Spotlight on CLAL Archive

 

CLAL Quarterly Report

Winter 2000-2001

Many Voices. Strong Communities. One People.

More people, more engaged in Jewish life, in more ways.  That has been CLAL’s goal since it began more than 25 years ago.    Today, we are seeing that vision realized.   As technological and  economic changes have impacted our lives, CLAL has been in the forefront of addressing the roles these shifts have in shaping Jewish identity and community. Whether it is working with rabbis across denominations, Jewish community leaders throughout the country, opinion makers in America or scholars across disciplines,  CLAL brings together people to promote its unique message of pluralism, diversity and inclusiveness in contemporary American Jewish life. 

HIGHLIGHTS 

RELIGION ON THE POLITICAL STAGE

What is the relationship between our moral and spiritual concerns and our political activism? Recognizing the impact of Joseph Lieberman’s nomination as the first Jewish vice presidential candidate, CLAL galvanized its efforts to address the questions of religious and civic engagement in American life.  CLAL’s President, Rabbi Irwin Kula, held numerous interviews with reporters to discuss the implications that the nomination had for American Jews.  Issues raised included church versus state concerns, the Jewish value of social responsibility, and the mitzvah of civic duty as a reflection of ethical conviction.    Many reporters had little familiarity with halacha (Jewish law), and the diversity of Jewish practice and expression.   By providing a context in which to view the nomination, Rabbi Kula offered a CLAL perspective:   

“What is significant here is that the Jewish community, once marginalized, has become fully integrated into American life.   Senator Lieberman’s selection reflects this acceptance.…The integration of his public life and personal practice has opened up the debate on what it means to be Jewish, not only privately but in the public square. At the same time, it provokes the question of how we articulate our spiritual, ethical and religious identities in our political discourse while maintaining a respect for the diversity of beliefs in American life. ”

 

CLAL JOINS IN RE-OPENING OF AUSCHWITZ SYNAGOGUE 

In September, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield joined a 50-member American delegation to re-open the first synagogue near Auschwitz since World War II.  The trip included visiting the death camp in Birkenau, and Berlin, where the group met with leaders of the German government and the Jewish community.  In Berlin, Rabbi Hirschfield made havdallah (the transition between Shabbat and the week) on the roof of the Reichstag, the seat of German government, with Acting President Kurt Biedenkopf participating.  Havdallah is a kind of kiddush on the rest of the week,” Hirschfield said.  “It marks a moment to recover our connection to a sense of the sacred that is less defined by separateness and retreat, and more by unity and engagement across boundaries.” 

In discussing his trip, Rabbi Hirschfield talked about the importance of reaffirming life in the face of death.  “How do we move beyond the Shoah without leaving it behind? By re-opening the synagogue, we realize that the Jewish people are more than the ghosts of Auschwitz.  We are a living presence here to stay.”  

 

CLAL PARTICIPATES IN ASPEN INSTITUTE’S 50th CELEBRATION 

Marking its 50th anniversary, The Aspen Institute, a prestigious global forum that brings together leaders from diverse disciplines to address critical issues confronting societies, organizations and individuals, held a three-day program in August on “Globalization and the Human Condition.”  Guest speakers included former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Queen Noor of Jordan, and James D. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank.  As part of its program, the Institute invited Rabbi Irwin Kula to participate in a panel on “Globalization, Religion and Social Justice,” with J. Byran Hehir, Dean, Harvard Divinity School, Helena Cobban, Middle East journalist and independent scholar, Weiming Tu, Professor of Chinese History, Philosophy and Confucian Studies, Harvard University and Garry Wills, Adjunct Professor of History, Northwestern University.   

In his remarks, Rabbi Kula discussed the paradox of the increased availability and accessibility of wisdom from ancient traditions (including Judaism) with the decreased role of  institutional and clerical authority. “The democratization of information has led to a free flow of information. This means that people have unprecedented freedom to pick and choose, and as a result, they are empowered to construct identity, especially their religious identities, in new ways.”  This results in new roles for religious “officials” and their institutions in deciding the meaning of inherited traditions and practices as well as the boundaries of community. 

