Rabbi Isaac Jeret's February Bulletin Column

Dear Friends:

With last month’s column, I began a two-part series in response to the general question of the future direction for the Conservative Movement. Last month, I focused upon an approach toward the revitalization of the authentic intellectual approach to Judaism that Conservative Judaism reflects when it is best understood. At the heart of this position is the notion that the methods of study and interpretation of Jewish sacred texts, not only their conclusions, must continue to evolve so that we, as Jews, can achieve a constant dialogue between the wisdom of everything Jewish leading up to our moment and the greatest conventional wisdom of our day. For those reading this month’s Bulletin who might not have received last month’s, please feel free to consult our website (www.nertamid.com) to read last month’s article.

As promised in last month’s piece, I intend this month to address the future direction of our Movement from a more sociological perspective. An ideological approach to Jewish life in the 21^st century does undergird this discussion. However, any reader of this piece should know with certainty that such ideological underpinnings serve only to underscore the degree to which our People and our heritage are most pragmatic in character. The ideological foundation for this sociological approach to the significance and purpose of the Conservative Movement is simple and practical: Jews must exist in the first place if Judaism is to exist itself and if Jews, by living Jewishly, are to make a Jewish difference in the world; it is of utmost importance to the aims of both Judaism and Jews that Jews continue to exist. What follows then is one understanding of the greatest challenge to Jewish survival in the 21^st century, a great Jewish opportunity that corresponds to this challenge, and the role that the Conservative Movement can play in helping our People to overcome this challenge and seize its resulting opportunity.

Today, there are approximately 13.5 million Jews in the world. In 1990, there were 5.5 million Jewish individuals in North America who were identified as Jews by the National Jewish Population Study conducted by the United Jewish Communities (the umbrella organization for all Jewish Federations in the United States). Today, there are 5.2 million Jews in North America, at most. Our population is also an aging one, and the average Jewish couple with children is not reproducing itself (couples are averaging fewer than 2 children). Three out of every four Jews marry non-Jews. Three out of every four children raised in homes of intermarried parents are raised as Christians, in some faith other than Judaism or Christianity, or completely without religion. These are the most optimistic readings of the results of the study that I cite.

In other words, the Jewish population of North America, soon to be relegated to the second largest Jewish population in the world (Israel’s Jewish population is growing and ours is shrinking), is diminishing in numbers. We are disappearing at an alarming rate. Our future looks grim by any accounting. In our own Movement, most congregations are aging significantly (ours is the Movement with the oldest average age of its members). A great number of our children are marrying non-Jews.

Ours is the Movement with the most to lose, most quickly, should all of the trends noted above continue as they are so. Ours is therefore the Movement with the most to gain from adopting an approach to contemporary Jewish life which both responds to the current sociological reality of North American Jewry and aims to build a larger and more engaged North American Jewish community.

So, what do we need to do? All research suggests that the foundational elements of Jewish identity formation occur in the home. The extent to which formal Jewish education has any effect is correlated with greatest frequency to the value ascribed at home to Jewish engagement and Jewish learning. The first thing that we need to do is to recognize that we, as a Movement, have a very narrow view of that which might constitute a Jewish household.

We must break out of the stale notion that a Jewish household constitutes only a home in which both parents are born Jewish. Our own community is an excellent example of the diversity of that which might constitute a Jewish home. In addition to many families of two parents born into Judaism, we have single Jewish parents, two parent homes in which one parent is born Jewish and the other is a Jew by choice, single parents who have become Jews by choice, intermarried parents who have elected to raise their children (actively, not passively) as Jews. We have intermarried couples actively raising their children as Jews in which the non-Jewish spouse is atheist, a practicing adherent of another faith (but clearly not the religion of the children and the home), or spiritually and/or communally interested and engaged but not Jewish (perhaps as yet, and maybe never to be so). We have grandparents raising children, we have gay couples doing so, we have straight couples doing so, and we even have joint custody arrangements that also enter into the picture. To enlarge and deepen the Jewish People, we must strengthen the great variety of Jewish family configurations that aim to raise Jewish children. As a Movement, we must shift our educational, marketing, and pastoral paradigms significantly so as to accommodate the widest range of Jewish households. We must distinguish between intermarried couples and interfaith couples, the former constituting households with one Jewish parent in which Judaism is decidedly the religion of the home and the latter constituting households of more than one religion (in which children are raised with more than one tradition). We must be the Movement of the Jewish household, in all of its permutations, because the Jewish future depends upon our doing so; no other Movement is seeing to it that there is a home, alongside the traditional model of the Jewish home, for Jewish households of the greatest range that exists in our day.

At the heart of the matter, we need acknowledge that the common denominator among all of permutations and formulations of Jewish households, as they are listed above, is that they are all Jewish households! In each instance, what is described above is a household in which parents/guardians have made the choice either to participate actively together in raising their children as Jews or, at least, to refrain from introducing a second faith into their children’s lives (as the children’s own faith) while raising their children as Jews. And, as I mentioned on the first morning of Rosh Hashanah, during my sermon, I believe that our recognizing and celebrating the generosity and righteousness of non-Jewish spouses who participate in raising their children as Jews is long overdue! To a shrinking People of 13.5 million in number worldwide, I cannot imagine a more generous act of love and dedication than to determine that one’s child should be raised in a faith other than one’s own.

Our niche is right in front of our eyes. Our purpose should be abundantly clear. In reality, we are already the inclusive Movement of the expanded concept of the Jewish household. However, we need now to start acting as such, proudly so and with a sense of unique purpose. We are the Movement for families who choose to raise their children as Jews, and families come in all shapes and sizes. And, thank goodness we exist, because no other Movement chooses to serve this need clearly and authentically.

The Jewish vision of the future is one of a healed world in which humanity reflects evermore its potential as images of the Divine. It is one of a world in which the value of human life trumps any other concern. It is one of a world in which decency and interpersonal concern is the norm and not the exception. This beautiful Jewish vision of a world wherein God’s presence is apparent by virtue of all that humanity might become can only be realized if there are Jews to teach it, to model it, and to work toward it. Without Jews, the Jewish vision will die. Just as our own synagogue is at the forefront of a new awareness of the range of Jewish households committed to a solid and vibrant Jewish future, so too, our Movement as a whole must evolve quickly to meet this challenge and to avail itself of a great opportunity to serve the welfare of the Jewish future.

As I understand Rabbi Shulman to have said on many an occasion, “what we do here matters.” May we do all that we do as well as we can do so and may we lead the way toward a new understanding of the unique role and purpose of the Conservative Movement.

B’Shalom – With Blessings of Peace and Wholeness,

Rabbi Isaac Jeret
Spiritual Leader