"Passionate Openness:" A New Aggadah for Conservative Judaism

Co-authored by Shoshana Boyd Gelfand


"How is it possible that 600,000 Israelites stood at the foot of Sinai and one Voice addressed an entire people, yet every individual was convinced that the Voice was addressed to him personally? Rabbi Levy answers, 'The Holy One appeared to them as a mirror. A thousand might look into the mirror, but it will reflect each of them. Do not marvel at this, for God spoke to each person according to that person's capacity. Do not wonder at this, for when the manna came down from heaven, each and every one tasted it according to their capacity – the young, the old, the sick, the healthy. So too with the Voice of God: 'the Voice of the Lord in its strength' means the Voice is heard according to the power of each individual. Do not be mistaken because you hear many voices. Know that I am He who was and is One and the same.'"

(Pesikta D'Rav Kahana)


We may worry about the trend today, but the midrash tells us that an element of individualism was present even at Sinai. Every Jew heard God's voice differently, according to his or her own capacity to do so. One assumes however, that we were bound together both by the shared experience, and the sense that everyone else held a component part of God's message, without which we were incomplete as a collective. Today, when individualism is rife, little seems to hold us together anymore. Six hundred thousand interpretations have become six billion interpretations, and our own single one quickly becomes lost in the vastness and rapidity of the discourse. We are left standing alone, with our solitary view, an individual in an individualistic paradise, with a dramatically-reduced capacity to be heard by anyone.

Like it or not, individualism is a fact of modern life, and any aggadah of modern Judaism will need to grapple with the concept in a serious way. Therefore, it may be worth taking a few moments to look at the sociological data on this contemporary American trend, and reflect on its implications both for the Conservative Movement and the Jewish community in general. In this way, at least we will have some shared language on part of the challenge that exists.

It was probably Robert Bellah et. al. who first introduced us to the phenomenon in Habits of the Heart,[1] and then Robert Putnam who sharpened our understanding of it in Bowling Alone.[2] In the more particular context of the American Jewish community, Steven M. Cohen and Arnold Eisen then demonstrated how the same force is at work in their study of American moderately-affiliated Jews.[3] In their book, they describe how the "Jew Within" – our inner-self, our personal quest for meaning – increasingly determines what to observe and what not to; external forces, like God, halacha, the family, community, even elements like guilt, play an ever-decreasing role. "More and more," argue Cohen and Eisen, "the meaning of Judaism transpires within the self."[4] Bethamie Horowitz has similarly pointed out that these Jews' ongoing involvement in Judaism "depends on it being meaningful and fitting in with their lives."[5] In short, much of the sociological evidence that we have points to the fact that a significant proportion of American Jews is unwilling to be told that there is a right or a wrong way to be Jewish; they will decide that for themselves, mainly on the basis of what their inner voice tells them.

Part of what this means, as Cohen and Eisen indicate, is that many of us "are simply not concerned with disputes about what constitutes proper observance."[6] Personal meaning trumps any notion of what is 'correct' according to a particular movement. Indeed, "Eclecticism is now the rule when it comes to practice. Consistency is no longer prized. Theology is virtually irrelevant."[7] Internal movement debates – mechitza or no mechitza, gay rabbis or straight rabbis, the relative validity of Reform, Conservative or Orthodox Judaism, etc. – are becoming increasingly meaningless to many members of our community. They know what is right or wrong, engaging or dull, persuasive or non-credible because they feel it in their all-American gut, and frankly, to them, that is what matters most.

Horowitz's research offers another important insight which we must also take into consideration. She writes: "Jewish identity is not something static that a person either has or does not have. Rather identity can evolve and change, ebb and flow, in relation to all sorts of influences, internal and external. A person may be much less connected to Judaism at one point in his/her lifetime and more deeply identified at another."[8] According to her, most of us are on non-linear lifelong journeys during which we will encounter various forms of Judaism. To hope to attract people, we will need to provide them with multiple gateways, or, as she articulates it, "an entranceway with many portals."[9]

This concept of journeys is playing itself out in a whole host of intriguing ways. According both to Hillel's recent research on the "millenials,"[10] and to Steven M. Cohen in his recent article on young adults,[11] Jews in their 20s and 30s (including fairly traditional Orthodox ones) are being very inventive and creative about their Judaism. Their physical and virtual journeys allow them to experience and sample multiple cultures and aesthetics, which many then try to blend with received Jewish norms. The result is that their Judaism is contemporary and inventive, and it is their very embrace of flexibility and the freedom they assert to innovate that allows it to be so. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has described this as "a tectonic shift in the ways that Jewish youth and young adults relate to one another and understand themselves."[12]

