From Strength to Strength: Reform Makes Great Strides at the World Zionist Congress

I had intended to write reports from the World Zionist Congress (WZC), but as you may have noticed, that didn’t happen. The Congress was such a sensory overload that it was hard to concentrate, let alone chronicle what was going on there. Now that I have returned to the States I can look back on what was an extraordinary experience for our large Reform delegation and an historic event for our movement.

What made the WZC a challenge is also what made it great. It was a cacophony of Jewish voices from all over the world representing a broad range of opinions on Judaism and Zionism. What made this Congress extraordinary is that every voice was heard — though sometimes louder than was appropriate! I choose to regard the high pitch as an expression of the great passion the delegates felt for their Zionist convictions, which is a positive take on behavior that was, at times, not entirely civil.

Despite the contentiousness of the debate, this 37th WZC was an historic event for the Reform Movement because, more than ever before, we claimed a place at the forefront of the Zionist movement. Ours was the largest delegation from the Diaspora, and our members were among the leaders of the Congress, including its chair, Philip Meltzer.

It is important to note that our strength came from you. Your vote for ARZA (the Association of Reform Zionists of America) in the American Zionist Elections last year helped us win 56 seats at the WZC — 40% of all the votes cast in the United States! Together with Reform delegates from Israel and around the world, the combined delegation of ARZENU, the International Reform Zionist Movement, was 78 strong. When these votes were added to those of our progressive Zionist coalition partners, Meretz and Labor, we formed a powerful bloc of 180 delegates.

The strength of our numbers truly mattered. It enabled us to gain leadership positions in the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI), and secure significant budgets for our movement’s work in Israel and the former Soviet Union. Since the Israeli government provides very limited support for non-Orthodox Judaism, this money helps to correct an imbalance that is also an injustice, and enables us to grow as a serious Jewish alternative in the Jewish State.

Also significant is the fact that the strength of our numbers enabled us to wield influence over the direction of the Zionist Movement. This we accomplished through the resolutions process, which is the heart of the work of the WZC. Almost all of the resolutions we introduced were passed, and we were able to block the passage of most of the resolutions we opposed.

The central foci of ARZENU’s resolutions were on promoting the values of democracy, pluralism, freedom of religious expression, equality for Israel’s minorities, diversity and sensitivity on the basis of gender and sexual orientation, combating expressions of racism and incitement on the basis of race, religion, national origin and sexual orientation, environmental concerns, and reforms to make the Zionist institutions more efficient, just and transparent.

Each delegate to the Congress served on one of eight different committees. The task of each committee was to review all the resolutions introduced by the different factions and vote on which ones would be considered by the Congress as a whole. I served as one of the two whips for our delegation on the committee “A Free People in Our Land,” where many of our delegation’s key resolutions were considered.

During our committee meeting it became clear that our bloc had the votes to move our agenda. This engendered strong reactions from most of our opponents, some of whom sought to disrupt the proceedings in order to minimize the number of resolutions we could pass. At the same time that voices were rising and the chair, British Reform Rabbi Lea Meuhlstein, was busy trying to restore order, it became clear that the more moderate Orthodox party, Mizrachi, was willing to work with us rather than oppose us, if we would be willing to find language that they could support. The result was extremely positive and reflected well on our pluralistic values. We could have passed our resolutions as they were drafted without Mizrachi’s support. Instead, we chose a path of moderation and inclusion that modeled the way we hope to see our Jewish world manage its differences.

Who would have imagined that Mizrachi would support a resolution calling for an egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall? By including language that affirmed the status quo in the existing sections of the Kotel, Mizrachi voted with us for the creation of a new, “third section of the Western Wall site that will be equal in size, funding, and visibility, and offering a dignified space of worship for the Conservative and Reform streams and to Women of the Wall.”

