And yet, after all this well-meaning effort, membership in synagogues and Jewish community centers is declining, federation campaigns are flat and a generation of young Jewish adults is in no hurry to affiliate.

The 20th century model of programmatic engagement is not working.

Recently I received an urgent phone call from what once was one of the largest synagogues in America, some 1,500 households. In 2000, the congregation had a balanced budget and no mortgage on a sprawling building. Ominously, young couples were moving out of the neighborhood and older folks were dropping out.

Here’s what the leaders did: They borrowed $1 million. Nearly half was spent on a slick rabbi who lasted less than two years. The rest was spent on programs: lectures by top speakers, concerts by renowned celebrities and an array of events targeted to specific segments of the community. Lots of people came to the programs and ostensibly enjoyed them. Then they went home.

Nothing was done to address the widely held perception that the congregation was cold and unwelcoming. Nothing was done to create connections between those who showed up and the clergy and staff. By the time the leaders called me, the congregation was $1 million in debt and had shrunk to 350 households.

What’s going on? Synagogues, rabbis and Jewish educators once were the main access points to serious Jewish learning. JCCs were comfortable places to put your little ones in preschool, join a health club and participate in cultural activities. Federations were the central address for supporting various arms of the community.

The Internet has changed all that. Hundreds of websites feature rich Jewish content for free.

Why pay to join a congregation when I can watch live streaming video of worship services, arrange for a Bar or Bat Mitzvah tutor online and have the ceremony in my backyard with a rent-a-rabbi? Why join a JCC when I can go to a fitness center and easily find a cheaper preschool?

Why give to a centralized federation when I can direct my giving to causes that resonate with me?

This begs the ultimate question: What is the value of affiliating with a Jewish institution?

In my new book, “Relational Judaism”(Jewish Lights Publishing), I suggest it is this: a face-to-face community of relationships that offers meaning and purpose, belonging and blessing.

To create such a community, we need to turn our engagement model upside down. Rather than spending all our time planning events and hoping people show up, let’s begin with the people:

Welcome them, hear their stories, identify their talents and passions, care about them and for them — and then craft programs that engage them with the Jewish experience.

Thankfully, there are organizations and individuals on the cutting edge of this relational tipping point. Chabad has grown from a small group of disciples to an army of 4,500 rabbis and their families who reject the dues model of affiliation: pay up front, then you are served. Rather, they build a relationship with individuals first and only then ask for financial support.

Congregation-based community organizing begins with one-on-one conversations designed to tease out common interests that can be the basis for communal action. Hillel is sending well-trained college students into the dorms and Greek houses to develop relationships with peers who would never walk into a Hillel House. A number of next generation initiatives like Synagogue 3000’s Next Dor and Moishe House are designed to reach young Jewish professionals by building relationships. Social media are increasingly useful as a way to build virtual communities and encourage face-to-face meetings.

The best fundraisers know that relationships are at the heart of raising money; most charitable giving is to people the donor trusts, not simply to support a particular cause.

From these case studies and more than 150 interviews with those doing relational work, my book throws a spotlight on a number of best principles and practices that any Jewish institutional professional or lay leader can use to do this transformational work.

This paradigm shift will not be easy. It will not require more buildings but a reallocation of the precious time of staff and laity. We will need engagement rabbis, relationship directors, community con-cierges and sophisticated tracking systems to ensure appropriate follow-up and transitions as individuals traverse the life cycle of community engagement. People may come for programs, but they will stay for relationships.

So let’s embrace a new goal: to engage every member of our institutions and every interested unaffiliated person in a deeper relationship with the Jewish experience and with each other.

Let’s learn who people are before we try to figure out what they want. Let’s inspire them to see Judaism as a worldview that can inform the many different levels of relationship in their lives.

Ron Wolfson is the Fingerhut Professor of Education at American Jewish University in Los Angeles and the cofounder of Synagogue 3000/Next Dor. His new book is “Relational Judaism: Using the Power of Relationships to Transform the Jewish Community” (Jewish Lights Publishing).

The new peace initiative, which was presented to Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden by a Qatari-led Arab delegation in Washington on April 30, would revive — and improve, from Israel’s standpoint — the so-called Saudi Peace Initiative of 2002. That proposal, subsequently endorsed by the entire Arab League, promised Israel full peace and recognition in exchange for a return to its pre-1967 borders.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani presented the new initiative, which would accept for the first time a modification of those borders. According to Al Thani, “The Arab League delegation affirms that agreement should be based on the two-state solution, on the basis of the 4th of June 1967 line” with the possibility of “comparable and mutual agreed minor swap(s) of the land.”