Also, this past July, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield participated in an Aspen Institute forum entitled “Spirituality in Contemporary Life,” the first such program to explore the role of spirituality in society today.  The seminar, open to Aspen Institute Fellows, explored people’s search for inner meaning and purpose in a world driven by economic and technological change.  Joining Rabbi Hirschfield were Father Thomas Keating, former Abbot of Spencer and Saint Benedicts Monasteries; Princeton University Professor Elaine Pagels, an Aspen Institute Board Trustee; and Dr. Edward W. Bastian, founder and publisher of aspen.com and a Buddhist scholar.   

In his remarks, Rabbi Hirschfield spoke about spirituality in a new era.  “How do you create a conversation between technology and other advances and the spiritual lives of individuals? How do you use a tradition’s richness in a broader way?…Judaism, as a result of the decentralization of the Diaspora experience, went from high ritual performed by a few to a system which infused daily life with transcendence.   In this way Judaism offers a profound gift with which we can begin to explore a more expansive spiritual conversation.  The sacredness is in the search for what is true in our experience of the ordinary.”

 

LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT 

CLAL’s mission to create dynamic Jewish communities could not be fulfilled without the cadre of committed volunteer leaders from across the country with whom we work in shaping Jewish life. CLAL faculty traveled nationwide to provide seminars, classes and lectures to individuals and communities.  Recent highlights were: 

· Bux-Mont/Philadelphia.    Rabbi Steve Greenberg conducted a program with seven of the area’s synagogues.  Rabbis and lay leaders were asked to address issues of synagogue renewal.  Rabbi Greenberg led the group in a brainstorming session on building the “ideal” synagogue by focusing on its three main functions: study, prayer and community. 

· Princeton, New Jersey. Rabbi Jennifer Krause, Drs. Robert Rabinowitz and Michael Gottsegen led a conference session for high school ethics teachers on how to incorporate Jewish texts into the teaching of ethics. Participants represented schools throughout North America.  

· Broward County, Florida.    Rabbi David Nelson conducted a Shabbaton for Broward County’s third CLAL Young Leadership group.  Close to 100 participants have completed or are completing the program, creating a cadre of new leaders. The Shabbaton, which included a service on the beach, expanded the ways in which these new leaders experience and articulate their Jewishness. Graduates of the first two programs (1993-95 and 1996-98) have become highly visible members of the Jewish community, as board members of various organizations, president of the JCC, president of the Women’s Division, president of the day school, and chair of the Jewish Community Relations Council. Expectations are high for those in this third group.

· New York City.  Rabbi Daniel Brenner co-led a CLAL Torah Study Group of leading writers, artists and other professionals on a tour of the Jewish Museum’s “Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey.”  The evening ended their yearlong study of Pirkei Avot (classic rabbinic wisdom).  The exhibit offered three reasons for why the Jews were able to survive in the Diaspora: the constant questioning and reinterpretation of Jewish traditions, the interaction of Jews and Judaism with other cultures, and the impact of historical events on Jewish life. The Torah Study Group, convened by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, is one of seven CLAL classes taught in the New York area. 

· Birmingham, Alabama.  Dr. Shari Cohen and Rabbi Brad Hirschfield led a symposium with 30 of Birmingham's emerging leaders and community professionals entitled "Imagining Birmingham's Jewish Futures."  Incorporating “scenario planning,” a method of visioning used by CLAL’s Jewish Public Forum, they took participants through a disciplined, yet highly imaginative process to analyze the impact of societal trends on their community ten years into the future. 

· San Diego, California.    Rabbi Jennifer Krause led a program entitled “Practicing With Your Life: The Hidden Blessing of New Year” for a standing room only audience. The event explored the central metaphors of the High Holidays as they relate to people’s lives, and the ways in which we shape our identities at peak times. The group included alumni of CLAL’s programs.  

