Who Among Us: A Jewish Experience at National Training
Guy Izhak Austrian, Congregation B’nai Jeshurun—New York, NY
Who Renews the Works of Creation Every Day?
Rabbi Paula Marcus, Temple Beth El—Aptos, CA
Commandedness: Finding Our Self-Interest in Mitzvot
Rabbi Ahud Sela, Temple Sinai—Los Angeles
Moral Conscience Or Absolute Duty?
Shmuly Yanklowitz, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School—New York, NY
Integrated Tikkun: Living a Prayerful Life
Rabbi Shawn Zevit, Jewish Reconstructionist Federation—Philadelphia, PA
Who Among Us: A Jewish Experience at National Training
Guy Izhak Austrian, Congregation B’nai Jeshurun—New York, NY
Streaming through the hallways of a Catholic seminary, ears ringing with echoing song, we felt that we were freeing ourselves from inaction and isolation. As we passed the statues of Jesus and Mary, the oil portraits of cardinals and archbishops, eight Jews and sixty Christians filled the stale air with a beautiful round: “Lekha dodi, netzeh ha’sadeh” – come, my beloved, let’s go out to the fields! And so we poured through the heavy doors and down the steps to stand together on the grass, near the trees, beneath the dusk and first stars. A Mexican-American Catholic from Los Angeles put his hand on my shoulder. A white Baptist from the Midwest bowed her head in prayer. A hush fell as the blue dusk surrounded us, and the Jews among us chanted Shema Yisrael.
This scene was part of a kabbalat Shabbat service organized by members of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (NYC) and Daria Jacobs-Velde, a student from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, at the July 10-17 National Training of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). As soon as we arrived at Mundelein Seminary, about 50 miles north of Chicago, the jokes began about the crosses on every doorknob and the “roommate” on the wall in each of our bedrooms. Yet we quickly found our way by holding two practices in tension: jumping headlong into the incredible diversity of our fellow trainees, and gathering quietly at least once a day for Jewish prayers.
The power of the one-to-one relational conversations became obvious as a way of engaging diversity. In one session, I watched as a young white woman from a wealthy suburb sat down to model a conversation with a black man from a housing project in DC. Absolutely tongue-tied, she couldn’t even put together a question. “Be curious!” shouted our trainer. “I know you’re dying to ask him about his life! Here he is!” The young woman felt that she had no right to ask questions, no right to hear the man’s story. And when they switched places, she didn’t know what to say, wondering whether her own story was worthwhile or could be powerful.
But around our lunch tables, across the seminary’s beautiful grounds, and in our class sessions, hundreds of one-to-one conversations happened between people who were deeply, hungrily curious about each other. Those of us from BJ experienced powerfully that people were interested in our stories, because we were both so different from and had so much in common with the others. The greatest similarity: our common need to make our cities more decent, just, and democratic places to live, and to make our religious congregations more dynamic, spiritually alive, and powerful.
Even as we reveled in that diversity and learned from it, we felt drawn together to each other to create Jewish space and Jewish practice in our time there. It was a strong confirmation of the notion that interfaith activity does not dilute one’s faith or identify: on the contrary, it drives all of us to be stronger and more knowledgeable about our own religion, so that we can speak on it and share it richly with others.
We gathered each morning, about six or seven of us, for shaharit, the Jewish morning service: choosing a psalm here and there, taking time to really focus on particular prayers, pausing to reflect and to relate the liturgy to the training and to our social justice work at home. During the Shema we really tried to listen to God and to each other, and during the Amidah we prayed for the strength to wrestle with another 12-hour day of training, hard questions, and new relationships. We took turns leading each morning, and for most of us it was our first time leading services in our lives—it felt as powerful a step up in our leadership development as any social justice action we had taken.
Though we didn’t have a minyan of ten, we were joined at times by a Baptist preacher from New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward, a Catholic deacon from wealthy Marin County in the Bay Area, and an Episcopalian priest from Chicago. They weren’t just curious. They mainly wanted, like us, to gather in quiet reflection and prayer.
On Sunday we all returned the favor and checked out High Mass in the seminary’s own cathedral. Dressed in green and white, the priests swung censers of smoke, chanted in medieval harmonies, and delicately wiped drops of red wine from golden goblets. “Just delightful,” thrilled the deacon from Marin County, “simply impeccable form!” Of course, we could only observe, couldn’t participate in a Christian service in the way that they had so easily prayed and joined in our shaharit and kabbalat Shabbat services. But we felt a surge of familiarity when one of the priests walked to the pulpit and read from Deuteronomy:
It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may practice it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may practice it?” No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it. (30:12-14)
As one of our trainers pointed out, training is a fine way for leaders to learn how to organize. But the real way to learn is by doing: research, action, and reflection, again and again. We returned from the training with a renewed commitment to action, a renewed appreciation for the power of diversity, and a renewed gratitude for the strength and depth of our own Jewish faith and tradition.