This important Arab League initiative comes in the wake of another significant but little noticed development that also originated in the Gulf: an April 8 resolution by the Kingdom of Bahrain condemning Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The outlawing of Hezbollah, overwhelmingly passed by Bahrain’s parliament, represents the first known instance that an Arab country has used the T word to describe a militant Arab organization like Hezbollah, which has rained missiles on northern Israel and last year murdered Israeli tourists in Bulgaria.

When I visited Bahrain in December 2011, becoming the first rabbi to meet with King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifah in his palace, the king told me — as widely reported by the media — that Bahrain and Israel share a common enemy in Hezbollah’s patron, Iran, which sits directly across the narrow Persian Gulf from Bahrain and other Gulf states including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait.

Yet nearly a month after the Bahraini statement, there has been no official response by the Government of Israel. Indeed, when a reporter for the Times of Israel asked the Israeli Foreign Ministry why it has not commended Bahrain for its anti-Hezbollah stand, a spokesman blandly

responded, “If the Bahrainis had wanted Israel to say something, they could have sent us a message through diplomatic channels. Since they didn’t, we didn’t.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may well have decided to err on the side of caution in responding to both the Bahraini and Arab League initiatives by waiting to see whether support will hold up across the Arab world. Yet this is one of those critical moments in Middle East history when an excess of caution may doom hopes for a breakthrough by strengthening cynicism and peace process fatigue on both sides.

Following the dramatic steps by Bahrain, Qatar and the Arab League, Netanyahu needs to respond in similarly dramatic fashion. Just as Sadat fundamentally transformed Israeli-Egyptian relations 35 years ago by declaring his willingness to travel even to Jerusalem, Netanyahu should declare his readiness to fly to Doha or Riyadh to demonstrate his genuine desire for peace — with the Palestinians as well as Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states.

The Israeli government and people need to remember that Israel exists and is destined to live forever in the heart of the Middle East, not the Middle West. The Jewish state can only secure its long-term survival by reaching an accommodation with the Arab world — or at least an important part of it.

Thankfully, the positive initiatives of the past few weeks by Bahrain and the Arab League delegation led by Qatar — neither of which would have taken place without the encouragement and support of Saudi Arabia — make clear that a historic opportunity exists for Israel to build a strategic alliance with the oil-rich states of the Arabian Peninsula.

Israel and the Gulf states are endangered by Iran, a genocidal theocracy with nuclear ambitions that vows to destroy the Jewish state and has extended its reach into the heart of the Arab world through skillful manipulation of proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the tottering Bashar Assad regime in Syria.

If Netanyahu seizes the moment to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians, thanks to the initiative put forward by the Qataris and the Arab League, there is a chance that after generations of bitter conflict, Israelis will finally live in peace and security. If, however, the Israeli prime minister spurns this opportunity, he will only empower the extremists in the Arab and larger Muslim world who are determined to destroy the Jewish state.

Now is the time for Benjamin Netanyahu to secure a better future for the people of Israel by taking a dramatic step for peace.

Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, is coauthor with Imam Shamsi Ali of “Sons of Abraham: A Candid Conversation About the Issues that Divide and Unite Jews and Muslims,” to be published by Beacon Press in September.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Until recently, I thought of Ruth, the heroine of Shavuot, as a positive role model, a woman who made good choices, was strong and fulfilled. But lately I’ve been rethinking this and focusing on the strange dynamics of what appears to be an unhealthy, possibly abusive, relationship between Ruth and Naomi, her mother-in-law.

Abuse is about power and control, and abusive relationships are not limited to romantic situations. Any relationship has the potential to be abusive, including relationships among friends and families or between bosses and employees. In this situation, Naomi is the more powerful woman and takes advantage of her daughter-in-law.

A quick recap of the story: The book of Ruth opens as Naomi, accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orphah, is beginning her journey back to Bethlehem after living in Moab for 10 years. We don’t know much about their lives in Moab, except that Naomi had followed her husband and their two sons there, escaping from the famine in Israel. Both sons had married Moabite women after their father died, and both sons died without heirs. Now Naomi, the lone Jewess, is traveling back to Israel, having heard that the famine has ended.

Orphah accompanies Naomi for part of the way before turning back. She already has experienced life with this family — the marriage, the unfruitful relationship, the poverty. She chooses to end their family ties, head back home on her own and take her chances that way.

