemitism and Jewish education in the Diaspora. Between them they have an annual budget of around $4 billion.

This matters directly to us. Israel has always been central to Masorti Jewish life. However, as the modern State of Israel developed, the Israeli government refused to recognise Masorti and other non-Orthodox forms of Judaism. Masorti rabbis in Israel cannot conduct weddings or funerals, Masorti communities receive no public money, and the Israeli government has gone back on its promise to create an egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall.

The WZO provides crucial funding for Jewish education all over the world and, since the Israeli government only funds Orthodox institutions, it’s the only source of support for Masorti synagogues, schools, youth programs and teachers. Dozens of Masorti communities around the world, and especially in Europe, are dependent on WZO funding for their existence. Moreover, the fact that Israeli and Diaspora Jews work together at Congress gives us a voice with Israeli politicians – they need our support and are ready to negotiate with us. This gives us a modest but vital degree of influence on issues close to our hearts: democratic values, religious pluralism and minority rights in Israel.

Over the past months there has been a titanic struggle over the future of the National Institutions. Right wing and Orthodox parties were poised to change the long tradition of including all Zionist parties in the governance of the institutions by staging a take-over and excluding moderate and progressive voices (including the Reform and Masorti movements and centre-left Israeli political parties) from all positions of influence. This would have meant the end of funding for our institutions and a critical weakening of our political influence. At the last moment, the representatives of Mercaz, the Masorti Zionist organisation, together with our political allies, managed to block this move and install a broad-based coalition (albeit one dominated by the Orthodox and the right wing) to lead the WZO for the next five years.

More specifically, this agreement includes increased budgets for Masorti and Reform Judaism, and both movements and their centre-left political allies have received senior leadership positions within the National Institutions. For example, Yizhar Hess, the outgoing CEO of Masorti Judaism in Israel will become a Vice-Chair of the WZO with responsibility for Israel-Diaspora relations and control of a significant budget.

But these achievements are one small part of a larger struggle within the Jewish world between the forces of insularity, religious intolerance and chauvinism on the one hand and those of us who believe in combining Judaism with universal, democratic and liberal values on the other. (To be clear, the latter group encompasses people from all streams of Judaism including many moderate Orthodox Jews.) This week, for example, the Likud has nominated Jacques Kupfer, a man with a record of anti-Palestinian, racist and extremist comments, to head up the WZO’s Department for Diaspora affairs.

Our struggle continues. To get involved and find out more about Mercaz – Masorti for Israel – go to masorti.org.uk/about-masorti/mercaz.

Read more about this year’s World Zionist Congress in this article in Haaretz (£) and this first-hand account by one of the Mercaz delegates.

Matt Plen is the Chief Executive of Masorti Judaism in the UK, a board member of Mercaz Olami and a newly-elected member of the Zionist General Council, the body that governs the WZO between Congresses. Thanks to Rabbi Alan Silverstein, President of Mercaz Olami, for information that contributed to this article.

Why Yom Kippur doesn't work - and (maybe) how to fix it

This is the drasha (sermon) I gave on Yom Kippur 5776/2015 at New North London Synagogue.

I remember myself as a 14 year-old, the second Yom Kippur after my bar mitzvah, refusing to go to shul, staying home and demonstratively eating because I didn’t believe in God and I refused to be a hypocrite.

Things have changed – here I am! – but in some ways, while I’m less concerned about inconsistency, have found my place within traditional Jewish observance, and have a more sophisticated view of the problems, nothing’s changed for me.

Here are my problems with Yom Kippur. 

Firstly: the whole construct of the Yamim Noraim (and in some ways Judaism as a whole) is built on an unsustainable anthropomorphism – a judging God who rewards and punishes.

I don’t believe in such a God and, on a deeper level, I reject the underlying assumption which is that the world is in some way inherently just.

Secondly: morality for me as a modern, liberal individual, is about the mitzvot beyn adam le-havero (commandments between people), which I regard as the expression of a binding ethical system.  It’s hard to imagine the observance of the mitzvot beyn adam le-makom (between a person and God) as more than a lifestyle choice, since they don’t affect anyone but me.  And why would I need to repent from a lifestyle choice?  

While the process of teshuva (repentance) relates to both kinds of mitzvot, the rabbis teach that Yom Kippur only repents for sins between people if we’ve already made good the damage, received forgiveness and repented before the day starts.  And if, as the Rambam teaches, teshuva is the essence of atonement, then the rituals of Yom Kippur itself seem to have no essential function.

This problem has another aspect: teshuva means making change, changing ourselves.  This requires a deep process of personal transformation, which we’re more likely to achieve through some kind of long term therapy, working with another person or in a group, than by standing in shul, surrounded by other people, but essentially alone with our thoughts. 

This is recognised in the tradition: the Rambam (Maimonides) writes that true repentance means a change both of behaviour and of attitude, requires a person to avoid negative, habit-forming behaviours and to remove herself from the situation in which the sin is likely to recur, and teaches that true repentance can only be achieved by confessing one’s sins to others.  The confessional prayers we say in synagogue, reciting a fixed formula of words in unison, can hardly be described as an authentic confession of personal sins.

