Monthly Archives: October 2010

When the new issue of Jewish Review of Book came out, a friend emailed me the Landes review of Green and asked: Is this frum screed any different than the worst of the dogmatic pronouncements from YU polemicists?

Here is the article by Landes. Last Trumpet at Jewschool has published a response by Green.

To the editor:

Rabbi Daniel Landes’ da’ mah she-tashiv (“Know what to answer the heretic”) approach to my Radical Judaism, protecting innocents from “the dangers lurking in the rhetoric that Green and like-minded thinkers employ,” represents a theological bankruptcy lurking in traditional Jewish circles. The forces of religion fought two great battles in the twentieth century, one against evolution and the other, taken more seriously by Jews, against Biblical criticism. It lost them both, quite decisively. These defeats, plus the Holocaust, are real parts of the baggage that any intellectually honest Jewish theology must confront. My book is an attempt to create a viable Judaism in the face of those realities. Landes may choose to live in a closed circle that pretends these uncomfortable facts do not exist, continuing to play by the old theological rules. For Jews living outside those circles, such an approach does not work. He should know; many of his students are among them.

Who is the “God of Israel” Landes is so proud to champion? The God of Numbers 31, telling Moses to slaughter the Midianites? The “compassionate Father” of our rabbinic prayers? Would Landes accept the God of Maimonides’ Guide as “the God of Israel?” Or the God of the Zohar? The longest single chapter of my book is precisely about the evolution of our understanding of God, a process that has never ended. Landes passes over the obvious evolution and variety of Jewish views of God as though they did not exist. But a freezing of theological thought in the face of contemporary challenges is precisely what we do not need. It is just as threatening to living Judaism as is the freezing of halakhah.

Indeed Mordecai Kaplan understood that much of Judaism’s vigor lay in its ability to grow and evolve. But so did Rav Kook, whose theological writing has always attracted me more than Kaplan’s. I am amused that Landes finds Kaplan to be my “hidden master” at this late point in my career. Where was he when I could have used him to shore up my Kaplanian credentials? While Kaplan’s style may at times be trying, to dismiss his theology as simply “boring” is beneath the dignity of response. Kaplan at least tells you openly and honestly what he means by “God.” I respect this and try to do the same. In some areas the divergence between us may be more in affect than in substance. But in matters of the heart that makes all the difference.

The nasty attack on Jewish Renewal is also unworthy of Landes. He picks out my comment on the seventh commandment (I say clearly that I am reading the ten as a guide for teachers) to remind his readers of the sexual misdeeds of some leaders in that movement. I suggest he beware of calling the kettle black. I have not seen that the high fences of halakhah have been terribly successful of late at helping some Orthodox teachers to defeat temptation, either sexual or financial.

The high point of my annoyance is Landes’ claim that I offer “no doctrine of ahavat Yisrael.” This book is written entirely in the spirit of love for both Judaism and Jews. Why else would I make the effort? Landes is unhappy that I admit openly my deep alienation from “the narrowly and triumphally religious” within our community. Honesty can sting. My claim to be “a religious Jew but a secular Zionist” is also intentionally distorted for polemical purposes. I meant simply that I remain committed to the vision of a Jewish and democratic state (There – I have signed my loyalty oath!) while according it no messianic significance. Has that gotten too hard to understand?

Landes lines up with the late Sam Dresner and others in expressing an overweaning fear of anything that smacks of pantheism, celebrating God within nature, or an underlying sense of universal religiosity. But it is precisely this sort of religion that I believe humanity most urgently needs in this century, when our collective survival as a species is so threatened. I am here to teach a Jewish version of it, one relying deeply on our own sources and bearing our values, but without making an exclusive truth claim for Judaism. I rejoice that the deepest religious truths are known to men and women of many cultures, clothed in the garments of both east and west. See Malachai 1:11.

Mostly I am saddened and disappointed that Landes reads me this way. He is, after all, the director of Pardes Institute. Surely that worthy institution was so-named by its founders for the association of “pardes” with the multiple ways in which Jewish sources can be read and interpreted. It has claimed for decades to champion intellectual pluralism under the cloak of behavioral conformity. Heresy hunting does not befit its leader.

Arthur Green

In the 1960’s, Tom Lehrer made fun of National Brotherhood Week, the national week from the 1940’s to the 1960’s that affirmed the unity of mankind.

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Moslems
And everybody hates the Jews

But during National Brotherhood Week
National Brotherhood Week
It’s National Everyone-Smile-At-
One-Another-hood Week

This week I received the universalism pitch three times. First from the Chief Rabbinate office, then from Chancellor Arnold Eisen, and finally at the Council of Centers of Jewish-Christian Relations conference. Despite all the mockery, National Brotherhood Week allowed Jews and Catholics to enter white Protestant America. Now, there is a perceived need to stop the demonization of the other. In all three cases the appeal was not to theology or specific commonalities, rather the universalism in which we are all brothers of a common Father in Heaven.

The first text I received was by Oded Wiener is the Director General and coordinates interfaith dialogue for the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. (He also writes Metzger’s successful speeches.) We need to emphasize that all humans are in the image of God and that we need interpersonal dialogue to end violence. Hmm.. seems to be responding to many major rabbis in Israel who have been racist and denying human dignity to non-Jews.

A world without violence: religions and cultures in dialogue
by Oded Wiener 14 October 2010

Beyond the quest for a better world, one without violence, there is a common element that unites us all – the belief in one G-d. It is important to understand that man, who was created in the image of G-d, is not a wild, independent creation, who cannot be subjected to restrictions or criticism. This is certainly not the case. Man is continuously accountable – first and foremost to the Creator, who watches his actions and both demands and expects that he will act appropriately in all areas of life.

What is the significance of man being created in “G-d’s image”? The meaning is that in every man one can see a semblance of the Creator… And for the sake of peace among men, that one should not say to his fellow, “My father is greater than yours”.. . Again, the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He, manifests itself in the fact that man stamps out many coins with one seal, and they are all alike, but the King, the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, stamped each man with the seal of Adam, and not one of them is like his fellow.”… These words are of great importance and reflect man’s commitment to behave in a way which respects the image and spirit of G-d within him, and the image and spirit of G-d in his fellow man– regardless of his religion or views, nationality or his people of origin.

The use of violence and force by a person of faith is in clear contradiction to the ways of G-d and undermines the ideological basis in the name of which that person is exercising violence.

Dialogue is the torch that must be carried in pride, without fear. It is no secret that on each side there is an opposition that challenges dialogue between religious and spiritual leaders and which, in extreme cases, is coupled with threats or efforts to condemn and marginalize those who engage in it… For this exact reason religious leaders ought to ask themselves – in light of the ignorance regarding the traditions and religion of other nations, which is often the catalyst for violence – how can they encourage dialogue, educate, teach, influence, and bring people closer together?

Full Version Here.

The second received speech was by Chancellor Eisen. He seems to have given several variants of it in the last few weeks. He gave it in the mid-west as “A Jewish Theology of Pluralism.” In that version he opened with the sharp statement the energy for dialogue and interaction between faiths is usually promoted by a crisis, a necessity, or an urgency. The purpose of such a theology is not to achieve sameness. And an effective theology of religious pluralism must not start with Moses or Abraham. It must start with Adam, the ancestry of all humans. Eisen’s NY version sought commonality with Islam through the common shared Abraham covenant of circumcision.