But Ruth instead famously says to Naomi, “Wherever you go, I shall go, where you live, I will live; your people shall be my people, and your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried” (Ruth 1:16-17). Based on these words and sentiments, the rabbis teach us that Ruth converted to Judaism, accepting all the laws of Israel.

Despite the beauty of the words, I find them troubling. Ruth clearly is choosing not simply to choose Judaism but to merge her entire identity with Naomi. Why? I have never understood the attraction for Naomi; it’s an odd relationship.

“Wherever you go, I will go.” Who is that close to her mother- in-law that she wants to follow her wherever she goes? What was the power dynamic, what was the mystique? And Naomi was quite clear on what this obedience and loyalty would demand — much more than her marriage to a Jewish man did, as it appears that Ruth was able to live as a Moabite, even when married to her Jewish husband.

As part of accepting the laws of Israel, Naomi tells Ruth that Jewish women must be modest and refrain from sexualized conduct (Ruth Rabbah 11:22). The story emphasizes Ruth’s modest behavior, as she gathers grain in the fields of their wealthy relative Boaz once they reach Bethlehem. She bends her knees rather than bending over, making sure her skirt covers her legs rather than hitch it up as the other women do (Ruth Rabbah 4:6).

But when Naomi tells Ruth to prepare herself to meet with Boaz at night, alone, in the place where he sleeps, Ruth does not protest. “Bathe, anoint yourself, put on clean garments, and lie down at his feet, Ruth is instructed” (Ruth 3:3).

So Ruth will approach Boaz at night, alone. Wait, isn’t that exactly what she was told would NOT be permissible if she followed Naomi to Bethlehem? Hadn’t she been told she would have to renounce “immodest” sexualized behavior? And yet, without a word, Ruth does as she is bidden. “I will do everything you tell me,” she says (3:5).

Clearly, Ruth is under the spell of the dominant Naomi. Why does Ruth follow Naomi’s command? To what end? Boaz already had said he would protect her and Naomi. Is Naomi simply toying with Ruth or testing her loyalty? Does she expect Ruth to do whatever she tells her? And once Ruth passes this test, what will be the next demand of subjugation? We find out soon enough.

Boaz marries Ruth soon thereafter, and she conceives and bears a son. (Boaz conveniently dies immediately after their wedding night). And the women of the town said “there is a son born to Naomi” (4:13). Born to Naomi? The Talmud asks, was it Naomi who bore him? Surely it was Ruth! And the women of the town said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who had not left thee this day … and Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom, and became nurse unto it” (4:16).

Wait a minute, why isn’t Ruth doing that? Did she give up her child to Naomi? Yes. Ruth gave birth to him, but Naomi rears him. Ruth gave up custody of her son!

Isolated from her network, having fully given up her identity, Ruth is offered up to bear a child, and then has the child taken away from her to be raised by another. Ruth is the biological mother, Naomi is the adoptive mother. Ironically, the Midrash tells us that both Orphah and Ruth come from royal families, perhaps to give the future King David a royal lineage, something which Naomi could not do.

I wonder when I read the story of Ruth and Naomi about what their relationship was really like. I know that in my work in the field of violence against women, in which potentially abusive relationships are viewed through the lens of power and control, a relationship like this one might be suspect, might raise a red flag or two about power dynamics and questions about the underlying reasons for this behavior.

“Wherever you go, I will go.” I would worry if that were my daughter. Wouldn’t you?

(Deborah Rosenbloom is the director of programs at Jewish Women International and an editor of JWI’s “Rethinking Shavuot: Women, Relationships & Jewish Texts.”)

]]> http://azjewishpost.com/2013/shavuot-feature-op-ed-rethinking-the-ruth-naomi-relationship/feed/ 0 http://azjewishpost.com/2013/arizonas-children-not-immune-to-gun-violence/ http://azjewishpost.com/2013/arizonas-children-not-immune-to-gun-violence/#comments Fri, 03 May 2013 19:44:12 +0000 PHYLLIS BRAUN - AJP Executive Editor http://azjewishpost.com/?p=22966 Gun violence is a public health problem, and Arizona’s children are not immune from this epidemic. As pediatricians responsible for the health and welfare of our patients, we must discuss the facts, and that includes the risks of keeping guns in a home.

Research shows that even when children are taught about gun dangers, they have limited ability to understand the consequences of their actions. We also know that teens may act impulsively when depressed, angry or under the influence of substances. If a gun is available to them, a whopping 90 percent of suicide attempts are lethal, as opposed to 5 percent involving drugs.