Thirdly, modern, liberal ethics has to be based on autonomous choice.  Not just free will in the sense of deciding whether or not to obey the commandments we’ve been given – this is assumed by the rabbis and implies an a priori acceptance of the commandments themselves – but freedom to think for ourselves and shape our own moral code.  I expect not only to choose how to behave, but also to decide for myself the difference between right and wrong. 

But the vidui (confessional prayer) of Yom Kippur presents us with a list of sins, our job being to accept the framework and judge ourselves accordingly.  Even if we happen to agree with many of the sins we’re presented with, how can this be a framework for proper, autonomous moral deliberation?

So what kinds of answers can I suggest?

Firstly, the tradition provides some justification for my concerns and basic perspective.  This is not something that needs to separate me from Judaism, but something that our thinkers have always grappled with.

As an arch-rationalist, Maimonides – perhaps our most important halachic authority and theologian – clearly could not accept the anthropomorphic view of atonement, nor the idea that the ritual has any kind of magical effect.  But he also knew that the traditional concepts were important to his medieval audience.

In his Hilkhot Teshuva / Laws of Repentance, he says: ‘at present, when the Temple does not exist and there is no altar of atonement, there remains nothing else aside from teshuva.’ He also says, ‘the essence of Yom Kippur atones’ but only ‘for those who repent.’

The anthropomorphisms and the rituals are a means to an end, a way of focusing our minds, of bringing people to the correct psychological state to engage in confession and soul-searching.  The essence is the internal process of repentance itself.

Maimonides helps affirm my basic perspective that the real work of repentance has to be done outside of shul, with people, over a long period, and that I don’t need to adopt a simplistic theology in order to engage with it.  Yom Kippur is a moment of introspection, reflection and making personal commitments about the change I want to create.

A practical solution might be to change what we do in shul, building in a process of facilitated, group-based introspection and reflection over the yamim noraim – the ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.  (For more on this see, this article by Donniel Hartman: http://bit.ly/1iNB8tt).

But the Rambam doesn’t help with my fundamental problem: the clash between the vidui, the framework of the mitzvot, and my aspiration to be an autonomous moral agent.

I want to address this through an article by the one of the most important modern Jewish philosophers, Emil Fackenheim (click here to read extracts from the article: http://bit.ly/1LyBsad).  Fackenheim agrees that we cannot stand before God and respond affirmatively to the commandments without free choice.  Recognising and living out our freedom is a necessary condition for any relationship with Judaism. 

But at the same time, freedom to make choices about our relationship with the tradition, means standing in the presence of God and hearing that commanding voice. 

Freedom and service or obedience need each other.  We can’t shape our relationship with the mitzvot unless we accept the framework of mitzvot as our starting point. 

Perhaps this is the function of the vidui, the Al Het prayer we recite throughout Yom Kippur.  It confronts us with this framework, and with the underlying commanding voice of God (alternatively the voice of the tradition or the idea of an objective moral code).  This is the precondition for any meaningful, authentically Jewish, process of deliberation, soul searching, teshuva, and choosing, freely, to be different.

Gmar hatima tova.

Should we print pictures of the Prophet Muhammad?

Should we print pictures of the Prophet Muhammad?  This for me is the thorniest issue to come out of the recent terrible events in Paris.  What’s more important – free speech or respecting the religious beliefs of others?  The question comes down to a clash between two different kinds of rights, where believers tend to emphasise one value, and liberal secularists the opposing one. 

We might assume that freedom of speech inevitably trumps some ill-defined right not to be offended – or to respond to offence.  But the situation is complicated by the fact that it’s clearly legitimate to oppose racist hate speech, and criticisms of Islam can never by entirely disconnected from prejudice against Muslims who are not only a religious group but, in most western countries, a vulnerable ethnic minority too.  As Jews, this sensitivity should be particularly clear to us.

Jewish tradition has two other important contributions to make to this debate.

One is Judaism’s radical monotheism, articulated most powerfully by Maimonides, the 13^th century legal authority and philosopher whose most important intellectual influences were the Islamised versions of Aristotelian thought he learned from Arabic writers like Al Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes.  Maimonides teaches that the fight against idolatry is no longer about combatting the worship of physical images.  Idolatry in his day manifested itself in people’s internalised, anthropomorphic, mental images of God.  For Maimonides, God cannot be conceptualised, known, or spoken about in any way.  God is beyond the grasp of the human intellect and imagination.  Any image of God is by definition human, not divine.  So too, revelation is a purely intellectual process and any anthropomorphic account (which has God speaking or writing, for example) must be understood allegorically.

Maimonides’ theology should make clear to any remotely sophisticated monotheist that blasphemy does not affect God, only the feelings of believers who incorrectly assume that God needs their protection.

The second contribution stems from the fact that unlike western legal systems, Jewish law focuses on obligations, not rights.  This distinction dissolves much of the tension between freedom of speech and freedom from religious offence in which we try, problematically, to defend the absolute right to offend the religious sensibilities of people who we want to avoid upsetting or indirectly harming. 

