Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

Rabbinical Assembly Convention Address, January 1979

by Harold M. Schulweis

"I know that I am perplexed, that my fears are irrational, incoherent. At times I am given over to panic; I am afraid of death. At other times, I am horrified by the thought of becoming, God forbid, incapacitated during my life-time. . . I don't know what to fear, what not to fear; I am utterly confused and ignorant." ["Redemption, Prayer, Talmud Torah,” J.B. Soloveitchik, Tradition, Spring, 1978]

"Can a sick person afflicted with a fatal disease tell the 'thou' who happens to be a very dear and close friend, the tale of a horror-stricken mind confronted with the dreadful prospect of death? Can a parent explain to a rebellious child, who rejects everything the parent stands for, his deep-seated love for him?

"In the majestic community, in which surface-personalities meet and commitment never exceeds the bounds of the utilitarian, we may find collegiality, neighborliness, civility, or courtesy – but not friendship. . . ["The Lonely Man of Faith,” J.B. Soloveitchik, Tradition, Summer 1965]

"I am lonely. Let me emphasize, however, that by stating 'I am lonely' I do not intend to convey to you the impression that I am alone. I, thank God, do enjoy the love and friendship of many. I meet people, talk, preach, argue, reason; I am surrounded by comrades and acquaintances. And yet, companionship and friendship do not alleviate the passional experience of loneliness which trails me constantly. I am lonely because at times I feel rejected and thrust away by everybody, not excluding my most intimate friends, and the words of the Psalmist 'my father and my mother have forsaken me' quite often ring in my ears

. . . ." ["The Lonely Man of Faith,” J.B. Soloveitchik, ibid.]

Who writes these lines? Who is it that so craves personal expression? Who seeks attention to the anxieties of the lonely self? Is it someone far removed from the Jewish community, a stranger to the poetry and wisdom of our tradition? These words come from the writings of Ish Ha-halachah, Yoshe Baer Soloveitchik – a personality deeply immersed in the Jewish community and grounded in the security of halachah.

Soloveitchik's cry is not unique among modern and contemporary Jewish thinkers. We hear it in the later writings of Hermann Cohen, more fully in the works of Martin Buber, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Franz Rosenzweig. The author of The Star of Redemption is not consoled by the vacant smile of philosophy and theology which teaches him that death is merely the loss of the body..."What does philosophy care that the fear of death knows nothing of this division into body and soul; that it bellows 'I,' 'I,' 'I,' and refuses. . . this relegating of fear to a mere body. . . ."

What is missing in Jewish life to satisfy the longing of the soul? Is halachah not enough? Is Jewish ritual not enough?

Is Jewish philosophy not enough? If these learned, pious, Jewish leaders cry out their discontent with the community of Jewish "gesselschaft,” if they seek attention for the shivering self, what may be said of the fears of the individual Jews we serve? And what may be said of the loneliness of those who lead others into community?

The existential torments of Jewish thinkers are more profoundly articulated but not less deeply felt by ordinary Jews. The individuals we serve make up the real personal histories out of which sociologists and psychologists construct the concepts of anomie, alienation and anhedonia. They are part of the statistics of rising divorce rates, rising suicides among college students, rising delinquency rates.

It is not enough to talk theology or halachah or mitzvoth or peoplehood to them. Not because these people are foolish or irreverent; but because other personal things press heavy on their hearts and minds and call for attention.

Inattention to our supra-personal preachments is not a mark of their insensitivity. But when you walk in a forest amidst flowers and trees, and a sharp pebble cuts into your foot, you quickly lose your aesthetic sensibilities. They are beset by the tensions between parents and children, the disharmonies of marriage, the dying of parents, the limits of career, the emptiness of their lives in the midst of the plenitude of their possessions. These are not "bad" Jews, but the classic rabbinic categories which divide relationships between man and God, and man and man do not touch their personal anguish. Shabbat, kashrut, tefillin, liturgy, observances bein adam la'makom; Soviet Jewry, Israel, social action, duties bein dam l'chavero offer them no "Guide to the Depressed.” What of the interior life, bein adam l'atzmo – between man and himself?

The youngster who has spent months fighting with his confused parents comes to your study to explain why he has joined Scientology. He is filled with newfound importance, with the sense of personal idealism, but mystified by his parents' opposition. He needs something more from Judaism.

The frantic woman whose husband has just left her hands me a scribbled note written by her nine year-old daughter and addressed to her father: "Please daddy come back. I promise I will be good." She needs something more from Judaism.

A Jew is defined by what hurts him. Our people are hurt. Around them swirls a revolution of values and expectations. The old sanctities of God, Torah and Israel have lost relevant application to their personal lives. Contemporary rabbis are caught in the vise. They cannot offer the same answers if only because Jews are not asking the same questions.