In similar fashion, Mizrachi joined with us to pass a resolution condemning hate crimes and denying funding from the World Zionist Organization to “any group or movement that promotes in their platform any principles or activities that directly or indirectly promote hate on the basis of national origin, racism and discrimination…”

Mizrachi also joined with us in passing a resolution supporting the GLBT community in Israel that calls on the Israeli Minister of Education to “ensure that all educational institutions in Israel will create curricula and programming that promote respect for, and the civil rights of, all diverse communities, including the GLBT community.” Meeting Mizrachi’s openness to our initiatives with sensitivity to their needs made such achievements possible. More than that, it earned us admiration and respect, and demonstrated that we are worthy of leading the shared institutions of the Jewish people.

There is much work to be done. Racism, discrimination, and acts of hate are on the rise in Israel. The current Israeli government includes parties that are adamantly opposed to Jewish pluralism, civil rights for all the citizens of Israel, and efforts to achieve a two state solution with the Palestinians. And the Jewish state has a long way to go toward fulfilling the Jewish values of justice and compassion for the weak and the vulnerable, the poor, the stranger, and the minorities in Israeli society.

Nonetheless, this is a moment to take pride in what we have accomplished, and to be inspired by the vision of what we may yet achieve if we continue to build upon our successes. Our challenge is to maintain our focus and continue to grow our engagement with Israel and Zionism in all of our congregations and institutions. Let us continue to dream of Zion and redouble our efforts to make her a fulfillment of the prophetic vision, an oasis of justice, righteousness, and peace.

Our efforts in mustering the power of our movement enabled us to win important victories at the 37th World Zionist Congress, giving concrete expression to the words of the psalmist: “May they go from strength to strength, that everyone may experience God’s Presence in Zion.” (Psalm 84:8) May we indeed go from strength to strength until we see the day that “a new light will shine upon Zion, and all of us will be blessed to see its splendor.”

Prayer and Ritual Cannot Change God, But They Can Change Us - Sermon for Yom Kippur 5776/2015

Prayer and Ritual Cannot Change God,

But They Can Change Us

Sermon for Yom Kippur 5776/2015

Rabbi Arnold S. Gluck

Temple Beth-El, Hillsborough, NJ

What do we expect to happen when we pray? What are prayer and ritual supposed to do? Some think their purpose is to change God’s mind; that if we pray sincerely, and are worthy, God will grant our wishes. It’s an audacious proposition, if you think about it. That we have the power to manipulate God?

It’s highly problematic to think that religion works this way. How egocentric to imagine that God exists to serve me? Am I the center of the universe that God should answer to me? If we could control God with our rituals and our words, if we could have such power, we would be God!

And there is another problem with this view of religion. It is bound to disappoint, sooner or later. As an old story makes this clear.

It was a hot day at Jones Beach and Bessie Cohen was there with her three-year-old grandson. She had bought him a cute sailor suit with a hat and she watched with delight as he played with his toys at the edge of the water.

Suddenly a giant wave swept onto the shore and before Bessie could even move, the boy was swept out into the cold Atlantic.

Bessie was frantic. “I know I’ve never been religious,” she screamed to the heavens. “But I implore You to save the boy! I will never ask anything of You again!”

The boy disappeared from view, and Bessie was beside herself. He went under a second time, and Bessie began to wail. As he went under for the third time, she screamed mightily, appealing to God to save the boy’s life.

Her final supplication was answered, as the sea suddenly threw the child onto the shore. He was badly shaken but clearly alive. Bessie picked him up and put him down gently on a blanket, far from the water. After looking him over, she turned her face toward the heavens, and complained loudly, “He had a hat!”

Bessie is an all too familiar character. She has long since given up on religion because it doesn’t work the way she thinks it should. Then in a moment of desperation she prays to God to save her grandson, and voila! It works! It works, until it doesn’t work! The boy came back without his hat! So Bessie goes back to being a skeptic—a skeptic who is still clinging to a flawed theology!

Imagine that Sam is praying for rain to water his lawn, and Joe is praying for a sunny day at the beach. Which one is supposed to have God rearrange the laws of nature to make him happy? So it’s no big deal. Today, God said “Yes” to Joe and “no” to Sam. Maybe next time Sam will have his way. God gets a lot of traffic on the cosmic hotline, you know, so who are we to second-guess which request was more deserving?