 

THE COLORADO INITIATIVE 

A guiding principle of CLAL’s community building is that dynamic Jewish communities thrive best when genuine, inclusive conversations are nurtured.  One example of this is The Colorado Initiative, supported with major funding from The Sturm Family Foundation.  The program has been key in bringing close to a thousand people into conversations about their Jewishness, building bridges between established Jewish institutions and denominations, and infusing provocative new energy into local Jewish life. In recent months, CLAL faculty have been engaged in a variety of activities in the Denver/Boulder community. They include:  

· Boulder JCC Celebrates First Year.  The Boulder Jewish Community Center celebrated its first anniversary with a community wide program featuring scholar-in-residence Rabbi Irwin Kula and CLAL associate Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. More than 300 people participated in this “town hall“ like event which focused on imagining and creating a Jewish future.  Local rabbis from all denominations led sessions, enabling them to teach beyond their usual constituencies. This two day conference was a result of CLAL’s six month effort to bring people together in conversations about new ways of constructing identity and community.  A plan is  now underway to establish an ongoing community wide series of conversations exploring both personal and communal Jewish possibilities.  It will culminate in an annual Boulder Reimagining Institute which hopes to attract national attention to the Boulder Jewish community. 

· Denver Women’s Leadership Group.  In an innovative series of programs, CLAL faculty helped empower a core group of women in key leadership positions both within Jewish communal life, and in the Denver community at large, to develop a network in which they can connect to Jewish life and reimagine leadership.    With CLAL’s support, the group has developed its own resources and will function independently in the coming year. 

· Conversations.  CLAL faculty led close to 25 small group sessions, bringing together people affiliated and unaffiliated with the organized Jewish community. These sessions, in which CLAL faculty employed its newly developed conversation method, are convened by peers for peers, and take place outside of the traditional institutional boundaries of Jewish engagement. Animated discussions, offered primarily in people’s homes, were held on a variety of Jewish issues. Topics included:  “The Changing Nature of Jewish Identity,” “Creating Community That We Would Commit To,” “New Markers of Jewishness: Work, Philanthropy, and Leisure,” and “Spirituality: Does It Need Organized Religion?”    These conversations are one example of CLAL’s new method for engaging people in Jewish identity and community building. 

· Professional Development.    CLAL faculty led “Lunch and Learn” sessions hosted by the JCC for its staff and other Jewish professionals from Denver based organizations.  Participants included representatives from the Federation, the JFS (Jewish Family Service), local synagogues, the Mizel Museum and CAJE (Central Agency for Jewish  Education).  Sessions in Boulder will begin soon. These sessions help create a community wide cadre of professional leaders and have dealt with issues such as “Professional-Volunteer Relations,” Changing Models of Philanthropy,” and “Reaching Baby Boomers and Generation X Jews.”  

· Consultation.  As a direct result of the work of The Colorado Initiative, Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard was invited to provide a series of programs for a broad audience of    the CAJE Commission on Jewish School Excellence which included lay leaders, professionals, principals, educators and funders.   The sessions explored new ways of creating powerful educational experiences in supplementary school settings.  “Out of the box” approaches were discussed, resulting in staff renewal and the development of a variety of new materials. With CLAL’s help, the agency, under the leadership of Daniel Bennett, has repositioned itself as one of the leading visionary institutions in the Denver Jewish community.

 

 

THE JEWISH PUBLIC FORUM AT CLAL 

Is the office supplanting the family as the place where people seek love, companionship and a sense of belonging?  What happens to a religious community when its members move to on-line chat rooms?  These were some of the questions addressed at the Jewish Public Forum’s seminar, “The Virtual, the Real and the Not-Yet-Imagined: Meaning, Identity and Community in a Networked World,” held June 4-6, 2000.  The program brought together 30 influential thinkers from such fields as religion, technology, business, architecture, new media, artificial intelligence and anthropology.  Key participants included leading cosmologist Saul Perlmutter, and media expert Douglas Rushkoff. 

Discussion ensued on how the Internet and related technologies, along with accelerating economic trends like globalization, affected the work of  “meaning-makers” or those who create the ways and places in which people connect to each other and to religious communities.  The conference focused on how rapid economic and technological changes are reshaping the ways and places people seek and create meaning in their lives.  To get a firsthand look at new meaning-making venues, participants spread out across New York City for on-site “learning journeys” to cutting-edge businesses, on-line communities, public spaces and cultural venues. The sites were chosen to reflect new settings where people learn, pray, shop, celebrate and make sense of their world. 

“Learning journey” sites included the new Times Square;  the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History; the downtown arts space, The Knitting Factory; the on-line religion magazine, Beliefnet.com; the technology and new media labs at Manhattan’s Beacon High School; and the African-American community Web site, Blackplanet.com. 