"Do not tell me what I am to do for Judaism; what I am to do for the sake of the synagogue, or for Zion's sake, or for the sake of mitzvoth. Tell me what Judaism can do for me. Tell me what the synagogue can do for me. Tell me what the Jewish community can do for me. Tell me what mitzvoth can do for me. For me – not as a dues paying member; not as an element in the collective set of a people; but for me – in my existential loneliness, in my despair and boredom; in my inability to celebrate, to feel, to laugh or to cry."

Their voices give new meaning to Akiba's statement: Kil tzarah shehi shel yachid tzarah, v'chol tzarah she-ainah shel yachid, ainah tzarah: Every distress of the individual is a genuine distress, but every distress of the community at large is not such a distress (Devarim Rabbah 2:22). A revolution. The pendulum has swung wildly away from the traditional pole of "we and there and then" to the modern pole of "me and here and now.” The troubled have no heart for history, eschatology or community. "Pay attention to our personal lives. We are falling apart."

THE PUBLIC AGENDA

What can I say to them? I have been raised to speak the language of reshut harabbim, the discourse of the public agenda. I was not prepared either by my home background or by my seminary training to handle these cries out of r'shuth ha-yachid, from the private domain. In my most imaginative moments, I cannot conjure up an image of my zayde complaining to his rabbi that he lacks spontaneity and craves self-fulfillment. My zayde and I were raised in the liturgy of community.

So, in one form or another, I convey the message: "Dear Friend, I understand your personal needs, your anxieties, your request for personal meaning and intimate meeting. But here in the synagogue we are concerned with other things – with prayer and ritual observance, with study and the celebrations of weddings and b'nai mitzvah. For what you want, you must go elsewhere."

And that is precisely where they are going. They are searching out a whole variety of encounter groups, growth centers, human potentiality movements; Scientology, Transcendental Meditation, Synanon, Day-top, Gestalt, actualization, and EST. It is tempting to dismiss all of this as a regional phenomenon restricted to the wild and wooly west. Surely California is unreal, a state of mind on the outer reaches of culture. But in fact it is far from an idiosyncratic phenomenon limited to a particular geography. Carl Rogers characterizes the phenomenon of group encounter as "the most rapidly growing social invention of the century." And there are enough Jews among the leaders and followers of these group movements for us to take them seriously. Statistics aside, I am constantly surprised by how many Jews are drawn to these experiences, and by the high caliber of the participants.

The attraction of so many Jews to encounter groups represents a major ideologic and pragmatic challenge to the synagogue and to the ethos of Judaism. For at the heart of these movements is more than another form of therapeutic relief. They signal the emergence of new secular religions, religions of remission and release: secular religions with their own doctrines of human nature and salvation, rituals of confession and therapeutic sacraments, gospels of self-fulfillment, charismatic leaders and supportive communities.

Scholars such as Huston Smith, Robert Bellah, John Sealy and Kurt Back have observed that these secular, psychological and social therapeutic enterprises contain all the marks of religion. They articulate a new faith form in which "theological supernaturalism" is supplanted by "psychological supernaturalism,” and "prophetic faith" is eclipsed by "ontological faith" (Tillich), the celebration of what is. Today many of these casual enterprises appear to be in transitional stage, moving from therapeutic meetings to societies advocating an alternate way of life; in short, a religion.

SERIOUS CHALLENGE

The challenge to the synagogue from the emerging psycho-religious movement may prove more serious than the conversionary efforts of Christianity we are accustomed to.

First, because the secular religions claim no triumphant design to convert us, the stigma of apostasy is not attached to the new believers.

Second, because most Jews are so secularized that joining such secular religions causes no cultural shock. The "God-terms" of the humanistic secular religions sound a familiar ring to Jews: awareness, creativity, freedom, care, concern, change, I-thou-relationship, responsibility.

And third, because there may be some comforting legitimation for encountered Jews who enjoy tracing the Jewish antecedence of so many thinkers, originators and organizers of these movements: Erich Fromm and Abraham Maslow, Fritz Perls and Werner Erhard nee Paul Rosenberg – and a host of others.

Right or wrong, Jews are disproportionately represented in these activities; right or wrong, they feel themselves disaffected from Jewish communal life; right or wrong, they hunger for something the synagogue fails to offer them; right or wrong, they are drawn away from us and we are conscience-bound to understand why and to consider whether and how they can be won back.