But when God is too busy to stop a three-year-old Syrian refugee from washing up dead on a beach in Turkey, or God doesn’t intervene to prevent the rape of children at the hands of ISIS, or a 45-year-old wife and mother dies of cancer, something is terribly wrong. The idea that they weren’t worthy of being saved; or that God answers prayer, but sometimes the answer is “no,” simply doesn’t wash. All these rationalizations, all these attempts to justify God, strike me as obscene in the light of real human suffering. As Harold Kushner asks, “When your reality clashes with your theology, do you deny your reality or change your theology?”

Historically, we Jews have chosen to change our theology, but many of our people suffer from what I would call “arrested theological development.” Old ways of thinking linger on, and bad theology has an afterlife. Consider all the anthropomorphic images of God we encounter as we grow up. It’s no wonder that some get stuck on the image of God as a great big man with a long white beard and flowing robes sitting on a giant throne in the clouds, micro-managing the planet. Such images abound in our culture, they remain in Scripture, and they certainly persist in our language.

Some years ago my colleague Rabbi Shira Milgrom offered a telling example of this from her own life. “When our youngest child was about two and a half years old,” she wrote, “my husband, David, was giving her a bath. Out of the blue, she turned to him and said, “Abba, God likes boys better than girls.” David, in one of his more brilliant parenting moments didn’t say, “Oh no, honey, that’s not true.” Instead he asked, “What makes you say that?” To which Liore answered simply and directly, “Well, God has a penis and boys have a penis, so God likes boys better.” Two comments,” adds Milgrom. “First, what would have made my daughter think that God has a penis? Trust me, there is no picture of God hanging on the walls of our home-- and certainly not one of God standing naked. So why would she think that? Don’t under estimate the power of a pronoun,” says Milgrom. “Liore had always—like you and me—heard God described as “He,” and having two brothers and a father, she knew exactly what a “He” looked like.”

The second and more difficult part of Rabbi Milgrom’s story is the impact this knowledge had on her daughter’s image of herself as a woman, already at such a young age! “Because she imagined God as male, she thought of herself as worth less in God’s eyes…”  That’s why the newer version of the machzor we use on these holy days, and all of the prayer books we produce at Temple Beth-El, use gender sensitive language to refer to God. It’s not a trivial matter. Words are powerful. They paint pictures in our minds that can be highly problematic.

No Jewish teacher understood this better than the Rambam, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, a k a, Maimonides, who was born in the mid 12^th century, in Spain, and died in Egypt in the early 13^th century. Long after the worship of physical idols and statues had ceased in Israel, the Rambam understood that a more insidious form of idolatry persisted, that of misguided mental images that foster wrong ideas.

Maimonides was a rationalist. He sought to reconcile faith with reason by proving that God must exist and that God cannot be limited to a physical form. Since everything physical is dependent on a prior cause, he argued, there must be a first cause. That “unmoved mover,” as Aristotle called it, is what we call God. God is not dependent on any prior cause, so God must be eternal and unlimited. God cannot lack, or need, or desire anything, because that would entail limitation. Step by step, in a logical and reasoned proof, Rambam demonstrates that God cannot be like anything else, that God is unique, in the true sense of the word.

Here lies the crux of our problem. If something is unique, meaning it is absolutely unlike anything else, then no language can describe it. Every attempt to talk about God must fail, and every description is a false image, an idol constructed of words. Like little Liore, who heard the pronoun “he” and intuited that God must be a boy, our minds translate God-talk into false images!

So what are we to do with the Bible? The Bible is filled with anthropomorphic images of God. It speaks of “God’s hand,” (Ex. 9:3), “God’s eyes,” (Gen 38:7) “God’s ears,” What are we to make of these? “The Torah,” say the rabbis, “speaks in human terms.” It uses human language to refer to God because those are the only terms we understand. They are all metaphors, says the Rambam. They should not be taken literally!

 “Neither sleep nor waking, neither anger nor laughter, neither joy nor sadness, neither silence nor speech in the human understanding of speech are appropriate terms with which to describe God. …were God to at times be enraged and at times be happy, God would change. … God is … above all this,” says Rambam. (Maimonides, Misneh Torah, hilchot yesodei hatorah 1:11-12)

Returning to my opening question, “What do prayer and ritual do?” What would Maimonides say?