Guy Izhak Austrian works as Director of Social Action/Social Justice for Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (“BJ”) in New York City. BJ recently joined Manhattan Together, an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation.
Who Renews the Works of Creation Every Day?
Rabbi Paula Marcus, Temple Beth El—Aptos, CA
U’v’tuvo michadesh b’chol yom tamid ma’aseh v’reishit
And in goodness daily renews every day the ongoing works of creation.
I pray this blessing daily but I have often wondered what it really means. And why the present tense? Whenever I read the first section of Torah I can feel a sense of the Divine as Source of creation. But it wasn’t until I started to understand how we as human beings are asked to partner in this ongoing process of creation that I began to see why this blessing is written in the present tense.
Congregation-based community organizing has helped me actualize the Jewish call to partner with God in the ongoing work of creation. I first became involved in our congregational organizing over five years ago. Through our house meeting campaign and our one-to-one relational meeting campaign, members of our synagogue shared stories of their deepest worries about healthcare costs, affordable housing and community safety. In sharing these stories we deepened our sense of responsibility to each other, uncovered our common humanity and began to imagine what was required to take action based upon the Jewish imperative of transforming society. At the same time we began the process of building power with other faith communities outside the synagogue and learning the stories from their members.
I had a glimpse of what it meant to be agents of the divine in June 2005 when we organized our first affordable housing assembly. We filled our social hall with 300 people from our synagogue and other institutions involved in COPA (Communities Organized for Relational Power in Action), our local congregationl-based community-organizing network, which is an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation. This gathering, which included elected officials and developers, was a celebration of our success in building the power necessary to secure a new ordinance from the county Board of Supervisors that any rezoned land would include an increase from 15% to 40% affordable housing for low and moderate-income families. This victory was significant because less than 10% of Santa Cruz families earn enough income to buy a home.
The spirit in the room was faith in action. By gathering together within the walls of our synagogue to create new, affordable housing opportunities for our working families, we were reclaiming our religious call to re-create the world as it could be, the world as it should be.
I am learning that there is no separation between my prayer life and this kind of politics. This organizing is a spiritual practice.Now when I pray this blessing my faith is renewed for I have a vision of what it means to create the community I want to live in. May we all be blessed to recognize the divine in us so that we may remain committed to participating in the ongoing works of creation.
Rabbi Paula Marcus is the Associate Rabbi and Congregational Cantor at Temple Beth El, a Reform congregation in Aptos, CA. She has been organizing with Temple Beth El for five years, through COPA (Communities Organized for Relational Power in Action), an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation, and has served on COPA’s Regional Strategy Team.
Commandedness: Finding Our Self-Interest in Mitzvot
Rabbi Ahud Sela, Temple Sinai—Los Angeles
One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned through organizing has been that people are primarily motivated to act in the world out of self-interest. This lesson of self-interest really hit home for me in a teaching from Pirkei Avot.
Rebbi said in the beginning of the second chapter of Pirkei Avot, “Hevei Zahir BeMitzvah Kallah KeVaChamurah, She’Ein Atah Yode’a Matan Secharan Shel Mitzvot, Be diligent in the performance of minor mitzvot as with major mitzvot, for you do not know the reward for various mitzvot.
This saying simultaneously suggests that there are major and minor mitzvot, but that the distinction is purely artificial because we can never know how God rates mitzvot. What we as humans might consider a major mitzvah may actually be a minor mitzvah in God’s eyes, and vice versa. In the end, we have to treat all mitzvot equally and be diligent of our performance of all mitzvot. I see my role as a rabbi, in part, to help move my congregants away from a prioritization of mitzvot, to consider new ways of performing mitzvot, and to integrate the pieces of their Jewish lives, so that they are able to see the goal of all mitzvoth is “letaken olam bemalchut shaddai, to fix the world under God’s sovereignty”. The message, as I read it, from Pirkei Avot is that fixing failing public schools is as holy as praying. Saving the environment is fulfilling God’s will as much as teaching your children how to celebrate Shabbat. In other words, even though we have an obligation to perform all the mitzvot, we can begin our Jewish journeys with the mitzvoth that express an element of our self-interest, and from there move on to mitzvot may not be in our direct self interest, but fulfill our larger goal of bringing redemption to the world by healing the world.