Rather than rights to speak and respond to offence, Judaism posits two relevant duties: the obligation to avoid harming others through speech (unless specific circumstances mean refraining from speaking out will cause more harm) and the primary obligation not to inflict injury or death.  Every individual has to weigh up whether and how to speak, write and draw in light of the harm likely to be caused by action or inaction.  But if someone steps over the line, we all have an absolute, unconditional obligation to refrain from violence.

Yesterday I met with a Muslim colleague who is keen to initiate serious dialogue between the Jewish and Muslim communities in an effort to create a nuanced, non-fundamentalist theological discourse which will lend support to the values of peace and co-existence.  In the present climate, I believe the role of religious people of faith has never been more important.

Israel, Gaza and Masorti

For anyone who has a relationship with Israel, the past three weeks have been a time of anxiety, depression, and maybe even despair.  How should we respond and what can we do to help?

I was in Israel two weeks ago, participating in a conference on Israel education, when I observed a interaction between a Jewish educator from France and Hagai El-Ad, the director of B’tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation.  El-Ad described B’tselem’s work in monitoring and documenting human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza – the majority of which are inflicted on Palestinians by the Israeli authorities – and explained his belief that we have a responsibility as Israelis and Jews to look this harsh reality in the face and call our government to account.  My French colleague responded by accusing him of peddling disinformation but, once El-Ad had refuted this idea, went on to her main point: that by making this material public, B’tselem are whipping up antisemitism and endangering the security of French Jews.  ‘You are killing Jews in France,’ she told him.  The interaction ostensibly presented a clear dilemma – should we campaign for human rights or should we stand up for Jews?

There are some Jewish organisations which feel able to take a clear position on this dilemma.  In this time of war, some choose solidarity, backing the decisions of the Israeli government, defending Israel’s unconditional right to self-defence, explaining the humanitarian nature of the IDF’s actions in Gaza, and fighting against antisemitism in the Diaspora.  Others (I’m talking about mainstream Jewish organisations, not anti-Zionist ones) call for ceasefires, advocate for the resumption of negotiations and hold Israel at least partly responsible for the failure of the political process, recognise the truth in some of the criticisms of Israeli actions, and condemn the rise of anti-democratic trends within Israel.

I’m proud to be an Israeli citizen, having made aliyah and lived in Israel for over ten years.  But this dilemma, accompanied by growing feeling of despair at the situation, is where I’ve found myself over the last two weeks.  I also believe a similar dilemma affects Masorti Judaism as a whole.  The diversity of our members’ views means we can’t respond to the conflict in a one-sided way.  What, then, can we say about it?

I believe there are three vital ideas, deeply rooted in the ethos of Masorti Judaism, all of which we need to hold in our minds if we are to respond to the situation in an authentic way.

1. The value of nuance and complexity.  The situation in the middle-east is extraordinarily complex and cannot be reduced to right and wrong.  Any interpretation of events which seeks to put all the blame on one side or attribute it to one single cause can always be challenged by taking a different perspective, changing context or bringing in a different historical frame of reference.  Not only Israelis and Palestinians disagree over the causes of the violence and what path might lead to its resolution.  Even within the Jewish-Zionist community, there’s no consensus.  I believe we need to look reality in the face and do our best to understand the complexity of the situation, even when this is difficult or painful.  And this should lead us to be cautious about advocating simplistic, one-sided diagnoses and solutions, as if the situation could be resolved easily if only we were in charge.

2. The value of Jewish peoplehood.  I see the Jewish people as an extended family.  It causes us pain when other Jews are killed or injured, and it troubles us when we see Jews doing things we disapprove of.  When I hear news of Israeli casualties or rocket attacks on Israeli communities, it touches me more deeply than similar news from elsewhere in the world – and that’s okay.  Israelis are part of my family and siding with my family is natural and good.  But that doesn’t mean I agree with everything my family members do.  The challenge I experience is finding a way to express this love and solidarity with the people of Israel, while avoiding one-sided statements which don’t reflect my values or my understanding of the conflict in all its complexity.

3. The Jewish value of human life.  Jews of all political persuasions like to invoke values drawn from the tradition to defend their position.  In the UK, universal values of peace and human life tend to dominate our discourse, but Judaism just as often emphasises the values of military force and the right to the Land.  Jewish tradition is no less complex than contemporary political reality and, in a way, can be seen as an ongoing argument between welcoming, egalitarian, universal attitudes, and discriminatory, exclusive ones.  Once we understand this, we have a choice as to how we want to interpret our tradition and which of its values we want to promote.  I choose (and I believe that Masorti Judaism should choose) openness and universalism over insularity and hostility to the Other.  We should draw on Jewish tradition to teach the values of compromise, reconciliation and, most importantly, the idea that all human beings are created in the image of God and that all human life is infinitely and equally valuable.