Arnold Eisen Chancellor, The Jewish Theological Seminary, October 24, 2010
The moderates of all faiths have to talk often and well, lest the extremists carry the day. The stakes of not doing so are simply too high to countenance.
But there is another, no less important, imperative to dialogue. It stems from the texts and practices that believers like me hold sacred and a notion of covenant with God and community that sees these bonds as precious vehicles to the service of something larger and higher than ourselves.
Jewish Sages have always made much of the fact that the Torah begins with Adam and Eve, not with Abraham or Moses. After the Flood, humanity begins again with Noah and his children, only one of whom is the ancestor of Israel. Why? So that no one can claim purer blood than anyone else; so that all of us know that we all, without exception, are created in God’s image and act on that knowledge. God makes a covenant with all “children of Noah” 10 generations before the covenant with Abraham.
The Torah is clearly interested in both of the sons of Abraham and wants its readers to be concerned with them as well… Abraham then inscribes the mark of the covenant on himself and his firstborn son, Ishmael, who is thirteen at the time. Isaac is not yet born. The result of the story, and its variant in the Quran, is that Jews share the sign of the covenant from the very outset with another people, another faith.
Full Version Here.

The third time was at the CCJR conference, in which theologian Prof Terrence Tilley, Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Professor of Catholic Theology, dealt with the contradiction between the recognition by the Catholic Church of Judaism as a revelation and their own sense of the specialness of the Church. He answer to the tension is not to solve it theologically but to dissolve it logically and practically.

Tilley cited the pluralism of Sacks in which the universalism of Adam plays itself out in particularity. Tilley said focus on the universalism since according to Sacks, after Babel we have no ability to evaluate others anymore. Even the [Adamite] Noahide laws can only be know in, and through, the particularity of other faiths. We have no God’s eye perspective to judge others in their particularity. Hence, if it is possible according to epistemological pluralists like Sacks that we have to work on the universal level and cannot enter truth claims, then the contradiction is not a contradiction.

Hilary Putnam has a similar reading of Sacks in an obscure volume. But Putnam frames it according his thinking that we have [universal] value without [particular] fact. Hilary Putnam, “Monotheism and Humanism.” Humanity before God, ed. William Schweiker, Michael A. Johnson, and Kevin Jung (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 19-30.

In these three cases, they all turned to Adam as a commonality. They seem less theological and more practical. When you have two groups that are in conflict, the practical first step is to seek a universal in order to create a safe space and establish at least some commonality. If human brotherhood seemed silly in the 1960’s – but it served us well. Can these simple statements serve us equally as well? Has there been so much demonizing with patronizing tolerance that we need a core sense of humanity?

This past Shabbat, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein held a question and answer session in Teaneck. The questions were indicative of where the community is at right now, while the answers led the older members of the audience to sense their own mortality.

The four questions asked were:
1] After all the effort put into day school education, we are losing members of our community- some of them to the right but many more to the left by their not continuing on the path of modern Orthodoxy. What are your thoughts?
2] How should we relate to Homosexuality? Is it a choice or natural orientation? Do we accept them as synagogue members? Enroll their kids in day school? Welcome them into the community?
3] Could we hear your thoughts on women rabbis or women serving in a public position?
4] Why are there so few religious Zionist leaders who defend democracy today?
They offer a good sense of what is bothering the community right now.

Very Short versions of the answers are as follows:
1] Defection from the community- This is not a new phenomena. There were places in Europe where 80% of the youth stopped keeping Shabbat. [AB- There were places that had 95% defection.] It was tough in the 1920’s and 1930’s. It was tough in the 1950’s. And even in the 1970’s Peter Berger would not have envisioned the rise of yeshivot and observance. Back in the 1950’s almost no one had a Sukkah, today everyone in Teaneck has a sukkah.
There is no need to question the money spent on day schools since that is our spiritual goal, our axiology, our formative activity. What else would we build and spend our money on?

2] He did not grasp the first part of the question at first. Rabbi Nati Helfgott, who drafted the Statement of Principle and was named one of the Forward’s 50 last week, was in the first row reformulated the question. The answer was formulated a tension between minimizing the issue by considering the person halakhic with an idiosyncrasy and on the other hand letting this aspect of their life override our ability to see their commitment to learning and a halakhic life. (Someone mentioned to me how 15 years ago even this position would have been rare in the community).

3] He did not want to use analogous thinking to other cases, if a woman cannot be A or B then she cannot be a rabbi. We have to appreciate everything she can do like teach and we have to appreciate the inherent virtue of being conservative in our judgment.

4] In 1952, in the first elections in Israel, the religious party went from those who God forefend davened in shorts to the Agudah and the gedolim supported it. More 1950’s stories.

Immediate reaction to those I spoke to: Oy we are getting old. I remember Rav Aharon when he gave me my bechinah in 1974. He was so strong and robust., now he is frail. And Oy, I use 1970’s stories with my college age kids the way Rav Aharon starts everything with a early 1950’s story.

Some (many?) were frustrated with the answers as not addressing the community. And happily, a HS senior reacted to the talk with “It was really good.” He gave subtle answers framing the issues in an intelligent way and showing how to think critically about the topic. He showed both sides on the issues. But for the passage of time, I think many of the old timer would have given the same answer, but they cannot go back again.
(If you were there and think I did not get the details correct, then email with corrections.)

Even academics must eventually return books to the library. I have had out for several years the following title and the library wants it back.

Andrew Beaujon , Body piercing saved my life: inside the phenomenon of Christian rock Da Capo Press (2006)
As a rock critic his goal was to review Christian rock, but as a non-fiction author he sought to explain the paradox or tension between the amoral world of rock and the Christian version of it.

From The Blurb

A look at some of the colorful figures who have transformed the Christian rock scene into a flourishing industry. A non-Christian, but a devoted fan of music and a senior contributing writer for Spin..Never condescending to his subjects, the author appears to hold a genuine curiosity as to what makes Christian rockers tick, and they in turn welcome his deliberately naive inquiries, making for a refreshingly unbiased view of a subject that many jaded journalists would find easy to mock.

Everyone in the world of Christian rock is connected to anti-religious rock more than the average person, yet the believers see themselves as more pure than those Christians who are religious but listen to ordinary music. What does it mean to situate one’s religion in the raunchiest part of culture? He describes a culture that is indebted to MTV and the internet, cheers for red meat, and has pop culture references to Hooters, Paris Hilton and reality TV. Preachers learn their sermon timing from stand –up comediennes like Eddie Murphy. How is this Christian?

The parallel to the Christian rock youth movements are the kiruv organizations that based culturally on videos, songs, pop-culture- offer trips to Great Adventure- offer classes in drumming and karate- and offer much of the same raunchiness. Torah study and mizvot are not the focus, rather personal states like commitment, belief, and acceptance of Torah as a reedom from doubt.

Andrew Beaujon in his interview finds that the preachers of rock declare: “We preach in an un-Christian place,” America is a non-religious country. The youth care about culture, music, TV and “we need to be conversant.” He finds an implicit dualism –“the world” is part for one’s religious life and one need to put the world aside. The world is sin and temptation. Second, there is the dualism in each person. People have a sinful nature, so we have to wean them away from it.
How much of kiruv reconnection to Judaism is weaning them away from the evil outside world? And how much is a support group knowing that people sin and need to group support of a shabbaton not to sin? What is the anthropology of outreach?