The shift she describes has been heavily influenced by technology, not just in a technical sense – i.e. the simple increase in the use of the internet, MP3 players, Weblogs, etc. – but much more importantly, in a figurative way. We know that our social context impacts who we are; sociologists have long pointed out that "an individual's existence takes place under certain external conditions" (technological, economic, political, etc.), and that "there is an internalization of at least some of these".[13] The new technologies create dramatically different external conditions to those that existed a generation ago, making it entirely normative today to search out information for yourself rather than having it broadcast to you by an "authority," and to share your ideas with the world, rather than having the world impose its ideas on you.[14] To borrow Kirshenblatt-Gimbletts's phrase, the "born digital generation" – the future of our community – is particularly influenced by these forces.

In short, a distinct portrait of the contemporary American Jew is emerging. Our ways to express our Jewishness are informed and shaped by our social context, which places a strong premium on self-construction by navigating our way through life in our own way, on our own terms, in a manner that allows us to encounter interesting people and opportunities, and that is fundamentally enjoyable and life-enhancing. We determine that which is Jewishly-valid on the basis of our experience of it rather than via more authoritarian means, and our shifting social realities cause our preferences to change and develop over time. We enjoy sampling multiple options and experiences, and blending them together to create something that is interesting and personally meaningful. That, according to almost all of the sociological data, and confirmed by much of our own experience, is the reality, and whilst we should not be slaves to these trends and simply mould contemporary Judaism so that it aligns itself with them, we ignore them at our peril.

Of course, this is not the only portrait of contemporary American Jews. Whilst the social context impacts all of us, there are still plenty of us who wholly reject the notion that Judaism is such a subjective matter. Some of us are able to transcend the intense pressures of modernity, and live with the dissonance between the received idea that our Jewishness is our destiny, and the reality that it is actually our ongoing choice. But none of us can ignore sociologist Peter Berger's painful reminder that "all the individual has to do to get out of his alleged Jewish identity is to walk out [of the 'artificial shtetl'] and take the subway."[15] The boundaries around us, even those of us who buttress and fortify them on a daily basis, are extraordinarily porous.

The question then, is how to respond to all of this, and maintain, even enhance Judaism and the Jewish People in spite of it. As Berger has taught us, there have been three typical responses to such challenges in the past: the reductive option, the deductive option, and the inductive option. The reductive option is to reduce Judaism's and the community's demands and obligations, and adapt, even surrender to the forces of wider culture. The deductive option is to steadfastly maintain everything that Judaism has always been, and fence it off from modernity's pressures in order to protect it. The inductive option simultaneously seeks to find a balance between these first two poles, searching for something that is both passionate about tradition, but open to contemporary forces.[16]

Conservative Judaism has always been good at the inductive option. Indeed, its aggadot of pluralism and "tradition and change" are the epitome of the inductive option. Conservative Judaism has always sought to find a balance between the richness and depth of our tradition and the ideas and realities that exist beyond it, and has actually shown remarkable ability to contain the complexity of that dialectic. The movement has always valued multiple means of exploring and interpreting religious ideas, and has espoused a philosophy that doesn't lament this plurality as an unfortunate reality to be tolerated, but rather celebrates it as a rich opportunity to be embraced. Indeed, for Conservative Judaism to thrive, it needs the fuel of open debate and discussion, because it is in this very openness that we find the source of our passion. In contrast to those who are overly passionate about their beliefs without being open to ideas that might challenge them, as well as to those who are overly open to all ideas without being passionate about a core set of beliefs to root them, the Conservative movement has always embraced both Jewish passion and openness to ideas, and has thrived on any inherent tensions that have emerged. It is this notion that ought to form the basis of our new aggadah: the two poles of passion and openness in creative tension with one another. "Passionate Openness" is the perfect articulation of our ideals for the early 21st Century, both because it expresses something that has always been part of our movement's weltanschauung, and because it poses a critical challenge to some of the idols of our age. The former case we hope has already been established, the latter requires further elucidation.