To rephrase in a different order and, perhaps, with a different emphasis.  I believe our role is to live out the fundamental human values which Judaism teaches: human life is sacred as we are all created in the image of God.  We should do our best to comprehend the historical, political, social and military reality of the situation, no matter how complicated or difficult it is, and make sure our speech and actions adequately reflect this complexity.  And, against the background of these two principles, we should remember that we have an additional, profound obligation at this time of crisis: to demonstrate love and support for our extended family – the people of Israel.

Marketing Masorti

Masorti is the smallest stream of Judaism in the UK with the potential, many of us believe, to be one of the biggest.  The challenge is how to get the message out to people who might want to join us. 

Challenge number one is to define our message.  We’ve got quite good at that over the last three years: Masorti Judaism has a genuine, soundly anchored ethos and set of values which generates amazing levels of unanimity among our rabbis, professionals and lay leaders.  They’re about the synthesis of tradition and modernity (‘traditional Judaism for modern Jews’ as we put it), warm, welcoming communities, and intellectual openness.  As these values are embodied primarily in the experience of our communities (rather than in intellectual or ideological statements) we’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to communicate them is by sharing Masorti people’s personal stories and journeys.

But even if we’ve made progress towards honing our message, there’s a second challenge which has so far left us stumped.  It involves a chicken and egg situation – how to communicate with people who by definition are not on our membership database and who we therefore have no way of contacting directly.  We can’t advertise on television (not only because of the expense – even if we had unlimited budgets, we’re trying to reach such a specific demographic that mass advertising would be 99.9% useless).  And social media, often touted as a marketing panacea, can only connect you to people with whom you already have some kind of… connection.

Last week I participated in a training session on marketing for charity chief executives (it was organised by Ella forums – recommended for charity leadership training and coaching).  The trainer said that modern marketing is not about getting your message to your intended audience.  Instead, it builds on the idea that the most convincing way of getting someone to buy a product or a service is through personal advice from someone they know.  I’ve just been decorating my house so I know this is true – I want my friends to recommend good builders they’ve used and I talk to them at any opportunity about this in order to get their advice.

A colleague from the United Synagogue once told me that they’re jealous of Masorti for this reason: our members always talk in a positive way about their shuls.  Masorti Judaism has lots of potential ‘recommenders’ – our challenge is how to enable them to get into conversations about their positive experiences in our communities with their non-Masorti friends who might be interested in trying us out.

At the training session, we learnt a good model for working this out.  It involves answering five questions: who are our potential influencers?  What is the ‘conversation moment’ – ie. who will the influencers be talking to, where and when?  What is the desired conversation – what will they be talking about?  What is the content we want them to be dropping into these conversations?  And finally, what are the accelerators – what means do we have at our disposal for making more of these conversations happen, faster and more effectively?

Here’s how I provisionally answered the questions.  My thoughts are based on anecdotal evidence at best, we’ve done no research on this, and I’m happy for people to disagree, suggest alternatives and prove me wrong.  Please let me know if the following rings But this is my starting point.

Influencers.  It seems to me that our most important target audience is young adults who are forming relationships, getting married and having children, who want to join a synagogue (or find one to get married in, or study for conversion, or where their kids can go to playgroup or nursery), but haven’t decided which one.  (By the way, I don’t mean to ignore the many people who are not in relationships and are also looking for community life.  Jewish communities often fail to cater to them and we need to try harder.  For the purposes of this article, I’ve simply chosen to focus a demographic which seems to reflect our main source of new members).  They might have grown up in Orthodox or Reform congregations and been dissatisfied there, or they might simply have moved to a new city and be shul-shopping with no particular agenda.  The influencers for this group are their friends who do happen to be members of our communities – maybe people who’ve grown up in Masorti and who have non-Masorti friends, or maybe those who are a few years (or months) ahead in the shul-shopping process.

Conversation moment.  I’m imagining a group of friends having dinner together, either at home or in a restaurant, maybe at a wedding or another event.  The conversation could also be happening between colleagues at the office.

Desired conversation.  The influencers and their friends are all at a similar stage of life – maybe approaching marriage, perhaps thinking about having babies, maybe already pregnant.  The desired conversation they’re having might start from these topics (I remember talking about them a lot when I was at that stage) – how’s the wedding planning going?  Where are you thinking about getting married?  Do you know of any good rabbis – I’m not so happy with the one from my parents’ shul?  Have you started thinking about nurseries and schools?  Which ones are good?  How can we get into the nearby Jewish preschool or primary?  A sub-species of desired conversation might be relevant to people in mixed-faith relationships.  How’s it going, what do your family think about it?  What are you planning to do about the wedding – have you thought about conversion?  What experiences with shuls, rabbis etc. have you had so far?  Are they friendly to non-Jewish partners?

Content.  What do want our influencers to be feeding into the conversation?  Here are some potentially important messages.  My (Masorti shul) is really welcoming, friendly, non-judgemental.  We were made to feel really welcome when we showed up.  My (or my friends’) kids love it – the children’s services/playgroup are really fun.  The rabbi seems nice – really approachable and interesting, not the kind of judgemental old man I remember from my shul growing up.  A second set of messages might be about addressing people’s concerns: it feels like a proper, familiar shul, but more open-minded.  If you get married there, your children will still be recognised as Jewish.  No, most Orthodox rabbis won’t recognise a Masorti conversion, but we decided the Orthodox process was too hard to go through, and this way we’ll still be able to have a proper Jewish wedding.  And so on.  The goal here is less about messages, but about having people give honest advice which comes out of their own experience.

