blogs/rabbi-ed-feinstein

Address to the GA
Rabbi Ed Feinstein
November 13, 2017

In 1965, the great Jewish philosopher, Abraham Joshua Heschel stood at this podium and addressed the GA, assembled in Montreal.

“There are two words I should like to strike from our vocabulary,” he declared, “ 'surveys' and 'survival'.”

Twenty five years before the National Jewish Population Study, fifty years before the Pew Report, Heschel declared, “Our community is in spiritual distress, and our organizations are too concerned with digits. Our disease is loss of character and commitment, and the cure cannot be derived from charts and diagrams.”

A generation before anyone spoke of “Jewish continuity,” Heschel taught: “The significance of Judaism does not lie in its being conducive to the mere survival but rather in its being a source of spiritual wealth, and source of meaning relevant to all peoples.”

Words matter. Baruch She-amar v'haya ha-olam. With words, we are taught, God created our world. And with words, we create a world. Heschel grasped that the jargon of “survival” and “statistics” reduces Jews to mere numbers, and turns the spiritual treasures of Judaism into an instrument. The jargon obscures the truly important task of this generation -- to shape a narrative of Jewish meaning and Jewish purpose that might gather us into a genuine community of commitment.  

The year before Heschel spoke, Look Magazine, the second most widely-read news magazine in the country, published a cover article entitled, “The Vanishing American Jew.” Citing studies of the Jewish community, the article pointed to ominously rising intermarriage rates, falling birth rates, and waning indicators of Jewish identity and predicted a deeply diminished Jewish community by century's end. The piece was subtitled, “Leaders fear threat to Jewish survival in today's ‘crisis of freedom.”

Fear and crisis. Without a language of shared values, without a compelling vision of the community we seek to create, we evoke crisis, we resort to fear. But crisis and fear are a drug. They produce an immediate high. But withdrawal always follows. Heschel understood that we cannot build an vital American Jewish identity, or inspire a revival of Jewish life, or elevate a new generation of leadership with crisis and fear, with dire statistics predicting an imminent end to our survival. It's the wrong language.

In the spirit of Heschel, and with deep respect for those presenting this morning, I suggest we continue his program of editing our vocabulary. I would like to suggest that we excise more words from our collective vocabulary. I nominate: branding, marketing, engagement, strategy, millenials.

Yes, the next generation communicates in new ways. They order their transportation, food, clothing and music on line. On line, they find dates and mates. On line, they share photos, experiences, and confessions. But once we've mastered online communication, we will discover that they are asking the questions we've left unanswered --

What do we stand for, as Jews in America?
Where is the moral infrastructure of the organized Jewish community?
Can Jewish life inform the purposefulness and the meaningfulness of my life?
What is the meaning  Jewish peoplehood in a pluralistic, democratic society?
Why should I be Jewish?

These questions will not be met by clever marketing or by creative branding (whatever that is). They will not be answered by more attractive websites or user-friendly ap's.

Heschel concluded in 1965: “Our social workers are involved in an eager search for new methods; what I plead for is a search for Jewish authenticity.”

This is Heschel's plea: Make the search for genuine Jewish authenticity the top Federation priority. Make Federation the most powerful force for Jewish education and Jewish revival in the community. Because we will not succeed at collective communal philanthropy unless we offer a narrative of collective communal purpose. We will not engage more givers or find more gifts without a compelling message of Jewish meaning. We will not find new ways to do Federation until we succeed in imagining new ways to do Jewish.  

This generation is waiting, impatiently, for spiritual wisdom. They are waiting for spiritual wisdom -- for heroic ideals, for vision. Most of all, they want to stand for something important. This is what they ask of us. A new covenant of collective responsibility.

In 1965, Look Magazine predicted our demise. Here's the irony: Look Magazine is gone, but we're still here. We've passed our expiration date. We are either living well past our time, or we are living in miracle-time. I prefer the latter. Whether this GA marks the birth of a new Jewish renaissance or the requiem for a once-glorious culture will not depend on whether we invent some clever marketing or communications strategy. But whether we grasp that we are living in miracle-time and offer a new compelling narrative of collective Jewish purpose, a compelling narrative of Jewish meaning, a Jewish culture that thrives in the environment of freedom. It depends on whether we can turn and share with one another what Heschel so elegantly called, “Gratitude for the sublime calling of being a Jew.” May we be successful.