America, the Jewish People, and perhaps the world as a whole, are currently being pulled in two different directions, both, in their own ways, deeply problematic. The sociological dynamics we described earlier are causing two particularly prominent reactions: either to go with the flow and bask in the huge range of possibilities now available, or to shut the windows, lock the doors, and fill up the sandbags in order to protect everything we believe to be sacred. These are Berger's reductive and deductive options, and whilst neither is inherently bad, both in their most extreme forms are acutely dangerous. The former – an over-emphasis on openness at the expense of passion – tends to lead to purposelessness in the general context, a life led without secure and enduring sacred values, built instead on the quicksand of instant self-gratification. In a Jewish context this is a path that begins with apathy and boredom and ends in disaffection and meaningless superficiality. The latter – an over-emphasis on passion at the expense of openness – tends to lead to religious fundamentalism in the general context, an unbending application of a Singular God-Given Truth, resulting in anything from intolerance to suicide bombings. In a Jewish context, this is a force that begins with narrowness and self-righteousness, and ends with our own forms of fanaticism and, in our recent past, even assassination. The idols of our age, avodah zara in the early 21st Century, can be found at either end of these two poles: purposelessness, apathy and instant gratification at the end of the reduction option, bigotry, extremism, and butchery at the end of deduction. Whatever aggadah we ultimately choose for our movement, it has to offer both a harsh critique of these forces, and a powerful and compelling alternative able to counter them.

However, in our context, the inductive option seems to be having a hard time. The pull to the extremes is strong, and if we were to base our view of the world entirely on the version of it presented by the media, we might assume that the middle ground is rapidly being consumed. The truth, however, is somewhat more complex. A large silent majority still exists that continues to passionately believe both that there are certain core values that are essential to pass on to our children, and that we can benefit significantly from our interaction with and openness to other people and ideas. However, at present, many such people seem to be struggling to find a home in any of the pre-existing categories or places, and so perhaps it is no accident that in wider society, according to Steven M. Cohen, "the party label with the healthiest growth over the last few decades has been 'Independent,' at the cost of both the Democratic and Republican labels."[17] In a not dissimilar manner in the Jewish sphere, the attraction of 'post-denominational' or 'multi-denominational' initiatives is growing – institutions like Pardes and the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem are attracting significant numbers of Jewish students and rabbis from almost all denominations, and Boston's Hebrew College proudly advertises its general specialization in "trans-denominational Jewish education" and the option of "Rabbinic ordination in a trans-denominational setting."[18] None of these are passing fads; indeed, similar phenomena can be observed in the various post-denominational minyanim that have been set up in recent years (Hadar, IKAR and Keshet to site just three examples), in independent or collaborative educational initiatives like Limmud and Alma/JCC Manhattan's Tikkun Leyel Shavuot, and in cross-denominational cooperatives like Chicago's City North Kehillah.[19] The beauty of all these initiatives is that they play into the social dynamic described earlier: they allow people the opportunity to navigate their way through Judaism in a serious way, sampling different options and ideas according to their preferences and needs, but without making rigid statements about what is acceptable and unacceptable. They work because they capture the spirit of the age without sacrificing the central importance of content. But whilst all this is going on, the inductive specialist par excellence – the Conservative Movement – is being described as "the grayest denomination in American Jewry."[20] What on earth is going wrong?

The critical error of the Conservative Movement is neither its core beliefs, nor their applicability to our contemporary context. The critical error is all about our movement's capacity to figure out how to allow its core values to live and thrive in our contemporary context. We know that out target population is searching for meaning. We know that they are on lifelong journeys to discover it, and that what captures them at one stage in their life may not do so at another. We know that they don't want to be told what is right and wrong; that they can figure that out for themselves. We know that they want to sample different styles of Judaism, different approaches, different ideas, and that this very diversity is what makes Judaism interesting. Yet for all our movement's pluralism, for all our belief in multiple voices, we continue to maintain very rigid boundaries around ourselves. Certain ideas exist beyond the borders of Conservative Judaism, and we are reluctant to allow them in, whether they come from the left or the right of our particular stances. And herein lies the inconsistency. To be a pluralist in an age of journeys to self-meaning demands that boundaries be drawn as widely as possible, precisely in order to allow those journeys to take place. The options that exist within the boundaries need to be as diverse and multi-faceted as possible, to clearly demonstrate that this is a genuine version of pluralism that enables diverse, contradictory and even oppositional voices to speak, because truth is not something that exists in any one place or any one person, but in the genuine dialogue or machloket that takes place between us.[21] It cannot be that if you, as a pluralist open-minded Conservative Jew, want to explore alternative modes of Jewish thought and practice, you either have to leave the movement and join a different one, or you have to go to a multi-denominational program where you can sample whatever you choose. If that is the case, there are few compelling reasons to remain within the movement. For all our talk about pluralism, our continued existence as a particular movement with a particular worldview and narrowly-drawn boundaries undermines core components of that which we are attempting to espouse. "Not surprisingly," notes Cohen, "signs point to the out-flow of some of the most committed and capable Conservative Jews, be they to Orthodoxy or, in a few cases to post-denominational institutions."[22] We're not allowing the real richness of the conversation to take place within our boundaries; in short, there is a paradoxical closedness to our openness.