Accelerators.  Whether or not I’ve got it right about the identity of our potential influencers and the content of the conversations we want them to be having, there’s one final question we have to address: how can we encourage more of these conversations to take place?  This means both ensuring the influencers know what to say, and to create a culture within which they’re prepared to have the conversations.  This is something of a challenge, since many of us naturally recoil from anything that smacks of missionising.  It also means letting go of any idea that we can tightly control the process or the message: encouraging people to talk means trusting them to talk about the right, relevant thing.  I want to suggest five ideas (none of which might be any good) which might accelerate the process:

1.       Most fundamentally, we need to put the idea into our members’ heads that they can and should talk about their positive community experience with their friends.  I think this should come from the rabbis and leaders of our communities, as they have direct relationships with their congregants.  If we can get our rabbis to become ‘influencers of influencers,’ creating the expectation that members reach out to their friends, it could be very powerful.  The networks of relationships already exist – the question is how to motivate people to get involved.  It strikes me that there are two potential motivators – and neither are about religious evangelising: one is a desire to help your friends by giving them good advice; the other is the desire to help your community by getting good people involved. 

2.       Giving potential influencers the confidence they need by providing information and messaging – via direct marketing.  Since they’re already on our membership database, it’s easy to reach them.  The trick here is getting the content right – but that’s a solvable problem with the right combination of research, hard work and creativity.

3.       Stimulating conversation at events – lots of guests come into our communities for weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs and the like.  Often the experience acts as a trigger for conversation.  What can we do to stimulate and focus these conversations?  One idea is to have effective, thought-provoking marketing materials available at events.  Another is to encourage community leaders as part of their sermons or announcements to explicitly invite these conversations to take place.  Maybe we could even follow up with event hosts afterwards, providing information and encouragement to continue the conversation with any guests who expressed interest.

4.       In the same spirit, perhaps we need to gather some data – who recently joined our shuls, got married, converted, had a baby.  These people are likely to have friends in the same situation.  We can then nurture them as potential influencers by targeting them with information and marketing which is relevant to their stage in life.

5.       Since conversations are about sharing personal stories, could we stimulate this by encouraging people to share personal experiences of our communities in an organised way?  This needs a bit of creative thinking, but maybe through an effective social media-based competition, backed up by some more traditional marketing.  This is about strengthening the positive culture we already have of people talking about their communities.

This time more than ever, I really welcome feedback.  Please tweet @MattPlen, tag me in a Facebook comment, or email me – matt@masorti.org.uk – with your ideas and especially if you think I’m wrong.

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.

Are religious labels past their sell-by date? A defence of denominations in a post-denominational world

This is my piece published in this week's thejc.com - but unfortunately not yet in the online edition.

I’m about to head out to Limmud conference, where literally thousands of Jews of every conceivable stripe spent five days learning, debating, celebrating and socialising together.  Coming hot on the heels of that other winter highlight, Hanukah, Limmud set out a particularly fashionable message about contemporary Jewish existence. 

The Hanukah story is a narrative of cultural tension and ultimately civil war within the Jewish people.  Sectarianism threatened their existence whereas unity brought salvation.  So too, the Limmud version of Judaism preaches the values of coexistence, mutual respect and learning from each other as vital for the Jewish future.  In recent weeks, this message has had a galvanising effect: those Orthodox rabbis who called for a boycott of Limmud have been roundly criticised by most mainstream communal leaders.

This welcome support for better relationships among different kinds of Jews, however, reflects a more radical, controversial view: the idea that denominationalism is necessarily destructive.  In the face of exciting new cross-communal initiatives, traditional institutions such as Masorti, Reform, Liberal and the United Synagogue often seem to be on the back foot - if not actively softening at the edges.  Perhaps this explains the development of multi-denominational community centres in Oxford and Hatch End, the emergence of alternative, ‘partnership’ minyanim within Orthodoxy, or the fact that for the very first time, the Chief Rabbi felt the need to attend Limmud.

In the United States, denominational Judaism also seems to be in retreat.  The recent Pew Research Center’s survey, ‘A Portrait of Jewish Americans,’ shows that whereas 75% of Jews aged 50+ affiliate with particular denominations (Reform, Conservative, Orthodox or ‘other’), in the 18-29 age bracket that number shrinks to 59%, with the remaining 41% identifying as Jews of no denomination. 

While there is much to celebrate here - Jews getting along better with other Jews is certainly no bad thing - the post-denominational trend has a more troubling side.  The Pew figures show that as American Jews assimilate, they tend to switch allegiance from the traditional to the progressive strands of Judaism, from there to non-denominational affiliation, and finally to identifying as ‘Jews of no religion.’  This is not to say that you can’t be a committed Reform or post-denominational Jew – plenty of those certainly exist.  But the emergence of non-denominationalism seems primarily to reflect a process of disengagement from Judaism.  

