The following Letter to the Editor of the Forward was written in response to the following article: "Goodbye Wissenschaft, Hello Relevance - Now and Then" by Jonathan D. Sarna Published May 26, 2010 for Issue of June 4, 2010
June 7, 2010
Jane Eisner
Editor
Editorial Department
Forward
125 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
USA
Re: “Goodbye Weissenschaft, Hello Relevance” in the Now and Then
column by Jonathan D. Sarna Forward, June 4, 2010
Dear Ms. Eisner:
That which might have “Relevance” does not mean it is “Important” or,
for that matter, that it is particularly worthy. It all depends on who
is doing the defining of the word “Relevance” and what their
objectives are for labeling whatever it is that is being evaluated and
labeled.
In his Forward Forum article “Goodbye Weissenschaft, Hello Relevance”
(Forward, June 4, 2010), Jonathan D. Sarna provides us with a
retrospective “trip tic” of the philosophies that had been driving the
Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), and which had made it the
acknowledged leader of the Conservative Jewish Movement in America for
so long. But, JTS is now facing hard times; not just financial hard
times like almost every other organization in our country,
particularly those of the not-for-profit persuasion, but, and perhaps
more so, in the way that long term political “leaders” who think they
are still leading their constituents are totally shocked when in the
blink of a few million ballots they find themselves in need of a new
business card; “Joe Blow, Private Citizen.”
How the mighty have fallen. That is surely part of what drove the
members of Board of Directors of JTS to install Arnold Eisen as their
new Chancellor and what led him to reprogram the organization’s GPS to
hopefully get it to where the Board of Directors wants it to be; back
on top. But, “On top of what?” is the unasked question that gets
obfuscated by the very act of casting the new direction and claiming
that now that it is cast all will be well. Please.
The big problem to be surmounted is said to be something about where
the emphasis should be placed by JTS when educating its degree
candidates who will be the rabbis, cantors and Jewish educators of the
American Conservative Jewish community down the road. Where it used to
be “the advancement of Jewish scholarship” in the days of Soloman
Schechter according to Professor Sarna and later became a more
“scientific” Jewish scholarship; i.e. Weissenschaft, professed and
dictated by former JTS Chancellor Ismar Schorsch, it will now, under
Chancellor Eisen’s plan, be a hybrid of “academic scholarship” and
“the application of that scholarship” to be “scholarship in the
service to Judaism and the Jewish community.”
Really? Now things will be OK?
Not really. Not at all. Until Conservative Judaism as a Movement lets
go of its practice of congregant infantilization, it is, in our
opinion, doomed to continue on its death spiral to nothingness. Its
mainstream congregations will continue to shrink in membership and
collapse upon each other as one Jewish Center joins with another to
save what is left of each. In our home town area on Long Island, there
are already several Conservative synagogues that have “combined
forces” to save what was left of their dying and dwindling
memberships. They have combined the remaining resources of the
organizations and have put up for sale buildings that had been the
houses of worship of the now totally eclipsed congregations that
seemed to have been thriving just a few years earlier.
They never saw it coming. But the seeds of this devastation had been
sown decades earlier in our opinion. We were there to witness what was
done and how it happened. Why none of the leadership or commentators
of today such as Professor Sarna are talking about this is what really
concerns us. When we were kids and were just trying to make sense of
Judaism in our Conservative Synagogues, those who were there to show
us the way and what it meant were either overwhelmed by the task or
not willing or able to meet it.
A few of us in my synagogue’s Hebrew school were exposed to a teacher,
Mr. Benjamini was his name, who taught us “Chumash and Rashi”, and
whetted our appetites for true Biblical scholarship. He did not return
for some reason in the next term and we floundered around in search of
that kind of teacher until we found the Manhattan Talmudic Academy
(MTA) and that changed our lives. We were told about it by our Hebrew
School principal who knew that the local Hebrew High School was taught
by people who were just a step or two ahead of the classes they were
teaching. To have him refer us to MTA was like the religious version
of Macys sending us to Gimbles. Today, the Chabad is reaching out for
guys like us. It wasn’t around back then. But, it would not have
provided what we wanted anyway, because we tried a Summer of learning
with the Lubavitch on Eastern Parkway but it did not offer the depth
of knowledge that Mr. Benjamini and MTA had given even if it did offer
a great deal of enthusiasm for what their movement was supposedly
about.
Let’s face it: Rabbis in Conservative Congregations still have to
signal to let their congregants know when to sit down and when to come
to their feet during their religious services, which is indicative, if
not down right symbolic, of how they view and treat their flocks for
the most part. Scholarship is for the scholarly. They “impress the
heck out of ‘em” with a few simple lines borrowed from Rashi or “the
Rhi” and as long as no one challenges them, things continue on their
way. Of course the congregants are satisfied with what they have been
getting all this time. But, have they been sufficiently intellectually
challenged? Have they been led to embrace all that Judaism can be to
those who do embrace it? In a sense, the Conservative Movement has
nurtured what was sown. But, what has been and what will be reaped
from this “Judaism-Lite” approach? Kids, and their parent as well,
learn “about” instead of learning “it”. They get short changed and so,
in the long run, does the Jewish community-at-large.
What they need, in our opinion, at JTS and at every one of the Jewish
Communities looking to JTS for leadership is its very own “Mr.
Benjamini;” if he could possibly be replicated. With all due respect
to Professor Sarna, and to his father before him; though some how I
believe his father might well agree with this take on things if he had
the prospective of hindsight we have all these years later; let’s get
back to basics. Stop treating congregants as the great unwashed and
keeping scholarship hidden away in the seminary. We dare say that if
that is not done, things will continue as they have been and those in
leadership positions today, both at the level of JTS and their
proponents in the “trenches,” may pretty soon be in need of new
business cards themselves.
Sincerely,
Drew Kopf