In addition, is it related to the mainstream? To be technical for a moment, Durkheim distinguishes between group and grid organization. In group organization, the religious moment is the separation from the non-religious world-the impure. Group identity is formed by excluding things. Grid organization is the hierarchal arrangement based on knowledge and observance. The religious goals for a grid arrangement are the aspirations of making oneself a scholar or scrupulous within one’s community. If people are lax within a grid community, then one needs for them to re-ascend the grid through Torah study and scrupulousness. Blaming the outside world would not work for a slid down the grid. In contrast, youth movement kiruv is about group identify and conveying a sense of difference from the outside? For Durkheim, group activities like discussing pop-culture or enthusiasm does not and cannot lead to grid strictness in observance.

Beaujon points out that personal testimonies are the secret currency of evangelicalism” Should we use hip-hop? Answer — Can and did it save anyone? One can use anything no matter how raunchy if you think it will lead to commitment. What are the criteria for integrating pop-culture into Kiruv? How do we know hip-hop is good to use? It works.
Christian rock preaches not to curse, but Beaujon notes that some of the successful preachers curse for shock value. The preacher shows he is cool by doing it. It somehow teaches that even though one has rejected pop culture, yet one is still part of it. Needless to say, mainstream preachers neither have to tell their congregants not to swear like a rapper, nor would they even violate it to be cool. Christian Rock is a religiosity situated in the simultaneous acceptance and rejection of pop-culture.

Beaujon deal with the case of second generation Evangelical kids. They say they have been saved and gained much through Christian rock even though they were already raised in a religious home and have done little tangible in the year to repent or change their ways. They don’t have more of any criteria of observance or attendance. Beaujon claims that since the second generation does not really want more demands for alteration of behavior, therefore those raised in religious homes have anger and resentment because they cannot get the euphoria and freedom from doubt. (They are lots of Jewish parallels here).

In the world of Christian rock, they preach abstinence by talking about sex often and decrying the immoral sex on TV. (Compare the endless Jewish sessions on negiah.) When it comes to statistics, those attracted to Evangelical chastity have the highest unwed mother rate (think Bristol Palin). The lowest rate are those studious types who prefer science fairs and are working to get into competitive programs. (On the Jewish side, getting someone turned onto serious learning (or math team) changes his life more than decrying secular values.)

Beaujon compares Christian Rock to jam bands. The attraction is not the artistry but the ability to tap into a sense of freedom and adventure. They have a sense of swagger, the fun of winging it, heartfelt muddled beliefs and the promise of self-guided education. Beaujon thinks that Americans try on identities and they need maps to navigate the muddledness of life. Christain music offers a chance to try on identities and boundaries.

Bono who is always speaking about his Christian faith is not the model. Beaujon points out, U2 are banned because of their “doubting” lyrics – and Bono’s criticism of grasping American tele-evangelists. Though they will play cover versions of their songs.

The mainstream Evangelical magazine Christianity Today published a review of the book in which the author wanted not to like Christian rock since it does not adhere to the mainstream straight world of the heartland church. They don’t want believers with spike wristbands. The magazine questions the very religiosity of the bands and these preachers. If you spend all your time in the music world, then you may be more non-Christian than you think. (Think of what a mainstream rabbi would say about a kiruv jam band.)

Show me an evangelical between the ages of 15 and 50, and I’ll show you an evangelical who can tell this story (or something much like it): I used to listen to secular music, then I discarded it all and listened only to Christian music. Then I realized I didn’t like much Christian music, so I slowly started listening to secular music again
It doesn’t take Beaujon long to note Christian rock’s tortured existence. Not only does the audience choose it as an oft-reluctant alternative to mainstream music, but many Christian musicians are themselves forever sorting out their own relationship to the non-Christian artists they esteem, the non-Christian listeners they covet, and the non-Christian labels with whom they’d like to sign.
At the Pedro show at Cornerstone, the central question—for Beaujon and the thousands of packed-in teenagers, if not for Bazan—is whether Bazan will flaunt the festival’s unwritten ban against curse words and include his lyrical f-bombs. He does, the audience squeals, and Beaujon marvels at how evangelical kids can love someone who has rejected their culture:
Which raises a question, one that Beaujon’s project and the entire Christian music industry begs: What makes music Christian? Is it the mission statement of the labels? The theological content of the lyrics? The faith of the musicians or producers? The faith of the listeners? The profit margins devoted to the poor? Surely none of the above, for all exist on a sliding scale….
Well—here’s a fool’s axiom: Both inside the parallel universe of Christian music and in every other universe, the only one who can make music Christian is Christ

Substitute the word Torah in the last sentence. Mission, outreach, faith, dedication, commitment are all second to Torah.

The book also opens up the question of the quality of religious culture. We tend not to have a frame of reference for judging religious art or thought. We accept kitch and don’t compare them to the broader world. In this Beaujon is indebted to the 1981 classic by Franky Schaffer, Addicted to Mediocrity: Contemporary Christians and the Art. In this work, Schaffer asked: we don’t hire builders, accountants, or doctors just because they are Christian, so why do we do this in art and thought? (No shortage of Jewish parallels.)

My interest here is how culture and relgion interact, specifically the rle of pop culture in Judaism. I am not overly interested in discussing kiruv.

Attn Wingnuts: This is not an attack on Kiruv. And there are many different organizations and changes over time, therefore I dont need your story globalized. I did not give Jewish specifics because my emphasis was on Beaujon.

There is a new book by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell called AMERICAN GRACE: How Religion Divides and Unites Us 673 pp. Simon & Schuster. $30. The book is not earth shattering but it will be standard work that needs to be footnoted and it will be the accepted starting point for discussions.

Putnam whose prior work Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community – showed the breakdown of social networks in the United States. We don’t have bowling leagues, Moose lodges, synagogue men’s clubs, or continuous community activities compared to prior decades. (Anyone dealing with the rise of the new online social networks would need to use this as a base.)

In this new book, Putnam together with Campbell argue that we went from the loss of the religion in the 1960’s, the return in the 1980’s, and then the reaction against the repressiveness in the late 1990’s by people claiming to be atheist or post-evangelical. None of this is new to readers of this blog.

Second, They show that increase in social contact with any group leads to an acceptance into one’s social network. Evangelicals, Catholics, and Jews each now accept each other and assume the others are all going to heaven.

Along the way they gather much of the tidbits about religious life in the US we know from the various surveys. Jews are the most accepted of any group and that most people are both somewhat feminist and religious. (The ADL fleeced American Jewry out of 54 million last year by arguing for the virulent Antisemitism everywhere..) I have included various citations from the NYT review and the review by Peter Steinfels.

There are may other reviews out there but I have also included an interview with Putnam by Albert Mohler the conservative Baptist. It is interesting to show how a conservative Evangelical deals with social science data, especially the fact that his own positions have driven people away. This is interesting because Centrist orthodoxy does not usually allow social data to interfere with ideology.

America has experienced three seismic shocks, say Robert Putnam and David Campbell. In the 1960s religious observance plummeted. Then, in the 1970s and 1980s a conservative reaction produced the rise of evangelicalism and the Religious Right. Since the 1990s, however, young people, turned off by that linkage between faith and conservative politics, have abandoned organized religion entirely. The result: growing polarization.

That reaction to “the long Sixties” has been extensively analyzed. Less so the second great aftershock, the rise of the “nones” after 1990 when young people, in particular, began rejecting identification with any religion, though not necessarily with a variety of religious beliefs and practices. More and more young Americans, according to polls, came to view religion as “judgmental, homophobic, hypocritical, and too political,” overly focused on rules rather than spirituality.