But does assimilation leads to the loss of denominational identity, or is the relationship the other way around?  In a recent article, Daniel Gordis (a Conservative rabbi who has moved towards modern-Orthodoxy) blames the synagogue movements – and Conservative Judaism in particular – for failing to stem the tide of assimilation through their inability to articulate a compelling message for modern Jews.  Gordis believes that too much compromise and the abandonment of principles has driven people away.  Yet we’re all too aware that very few contemporary Jews want to engage with a Judaism they see as dogmatic or intolerant.

So what are our options?  Here and there in the Jewish world there are exceptions to the sectarian/assimilation polarity.  Chabad Hasidim, for example, are well known for combining passion and commitment with genuine love and openness.  But while Chabad’s outreach strategy reflects tolerance of all Jews, it does not imply a fundamentally accepting attitude towards different expressions of Judaism.  

My own movement, Conservative/Masorti Judaism, provides a different twist to this model.  A slightly cynical Masorti rabbi friend from Israel recently commented to me that our problem is that we invest all our energy in the future of the Jewish people, while neglecting our own movement.   It’s true that in the States, at a time when official Conservative Judaism is undergoing a period of organisational decline, hundreds of independent minyanim, educational projects and social change initiatives are being led by people who’ve grown up in Conservative synagogues and summer camps and who are now expressing their values in the wider Jewish world. 

In this country too, Masorti Jews are disproportionately represented in the leadership of cross-communal Jewish institutions of all kinds.  On a personal level, I’ve recently been part of the initiative to set up a new Jewish school – Alma Primary in Finchley.  Although many of the initial founders were members of New North London Synagogue, we took the decision to make Alma a cross-communal school, not a Masorti one. 

And, unlike Chabad, this commitment to diversity goes all the way down into Masorti theology.  Our rabbis are committed to the idea that halacha, Jewish law, is inherently pluralistic.  Masorti synagogues are well known for combining a clear, recognisable ethos with a remarkable tolerance for difference – often within the same community.  My own shul, New North London, has both traditional (separate seating, male-led service) and fully egalitarian minyanim, with very little tension between them.  And all this takes place in a synagogue community where people meet week in week out for prayer, Jewish learning and the building of meaningful relationships.  Are there any post-denominational frameworks in the country that can offer the same?

It turns out that there is a third option beyond intolerant sectarianism and the abandonment of specific ideological commitments.  The kind of ‘soft’ denominationalism represented by Masorti and other like-minded communities might be our best way forward.  Certainly without it, the post-denominational institutions we’re so proud of will have very little to sustain them.

Who do you want to get into bed with - Masorti or Haredi Jews? A question for my modern Orthodox friends

The organised Jewish community has become obsessed about who’s attending Limmud.  More specifically we’re preoccupied with which Orthodox rabbis are attending (or not attending) and more specifically still with what other Orthodox rabbis have tosay about Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis who has finally done what his predecessor Jonathan Sacks should have done, and signed up for the conference.

I hate to add to the clamour by writing this piece, and I personally have no strong feelings about whether Rabbi Mirvis should attend.  I hope he enjoys Conference and feels he made the right decision.  But the episode does raise important issues of Jewish identity and Jewish peoplehood.

I recently stuck my nose into a Facebook debate in a groupcalled MO/OO – Modern Orthodox/Open Orthodox.  A call had been issued for modern Orthodox leaders to stand up for the Chief Rabbi and speak out against a group of ultra-Orthodox luminaries who’ve issued a public letter urging their followers to boycott Limmud.  I asked why only modern Orthodox leaders were being called on.  Shouldn’t Jewish leaders of every stripe rally round an institution that brings Jews together to learn?  How has the question of participation at Limmud come to be seen as an internal battle for people who label themselves with the ‘O’ word?

There’s a fundamental question here for people who define themselves as modern-, liberal- or open-Orthodox (or any other variant I have yet to come across).  Who is your coalition?  Who do you align with?  Who’s a member of your Jewish ‘family’?  Are you more at home with the people to your right – the ‘black’ and ‘grey’ worlds of more mainstream and ultra-Orthodoxy – or with those to your left – Conservative/Masorti Judaism and the more traditional fractions of other liberal Jewish movements?  Are the aspirations of MO/OO Jews best served by fighting over the future of Orthodoxy, or should they more profitably throw their lot in with the rest of us, ignore their own right flank, and focus on the future of the Jewish people as a whole?

Some people in the Facebook debate said we can’t ignore reality – whatever the similarities between us, Orthodox and Masorti are divided by a clear line: Orthodox Jews are obligated in a very practical sense to halachic observance whereas most Masorti Jews, however committed they might be to the halachic framework in theory, tend to give halacha at most a vote and certainly not a veto in their own religious decision making.  This difference seems to stem from a theological distinction: Orthodoxy of whatever persuasion ostensibly buys into the idea of a direct link between divine revelation and the halachic system, whereas Masorti/Conservative Judaism understands halacha as a human creation which evolves over time in response to changing historical circumstances and the Jewish people’s ongoing quest to articulate a meaningful response to God.