As members of the Arizona Chapter of the Academy of Pediatrics (AzAAP), we are saddened that members of the United States Senate failed to pass a package of common sense gun safety bills that would have helped protect children from gun violence. In 2011 alone, 23 firearm-related child deaths occurred in Arizona. According to Arizona’s 2011 Child Fatality Report, in almost 25 percent of these cases the gun was owned by a parent. AzAAP supports recommendations such as implementing a strong, effective assault weapon ban, mandatory background checks and waiting periods before all firearm purchases. More mental health services for our children also play a crucial role in addressing this public health crisis. Our approach to policy and laws must be thoughtful to help keep our children safe.

—Mary Rimsza, M.D., Phoenix, and Eve Shapiro, M.D., Tucson

Yafit put on a solo, autobiographical show during which I laughed and cried with her, as she tried to identify who she is: Is she an Israeli who was born and raised in Israel, or an American who has studied and lived here for many years?

Being an Israeli-American, I can identify with her and her dilemma, as do most Israelis living in the United States. One always asks oneself, who am I? Moreover, an Israeli-American is always a puzzle to others who are curious about us but cannot understand completely who we are.

Yafit cowrote the play with Suzanne Bressler. She travels with her father, who is her producer, and sometimes her mother, who gives out schnitzel to the audience.

The play was enjoyed by all, as evidenced by the enthusiastic applause and many questions asked of Yafit. I was only sorry that the JCC auditorium was not packed, as I feel this play would appeal to all who love Israel.

I am looking forward to a comedy Yafit is writing about her own December wedding that took place in Israel. She is Sephardic and her husband is Ashkenazi; the wedding gave her plenty of material and food for thought.

—Yael B. Neuman, Ph.D

Harold Berman

One Christmas eve, as Jews across the country headed for Chinese restaurants, I found myself in a church choir.

The church, on the outskirts of Boston and straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, had hired me to sing for their service. As the clock struck 11, I entered the sanctuary with the choir, our robes and music illuminated only by the candles each of us held.

“Once in royal David’s city stood a lowly cattle shed,” we intoned in a near-whisper as the organ weaved its way under our voices. “Where a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed.” The congregation gradually joined in as we made our way to the choir loft. “Mary, loving mother mild, Jesus Christ her little child.”

The hymn concluded, and in a moment never to be replicated in any synagogue, the entire congregation sat down in unison, uttering not a word.

And so began my search to live a deeply meaningful Jewish life.

I was born and raised as a Jew. I had my Bar Mitzvah at the local Reform temple. After college, I fell in love with the woman who was to become my wife. She wasn’t Jewish; she was the minister of music in a Texas megachurch. But at the time, I couldn’t imagine why that should be an issue, and I was upset when the local rabbi wouldn’t marry us alongside her minister.

That Christmas Eve was hardly the first time I had sung in a church. But this time was different.

We had recently decided to adopt a child. My Christian wife, who was busy directing the choir for a church service across town, had concluded that, given our circumstances, it would be easiest to raise him as a Jew. We had even joined a temple that was very welcoming to interfaith families.

As I stood in that church choir loft, with talk of mangers and virgin births swirling around me, a little voice in my head began to protest. The voice reminded me that, in addition to Christmas Eve, it was Friday night. The voice asked what I was doing there. I didn’t have a good answer.

The voice asked me why Shabbat wasn’t as important to me as Christmas Eve was to them. I struggled for a response.

By the end of the service, the voice had thoroughly interrogated me. “OK, OK,” I thought. “You’re right. I need to get serious about Judaism.”

Ironically, that church service gave me the push I needed to start making Judaism central to my life. Push, yes. But where was the pull? Where was the compelling Jewish community that would draw me in?

My wife and I started going to classes at the temple we had joined, but the classes weren’t so exciting. And when hardly anyone else showed up, we began to lose interest.

I started going to services, but that wasn’t so exciting either. There was lots of talk about making the service shorter and more entertaining, but hardly a word about making prayer more meaningful.

So I started to read about Judaism, books like “The Sabbath” by Abraham Joshua Heschel and piles of commentaries on the Torah. It was all so compelling, so rich, so deep. But every time I lifted my gaze from those books, the Jewish reality around me wasn’t nearly as exciting — neither in the temple we had joined nor the many others we visited.