“The Richter rating of this second aftershock is greater than that of the first aftershock and rivals that of the powerful original quake of the Sixties,” Putnam and Campbell write.
Putnam and Campbell write, “By the 2000s, how religious a person is had become more important as a political dividing line than which denomination he or she belonged to.”

Here the authors explain the observation they started the book with: America’s religious diversity hasn’t generally involved much intolerance. Indeed, believers seem willing to bend basic doctrines in the name of interfaith amity. Most Christians, even most evangelical Christians, ¬believe that non-Christians can go to heaven, notwithstanding the New Testament’s repeated assertions that Christ is the only path to the Kingdom of God.

The authors’ explanation for this bigheartedness is common-sensical: “Most Americans are intimately acquainted with people of other faiths.” Americans have, on average, at least two friends who don’t share their faith, and at least one ¬extended-family member who fits that description. And who wants to tell friends or relatives that they’re going to hell — or even believe that a friend or relative is going to hell? More broadly: getting to know an adherent of an otherwise alien faith tends to humanize the aliens.

They conducted surveys with the same large pool of people in consecutive years and tracked changes in both social milieus and attitudes. They conclude, for instance, that gaining an evangelical friend leads to a warmer assessment of evangelicals — by seven degrees on a “feeling thermometer,” to be exact — and gaining a non¬religious friend brings four degrees of added warmth toward the nonreligious.

“Most Americans today are religious feminists.”
Jews are the most broadly popular religious group in America today.

A whopping 89 percent of Americans believe that heaven is not reserved for those who share their religious faith.

Americans are reluctant to claim that they have a monopoly on truth.”

The discussion between Putnam and Mohler is useful for Orthodoxy. If we apply Putnam’s conclusions to orthodox Judaism then the new skeptics, the post-orthodox, and the fault lines in the community are all due to strong political rabbinical control in which rabbis over extending their bounds by banning Slifkin or Avi Weiss. The turn to right wing politics in both American and Israeli politics was not good for keeping people. Putnam argues that this has not been a secularization trend but a break from the conjunction of religion and politics. The young still like relgion just not the political form in which it was presented. Putnam has the data that this change away from the institutional structures will be as great as the 1960’s losses. (I have been working that assumption with that since this blog started but now I have a footnote.)

Putnam thinks that a successful religious leader is likely to arise who could combine a liberal framework with Evangelical relgion- getting the best of both worlds. Think of combining the Torah and spirituality of Orthodoxy with an open political- social base. The conservative Evangelical Mohler acknowledges that there is wisdom in sociology but then clergy need to learn what to do with the data. Evangelicals should not jump to become judgmental before they have the understanding of what is actually going on in the field.

Mohler askes: if this is true, then what does the future of mission look like? Mohler then hems and haws about what to do with this and states that he is based on the text of the bible and must separate the true message from what may have not been expedient. But he cannot go much further than this.

Putnam: Well you know it’s interesting, if you just read the raw data you have to say we’re in a period, and have been for the last twenty years, of a sharply increasing secularization mostly because the younger generation, unlike previous younger generations, have just stepped sharply away from organized religion. And many people, especially many people on the secular side think of this as finally America’s becoming a secular nation. I actually don’t think that’s quite right.

Many of these young people in their private beliefs have quite conventional religious beliefs. I think they’ve been very turned off, as I said, by the conjunction of politics and religion.. they’ve essentially said well if that’s all religion is about is just about republican and conservative politics that’s not me, I’m out of here.

And if you ask me, I bet you quite a bit that over the next ten, fifteen, twenty years, some successful religious entrepreneurs, people who want to save a lot more souls will be looking at that pool saying, I think I know the kind of religion that would be attractive to them. It would be, it might very well have a lot of the accouterments and liturgy and so on of evangelical religion.

Mohler: One of the most important acts of intellectual stewardship is to learn how to read a book. And as I often say to my students we need to read a book for all it’s worth. And that means putting into context, understanding it’s purpose, being able to judge its credibility, and then considering what kind of intellectual impact it should have on our lives and our thinking…Now we’re going to be looking at this and inevitably evangelical Christians are going to be reading it with a lens, a focus, that is intensely and unapologetically theological, that’s really important, that’s where we have to begin, and that’s where we have to end. But we need to read a work of sociology as a work of sociology. So phenomenology attempts not to make a value judgment of whether people are right or wrong, but simply to come to an accurate understanding of what they believe and why it matters.

I think the genius of this work and where evangelicals are going to find an awful lot of fodder for thought is in the second aftershock

But what Putnam and Campbell come back to demonstrate is that there was another aftershock that began in the 1990’s a response not to the sixties but to that second aftershock. These were folks who said we don’t like the way that conservative Christians would take this country. And indeed, we don’t like what we hear. And he points out some things that evangelicals really need to pay attention to. For instance, he suggests that the growth in evangelical momentum ended in the 1990’s and thus for a period that could be as long as twenty years, we have been in an era of evangelical retreat.

How do we communicate our message? How do we tell people the truth in a way that is hearable and in way that is understandable? Did you notice when he talks about the religious predictor factor of voting.

He said something that I never heard said by a scholar in this field of inquiry before. He said that they determined that when an individual had an incommensurate set of positions with religious beliefs on one hand and political convictions on the other, it was not the case that the religious convictions would drive a change in the political positions. Instead it turns out that the political positions drive a change in the theological worldview. Now for evangelical Christians that comes as an explosive bomb. This is something that needs to get our attention immediately.

A theological lens, we have to look at it with a missiological lens. We have to look at it first of all as Christians and come to understand that when we look at this kind of data it’s telling us what is, not what ought to be. We gain out understanding of what ought to be and what ought to be believed first and foremost from the bible. We’re a people of the book, and so if we’re looking for what to believe we don’t look to this data we indeed look to the word of God. We also look at it with a theological worldview that given our last conversation of the issue about whether it’s the political position that draws the theological conviction or vice versa , we’re the people who know it better be the theological and biblical conviction that drives all the rest.

Thoughts?

Continued from Part I- here.

Beck notes that in the era of cosmopolitanism – liberal tolerance that keeps religion out is not the model anymore. Religion is back, but we want it to be moderate enough not to hurt anyone. Beck notes that many in each faith have to learn to civilize themselves, abjure violence, and commit to mutual tolerance.

Beck notes how the Pope functions as an NGO and that the pope was able to criticize Bush in the name of religion for supporting war and sweatshops. Rabbi Sacks is serving some of the same function on a smaller scale.

Beck offers five models for a more civilized religion. He seems to appreciate all of them and encourages all of them.

1. The first is based on Thoreau, an acceptance of religious civil disobedience. Social action disagreements as positive because the disagreements overcome depersonalization and denationalization.

2. His second is the market model, we need to get along to make money.

3. Third is Hans Kung’s idea world ethos- we all accept of the Golden Rule and each religion should stress the Golden rule within their relgion.

4. Fourth, is Gandhi’s religious cosmopolitanism- a combination of syncretism and universal rights and universal reason over ethnicity.

5. Finally, Jurgen Habermas has argued to let each religion argue in the public sphere based on public discourse. It creates a religiously neutral state in which no religion is enfranchised.

I would add to this that Zygmunt Bauman thinks in an era of “willful ignorance” we need at least a minimum of Levinas’ concern with the other. We turn our faces from atrocities around the globe or that our products are made in sweatshops. Tzvetan Todorov thinks we need to stress a positive humanism toward others, knowing full well the fragility of it all. And interfaith encounters are on the upswing around the world as a means of moderation and civilization since much of the intolerance is religious based.