But the minute we look around us, we see this isn’t the case.  The (Orthodox) United Synagogue is full of Jews who identify as Orthodox but whose lifestyles don’t begin to approach the standards set out by halacha; you can’t even assume that committed members of US communities are fully observant.  I’d venture to say that not every member of the MO/OO Facebook group keeps all 613 mitzvot.  And I know for a fact that they (alongside many modern Orthodox academics and intellectuals) don’t all buy the official line that the Torah as we know it was given to Moses at Mount Sinai.  At my own (Masorti) shul, this diversity of religious practice also holds true – in fact, there’s no way of knowing who keeps what, and the fact that there’s no correlation between communal involvement, Jewish knowledge and ritual observance is one of the best things about the community. 

And even if we could draw a (blurry) line between Orthodox and Masorti Judaism in terms of practice or theology, should we assume that commitment to a certain style of observance is a necessary qualification for participation in the debate over liberalism and halacha?  To anyone who thinks it is, I’m tempted to respond that maybe a certain level of commitment to liberal values should also be a condition of entry.  In other words, if you think I’m not frum enough to participate in your conversation, maybe you’re not open-minded enough to take part in mine.

But this kind of small-mindedness is clearly fruitless.  I prefer the line taken by an (Orthodox) rabbinic colleague who told me he aspires to create a meaningful conversation about the future of what he calls ‘centrist Judaism’ in which anyone who connects with the term would be able to participate.  I take this to mean a conversation in which anyone who cares about halacha, Torah education, Jewish peoplehood and liberal values can take part – without strict entry criteria and without the problem of constantly having to look over our shoulders at people whose opinion we think we should care about but who are not part of the conversation.  Because this way, anyone whose opinion we care about will be part of the conversation, and anyone who chooses to stay outside can safely be left there.

One final point, and something I think all of us – Orthodox or not – can learn from the history of Conservative/Masorti Judaism (and emphatically not because Masorti Judaism is in any objective way better than the other streams).  Conservative Jews have always had as their first allegiance not their own movement, but the Jewish people as a whole.  Solomon Schechter, one of the founders of Conservative Judaism in the States, coined the term ‘Catholic Israel’ to refer to the collectivity of committed Jews of whatever denomination, in his eyes the historical agent which has the authority to shape and authorise halachic change.  Today, the Conservative movement in the States is in a period of numerical and organisational decline, but hundreds of independent minyanim, synagogues, educational projects and social change initiatives are being led by people who’ve grown up in the Conservative movement and who are now expressing their values in the wider Jewish world. 

In this country too, Masorti Jews are disproportionately represented in the leadership of cross-communal Jewish institutions of all kinds.  On a personal level, I’ve recently been part of the initiative to set up a new Jewish school – Alma Primary in Finchley.  Many of the initial founders were members of New North London Synagogue, but we took the decision to make Alma a cross-communal school, not a Masorti one.  In his sermon for Yom Kippur and in a recent address to a meeting of Masorti leaders from all over Europe, Rabbi Chaim Weiner, Av Bet Din of the European Masorti Bet Din, spoke about two exemplars of modern Jewish leadership: despite the ideological rift between them and Masorti, he chose to take example from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and the Lubavitcher Rebbe.  How many Orthodox leaders would be open enough to publicly take inspiration from Leo Baeck or Mordecai Kaplan?

A slightly cynical friend – an Israel Masorti rabbi – commented to me that the problem with Masorti/Consevative Jews is that we invest all our energy in the future of the Jewish people, while neglecting the future of our own movement.  But in the present divided, fractious state of the Jewish community, I see this tendency in a much more positive light.  We certainly face a challenge in getting the balance right: how much do we invest in our movement as a vehicle for articulating the Jewish values we believe in, and how much do we act on those values through action in the wider Jewish community? 

And the same challenge is no less important for Orthodox Jews involved in leading Partnership Minyanim, championing Limmud, working for gay/lesbian inclusion or promoting critical, open-minded education.  I’d like to extend this challenge as an invitation to anyone who’s concerned with centrist, liberal, halachic Judaism, and the future of the Jewish people as a whole.  How can we work together and learn from each other, both within and across the denominational lines which ostensibly divide us, in pursuit of our common goals?  I’m waiting to hear ideas.

Masorti Judaism: between mitzvah and autonomy

Perhaps the most difficult issue for liberal halachic Jews is the tension between two core values: mitzvah (which I translate here not as an individual commandment but as the concept of commandedness) and autonomy.  Mitzvah is the most important principle of halachic Judaism while autonomy is the indispensable grounding idea of modern ethics.  I want to explain more clearly what these two values mean and why the contradiction between them is inescapable.