My wife wanted to learn more about Judaism too, if for no other reason than to help raise our son. But the enthusiasm she encountered at church wasn’t matched in many parts of the Jewish community. Temple members had welcomed us with open arms. Everyone was friendly. But beyond the smiles, there wasn’t much more to keep us coming back.

Being warm and welcoming and inclusive is nice. In fact, it’s essential. But it’s not enough.

When it comes to the intermarried, our Jewish world has made a mantra of the “open tent.”

We’ve forgotten that the tent’s door is merely a point of entry. What’s inside is what ultimately matters.

The intermarried can get smiles in many other places. But if we are not providing them with all the depth and meaning that our 3,500-year-old tradition has to offer, we are not only selling Judaism short, but we are failing them.

So from the church choir loft to Jewish experiences that left me asking “Where’s the beef?” to a pile of Jewish books — just where did I end up?

Today, we are an observant Jewish family living near Jerusalem. My wife at a certain point felt compelled to convert and become part of the Jewish people. Our children are conversant with Jewish texts. We live in a community that is fully immersed in Jewish life.

How we got here is a rather involved story, which my wife and I have set forth in our recently released book, “Doublelife: One Family, Two Faiths and a Journey of Hope.” The very short version is that we ultimately found more traditional parts of the Jewish world, where Judaism was a 24/7 activity that was about nothing less than transforming ourselves and our world; where we were inspired to learn and grow and ultimately become a Jewish family because we were given substance we couldn’t find anywhere else.

But when we started out, we would have been any Jewish outreach worker’s nightmare. Had we only experienced the “warm and welcoming” track that much of the Jewish community is offering to the intermarried, I wouldn’t be writing this. I would have been lost to the Jewish community.

With approximately 600,000 intermarried families in the United States, I wonder who else we’re overlooking.

Harold Berman, the co-author of “Doublelife: One Family, Two Faiths and a Journey of Hope,” is the former executive director of the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts. He and his wife, Gayle, are the founders of J-Journey.org, a support system for intermarried families who seek to become observant Jews.

If this is true, then it means that the Arabs might have reluctantly come to terms with the reality developed since the Six-Day War, namely, that some Israeli settlements have become accomplished facts, and that there is no way on earth to uproot them. This sounds like a positive move by the Arab League, an organization which usually doesn’t enjoy the trust of Israelis.

The first time I heard about the Arab League was in 1964, when I was about to graduate high school. I heard over the radio that this organization, representing the Arab states surrounding Israel, in its convention in East Jerusalem (then in the hands of the Jordanians), announced the creation of another organization: the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

I asked my father, who was listening as well, what it meant. He said he didn’t know, but anything initiated by the Arab League must be dangerous to Israel. He then told me about 1948, when, just before the establishment of the state of Israel, the secretary of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, threatened us with genocide, “a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades.”

Many years later, Israeli historian Tom Segev claimed that Pasha didn’t really mean it, and that he was just bragging. But in 1964 I didn’t know that yet. On the contrary, I learned that the Arab League was behind the Arab boycott of Israeli products. Therefore, my perception of the Arab League as the ultimate bad guys remained intact.

Then came the Six-Day War. Again the Arabs were threatening us with destruction, and the Voice of Cairo radio announced that Tel Aviv is burning. I was serving in the Israeli Air Force at the time, and I knew perfectly well that as this nonsense was aired the Egyptian air force had already been destroyed, and that the Egyptians, followed by the Jordanians and the Syrians, were on their way to a smashing defeat.

Like many Israelis, I believed at the time that this was the war to end all wars, and that the Arabs will sit down with us, make peace and get their territories back. Nothing of the sort happened. On the contrary, it was no other than the same Arab League, which, in its summit in Khartoum in September 1967, gave us not one No, but three: No peace with Israel; No recognition of Israel; No negotiations with it.

The Arab League, then, remained the epitome of Arab rejection of Israel. When in 1979 President Anwar Sadat courageously signed a peace accord with Israel, the Arab League punished Egypt by suspending it for a whole decade. Then it sank into impotence over its dubious role during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait,and as far as Israel was concerned, I thought we wouldn’t bother about them anymore.

In 2002, however, the Arab League reemerged with a surprising move. In its summit conference in Beirut in March 2002, it announced that in return for Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders, its member states would make peace with Israel and put an end to the conflict. What a far cry from the Khartoum summit!

Israel wasn’t responsive to this initiative, mainly because the resolution had called for the withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders and the establishment of East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state.