One of Beck’s new points is his observation of the rise of reflexive fundamentalism. In the new cosmopolitan age, fundamentalisms clash in violent ways different than the traditional versions. What are the characteristics of the new reflexiveness.

1. There is a rediscovery of unquestioning acceptance of relgion. The more religion the less self-reflexive questioning in the classroom. For Beck it functions like a strong brand allegiance.

2. There is a totalitarian immediacy of God. Believers offer submission to whatever variant is popular in order to gain a direct line. They replace objective world with the subjective world, and use the language of scientific rationality for religious certainty.

3. There is demonization of believers in other faiths

4. Finally, globalization allows a transnational network and operation

To Beck, I would add Arjun Appadurai’s observations that now we can be tolerate where we live and project out intolerance on a homeland that we visit regularly. His example is Hindu’s who are tolerant in the US and project intolerance onto Kashmir. Appadurai also notes our ability to have small televised flashpoints like Kashmir or Hebron that allow an unnatural focus. He also notes the breakdown of nationalism has lead to a fear of minorities, in which he observes that the “Fear of small numbers” causes a demonization.

Beck wishes us to replace truth with peace. (190-194)
1. Modernity advocated toleration of religion of those I disagree with. They are wrong but I tolerate them. For Beck, this requires a state to enforce it. It needs governmental programs.

2. Another option is to return to the double religion of masses and elite. The elite are taught a universalism- like in the older days- and the masses are left alone. Think Plato, Averroes, or Vivekananda.

3. We should return to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing parable of the ring from Nathan the Wise. We avoid all discussion of absolute truth in the name of peace. We live as if there is no true ring.

4. We should accept God as mediator. To think that God is greater than any one religion, so we cannot totalize our religion. (Rabbi Sacks has this one) Create universalist interfaith leaders.

5. Advocate grassroots co-operation as a form of religious secularism. Encourage people to separate out good works and making the world a better place from dogma. Get people to help one another on economics or climate despite the religious differences.

There will not be a return to people living secular lives in the public sphere.

EJ in his comment on the first post already perceptively noted how hard this will be for Haredim. He also noted the potential reframing for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Someplace in my online classes on the Varieties of Modern Orthodoxy, I mentioned that I would like to give a similar class on the Conservative movement. Well, someone who listened to the series invited me recently to give the talk. So I was looking at some recent Conservative religious thought and here are some thoughts, specifically relating to Orthodox matters. They are not the content of my talk – they are are observations that loop back to things discussed here. These thoughts are impressions of an outsider and maybe over generalized.

For those who want some decent reading of where things are at and going- here are some good links. Arnold Eisen’s March 2010 vision for the movement, an assortments of current pulpit rabbis giving their important sermons (lots of good stuff in there), and the 2007 short visions for the movement.

The first thing I noticed is that the phrase Covenantal approach to Judaism has been gaining traction in the last three years. Covenantal meaning that there is an ongoing relationship with God and hearing God’s word. The traction is not in the name of the movement but in the thinking about applying tradition.There is a subtle shift from “tradition and change” or any legal theory of change to a relationship model. Many of the pulpit rabbis use the phrase to describe the uniqueness of the movement. Eisen speaks of going beyond the sovereign self to the broader commitments of covenant, mizvah, and community. In the debate between emphasizing the head or the heart, the winner seems to be emphasizing people’s lived narratives.
Orthodox should not be projecting legal theory from prior eras onto contemporary Conservative rabbis. Human dignity and ongoing relationship with God is cited more than Catholic Israel.

Second, I noticed that the big tent is not spoken about anymore. Rabbi Alan Silverman, one of the short list of candidates to be the new chancellor mentioned the need to going back to being a big tent that embraced the full spectrum of positions. That is distinctly absent from out Arnie Eisen’s rhetoric. Eisen did visit Hesder Yeshivot in his preparation year but did not go that route. I have also noticed a hesitancy about Talmud as a discipline from some of the speeches. Originally, the Conservative movement was focused on peoplehood with influence of Ahad Haam, Dubnow, and others. Someone started calling the movement halakhic in the 1980’s , (I suppose to compete with Centrism’s recent use of the term)That rhetoric has now shifted more to covenantal. I am speaking about those official statements- those fellow travelers who do not affiliate are more likely to use the term- halakhic.

It is interesting that spirituality is tolerated but not part of anyone’s agenda. The bigger news is that everyone seems to now have caveats on the value of wissenschaft. Pure research in Jewish Studies is left for the university. Now, scholarship has to be balanced by concern for people’s everyday lives.

Once upon a time, Marshall Sklare was the best analysis of the Conservative movement. It was a practical and pragmatic need to care for the masses of Eastern European immigrants guiding them in their Americanization and then suburbanization. There was nothing overly ideological about the movement. Sklare pointed out the lack of theory, consistency, or roots to Europe. Mordechai Waxman in his Tradition and Change also had a pragmatic understanding of the movement. One of the critiques that Orthodoxy had about the Conservative movement was that it was non-ideological and solely a pragmatic logic. Now, Orthodoxy invests the Conservative movement with an anachronistic heavy ideological mission from the first day. It seems that the debates between Reform and Orthodoxy in the 1840’s have been projected onto the Conservative movement. (I assume everyone has read Sklare and Waxman already).

But just as Reform and Orthodoxy were at their nadirs in 1970, I assume that Conservative movement will regain their traction after retooling. But the biggest question today that keeps coming up in discussions is that the best and brightest, those most committed to Torah study, prayer, and community work are not officially affiliating with the movement. There are many independent minyanim doing well, many political action groups, many dynamic young rabbis, and places like Hadar. Yet, there is a trend not to want to affiliate with the movement. The movement has an image of still too much old time suburban synagogue of the cantor leading everything, responsive reading, no spirit, no learning and still has a post WWII feel. But there is a new active generation.

When I compare this to Centrist Orthodoxy, the moment of alienation was eclipsed by writing the past off. Back in the early 1980’s, the majority of Orthodox synagogues meant old synagogues in the Bronx, hundreds of small town synagogues in New England and the Midwest, synagogues in declining neighborhoods. Centrist Orthodoxy basically wrote them all off and focused on 10-12 major communities of professionals who send their kids to day schools and have possibly spent a year in Israel. Orthodoxy went from Shapiro’s wine to Cabernet Savignon, from clerks to physicians, and from old time Jews to the new heroic halakhic Jew. Yiddish, nostalgia, and looking backwards were jettisoned. Even synagogues where the former rabbis were important rabbis were ignored if they were in declining neighborhoods. The past was effaced and the word modern was temporarily dropped to be Centrist. No one had a problem doing this because the new generation was frum, learned, and correct in a way the old-timers were not. No one in the creators of Centrism had a problem with ignoring the old Jews in the old shuls. (They also ignored most of the West coast, allowing the vacuum to be filled by Chofetz Chayim, Chabad, and Ner Israel- but that is another story.)

To return to what I see, as an outsider, in the Conservative movement. The movement is still holding on to its old haunts and habits in Long island and North East so that the new generation has a disconnect. It still projects Chaim Potok more than contemporary novelists and artists. The movement has everything to gain by embracing all these new dynamic leaders, but they have no need to return to decay of the movement. So things appear less than the sum of the parts. As several of their leaders have noted there is no central organization for seeding and directing social planning. One thing we learned from watching the decline of the mainline churches is that any Church with valuable property like Episcopalians did better than Methodists with their suburban property. Carved Stone buildings in the city are more stable socially than modest wood buildings in the burbs. The movement has inertia.