If God doesn’t change. If God is “l’eila min kawl birchata v’shirata, beyond all the praises, songs and adorations we can utter,” as we say in the kaddish prayer, why should we bother to pray at all?

This is the perplexity that Maimonides seeks to resolve in his magnum opus, The Guide for the Perplexed. What is the purpose of religion if God is unchanging? How are to understand prophecy if God doesn’t speak? What is providence if God doesn’t act in history? And how are we to understand prayer if God is beyond our influence?

700 years ago Maimonides offered an understanding of religion that speaks powerfully to us today, maybe more than ever. Prayer doesn’t change God, it changes us. Prophecy occurs when we use our hearts and minds to understand God’s ways. Providence is when we live in harmony with nature and each other in accordance with that understanding.

We can’t see God with our eyes, or hear God with our ears, but we can feel God with our hearts, and we can apprehend truth with our minds. And when we do, we will realize that God is not revealed in miraculous events that disrupt the order of nature. The order of nature itself in all its magnificence and splendor is miraculous, wondrous, and amazing.

This is where the religious impulse is born, in the realization that God’s infinite wisdom is revealed before us to behold. And when we do, when we experience such awe, says the Rambam, we “will immediately love, praise, and glorify God.” Prayer, according to this understanding, is not an attempt to control God. It is a response to the great wonder by which we live; to the realization that we are not the center of the universe; that we are in fact tiny creatures who might exclaim in the words of our neilah service this afternoon, “O what are we that You have given us eyes to see something of Your truth? What am I that you have given me thought to fathom something of Your purpose?”

Prayer is not the assertion of a proposition. It is an exclamation. Ma rabu ma’asecha Adonai, How manifold are your works, O God!

When prayer is the dry repetition of words, it is lifeless. Prayer must be alive with emotion, with feeling, with a sense of amazement. It won’t happen every time we pray. That is simply too much to ask. But this must be our aspiration. As said Heschel, the words of prayer must be a “challenge to the soul” that leads to “an outburst of the heart.” Prayer is a call to remove the blinders that impede our vision of the wonder of God’s creation.

But, “Prayer is no panacea,” said Heschel, it is “no substitute for action.” On the contrary, prayer is a call to action, a goad to conscience, and our rituals a rallying cry to shatter the hardheartedness of our indifference to the pain and suffering around us. God’s world is filled with such abundance, such beauty, and such opulence. How outrageous then that so many of God’s children live in squalor, plagued by war and discord and deprivation. “Prayer,” said Heschel, is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, [and] falsehood.”[1]

Just before the destruction of the 1^st Temple, the prophet Jeremiah hears God’s call to go to the Temple and warn the people of the calamity that is about to befall them. They believe that they are immune to harm because God would never allow the destruction of the place where God’s glory dwells. They think their rituals, their sacrifices, will protect them. But Jeremiah says, “Don’t put your trust in illusions and say, “The Temple of God, the Temple of God, the Temple of God…” Rather, he says, ‘if you mend your ways and your actions; if you execute justice between one person and other; if you do not oppress the stranger, the orphan, and the widow… only then” will you have protection “will I let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers…”[2] says God.

God doesn’t need our offerings and our prayers. They don’t affect God. They are supposed to change us, to make us more sensitive. God abhors our sacrifices when they are pompous ceremonies of self-righteousness, says Isaiah. “Your new moons and festivals fill Me with loathing,” he says in the name of God. “Cease to do evil; learn to do what is good. Devote yourselves to justice; aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow.”

In the haftarah we are about to read, God tells Isaiah to cry out, to tell the people of Israel that they are completely misguided in their religious practice. They’re doing all the rituals. They’re praying and fasting on Yom Kippur, and it isn’t working! They don’t feel the nearness of God. “Why, when we afflict ourselves” they ask, “do You take no notice?”