Moreover, the refugee issue remained ambiguous. The resolution spoke about “the return of the Palestinian refugees,” but didn’t specify where they should return to: to the Palestinian state? To Israel?

No Israeli would have agreed to the latter solution, which is perceived by Israelis as the destruction of Israel.

Years passed , the Second Lebanon War erupted, and when it seemed that Arab-Israeli relations have never been worse, the Arab League surprised again. At its summit meeting in Riyyad in March, 2007, it decided to send the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan to Israel in an attempt to raise support for its 2002 initiative. Again, the Israeli reaction was hesitant. According to a report in the Haaretz newspaper from Aug. 9, 2012, Ehud Olmert, Israeli prime minister in 2007, considered an option to personally address the summit participants, but backed out at the last moment.

So today, the Arab League is knocking on the door of Israel again, this time through Washington. I think we should open the door. This is not the same Arab League my father loathed and feared in 1948, and Israel is not the same embryonic, fragile, state it was then.

If Arabs have become resigned to the fact that Israel is here to stay and want to talk peace with Israel, let’s sit down and talk. No preconditions, no hidden agenda, just face to face, hard, candid talk. If they bluff, that’s the way to find out. We fought each other for so long, and maybe we’ll fight again. In the meantime, why not give talk a chance?

Uri Dromi is executive director of the Jerusalem Press Club. This commentary first appeared in the Miami Herald.

NEW YORK (JTA) — I have mixed emotions about Natan Sharansky’s proposed agreement to expand the public space at the Western Wall to include the currently secluded area known as Robinson’s Arch.

As a lifelong Conservative Jew, I applaud any plan that seeks to treat egalitarian worshipers and women’s prayer groups as full members of the Jewish people deserving of a place to pray at Judaism’s holiest site. But I worry that in the zeal to achieve equality, Reform and Conservative Jews are about to shut the door on a unique spiritual experience.

I had never heard of Robinson’s Arch until the summer of 2010, when I joined one day with a few dozen other students and faculty from The Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem to convene the morning minyan there.

Only that morning did I learn that Robinson’s Arch was a secluded location, an archaeological site at the southern part of the Western Wall, two stories below the main area on the other side of a tall (really tall) and thick (really thick) wall (the Mughrabi Bridge that leads up to the mosques atop the Temple Mount). And I also learned that under a court-mandated agreement with the Israeli government, groups affiliated with Masorti — the worldwide arm of the Conservative movement — had been holding egalitarian prayer services there for nearly a decade.

It was so removed from the main plaza that one may have thought it was miles away. Less developed and commoditized, I found the multi-level area to be a secluded, quiet place, where one didn’t hear the buzz from the main plan area, one that wasn’t a bustling tourist destination.

Frankly, I think Masorti got the better of the deal. It’s visually stunning. In addition to the massive retaining walls, there are huge boulders placed there that look like they were thrown down to the street outside the Temple during the destruction in 70 C.E. One can see charring on some of them from the burning that took place after the sacking. These were likely uncovered during the excavations in the Archeological Park, where Robinson’s Arch is located.

The emotional and spiritual experience I had that morning took me by surprise.

Later that summer, and because being there had evoked such emotion, I eagerly joined a group of about 30 people from The Conservative Yeshiva who went to Robinson’s Arch on the night of Tisha b’Av for the reading of Eicha (Lamentations), as we commemorated the destruction of the two Temples and other national tragedies endured by the Jewish people. The site is as beautiful at night as it is during the quiet of the morning. The entire area was filled with hundreds of non-Orthodox Jews — a few teen groups but mostly adults and families.

After the main part of the evening service, we sat down on the stone pavement and low walls; a different person led the reading of each of the five chapters. Everyone else followed along or chanted quietly with the leader. One could have heard a pin drop. It was awesome, sitting on stones just next to the structure about whose destruction we were reading.

Just after, as is traditional, we sang a long kinah with a beautiful melody, and as we rose as one to finish the evening service — literally just then — the minaret above us on the Temple Mount called the Muslims to prayer. It’s really loud if you are standing just under the mosque, but we didn’t miss a beat of our prayers. It was another powerful reminder that this structure we were facing, this very wall, was at Mount Zion in Jerusalem and nowhere else in the world. The minaret call seemed out of place, yet strangely not out of place. If only these two cultures could blend so well in the rest of daily life.

One would never have known of the noisy area on the other side of the high, dense wall where dozens of Eicha readings were taking place. That’s how separate it is.