The question, of course, is where then should the boundaries be drawn? If we draw them too narrowly, we close off options, but if we draw them too widely, we create an environment where absolutely anything goes. The answer lies again in the notion of "Passionate Openness", and the creative tension and dialogical relationship that exists between passion for Jewish people, traditions and ideas, and openness to diversity and multiple truths. To be a "Passionately-Open" Jew, you have to be able to say with conviction both that you are committed to exploring Judaism in a serious and thoughtful manner, and that you are open to considering manifold views and perspectives. If you can only say one of these statements with conviction, you are not a "Passionately-Open" Jew; if you can say them both with conviction, you are.

The real issues of import in the Jewish world are not the existence or absence of a mechitza, or the acceptability or unacceptability of homosexual rabbis. The real issues are how to counter violence and vicious religious extremism at one end of the spectrum, and apathy and meaningless instant gratification at the other. The only response to both of these is to gather all the positive energy and passion that can be found throughout Jewish tradition and open ourselves up to all the positive creativity and dynamism that exists throughout our wider context. If we can fuse these together and create a dramatic and spark-filled genuine dialogue between them, perhaps we'll start to reconstruct that One Voice that spoke to us at Sinai, and in doing so, we'll create something of genuine significance and allure, both for the Jewish People and the wider world.


NOTES

1. Robert Bellah, et. al., Habits of the Heart. Individualism and Commitment in American Life. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985).
2. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000).
3. Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen, The Jew Within. Self, Family and Community in America (Indiana University Press, 2000).
4. Ibid., pp.183-184
5. Bethamie Horowitz, "Connections and Journeys. Assessing Critical Opportunities for Enhancing Jewish Identity." (New York: Report to the Commission on Jewish Identity and Renewal, UJA Federation of New York, 2003), p.186.
6. Cohen and Eisen, Jew Within, op. cit., p.92.
7. Ibid.
8. Horowitz, "Connections and Journeys", op. cit., pp.186-187.
9. Ibid., p.189.
10. Unpublished data, presented by Avraham Infeld at the Mandel Leadership Institute, Jerusalem, February 2006.
11. Steven M. Cohen, "Engaging the Next Generation of American Jews. Distinguishing the In-Married, Inter-Married, and Non-Married." Journal of Jewish Communal Service, Fall/Winter 2005.
12. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "The 'New Jews': Reflections on Emerging Cultural Practices" downloaded from: http://www.nyu.edu/classes/bkg/web/yeshiva.pdf
13. See: Peter Berger, The Heretical Imperative. Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation. (New York: Anchor Press, 1979), p.5.
14. For a more detailed analysis of this trend, see, for example: Don Tapscott, Growing Up Digital. The Rise of the Net Generation, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998).
15. Berger, Heretical Imperative, op. cit., p.30.
16. Ibid.
17. Steven M. Cohen, "Non-Denominational and Post-Denominational: Two Tendencies in American Jewry," in: Contact, Vol. 7, No.4. (Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation, Summer 2005/Av 5765), p.8.
18. See: http://www.hebrewcollege.edu/
19. For further details of these initiatives see: http://www.kehilathadar.org/ (Hadar); http://www.ikar-la.org/ (Ikar); http://www.limmudny.org/ (Limmud New York); http://tikkunny.org/intro_flash.swf (Tikkun Leyl Shavuot); http://www.shurekehilla.org/ (City North Kehilla).
20. See: Cohen, "Non-Denominational," op. cit., p.8.
21. We use the term "genuine dialogue" in its Buberian sense. See: Martin Buber, Between Man and Man (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1947).
22. Cohen, "Non-Denominational," op. cit., p.8.


(Also published in Conservative Judaism)