The answer is powerfully clear, says Isaiah. God is not interested in your self-affliction. God wants you to care for the afflicted among you. “…unlock the shackles of injustice, undo the fetters of bondage, let the oppressed go free… share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house. … Then when you call, God will answer; when you cry out, God will say: ‘hineini, here I am.’”[3]

Like Jeremiah who went to the Temple to denounce the misguided practices of the Temple, Isaiah condemns the self-centered rituals of Yom Kippur, right in the middle of service of Yom Kippur! And it is in that very same spirit that the rabbis chose this reading for the synagogue on Yom Kippur. Could there be any clearer, more powerful statement of the purpose of our rituals?

Our hearts must break for the pain and suffering, the injustice and unfairness of life. God cannot feed the hungry and clothe the naked unless we join with God to do so. We were created to be God’s angels, God’s messengers, God’s hands in the world. And so we must pray, not to move God, or to move mountains, but to move ourselves!

If this day is to fulfill its purpose, if it is to be the Yom Kippur that Isaiah envisioned, that truck outside should be so heavily laden with food that we have to make two trips to the food bank. And when we next host IHN, when we shelter homeless families here at temple, we should have to turn away volunteers.

There is a crisis of prayer in our day. Fewer people, Jews and non-Jews alike, are actively choosing to engage in prayer, especially in communal worship. Could it be a coincidence that we are also experiencing a crisis of compassion, of active care and concern for others? I think not! When our hearts are open to God they are also open to one another.

 As Heschel said, “In prayer, in the turning of our hearts to God, we seek not to impose our will on God, but to impose God’s will and mercy upon [ourselves].” And God, says our tradition, wants us “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.”[4] 

There is much more that I could and should share with you about the meaning and purpose of prayer and ritual. Some of that will have to wait for another time. But there is one more aspect of prayer that I must reflect on briefly, and that is prayer as the outpouring of our souls.

In the opening chapter of the Book of Samuel, Channa goes to the Temple at Shiloh to pray because she is desperate to have a child. Eli, the High Priest, sees her praying with great passion and he thinks she is drunk, because in his world, if you make the right offerings to God, and you are worthy, God will grant your wish. Channa insists that she is sober, saying, “I have had neither wine nor liquor, but have been pouring out my heart before God.”[5]

Sure enough, soon after, Channa becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son, who grows up to be the great prophet Samuel. Are we to believe that Channa’s prayer stormed the gates of heaven and bent God’s will in her direction? It is tempting to think so. But it’s highly problematic. What about all those Channas who never became pregnant? Did God turn a deaf ear to their prayers? I don’t think so!

Channa pours out her soul before God, not because she thinks her words will change God’s mind. If that were her intent, she would have taken the conventional route and offered sacrifice. She prays because she must, because she knows God cares, that God loves her. Eli, The High Priest, is literally and figuratively blind. He doesn’t see true spirituality when it’s right before his eyes. He is so caught up in the formalities of the rituals of the Temple that he fails to see what the prophets saw, what our rabbis understood, what the Rambam taught, and what humble Chana knew— that prayer and ritual are about intimacy with God. Precisely because God is so transcendent, we must bridge the gap to feel God’s nearness, by opening our hearts and pouring forth our souls. It is in this way, through us, that God becomes an active presence in our lives, and in the world.

Prayer is an urgency. A necessity. It is, as Heschel says, “the home of the soul, its place of continuity, permanence, intimacy, authenticity, [and] earnestness.”

Our words of prayer will not change God, but they do have the power to inspire us, to heal us, and to move us to be healers. No, our words of prayer and our rituals will not change God. But they do have the power to change us, and that can change everything.

V’chein yehi ratzon! Amen!

           

---

[1] “The Spirit of Prayer,” in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, p. 262-3.

[2] Jeremiah 7:4-7

[3] Isaiah 58

[4] Micah 6:8

[5] I Samuel 1

Rekindling the Fire of Jewish Life - Sermon for Kol Nidrei 5776/2015

Rekindling the Fire of Jewish Life

Sermon for Kol Nidrei 5776/2015

Rabbi Arnold S. Gluck

Temple Beth-El, Hillsborough, NJ

I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you that we Reform rabbis have an online forum. What do we do there? We argue, of course! What else would rabbis do! We share ideas, talk about Israel and respond to world events; we ask each other questions about source citations, share stories, and then we argue about them.