My work in the world informs my davening and my davening informs my work in the world. I can not remain in the cocoon of my spiritual life and only pray for things to get better without actually doing anything. Nor can I work to solve the problems I face in my life without being centered spiritually through davening. I must work in the world and then center myself and focus my energy, and then go back and work in the world, and then center myself and focus my energy.
My keeping kosher informs my feeding the hungry and my feeding the hungry informs my kashrut. I can not focus only on the food I put in my mouth and ignore the mouths that go hungry. Nor can I feed the hungry while ignoring how I eat. I have to feed those in need because that is God’s will and then feed myself in the way that I believe is God’s will. These are never ending cycles and interweaving relationships because ultimately I want all Jews to have a relationship with all mitzvot, and to see Judaism as a tradition that informs every aspect of life.
The techniques of community organizing resonate powerfully with what I hope to achieve as a rabbi, with my desire to revitalize synagogue life, to listen and reach my congregants, to build relationships and trust, to integrate Jewish ritual and commitment to the broader society, and to identify and act on our self-interest in all arenas. In doing so, I believe that we can move forward in this critical juncture in Jewish history, stepping as entire communities towards redemption.
Rabbi Sela is a rabbi at Sinai Temple, a Conservative congregation in Los Angeles where he lives with his wife Alisha and their 3 year-old twins, Yael and Gavi. He is a recent graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary and has a Master’s Degree in Bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania. Rabbi Sela’s interests include Jewish bioethics, the connection between Judaism and the environment, the connection between Judaism and social justice, and the teachings of the Chassidic masters.
Moral Conscience Or Absolute Duty?
Shmuly Yanklowitz, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School—New York, NY
For years I have been inspired by the words of the great Talmudist and Jewish philosopher Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik in his magnum opus, “Halakhic Man”:
“There is nothing so physically and spiritually destructive as diverting one’s attention from this world. And, by contrast, how courageous is halakhic man who does not flee from this world, who does not seek to escape to some pure, supernal realm. Halakhic man craves to bring down the divine presence and holiness into the midst of space and time, into the midst of infinite, earthly existence,” (41).
In my spiritual activism and leadership, I receive tremendous inspiration from the mandate of Jewish commandments and of the eternally ringing voice of G-d from Sinai, and it is through the lens of the Jewish tradition that I view my deep commitment to synagogue community organizing. Being a traditional Jew does not for a moment exclude me from the larger pluralistic Jewish discourse or the American political discourse on social change and welfare. And thus, I am moved to engage in CBCO and its methodologies of one-to-one meetings, house meetings, power analyses, and actions.
While my social justice leadership—in organizing, service learning, education, and advocacy— has primarily been among the pluralistic Jewish community where we can flourish among the beautiful collage of Jewish diversity, as a future Orthodox Rabbi, I must admit that I find tremendous satisfaction and encouragement from facilitating this discourse in the halakhic community.
One of the great appeals for me when I joined the Orthodox community many years ago was the strong sense of unquestioned duty that members typically embrace. A discourse of law, absolute obligation, and concomitant ethics provides structure to a day of service to God, the Jewish people, and humanity. The questions are most often not “Is there a God?” or “Am I obligated?” but rather “How am I obligated?” and “How can I best fulfill these duties?”
It is preciously for this reason that I feel compelled to work for justice from within Orthodoxy. In a community that is often times so dedicated to text study and yet also sadly passive in social systemic change beyond the parochial, it is my conviction that our sense of duty for laws of ritual must apply with an equal force to laws and ethics of Kavod Habriot (honoring all people), Tzelim Elokim (serving with the consciousness that all people are created in the image of God), and V’ahavta L’reecha Kamocha (loving another like oneself). This conviction resonates in the practices of community organizing, and also underlies the work I’ve undertaken with several others to build the Orthodox Social Justice organization (Uri L’Tzedek). In our Tzedek Beit Midrash we explore the Bible, Talmud, Rabbis and philosophers to understand the tradition’s wisdom on social issues such as immigration and workers justice. But as Shammai teaches, “Make your study of Torah a fixed habit; Say little and do much,” and so our work seeks to build on the learning shifting from rigorous hermeneutics of texts and human narratives to the language of community organizing and social change.
There are times when my personal inspiration and sense of commitment to fighting injustice stems from the core existential self of my raw humanity. Ideally that fire would always be lit, but I feel blessed that on the days when my conscience simply isn’t enough to move me to respond to the call of duty that there is a growing Modern Orthodox community that challenges, supports, and inspires me to engage in this work. At the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School (YCT), I am surrounded by inspirational peers who are trained by JFSJ in community organizing and who are seeking to walk in God’s ways by pursuing justice wherever we are called as Rabbis and as humans to act.