Separate but equal is an American construct, and one that in the racist context of Jim Crow was understandably rejected more than half a century ago in the United States. But Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are not in America, and the opportunity to pray in seclusion at Robinson’s Arch is not the same as being relegated to a dilapidated, underfunded public school in Little Rock.

So, yes, the Sharansky plan should be cheered for providing 24/7/365 access to the Robinson’s Arch area, ending the entrance fee and creating a more accessible entrance via the main plaza security gates. But there are also disturbing reports that the plan will involve the creation of a raised platform that will put egalitarian groups on the same level as worshipers in the main area — above instead of amid the archeological remains at the site. This would be a terrible mistake. The area should be preserved, not expanded or further developed, so that Robinson’s Arch will continue to retain its serene and spiritual nature for the foreseeable future.

Sometimes separate is not only equal, it’s better.

(Anne Mintz is a researcher and archivist who consulted in the creation of the JTA Jewish News Archive.)

Sarah Chandler

FALLS VILLAGE, Conn. (JTA) – Judaism is designed to be a person’s operating system, the platform on which other areas of one’s life functions. But for many Jews, religious practice sits on a shelf alongside theater subscriptions, gym memberships and soccer practice, relegated to one of many offerings from which we can pick and choose.

For Jewish educators like myself, this mindset poses particular challenges, forcing us to adopt the tactics of public relations agencies to induce Jews to participate in Jewish life. Why can’t these opportunities speak for themselves? Why do people have to be convinced to take a Hebrew class, attend Shabbat services or drop in on a lecture?

Partly, of course, it’s an issue of time. Lots of people might want more Jewishness in their lives, but work, family and other commitments end up taking precedence. Even in the best-case scenario, when people do show up for Hebrew school, committee meetings or worship services, many are unable to leave their consumerist addictions at the door.

They may sincerely want to achieve something — learn a new skill, be inspired by a rabbi’s talk or approve next year’s budget — yet they instinctively rely on “experts” to package Judaism for them. The cult of achievement seeps into everything. Leaders steeped in the ethos of corporate America expect flawless execution at meetings. Parents pushing their kids on the fast track are never satisfied with the rate of their children’s Hebrew acquisition.

What if, instead of being just one more place to look for “more” and “better,” Jewish life could be an escape from this compulsion? What if, instead of being just one more place to “get it done,” Jewish life could be the place Jews awoke to gratitude for what they have in each moment?

The ancient Jewish practice of shmitta, the biblically mandated sabbatical year of rest and release that begins in September 2014, offers one way to roll back this trend.

At its core, shmitta is a chance to show contemporary Jews that ancient Jewish texts have the potential to serve as a sophisticated map for many areas of their lives, not just occasional events in particular buildings. But it is also a way to induce individual Jews to take more responsibility both for their personal consumption habits and shaping the contours of their spiritual lives.

Traditionally, shmitta was a time when farmers did not cultivate their lands, debts were forgiven and slaves were set free. In a contemporary context, when most of us are neither farmers nor slaves, we can see this year not only as a chance to restore balance and share more equitably, but to release ourselves from the mentality that sees everything in the world — from natural resources to Jewish communal ones — as one more set of things to be consumed. Anyone looking to revive their communities, spend more time with family and friends or even live more simply can take inspiration from the concept of shmitta.

Hazon, a national Jewish organization promoting sustainability, is part of a coalition of eco-minded Jewish projects planning a series of initiatives in anticipation of the next shmitta year. Taking our cues from the transition town movement, a social experiment that focuses on economic localization and sustainable agriculture, the Shmita Project seeks to revive the ancient teachings of the sabbatical cycle and apply them to our times. Bringing these principles alive is our next best shot to counter the consumerist impulse from within the Jewish tradition, all the while supporting the environment, our communities and ourselves.

Jewish texts explain that during the shmitta year, land owners would take down their fences so that the poor and animals could take freely from the crops. Today we might consider which resources from our “fields” we can offer to others. We could literally feed the hungry, or give of ourselves in other ways, through volunteering, pro bono work or other collaborative community projects.

Shmita also calls upon us to release debts and take time off from work. Today, communities might consider setting up a “degrowth” plan in recognition of the fact that we are living beyond the capacities of the ecosystem. The Worldwatch Institue cites studies in Europe that indicate cutting back from a work week of more than 50 hours actually would create jobs.