Finally, the rise of websites like Kosher.com that delivers kosher food to anywhere, allows congregations to exist in communities without kosher butchers, bakeries, or kosher delis and pizza shops. Will that change the observance levels in way out of town communities?

For my Hebrew readers, there are several recent articles on college that came out this week in Israel. They offer an interesting parallel to the American debates. Dr. Aviad HaCohen defends the academic enterprise against those who blames the ills of society on college such as R. Avraham Wasserman of Yeshivat Ramat Gan. And there is a great interview with Rabbi Shabbtai Rapaport of the Bar-Ilan Kollel on how the college can have both religious and non-religions and that it creates a respect for the Jewish tradition teaching that Judaism is not for the Datiim alone. That he has no problem bringing Academic tools into the study hall. And the section quoted below is a little diatribe against the ignorance of our age.

The h/t goes to Rav Tzair and here is a quote from his post with the links.

.לפני כמה ימים הצצתי באתר כיפה וראיתי מאמר של ד”ר אביעד הכהן שבו הוא תוקף את:
ניסיונם של כמה רבנים, שהדי דבריהם נשמעו באחרונה ברמה, לתלות את כל חוליי החברה הדתית בלימודים האקדמיים.  לראיון שהתפרסם באתר הארץ עם הרב אברהם וסרמן, ר”מ בישיבת רמת-גן ורב קהילה בגבעתיים, על מאמר שהוא כתב בעלון “עולם קטן” כנגד יתר האקדמיזציה הפושה בציבור.

– עם או בלי קשר לידיעה הקודמת, היום התפרסם באתר YNET ראיון עם מו”ר הרב שבתי רפפורט, העומד כיום בראש המכון הגבוה לתורה (הידוע בכינויו “הכולל”) של אוניברסיטת בר-אילן. אני בטוח שלא מעט מתלמידיו יתקשו להאמין שהוא אמר את המשפט הבא:
זו אוניברסיטה שמנסה לחנך. היא לא פונה רק אל השכל, אלא גם אל הלב ואל ההכרה וזה האופי המיוחד שלה. המסר שעובר כל הזמן הוא חשיבותה של המורשת היהודית. וכל הזמן , תוך כדי, לא דוחים אף אחד. לא אומרים לאף אחד בגלל זה אתה לא יכול ללמוד כאן, אלא אומרים אנחנו אוניברסיטה שהתורה עניין מרכזי בה, בוא ותראה. בבר אילן את התפיסה הזו נושמים באויר.
(לשם ההגינות אבהיר שאני לא זוכר אי פעם שהרב שבתי התבטא כנגד לימודים בבר-אילן או בכל מוסד אקדמאי אחר)
הראיון מסתיים במשפט שהוא מאד מאד משקף את האיש:
אני חושב שהחיסרון הגדול של דורנו זו הבורות שנובעת מחוסר חשיפה לתורה. זו אינה בורות של חוסר ידיעה, אלא מתוך הכרה שזה יהיה לי קשה. אני חושב ששונאי ישראל האשימו אותנו בהרבה דברים, אבל אף פעם לא בטיפשות. עם ישראל הוא עם חכם. אני חושב שצריך לפתח את תחום התורה והאמונה והמורשת ולא רק ללמוד אותם. יש לנו מחויבות להוריש לדור הבא משהו עשיר יותר ממה שקיבלנו.

These are notes to myself on a new book that will be required in courses on the topic. If you have an interest n theory of relgion read on, if not wait for me to post a less academic post. Ulrich Beck offers a social definition of the changes of religion in the last decades. Why is it an era of post-secularization? And why does that make orthodoxies a good choice. Let me know what you think about his theories. I received a pre-publication copy and am still digesting it, so there will be more personal comments in an eventual part II. (I assume ej ordered a copy when I gave him advance notice in a comments thread.)

This is the one book to read this year about religion in the world. Ulrich Beck, an important German sociologist of globalization, cosmopolitanism, and secondary modernity has written a synthesis of the various works on post-secularism of the last decade. He integrates Habermas’ allowing religion into the public sphere, Jose Casanova’s critique and reformulation of secularization, the gang over at Immanent Frame (Charles Taylor, Talal Asad, Arjun Appadurai et al)along with the sociology of Zymunt Bauman, Anthony Giddens, and Pierre Bourdeau. This book is almost a summary study of the writings on religion of the last decades and into the future. Beck is interviewed often and has many quotable quotes. (There are many more interviews out there.)

Beck’s opening point is clear. Most sociology of religion has been functional and accepting. They explain why people have beliefs without judging the value of the beliefs. Sociologists are equally open- minded toward any manifestation of religion -new age, Evangelicals, revivalism, and magic. Beck argues that we need a sociology of the effect of religion on society and to examine the cultural productivity and destructiveness of religious beliefs. The contents of religious beliefs as an “autonomous force and reality, their vision of a different humanity and their power to make whole worlds tremble, are so rarely exposed in their full ambivalence to the gaze of sociology.” Beck is a confirmed European secularist, yet he seeks to capture the power and hold that religion has today.

Beck’s conclusion about contemporary religion is that everyone has a” God of one’s own.” This God is not an omnipotent God, rather God needs mans help to be acknowledged and to make the world a better place. God himself is “impotent and helpless in an apocalyptic age” We turn to God to seek solace and dignity not safety or solutions.“We wish to chain our personal God to our own desires, traumas, hysterias, fears and hopes and at the same time, we want to keep these chains in our own hands.” (13)

Beck considers taking refuge in dogmas of faith that are incompatible with our “individualized experiences and ambivalent feelings” is a form of self-deception- it fails to acknowledge individualism. Rather one needs to recognize the empirical and historical fact that the God of one’s own correspond to the space of one’s own life and life of one’s space. Man is at the same time believer and God. Modern life is fragmented with an alterity of own’s own life. (15) One’s own life is another name for the contingent and reflexive nature of that life

Beck declares that the collapse of secularization theory is greater than fall of the Soviet Union (21). Heavily reliant of the essays that Habermas wrote in 2007 – 2008, Beck declares a post-secular age. orthodox and conservative religions are gaining ground everywhere. (24) The new religious movements are based on changing psychological schools cobbled together to form Gods of their own. Asian and archaic elements are accepted by even the most modernized people. (27)

The visit of Pope Benedict to the US or Britain was a mass media event of papacy- a cosmopolitan event. It filled no churches and does not stop decline but it becomes a major cultural event even for atheists. God in the age of technical reproduction is adapted for mass media- there is an aura given by the Pope (37-8)

Beck is one of the leading theoreticians of globalization. Habermas’ reflexive modernity (and Bauman’s liquid modernity) is defined by Beck as having three elements – risk society, individualization, and cosmopolitanism. Beck prefers the term cosmopolitanism to that of globalization since there is an erosion of clear boundaries, an involuntary confrontation with the other, and a new need for a hermeneutic of the other. (67-8) This time it is a choice of enriching mutual recognition or violence.