On January 14-16, 2001 the Jewish Public Forum will hold the next, and most ambitious, of its innovative seminars.   At the workshop, "Playing the Jewish Futures: Scenarios on Religion, Ethnicity and Civic Engagement in the year 2015," an impressive group of fifty people representing a wide range of fields, will pool their expertise to identify the broad cultural, political, social and economic trends that will most shape the environments in which the Jewish future will be created.  They will then generate four plausible narratives of possible futures, based on the most important trends. 

The Jewish Public Forum is funded through the generous support of The Eleanor M. and Herbert D. Katz Family Foundation.   

 

NATIONAL JEWISH RESOURCE CENTER 

What’s Jewish about Mother’s Day?  How do American Jews celebrate on July 4th?  These are some of the recent topics explored by CLAL’s National Jewish Resource Center, which creates and publishes new practices connected to traditional Jewish thought.  

The variety of ways Jews have experienced July 4th  was addressed by the faculty at a CLAL breakfast in New York City, focusing on how we integrate the wisdom of our inherited tradition and of our American experience. To mark Election Day, CLAL held a program in New York City exploring the changing role of religion in political life. For the High Holidays, CLAL issued its new calendar. With the theme of Shehecheyanu: Reaching Each Moment, it offers a series of illuminating rituals, meditations, blessings and Jewish teachings for everyday moments and occasions. Called Sacred Days 5761-5762, it features collected writings by CLAL’s faculty.

 

NATIONAL UNITY SHAVUOT 

Pluralist study events across the U.S., a complete Shavuot Web site (www.Shavuot.org), and the publication of a guidebook for planning pluralist programs were among the highlights of CLAL’s second annual National Unity Shavuot.  Made possible,in part, through the generosity of The Nathan Cummings Foundation, CLAL’s National Unity Shavuot program emphasizes pluralism and unity. Pluralist events across the country planned by local rabbis (many of whom are CLAL rabbinic alumni) took place in twelve cities, including Baltimore, New York, Denver, Chicago, and Miami.  

For Internet users, the Shavuot Web site provided an important educational resource.  It offered concise information about the origins and customs of the holiday; a trove of texts from biblical, rabbinic and contemporary sources; and guidelines for using those texts in private or group study.  An on-line study area enabled users to engage in virtual learning sessions with fellow participants from around the world. 

Also available on line was a new guidebook for planning a interdenominational     Shavuot event. The guidebook offers tools and methods for facilitating interdenominational dialogue, descriptions of successful Shavuot learning programs, and a 20-page collection of core Jewish texts from which study programs may be designed.


RABBINIC COMMUNITY ON LINE  

The new CLAL Rabbinic Community On Line  home, www.clalrabbis.net, funded by the Nash Family Foundation, constitutes the cutting edge of CLAL’s programming for rabbis.  An important component of the CLAL Rabbinic Community On Line is distance learning. Building on the success of CLAL’s first offering a liturgy course developed by Rabbi Reuven Kimelman, CLAL developed  Kavannah for Living,” an on-line course taught by Rabbi Daniel Brenner.  The course aims to assist rabbis in making everyday Jewish rituals relevant to the contemporary lives of their congregants. The curriculum follows the contours of the daily life cycle, suggesting rituals and kavannot to accompany a typical day’s activities from waking in the morning to bedtime.  It is based on CLAL’s work with Rav Zalman Schechter-Shalomi through the project “Bringing the Spirit Into the Center” funded by The Nathan Cummings Foundation, The Righteous Persons Foundation, Gigi and Samuel    Fried Philanthropic Fund, Richard Goldstein Foundation, Yesod Foundation and Michael Gelfand. 

The course includes dedicated study and discussion areas, and an archive for past study units. Moreover, we have made it easier for rabbis to participate by distributing course materials via e-mail and enrolling them in an e-mail group dedicated to discussing how to make the ritual materials more pluralist and easier to use. The response to “Kavannah for Living” has been very strong, with close to 7,000 rabbis contacted, and it will continue in the 2000-2001 academic year. Plans to offer two new courses are also underway. The first will help rabbis better convey the meaning of the Holocaust for Jews today; the second will focus on the significance of new spiritual currents in America. 

Editor: Judy Epstein 

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