One recent argument began when a colleague was looking for a story for her Rosh Hashanah sermon. She shared the elements she remembered, and, as often happens, at least a half a dozen colleagues posted a version of the very story she was looking for. You might think that would have been the end of the matter—a happy ending at that! One rabbi was looking for a story and other rabbis helped her find it. But not this group. This group went on to debate the merits of the story. And, as you can imagine, some loved it, while others loathed it. I won’t tell which side I was on. Not yet, anyway. First I’ll share it with you and give you the opportunity to form your own opinion. Then I’ll tell you what I think. The story is one of many tales of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chassidic movement.

Legend has it that when the Baal Shem Tov saw misfortune threatening our people, he would go to a certain place in the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted. Later, when his disciple, the Magid of Mezeritch, had occasion… to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say: “Master of the Universe, listen! I don’t know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer.” And again the miracle would be accomplished. Still later, when Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sassov sought to save his people, he would go into the forest and say: “I don’t know how to light the fire, I don’t know the prayer, but I know the place, and this must be sufficient.” It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished. Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: “I am unable to light the fire and I don’t know the prayer; I can’t even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and this must be sufficient.” And, so goes the story, it was sufficient.

So, what do you think? Does this story speak to you? It most certainly speaks to me, but not in a good way. I find its message depressing and disturbing: our glory days are over. They are in the past. Once upon a time, we had it right. We had the magic, we knew the words and the place; we got it just right. But with each succeeding generation, alas, our knowledge and our powers diminish, and we become a mere shadow of the great ones who came before us! We know this is true, but it’s all right, because we can reflect back and wax nostalgic about the good old days when God was in heaven and all was right with the Jewish world. All we need now is for Tevye to sing a chorus from Fiddler on the Roof, and everyone one can smile and take comfort.

But I’m not smiling, and I take no comfort in nostalgia. For me, it is not enough for us to have a glorious past. I want a great future for our people here in America and throughout the world. I want us and our children, our grandchildren, and our great-great-great-grandchildren to know how to light the fire of Jewish life, to be able to say the prayers, and even more, I want them to achieve a level of knowledge, sophistication, creativity, and vibrancy beyond our wildest dreams. I want us to be more from one generation to the next, not less.

Evidence suggests, however, that this vision of a vibrant American Jewish future may prove to be an illusion. With notable exceptions, Jewish literacy, loyalty, and observance are not growing. Fewer of us know how to light the fire and say the prayers, and a startling number of us want no part of our story at all. The portrait of American Jewry painted by the latest demographic research is, in fact, one of significant decline. So much so, that if we fail to act, the Baal Shem Tov’s legend may indeed become our story.

Here are a few of the disturbing findings of the 2013 Pew Research Center’s report on American Jewry.

·      Of the 7 million Americans who have at least one Jewish parent, 2.1 million of them no longer identify themselves as Jews, at all.

·      Of those who do define themselves as Jews, 22% of them say they have no religion.

·      Two thirds of these Jews without religion are not raising Jewish children.

·      Among Jews ages 25 to 54 who are intermarried, 36% are not raising their children as Jewish at all, 44% say their children are being raised partly Jewish or as Jewish but with no religion, leaving only 20% who are raising their children exclusively in the Jewish religion. Considering that the intermarriage rate has reached 72% among non-Orthodox Jews, the implications for our future are alarming.

Unfortunately, there is even more bad news. The birth rate among non-Orthodox American Jews is now 1.7 children, well below the replacement rate of 2.1 per couple. Add to this the fact that fewer than 50% of Jews between the ages of 25 and 39 are married, and the conclusion is undeniable. With fewer non-Orthodox Jewish families, and with those families having fewer children, we are marching toward what Steven M. Cohen and Jack Wertheimer have called “a demographic cliff.”

And what of those who still identify as Jews? Here, too, the picture is one of diminishing commitment and loyalty. Jewish giving, Jewish literacy, rates of communal affiliation, synagogue attendance and support for Israel are all in decline. So much so, that if we do not succeed in reversing these trends, within a generation the landscape of American Jewry will be very different than the one we have known and valued all our lives. We will have fewer and smaller institutions and there will be far fewer of us. As a result, our political power and influence as a community will be diminished, with all that implies for us and for Israel.