Cosmopolitanism is defined as a product of powerful economic, political, and mass media developments at the start of the 21st century. There is a simultaneous abolishment of older boundaries between people and the creation of new ones. Erased are the old boundaries , the new overrides the pre-existing hierarchies of class, caste, exclusion. In turn, it creates new boundaries of violence and tolerance or new sets of competing religious universalism or a dualism of good and evil that withholds dignity to outsiders. (52-54)

Individualization does not mean Bellah’s individual, and egoistic choice, nor is it Enlightenment autonomy and it is not the market’s conscious choice or individual preference.(see Anthony Giddens and Zygmunt Bauman).Individualization is imposed on the individual. There are no more specific roles in a marriage, ways to act at work, or paths in life. Until recently, men were the legal bread winner and women had to cook. Now that that is not legally mandated, Individualization is the process of deciding in a marriage of the routine of chores, roles, place to live, finances. A similar need for choice, negotiation, decision making applies to all aspects of our lives.

The third element risk society is to recognize that these changes are not better nor worse (Giddens vs Toraine), rather that we are forever seeking to minimize or deal with risk in our lives. Individualization creates risk. We live on a circus high wire act trying to balance marriage-divorce, several jobs over the course of a life, self-praise and marketing, the need to be flexible and resilient to change. We always have risk and are making decisions – evening meal, insurance, who takes out the trash, old age, medical decisions, university training, what house to buy, who to have as neighbors. There is a new immediacy to our lives and we need to make choices
Here is where religion comes in—submission to orthodoxy is part of a strategy of decreasing risk- The effect of religion in the public sphere is to help mediate risk society.

Beck’s core thesis about religion in an age of cosmopolitanism: 1] religious belief spreads in proportion to insecurity 2] religious subjective anarchy of new age, spirituality, pop psych– churches have made their peace with it 3] Religion is similar to individualization of family and social classes 4] Religion has broken away from an elite or priestly model -people write the religion in their own words 5] It is a fallacy to link declining membership and lack of commitment to any form of decline in relgion or secularization. People are interested in religion in their own terms, even without membership or commitment. (85ff)

Individualization creates a God of one’s vision outside of church- against the secure backdrop of the welfare state and modern technology. Religion is an empowering of the believing individual who with the aid of doctrine creates commonality with others that creates new borders.

Authority is based on personal commitment. But the asking for individual commitment blurs lines of church and self. (The old kehilah system or even the synagogue system of the 1950’s no one asked if you wanted to join or for any personal commitment).

Originally, we had doctrines, rules and rites and then we asked a second order question who is a Christian? Doctrines were universals, differences of individuals were not considered. Now in the age of cosmopolitanism, we ask who is a Christian? and then what are the doctrines and rites?

[For a Jewish equivalent, we used to ask what does Judaism say or require? Then ask who buys into it? Individual lack of commitment did not play a great role. Now we ask Who is Orthodox? And then determine the lines of the doctrines and practices. Commitment comes before the system. There used to be starting universals like peoplehood, yiddishkeit, or even to follow torah and mizvos, now we start with particulars.]

And now that everything is a matter of personal commitment then we deny dignity to others who don’t share our belief. If I believe then you are wrong, then there is no philosophy, institution, or universal that transcends my belief. Religions today are more exclusive specifically because they are more personal and based on commitment.

Thirty years ago, people thought that religion was certain knowledge against the egoistic individualism of what Bellah called “Sheilaism.” Now, from a post-secular perspective, all the individual commitments to Evangelicalism, Orthodox Judaism, revivalism, and spirituality are all forms of personalized commitment similar in content to Sheilaism, but good for risk management in an age of forced individualism.

To be continued in part II with tolerance and the political elements of religion.

In the meantime any thoughts?

This is a first draft. Not completely thought through so it may change in a few days. I am not wedded to any section, so I may retract whole sections. Yet, I think there is something here.

When I first started this blog, the New York Times Sunday book review had an issue dedicated to the 1930’s depression featuring books about the attitudes toward the downtrodden masses . Many of the opinions featured corresponded to the positions of the Conservative rabbis of the era and their decision for the law to respond the masses. (My thoughts on the 1930’s will show up in a more professional venue, eventually). This week’s New York Times book review has two articles about the Tea Partiers. As I read those articles, it sounded much like the rhetoric on the orthodox blogs and orthodox editorials which blame the Rabbinic administration for the high cost of yeshiva tuition. It seems like we are heading for some form of Tea Partying about rabbinic authority.

It seems that the economic difficulties are generating a sense of outage that is taken out on the current leadership, in our case day school administrators. The important line in the book review is that “the objects of their outcries …are of far less consequence than the great failures that plague the nation.” There are problems and the objects of anger are not the cause. So the question is: When will there be a Rabbinic leader who is playing a tea-partier role? Since we have had rabbis in the 1950’s hunting communists, in the 1960’s wearing Dashikis, in the 70’s advocating “do your own thing” in the 1980’s cozying up to the Moral Majority, becoming libertarians in the 1990’s, and rabbis sounding like Evangelicals today, then it is only a matter of time until we start hearing Tea Partier sermons about Rabbinic leadership.

People are angry that they cannot afford to live the frum lifestyle they want, because if one is frum then one is guaranteed the lifestyle. Someone has to be at fault. If you create a community that requires the members to be in the top 6% of US income, and makes one comfortable only if one is in the top 3% then you have a social problem. The objects of blame are a side show, but if the blogs are an indication then there is some of the blame is being placed on leadership.

From the NYT

Anatomy of an Uprising By ALAN BRINKLEY October 8, 2010
Listening to the many and diverse demands and ideas that the Tea Partiers express in their rallies, pamphlets and oratory does relatively little to explain why so many Americans are so angry… Similar outbreaks of outrage and blame have accompanied most major economic crises over the last century and more…. The Great Depression produced multiple movements that reviled the power of bankers and the concentration of wealth. In both cases, as in our own time, the movements soon became immersed in innumerable other grievances and prejudices.
The Tea Partiers are right to be angry. But the objects of their outcries …are of far less consequence than the great failures that plague the nation.

But let me recount another Sukkot story. We had as a guest an NCSY BT from the 1970’s who is RW MO, as are his kids. He now lives in an agudah neighborhood somewhere in the US where 4 bedroom houses cost 180, 000. He was complaining that the synagogues here in Teaneck don’t allow drinking. He was adamant in his declaration that: who do the rabbis think they are telling us what to do! Rabbis have no right to forbid anything! He proclaimed that the tradition to drink on Simchat Torah goes back to the Gemara since the gemara says we do birchat Kohanim at Shararit because the kohanim will be drunk by mussaf. (I did not correct him about the Gemara or tell him what the Mishnah Berurah actually says, it was too good of a diatribe). Over the course of the meal, he complained about NY orthodox, its day schools, and the cost of living in the NY community. There was a sense of the Torah being one thing and the Rabbis as administrators as another. There was also a sense of how alienated some parts of out of town Orthodoxy are from the NYC enclaves.

There is a certain distrust of the elites in America and so too in certain parts of Orthodoxy. Many people feel outside or looking up at the elites who are disconnected from their lives. And many want freedom – a core value in America. Our enclaves are conformist and dont hear their needs.

The Beat Generation and the Tea Party Lee Siegal
Still, American dissent turns on a tradition of troublemaking, suspicion of elites and feelings of powerlessness, no matter where on the political spectrum dissent takes place.
Like the Beats, the Tea Partiers are driven by that maddeningly contradictory principle, subject to countless interpretations, at the heart of all American protest movements: individual freedom. The shared DNA of American dissent might be one answer to the question of why the Tea Partiers, so extreme and even anachronistic in their opposition to any type of government, exert such an astounding appeal.
More seriously, the origin of the word “beat” has a connection to the Tea Partiers’ sense that they are being marginalized as the country is taken away from them. According to Ginsberg, to be “beat” most basically signified “exhausted, at the bottom of the world, looking up or out . . . rejected by society.”

