One of the joys of summertime for us is our chavura. A chavura is a group of friends, a fellowship. Ours is led by our rabbi, and features long lazy Shabbos Saturday mornings or Friday nights with a little study, a lot of discussion, good food, maybe a little drink, and wonderful people. We rotate meetings among members’ houses — maybe we eat broiled dates and drink very strong gin and tonics in front of the 17th century Vermont farmhouse hearth that takes up the whole room, or read Talmud in the octagonal tower house the owner built herself deep in the woods, or watch the flowers grow in the greenhouse and sunroom of the group’s best octogenarian gardener. This time we met in a mid-century Japanese style guesthouse, perched in a secret meadow full of sculpture and butterflies, so spare and elegant it was like a museum, and we talked about this article from Tablet magazine.
The central thesis of the article seems to be that Reform Judaism is in crisis because it has too big of a tent, and that the answer to declining synagogue membership is to create ideological demarcations that define the Reform movement: What we need, in other words, is more shit you got to believe in to get in. I don’t feel like more dogma is what secular Jews who don’t go to synagogue are seeking, exactly, but I’m fascinated with the article’s flat refusal of the most obvious choice for an ideological litmus test for what makes a person a Jew. It sneers at the idea, expressed by a rabbi in the article to apparently merely polite applause, that “inclusion is a moral Jewish obligation,” or that our “commitment to justice is theological.”
Justice, justice, shall you pursue (Deuteronomy 16:20) is apparently right out for today’s Reform Jew. But what’s in?
Zionism, apparently. The article notes approvingly the standing ovation received for the idea that “To turn against Israel, to join our ideological opponents and political enemies in castigating Zionism, is a sign of Jewish illness.” Most of the article tries to elide support for K’lal Yisrael, the Jewish people, with support for the state of Israel, and to claim that anti-Zionist Jews are apathetic unreligious unaffiliated lefties who don’t belong in the Reform movement, who aren’t Jews really.
Yes, well. I’m not an anti-Zionist Jew. I can’t stand Bibi, but I believe Jews have the right to live peacefully in the land currently called Israel, just as the Palestinians do. BUT: The last person to teach me some Yiddish was an anti-Zionist Jew. The last time I danced to Klezmer music was with a bunch of anti-Zionist Jews. The last person I bought a Havdalah candle from, a candle she had made herself with her own hands, was an anti-Zionist Jew. And I use that candle, every week, with my spice box, to make Havdalah, like all those apathetic non-religious unaffiliated lefties you know do, you know, the one who aren’t really Jews.
Judaism has put up with this nonsense about who is Jewish enough for a really long time, I know that. Jews have been pushing away people who care intensely about K’lal Yisrael, people for whom a Jewish identity is their whole world, for a long time, too. That Yiddish learning and Klezmer dancing I was doing? Happened in a church. And why was that? Are Reform synagogues doing as the article suggests, and excluding anti-Zionist Jews? I don’t know. I didn’t ask.
But I do know that we Jews are a diasporic people, a resilient people, and I know that there are an infinite number of ways to be Jewish. If Reform Judaism wants to revitalize itself, it could seek out those people who are finding new ways to be Jewish, to pursue justice, to make Jewish art and music and Judaica, to read Jewish texts, to speak Hebrew and Yiddish and Ladino, and bring them into the synagogue and make Reform Judaism a welcoming place for them and all their wild friends. (At least as welcoming as a South Minneapolis church!)
In the meantime, here’s a list of some of the most vibrant Jewish people and organizations I know, people that make me proud and excited to be Jewish. (Are all these people anti-Zionist? Are all of them Reform? Those are not the right questions. They’re Jewish. Doing exciting Jewish things, in Jewish ways. Vet their organizational affiliations and ideologies on your own, according to what’s important to you. But try for a big tent, or at least a justice-focused tent. We need everyone!)
Some Cool Jews
The Jewitches: Jewish magic, Judaica, essays, excellent Instagram account.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg: Torah study that is both scholarly and inclusive.
Southside Shtetl: Pop-up Judaica and Klezmer marketplace in Minneapolis.
Maayanot Community Mikveh in Minneapolis — inclusive community Mikveh, perhaps modeled on
Mayyim Hayyim: Boston’s wonderful community mikveh.
Nomy Lamm, disability activist, Jewish witch, works with both Sins Invalid and the Dreaming the World to Come podcast and planner.
Reboot: Jewish arts and culture.
Be’Chol Lashon: Jewish diversity and vibrancy all over the world.
At The Well: Start a Rosh Chodesh practice!
T’ruah: Human rights rabbis.
Klezmer on Ice: Minneapolis Klezmer festival
Svara: Queer and trans Torah study
Boston Workers’ Circle: Secular Jewish arts and culture, progressive politics, Yiddishkeit
Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird: Do you need a painfully sexy Jewish man singing in three languages on your music playlist? You do.
Michael Twitty: African-American, Jew by choice, queer, does interesting things with food, ancestry, and trauma. His Passover plate will school you.
And finally, a little note on Tablet magazine: I’m not sure how aware I really was of Tablet before the rabbi sent the article. The name is minimalist, arty, and anodyne; I’ve definitely heard of it, and read articles in it, but would have guessed it was a Slate knockoff. After I read the article, a little casual wikipediaing suggested to me that Tablet is a sort of Commentary for the 21st century: that is, a faux-intellectual mostly conservative magazine mostly written by the kind of Jews who vote Republican without a shred of irony. And here’s the thing about this kind of media outlet: I had a subscription to, and read, Commentary in the 1990s, because a well-off white male PhD liberal political scientist who was a mentor to me gave it to me as a gift. It was fashionable then, as it is now, for well-off well-educated white male liberals to “listen to the views of the other side,” by which they meant reading and politely engaging with their demographic and cultural counterparts on the political right. What I was choosing to read at the same time was Dykes to Watch Out For, and reading those two publications in counterpoint left an indelible lesson:
There are not two sides to political discourse in this country, unless by “two sides” you mean insiders — the (mostly) well-off white male political leaders who have platforms in places like Tablet, or Commentary, or the New Republic, or the New Yorker, or the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or Fox News, or MSNBC, etc. — and outsiders, that is to say, everyone else. So if you want to authentically “listen to the views of the other side” in this country, you need to go places you’ve never visited and seek out voices you’ve never heard, because they’ve been actively silenced by people with power. Most of those voices are going to belong to people of color, poor people, queer people, disabled people, gender diverse people, very old people, very young people, any group of people you don’t see on your teevee or your phone, or only see depicted in negative ways. Being a progressive who reads faux intellectual right wing discourse in highly visible and well-funded media outlets (who’s paying for those, anyway?) doesn’t make you thoughtful and bipartisan, it programs you to respond respectfully and seriously to arguments that didn’t deserve the airtime they got in the first place.
So that’s my suggestion: Next time you’re discomfited by an article that calmly and coolly asserts something outrageously wrong in a glossy online magazine (Jews are only Jews if they’re Zionists!), find a new voice to listen to: someone excluded or shut out or simply with less of a platform, someone you can elevate, someone saying something interesting in a new and vibrant (and in this case Jewish) way. It will cheer you up. It will heal the world.
I’ve made some suggestions, but if you’ve got some I missed, add them in the comments! And, as always, like, subscribe, comment, and share to keep this content coming.