Now, I haven’t shared this information in order to depress you. On the contrary, it is intended as a wake-up call. For only if we understand what is happening can we take the necessary steps to bring about a different outcome. It is not too late. Not if we are determined and act decisively.

I have spoken so far on the macro level about the non-Orthodox Jewish community in America. But I know well that there is a very personal side to these matters. Many of us have given the fullness of our hearts to the effort of raising Jewish children, only to see them make other choices.

When parents come to seek my advice in such situations I tell them the story of the man who complained to the Baal Shem Tov that his son had forsaken God. “What shall I do?” asked the father. “Love him even more,” replied the Rebbe. This must be our response to all of our children who choose to leave our Jewish community. We must love them even more. Anything else would be a betrayal of our Jewish values. And when we do exemplify those values of love, compassion and acceptance, we have reason to hope that our children may find their way back to our faith.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reminds us that there is a spark that remains in every Jewish soul, no matter how far removed they may be from their people and their heritage. “Some years ago,” he writes, “one of the leaders of world Jewry [went searching for the] “missing Jewish children” of Poland, those who had been adopted by Christian families during the war and brought up as Catholics. … He organized a large banquet and placed advertisements in the Polish press, inviting whoever believed they had been born a Jew to come to dinner. Hundreds came, but the evening was about to end in [disappointment] since none of those present could remember anything of their earliest childhood—until the man asked the person sitting next to him if he could remember the song his Jewish mother had sung to him before going to sleep. He began to sing ‘Rozhinkes mit Mandlen’ (‘Raisins and Almonds’), the old Yiddish lullaby. Slowly others joined in, until the whole room was a chorus. Sometimes,” Rabbi Sacks concludes, “all that is left of Jewish identity is a song.”

Even if nothing more remains of a Jewish identity than the memory of a distant lullaby, we must never stop trying to reach our children whom we’ve lost. With hearts and arms that are open and welcoming, we must do everything in our power to reach out and encourage those who might find their way home. So, too, must we welcome and encourage the intermarried. We have seen so many examples of wonderful Jewish families in which one of the partners isn’t Jewish. These non-Jews are our Jewish heroes, and they need to know how much we appreciate the contribution they have made to Jewish life.

Turning back to the macro level, I’d like to spend the next few minutes sharing a few strategies for building a strong and sustainable Jewish identity that can help us bend the curve from decline to resurgence. They are the insights of a group of Jewish thought leaders I have been involved with since the release of the Pew report.

Evidence indicates that Jewish engagement tends to produce long-term commitment to Jewish life when characterized by three qualities. First, that it be intensive and immersive in nature, offering participants powerful experiences of living in Jewish time and space with Jewish peers. Second, that Jewish engagement begin early in life and continue steadily into adulthood. And, third, that it be rich in meaningful Jewish content that provides a solid base of Jewish knowledge and literacy.

Almost 2,000 years ago, at a time when the continuity of Jewish life was threatened, Rabbi Akiva taught us the importance of immersive and content-full Jewish experience. As the Talmud relates, in the second century, the Roman government forbade the Jews to study the Torah and practice Jewish rituals. But Rabbi Akiva defied the decree and continued to teach the Torah at public gatherings. When asked why he risked his life in this way Akiva answered with the following parable:

“One day a fox was strolling by the banks of a river and saw how the fish were anxiously swimming around from place to place. He asked them: ‘What are you trying to escape from?’  The fish answered: ‘From the nets that people cast to capture us.’ The fox said: ‘Why don’t you come up and find safety on land, so that you and I can live together in peace?’ But the fish replied: ‘Are you really the one whom they call the most clever of animals? You’re not clever at all, but really quite dumb. If we are already afraid in the element in which we live, how much more would we have to be afraid in the element in which we are certainly going to die!’