There are people out there who fell that they are not represented in the Rabbinic elite, just like Tea Partier’s have “a feeling that their opinions are not represented in Washington.” This movement or moment is likely to come from the right wing side – a call to follow Torah and not Rabbinical organizations, Rabbinical administrations, and the politics generated by rabbis. (It will probably still deeply respect Gedolim, Zaddikim, and Rabbinic authority in general-just not the political manifestations of lower levels of the hierarchy.)

In the past when there was an economic gap and a blaming of the Rabbinic leadership it led to varied results. In the 1740’s, there was a critique of Rabbinic leadership and the newly wealthy and new lands of Podolyia created Hasidism. People broke from the Kehillah to form shiblach. In the 1880’s, it lead to a variety of secular solutions that fled the Rabbinate to Zionism, Socialism, Bund, Folks Party. The story of Kotso shel Yod by Yehudah Leib Gordon conveys a sense of the alienation. By 1921, it lead to young Rabbis choosing the Mizrahi movement that preached job training, education for productivity, and secular studies. The Great Depression created a generation of Conservative rabbis who spoke of social realism and helping the masses.

Now, what will come from the economic crisis of the last few years. There will certainly be the creation of Orthodox communities that allow one to make lower than the top 6% of income. Centrism may be cast as having been a rich man’s religion. But the interesting point is that the blaming of the Rabbis as an object of scorn for the economic difficulties will lead to a distancing from the seemingly aloof rabbis. (It does not matter if it is true at all, just that it is perceived that way).

Now from where will the change occur? There are three choices: (1)the places with 180K homes far from NY who are alienated from the economics and education required for Centrism. (2) the new places in the Sun belt devoid of seminaries, rabbinic elite, and direct contact with the North (3) the heart of places such as Bergenfield where the economic inequities are being felt. This corresponds to (1)Those who fundamentally disenfranchised from the community (2)Those in a new place without a strong leadership base (3) those in the center who feel the greatest dissidence and that their expectations not met. Hasidism started in a place like the second choice, Secularism, Bund, and Mizrahism in the third, but those leader found fertile ground for their ideas in the first group.

Let me know when you start hearing from some young Rabbi who thinks we need to scale back Rabbinic authority or that the Rabbinical supervised enclave is not needed. Not a liberal Orthodox Rabbi who never had a strong sense of authority, rather someone who has a tea-party rhetoric against the elites who are not concerned for the needs of the people. Look to the right not the left. Someone with Tea Party politics and a strong sense of Torah.

I am not interested in discussing American politics, rather to gather the voices of the new Jewish generation.

There is a major under-reported story that will effect Jewish religion in America.
Hebrew College in Boston just announced that their 32 million dollar debt has been renegotiated. (see Update below) see here and here. This is where they were 10 months ago..

Rabbi Daniel L. Lehmann, the college president who is a YU musmach, took over in 2008 to a 32 million debt left by the previous administration. The institution did not meet the interest payments the year Lehman took over and paid operating costs on credit. They will enter 2011 with a clean slate. he was able to do this in the midst of a recession. This will give Lehmann and the Rabbinical school headed by Arthur Green an ability to emerge as the premier non-orthodox non-denominational rabbinical school. (This makes Lehmann into one of the top fundraisers out there right now – worthy of the comparison to Norman Lamm who renegotiated YU’s debt and then raised funds to make YU one of the wealthier institutions.- see update that negates this line.) Currently JTS remains with a much smaller debt, but one that it cannot get out from under.
If Lehmann can keep this up, he can design from almost scratch any type of new Jewish institution he wants. One not tied to any denomination or burdensome institutional tradition. Knowing his track record, he will succeed. He built the new Jewish HS in Boston from scratch.
The Rabbinical school under Green will definitely draw students from HUC JTS, and RRC. We will see if he makes a pitch to attract liberal YU students like himself. His interests include music- he is likely to develop the existing music program. Expect his 2011 graduation-end of year speech to give a vision of where he is taking the institution and American Jewry.

Update- It seems that Hebrew College had to give up the building to pay off the debt. 32 million was not raised, rather they gave to the banks the ill conceived building that Gordis built. There is still no clear indication if the building was repossessed or if there is a lease to stay at that location. (I should know not to trust Rabbinical school announcements about their finances, oh well. ) If they vacate, where will they go? I stil have fond memories of their former location in a run-down mansion in Brookline. So, it shows strong leadership and does not show massive fund raising. Either way- they are now free to build Jewish programs when other seminaries are strapped for cash.

This speech tic of speaking of the new generation is not going away so fast.
There is a new Avi Chai Report:
Generation of Change: How Leaders in Their Twenties and Thirties Are Reshaping American Jewish Life

Much of the results is old hat already and the write up has too much of Jack Wertheimer’s preaching rather than Steve Cohen’s sociology.
The report introduces three types of activities: protective, progressive, and expressive. They are also working with a clear divide between establishment and non-establishment. Since I filled out the survey form, from their write-up it seems that my answers were included in the statistics for the older establishment group. 🙂

Organized Jewish life in the second half of the twentieth century was focused around protective activities…
It is simply not true, as some contend, that younger Jewish leaders want nothing to do with these organizations and their protective causes. Many do, especially among those who are socioeconomically more secure and relate positively to the networking culture of the established Jewish organizations; political and religious propensities also dispose some younger leaders to identify with protective causes.

Two other agendas are simultaneously at work among young leaders. “Progressive” causes appeal to some: Jewish leaders involved with start-ups are especially apt to identify with broader social causes—environmentalism, service to the downtrodden (mainly non-Jews), and a variety of social justice causes, including what they regard as justice for the Palestinians.

The third agenda might be labeled expressive: Young Jewish leaders want to help their peers find personal meaning in being Jewish. There has been an explosion of interest in Jewish culture—including everything from foods of various Jewish communities to an interest in Jewish languages and folkways to a celebration of Jewish books, music, film, and other artistic productions. A small but noteworthy minority is drawn to experimental forms of Jewish religious expression, usually found outside of conventional synagogues. And more broadly, younger Jewish leaders have created a wide range of opportunities for their peers (and others) to study Torah, explore spiritual questions, and probe what being Jewish means to them.

The emphasis leaders place on protective, progressive, and expressive types of Jewish activities sets groups apart from one another. Put differently, the mix of these three elements shapes the particular culture of organizations for young Jewish adults, whether they are sponsored by establishment organizations or non-establishment ones.

Nonestablishment Programs: Over the past ten to 15 years, a large network of new programs and institutions has been
created by Jews in their 20’s and 30’s. These so-called start-ups tend to be characterized by the following:
1. They do not hesitate to question the status quo.
2. They seem highly attuned to their clients—younger Jews.
3. They experiment.
4. They network with one another and arrive at
innovative solutions.
5. They have the agility to associate seemingly unrelated
fields and causes.

From Christian Century (this is a very non-Catholic list)
Essential theology books of the past 25 years

We posed this question to eight theologians: Suppose someone who hasn’t been keeping up with theology for the past 25 years now wants to read the most important books written during that time. What five titles would you suggest?

Here are their responses:—Click on the name and you will get their 5 recommendations with explanation

Stanley Hauerwas

Amos Yong

Emilie M. Townes

Lawrence S. Cunningham

Sarah Coakley

Kevin J. Vanhoozer

George Hunsinger

Willie James Jennings