Rabbi Soloveitchik later wrote, “The actualization of the ideals of justice and righteousness is the pillar of fire which halakhic man follows, when he, as a rabbi and teacher in Israel, serves his community,” (91). It is my dream and mission to build my rabbinate around fighting for justice for all people.
Shmuly Yanklowitz completed his Masters at HARVARD University in Human Development and Psychology. He is currently a second year rabbinical student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, completing a second Masters at Yeshiva University in Jewish Philosophy, and is working on a PHD at Columbia University in Developmental Psychology. He is also a Wexner Graduate Fellow and the Founder and Director of Uri L’Tzedek (The Orthodox Social Justice Organization).
Integrated Tikkun: Living a Prayerful Life
Rabbi Shawn Zevit, Jewish Reconstructionist Federation—Philadelphia, PA
What of prayer and social justice? I experience the contemplative or prayerful moments and practices of our tradition as cut from the same cloth as taking action or advocating for social justice in our world. This is what the Jewish path asks of me in my understanding. Before the term tikkun olam emerged in the 1960's from the larger Jewish spiritual understanding of tikkun, coming to mean social justice or repair of the world, tikkun was understood as tikkun hanefesh (the individual soul or atzmi- myself) and tikkun olam (the rebalancing or repairing of the world at large).
Prayer is the key way for me to live this holistic and integrational approach to life. So many concepts of justice, compassion, loving each other, loving myself, equity, wisdom, restoring fairness and right leadership, and many more, are what are expressed repeatedly in our Divine dialogue of prayer. When I pray I feel challenged to connect with and assess how I am living the values I espouse and say I hold dear. Am I?
When I help organize communities, synagogues or organizations to do the work of tikkun, I see my work as prayerful actions in the world, even making sure to offer a reflection, pause to center my thoughts, breathe into any anxiety or undue urgency that might be counter productive to the action I am about to take. The integrated approach to tikkun invites me to ask- what are my motivations, my own brokenness that is playing out in my attempts to "repair the world" and how am I going about this with attention to physical, emotional, mindful and spiritual states. Am I causing harm in relationships, seeing people as expendable on the road to a just cause? Am I ruining my own health and well-being in the way I am pursuing tikkun, thus reducing my effectiveness and longevity in doing the work of tikkun.
The content and process of prayer (in Hebrew, t'fillah" from the ancient Hebrew "to judge or discern within and beyond oneself), whether it is in formal liturgy, meditation, chant, yoga, or opening up with gratitude to being alive, is an act of tikkun in the world. Without prayer I can start to believe that I alone am the source and judge of what is a right course of action. Who is my guide? What are the set of ultimate values that are directing and helping me to prioritize my actions. As our tradition suggests, am I pursuing justice justly or unjustly? Prayer holds me to the ground of my own being and does not let me escape the noise of my own soul and I find, opens my heart more to my work in the world with others and the planet.
In the Davenning Leaders' Training Institute that I co-direct with Rabbi Marcia Prager at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, we work tirelessly for 4 weeks over two years to understand and engage with the deep structure of our liturgy and the meaning and function of prayer in our lives. At the same time we base this on building a prayerful community out of which prayer arises, not words that are to be memorized separate from caring relationships and issues of sustainability and justice around and between us. The stronger the bonds of community informed by core Jewish values and conscious compassionate behavior between participants in relationship to the environment we are part of, the deeper and more meaningful the prayers become.
Without taking our prayers out of the sanctuary into the streets we risk seeking comfort and escape from the cries around us. Sometimes I need a rest from all the suffering and pain I see and interact with daily on the road to trying to help alleviate that very suffering. But staying too long in the internal world can also be an escape. That is why ultimately as all worship ends in Aleynu- it is upon us "li'takeyn olam b'malchut Shaddai". To repair the world for God's presence, however we experience that Presence, to permeate everywhere. A spiritual discipline and regular prayer life aims to inspire and ignite within us the very sense of communal responsibility so that our prayers become activist stances- connecting us to our own hearts and values, to all life around us. To live this integrative approach is my prayer for all of us- with our hearts and our feet marching together for the repair of all the worlds.
Rabbi Shawn Zevit is an author, recording artist, consultant, spiritual director, teacher and Director of Outreach and Tikkun Olam for the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation. He is also co-director of the Davenning Leader's Training Institute, a two year program training leaders to
build prayerful and deeply relational faith communities in which prayer is a dynamic force for change.