Commandedness is perhaps the most important principle of rabbinic Judaism.  For the rabbis, the value of performing a mitzvah is not only inherent in the act itself (and sometimes, as in the case of sha’atnez or tefilin for example, the act might have no intrinsic value other than the fact it’s commanded).  A mitzvah is important simply because it’s commanded and because we are under an obligation to perform it.  The Talmud (Kiddushin 31a) illustrates this idea with the story of a non-Jew, Dama ben Natinah, who was seen to have honoured his parents even at great cost to himself, and was subsequently rewarded by God.  Rabbi Hanina comments that if this happened to someone who honoured his parents despite having no obligation to do so, how much more would a Jew in a similar position be rewarded, as (this is the punchline) it is greater to be commanded and act than to act without being commanded. 

This flies in the face of common sense.  Why might it be the case?  The Tosafot (medieval Talmudic commentators) offer several explanations.  The pragmatic view is that a person who is obligated to do a good deed is more likely to act than a person for whom the deed is voluntary (on Kiddushin 31a).  A more principled explanation – and one that in my view goes to the heart of rabbinic Judaism – is that the value of performing a mitzvah is that in so doing a person negates her own desires submits herself to the will of God (Avodah Zarah 3a).  If so, demonstrating obedience rather than the content of the act itself is the vital component in any mitzvah.

In complete contrast, modern ethics is based on the value of autonomy, which literally means self-rule.  The eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that any act which is impelled by a heteronomous (external) source of authority can never be described as moral.  The reason for this is that obedience can only be induced by fear of punishment or hope of reward: we pay tax to avoid being fined, we stop at red lights to avoid being injured or arrested and so on. Because morality is defined in terms of duty while heteronomous action is always a matter of self-interest, heteronomy can never be the basis for morality.  Moral agents are always by definition autonomous in that they make free, rational decisions as to how to behave, based on their sense of duty to others.

The clash between mitzvah and autonomy should now be clear.  Autonomy is about obeying our own, rational, self-imposed moral principles, whereas mitzvah means putting these to one side in order to obey God or submit ourselves to Jewish tradition.  Incidentally, this holds true regardless of whether or not we consider the Torah to be of divine origin: obeying God contradicts the principles of autonomy no less than obeying the rabbis.  Sometimes the practical results of these two principles coincide: either could lead a person to give tzedakah for example.  Less often they clash: when my son was born, I was acutely aware of my halachic obligation to perform a brit milah, whereas my moral sense was outraged by the thought of intentionally injuring a new baby.  But if intentions are what’s important, then the contradiction is always there.  I can’t act in order to realise my own autonomy and simultaneously aspire to overcome my desires so as to obey God or the rabbis, both heteronomous sources of authority.

Progressive and ultra-Orthodox Jews resolve this tension by prioritising one of the two principles.  For ultra-Orthodoxy, commandedness always holds sway and personal values and desires are to be abandoned when they clash with halachah; Progressive Judaism privileges autonomy and empowers the individual to selectively filter the mitzvot in light of modern, rational principles.  The challenge is most squarely faced by the centrist movements in Judaism, modern Orthodoxy and Masorti: neither are prepared to jettison their halachic commitment or sacrifice their modern, liberal principles. 

What might be a Masorti response to this dilemma?  How can we be true to ourselves, our passionately held values, and our sense of personal freedom, while at the same time upholding our commitment to Torah and mitzvot in the framework of halachah?  For my answer, I want to draw on the work of one of the most important of all modern Jewish thinkers, Franz Rosenzweig.  While Rosenzweig is not usually identified with Masorti Judaism, I believe that his commitment to liberal philosophical principles together with his profound commitment to the tradition makes him a particularly suitable role model for us.

Rosenzweig returned to Judaism after a period of assimilation but felt unable to submit himself to Jewish law as this would have compromised his freedom as an individual.  The solution lay in a distinction he drew between Law and Commandment.  Whereas Law is an objective set of rules whose imposition clearly compromises personal autonomy, Commandment is a personal directive issued in the context of a committed, loving relationship, where the power of the relationship enables us to hear and freely obey.  Rosenzweig’s insight is that a loving relationship dissolves the boundary between autonomy and heteronomy: if we are able to feel the power of the mitzvot, in other words to experience God’s love through them, we’ll be able to respond to the commandments without compromising our freedom.

But what if we don’t experience the mitzvot in this way?  What if observance still feels like an imposition and a restriction?  Rosenzweig’s answer is simple: the only way to open yourself to the inner power of the mitzvot is by doing them.  Our job is to experiment: take on a commandment, not because we feel obliged but as an experience, practise it, remain open to its inner power.  Gradually expand the role halachah plays in our lives, without any pretence or abandonment of personal integrity, but as an educational exercise.  Practising Judaism here takes on a double meaning: we practise the mitzvot in the sense of practising a musical instrument, and in so doing we develop our ability to practise them in the sense of practising medicine: performing them in the truest sense.

This seems to me to be the path Masorti Judaism would recommend: an incremental journey through the halachah, taking on practices, experimenting and learning and, as we begin to experience the inner power of the tradition, deepening our commitment and sense of obligation to the truly commanding voice of the mitzvot.

This is my recent piece published in Masorti Judaism's Reflections.