And thus, Rabbi Akiva continued, is the case with us. If we are already in a dangerous situation when we sit and study the Torah, of which it is said ‘For thereby you shall have life and shall long endure’ (Dt. 30:20), how much more dangerous would our situation be if we were to neglect the Torah!” (Talmud B’rachot 61b)

Jews thrive and endure as Jews when we live in a Jewish environment together with other Jews. When we do, we are like fish in water. We flow naturally with the rhythm of Jewish time, in which Shabbat is Shabbat 52 weeks a year, and our holidays are holidays that we all recognize and celebrate together. This is the experience our children have when they go to Jewish summer camps, to Israel, or attend Jewish day schools.

But here in America, we Jews are like fish who have learned to live on dry land. For the most part, we take an occasional dip in the water, but it is rarely enough for us to feel that we are in our own element. Hoping to endure and pass our identity on to our children we send them for swimming lessons— to Hebrew school— and we prepare them for one big swim— bar or bat mitzvah. But as the evidence suggests, it is insufficient to sustain them as Jews unless it is followed up by ongoing immersion in the waters of Jewish life.

Attending services only rarely, observing a few Jewish holidays, often in a cursory manner without much passion, enthusiasm, or content, has little chance of producing a strong Jewish identity in a non-Jewish environment. Only when we live among our people do we form bonds of friendship with each other and come to see our shared culture as our own.

In the past, as in the days of Rabbi Akiva, Jews were forced to risk their lives in order to demonstrate their devotion to Jewish continuity. In our day, what is asked of us is to keep the waters of Jewish life deep, abundant, and inviting so that our young people, especially, will want to enter and thrive in them. This requires, and will increasingly require, determined action on the part of all of us who want to see our Jewish community continue to exist and our children and grandchildren grow up to be Jews. Each of you, by virtue of your membership in this community is contributing to this effort, and I want to thank you for your commitment to our cause. But let there be no mistake about it. What we are doing currently is not enough to ensure our future. We need to do more to add fire and passion to our collective Jewish life. So I urge each of us to think about our involvement not just in terms of what we want to receive, but also in terms of what we can do and what we can give to strengthen our community. Of course, funding matters, but your active engagement matters even more.

I’d like to close with a story that reminds us of the importance of Jewish knowledge and learning.

Once, a long time ago, on the eve of his wedding, a groom’s passage was blocked by a raging river. Just as he was about to give up, he saw a rabbi approach the water from the nearby forest. The rabbi looked carefully at the river and then dutifully removed a prayer book from his pocket and recited a prayer. He bowed left and then right, and miraculously he walked across the river.

“Please, Rabbi,” he said, “my wedding is just hours away and I’ll miss it if you don’t help me.”

“How can I be of assistance?” the rabbi asked.

“If I could borrow your prayer book for a moment and if you could show me the prayer to say before I cross this river, that would be all I need.”

The rabbi gave him the book and the groom recited the prayer, bowing left and then right. Having completed the ritual, he took one step onto the water and sank straight to the bottom. The rabbi grabbed him by his coat and hauled him onto the shore.

“What did I do wrong?” the young man sputtered. “I said the right prayer. I bowed in the exact sequence. Why did I sink?”

“Ahh,” said the rabbi with a smile. “You asked me for the prayer book and you wanted me to show you the appropriate blessing, but you never asked me to show you where the rocks were under the water.”

To find our way—to traverse the waters of Jewish life—we need to know the meanings of our practices and customs. We need to know why we do them. For if we don’t, we won’t do them for long. And isn’t that the sad story of our time? Have you encountered learned Jews who are not committed to Jewish life? They are few and far between because the power and depth of our tradition shines forth brightly when it is revealed. Torah and wisdom, knowledge and understanding, are the stepping stones to Jewish commitment and continuity. So I challenge you, young and old alike, to immerse yourselves more deeply in our teachings and our way of life. Our young people need our adults to be role models of what we hope and wish for them. So let us all embrace a Judaism that is serious and aspirational. Not just because that is the only kind that will survive here in America, but because it is the only kind of Judaism that is worthy of survival.

May each of us rekindle the fire of Jewish spirit on the altar of our hearts, that it may burn bright and blaze the way to the renewal of our extraordinary people in this great land of freedom.

V’chein yehi ratzon! Amen!