Community and Society ArchiveWelcome to Community and Society where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the changing nature of community and society in America today and on the challenges and opportunities these changes represent for the Jewish people in America at the dawn of a new century. Every other week you will find something new and (hopefully) engaging here! To access the Community and Society Archive, click here.To join the conversation at Community and Society Talk, click here.Our authors are especially interested in hearing your responses to what they have written. So after reading, visit the Community and Society Discussion Forum where you can join in conversation with CLAL faculty and other readers. Believing CassandraBy Robert Rabinowitz What do you do when you believe the world is headed for doom and nobody seems to be listening, least of all your own community? This painful predicament is the subject of a recent book, Believing Cassandra by prominent environmental advocate and consultant Alan Atkisson (http://www.chelseagreen.com/Cassandra/index.html). I came face to face with the predicament myself last month when I attended the annual conference of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (www.coejl.org), the national Jewish environmental organization. At the conference, I was privileged to meet some people who live by Maimonides recommendation to think of the world as if its fate were hanging in the balance, to be decided by the moral quality of ones own actions.
Perhaps the most frustrating moment of the conference came during a panel discussion in which a local rabbi talked about how COEJL members might make an impact on synagogues. Many participants talked about the difficulties they had faced in getting their community organizations to adopt environmental policies or even in explaining their concerns to family and friends. Quite simply, the environment does not yet seem to have really made it onto the radar screen of organized Jewish life. For example, no senior representatives of large communities, national organizations and major philanthropies attended the COEJL conference even though COEJL is the Jewish communitys official contribution to what is perhaps one of the three major social movements that arose in America in the last half of the 20th century. In his book, Atkisson quotes with approval Philip James Baileys statement that "the worst way to improve the world is to condemn it." Condemnation is very tempting when the world seems to be ignoring what you think is the one vital thing to which it should be paying attention. But generally it does not bring change. This is something that CLAL emphasizes at the annual retreats we hold for rabbis. It can be tempting for them, too, to condemn the congregants who fail to attend synagogue services and who insist on playing tennis while their kids are at Hebrew School instead of participating in family education programs. An attitude of condemnation can turn a rabbinic career into an isolated and embittering experience instead of into an opportunity to enrich and deepen the Jewish significance of the most important places in peoples lives. Some of the people I met at the COEJL conference felt that humanitys treatment of
our natural world was indeed leading us toward doom. They really saw themselves as
contemporary Cassandras: prophets whose words are not being heeded by a community which is
too concerned with meeting the urgent demands on its resources and with the crisis of
continuity. Such an attitude can easily lead to bitterness and despair. The challenge
faced by COEJL members is to decide where to focus their efforts. Should they try to get
the environment onto the Jewish communitys agenda only to risk the bitterness of
rejection? Or should they instead concentrate on building a movement outside the community
mainstream, recruiting the many passionate and talented Jews, like Michael, Andy and Jodi,
in the business, governmental and non-profit worlds who care about the environment? As I
contemplate the latter option, which seems to me the most fruitful, the phrase from Ethics
of the Fathers "Do not separate yourself from the community!" -- echoes
in my head. And I ask myself, "Is the only way to avoid playing the role of Cassandra
to ignore those who dont seem to be listening, even if they are your own
community?" To join the conversation at Community and Society Talk, click here.To access the Community and Society Archive, click here. |