My hope is that such efforts will result not only in people taking a closer look at how economic sustainability might work in their communities, but also in individuals taking greater responsibility for personal consumption habits and relieving themselves of the expectation that others will perform Jewish practice on their behalf. Rather than criticizing the failings of our institutional leaders, we can take active roles in revitalizing Jewish life — and local economic and environmental systems — as co-creators. In turn, we can begin to discharge the consumerist tendency from our communal life.

Parshat Behar, the Torah portion that contains the injunction to observe shmitta, falls this year on May 3-4. It will be a wonderful opportunity to share shmitta educational and experiential offerings in your local synagogue, school, community center, community garden.

Imagine the Jewish community digging into these ancient texts about shmitta and renewing them for modern times. Imagine disaffected Jews igniting change through community organizing inspired by Torah.

How will you integrate shmitta principles into your personal and communal life by September 2014? Join us on the journey.

(Sarah Chandler, the director of earth-based spiritual practice for Hazon’s Adamah Farm at Isabella Freedman, is a Jewish experiential educator, community activist and spiritual leader.)

]]> http://azjewishpost.com/2013/op-ed-how-shmitta-can-help-us-kick-the-consumerist-habit/feed/ 0 http://azjewishpost.com/2013/jews-should-work-to-reduce-fossil-fuels-not-ally-with-gas-and-oil-companies/ http://azjewishpost.com/2013/jews-should-work-to-reduce-fossil-fuels-not-ally-with-gas-and-oil-companies/#comments Fri, 05 Apr 2013 19:09:43 +0000 PHYLLIS BRAUN - AJP Executive Editor http://azjewishpost.com/?p=22322 JTA recently reported on a new alliance between Jewish leaders and domestic gas and oil companies (see http://azjewishpost.com/?p=21879). Called the Council for a Secure America, the alliance is based on a “common interest” between American Jews and domestic energy companies to “increase domestic oil and gas production and to decrease U.S. reliance on imported oil from the Middle East,” the report said.

But the alliance represents neither the Jewish community nor its interests.

To say that reducing our dependence on foreign oil is our No. 1 priority is not only an ineffective approach to energy policy, it is a distorted picture of the Jewish community’s concerns.

Reducing the use of all fossil fuels, not just foreign ones, must be our goal. This not only will help improve energy security in the United States, it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lessen the tremendous threats to Israel’s security posed by climate change.

Every nation already has its own supply of renewable energy. If we learn to harvest this natural inheritance, fossil fuel tyranny and energy scarcity would disappear.

Israel is at the forefront of solar energy research and commercialization, and a shift to a clean energy economy would benefit Israel in many ways. Oil is also the primary source of income for Iran, and reducing the world’s need for oil will improve Israel’s security.

Focusing on domestic fossil fuels will only make us more dependent on a system that is putting the entire natural world at risk. Furthermore, in a dirty energy future in which climate change goes unchecked, the disruption of weather patterns in the Middle East could turn most of Israel into a desert. As reported by Ben-Gurion University in the “Israel National Report” on climate change, the Negev Desert could expand as much as 200-300 miles northward, which would include most of Israel. That would be an overwhelming threat to Israel’s survival, as great as any the nation has ever faced.

The JTA report suggested that there is no communal consensus on energy policy. But there is a growing Jewish communal consensus that our desire to achieve energy independence must be linked to an urgent response to climate change. The Green Hevra, a network of 16 Jewish environmental organizations co-founded by the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, is leading the call in the Jewish community for sustainability.

For many individuals and organizations across the Jewish community, Jewish values, alongside self-interest and policy concerns, are a critical factor that motivates their position.

Jewish texts and traditions highlight the importance of caring for the world and repairing the world, or tikkun olam. More directly, we are commanded to “choose life, that you and your seed will live.” The effects of climate change will heavily burden the world’s most vulnerable populations and threaten the existence of many of the Earth’s species. They also are predicted to escalate conflicts around the globe, including the Middle East.

Choosing a dirty energy future means violating the most fundamental precepts of Torah and of derech eretz, of common sense. When given alternatives, this is not the future most Jews choose.

We can ensure greater security for the United States and Israel, create a cleaner and safer world, and transmit our values to future generations by choosing clean energy.

Sybil Sanchez is the director of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life. David Seidenberg is the founder of NeoHasid.org. This Op-Ed has been endorsed by the following members of the Green Hevra: Baltimore Jewish Environmental Network, COEJL, Green Zionist Alliance, Hazon, Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, Jewish Farm School, Neohasid.org, Pearlstone Center, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Shalom Center, Eden Village and Teva Learning Alliance. For information on the Green Hevra, visit www.greenhevra.com.