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For Immediate Release

CLAL RABBINIC RETREAT PROVIDES RARE SETTING FOR CONVERSATION AMONG JEWISH MOVEMENTS

NEW YORK, NY-At the very moment that international media were showing scenes of angry infighting among Jewish denominations in Israel and North America, CLAL assembled 21 rabbis representing every Jewish movement to explore the diversity of the Jewish community and create conversations that endure despite denominational differences.

The rabbis debated, studied and even meditated together at a Rabbinic Leadership Retreat in Newport, Rhode Island February 7-11.

Now in it seventh year, the Rabbinic Leadership Retreat is a unique setting for cooperation and dialogue among North America's Conservative, Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist, Renewal and post-denominational rabbis. Some 300 rabbis have taken part in past Retreats. Together they make up a cadre of rabbis who continue to engage in civil and creative dialogue despite the much-reported divisions in Israel and North America over issues of ritual and Jewish identity.

Members of the CLAL faculty-themselves representing every Jewish denomination- led the participants in workshops and study sessions with two aims. The first was to explore and appreciate the important disagreements rabbis have about Judaism and the future of the Jewish people. The second aim was to open up through these conversations new and more expansive possibilities for understanding Jewish identity in the contemporary age.

"The Rabbinic Leadership Retreat is not about achieving Jewish 'unity,' which is an approach that tries to paper over the real differences between denominations," said Rabbi Irwin Kula, President of CLAL. "Instead we model, through sacred conversation, ways of remaining one people while appreciating this great diversity."

Participants in the retreat said it encouraged them to seek new ways of cooperating with rabbis of other denominations. "The highlight of the conference for me was being openly encouraged and thus achieving time to talk with colleagues across the spectrum," said a Reform rabbi. "It gave me a chance, in a thinking and learning environment, to consider my own presence in the world as a potential agent of growth and change."

The Rabbinic Leadership Retreat also helped the rabbis see possibilities for deeper engagement with Jews who are expressing their Jewishness outside of synagogues.

"The tension between finding spirituality in these 'off' places and events and seeing them as inherently spiritual is interesting and challenging," said an Orthodox rabbi. "I guess stretching is really what the conference is about-Jewishly, rabbinically, institutionally."

The 1999 Rabbinic Leadership Retreat also took advantage of the rich Jewish historical heritage of Newport, whose Touro Synagogue is the oldest extant synagogue in North America. Newport's Jews were also the recipients in 1790 of a famous letter by President George Washington in which he described a "Government which to bigotry gives no sanction." "President Washington's letter is itself a landmark text about religious pluralism," said Rabbi Rachel Sabath, CLAL's Director of Rabbinic Programs. "As he understood, true pluralism means an appreciation of differences that goes beyond mere toleration."

Since its founding in 1973, CLAL has been a pioneer on the issue of Jewish pluralism, offering alternative models for cooperation and conversation and training North American rabbis in issues of pluralism and institutional change. In addition to the Rabbinic Leadership Retreat, CLAL conducts the Rabbinic Internship Program, which brings together senior-year rabbinic students from every denomination for a year of joint study and dialogue. CLAL also selects outstanding rabbis, academics and professionals of all denominations for an immersion year of study in the Rabbi Irving S. Greenberg Fellowship Program. Graduates of this program have assumed major rabbinic and communal positions throughout North America.

The Rabbinic Leadership Retreat was made possible through the generosity of Andrea and Charles Bronfman, and Anita and Ronald Wornick.