The new psycho-religious enterprises are more respectable, more expensive, more secularized than the counter-culture youth experiments which have been with us for quite some time. But there are significant similarities. Beatniks, hippies, the psychedelic revolution, the attraction to cultism from Meher Baba to the Unification Church – despite the varieties of style and motivations – present a harmony in despair along with the secular religions: a profound discontent with an increasingly impersonal, pressuring society and a yearning for spirituality.

Avoth siman L'vanim, the parents reveal their children; banim siman l'avoth, the children reveal their parents. Significantly both phenomena have emerged outside the institutions of the establishment; outside the academy and outside the synagogue and church.

The root metaphor held in common is "the wearing of mask.” Masks superimposed upon them from infancy; a facade of roles, obligations, duties meant to please others: nachas-producing machines for others: parents, teachers, employers, institutions. A tyranny of “shoulds” muzzles their personal desires. Should they rebel they will be met with a chorus of accusation: bad son, bad daughter, bad husband, bad wife, bad Jew. For all external appearances they are successful, accomplished, contented souls. But they feel suffocated beneath the iron mask, their inner voice muffled. Under the burden of surplus repression, the buried self twists and turns, knows itself to be dancing the unlived lives of others.

Here the new secular religions enter to encourage "the cracking of the masks,” the liberation from false facade. From massages to primal screams, from shedding of clothes to breaking in and out of humanly formed circles –

The promise of release;

The hope is in new revelations out of the inner core of the self;

The miracle is in the resurrection of deadened affect;

The major sacrament is in the self-confession of repressed aspirations.

A relative – talented, prosperous, educated – attends Synanon and describes the savage verbal assaults upon him. Why does he allow himself to be so attacked? Because the torpor of his daily existence is so oppressive that he welcomes the abrasive intrusions. It is a parody of the shaving lotion commercial: the brisk slap is gratefully acknowledged, "Thanks, I needed that."

The passion for aliveness, the need for expressivity in a muted and deafened society, the desire to unburden oneself of the anxieties which haunt them, the promise of a community which pays attention to the self swallowed in the anonymity of the conventional assembly moves them to search for more intimate community.

Let me not be misunderstood. This is no brief for the encounter movements. I know the failures of many of these groups. The collaborative studies of Lieberman, Yalom and Miles reveal the shallowness, exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims as well as the outright dangers of many of the therapy and encounter circles they have studied [Encounter Groups: First Facts, Basic Books, New York, 1973]. I know the hucksterism and commercial exploitation of many of the entrepreneurs of encounter. I know that much that lies behind the salvation of self-assertiveness is rationalized narcissism; that the ethos which declares that each of us has his own space and each of us does his own thing ends up as midath sodom, the characteristic of Sodom, "Mine is mine and thine is thine." The code words, "I am responsible for myself and you are responsible for yourself" translate themselves into detachedness: "Don't lean upon me, don't come to me with your hurts."

I know how often "spontaneity" is confused with impulsivity; how what passes for "feeling" has nothing to do with the feeling of compassion and commitment but is more akin to the adolescent's whining, "because I feel like it."

I know how readily the self as sacred center spawns a society of "panthers roaming round in separate cages,” snatching at the world with red claws.

I know the tragic ironies of the preoccupation with the self; the over-concentration upon the health of the self which ends in hypochondria. Viktor Frankl has warned against the consequence of such super-reflectivity upon the self. Said the fox to the centipede: "In what succession do you move your legs?" And the centipede grew paralyzed, immobilized by hyper-reflectivity.

I know the false promises of instant community formed out of brief encounters with intimate strangers. But the success or failure of these groups do not concern me. What concerns me is the hunger of our people which the Jewish religious community does not seem to be able to satisfy. Criticism is important; but it is not enough. Their failures are not our successes

Theirs, we say, is a commitmentless communion. And ours?

Theirs is a skin-deep culture of contacts. And ours?

Have we a more compassionate community to offer them?

Is there within the synagogue, the temple "family,” a place where the need for emotional honesty can be expressed?

Is there a group for those who would unburden themselves of the normal crises we all face; to find support and relief in confession and sharing their concern with others?

Can they tell of "peak experiences" in synagogue encounters – at membership meetings, at minyan, at Board meetings, at services? Can they tell of hugging and embracing the other as friend?

Do we offer them out of the Jewish tradition some personal wisdom which can help them cope with their agonizing problems? Does our rich ritual life inform their personal lives?

Does halachic wisdom enter the crucial private lives of our people?

Or do we simply dismiss all this as secular affairs; individual, private concerns. Chukath hagoi – imitation of the gentile world. What has all this to do with halachah? With the keeping of the Sabbath and dietary laws? With the public agenda of our collective lives? With the texts the rabbinic seminarians have studied? Is it Jewish?

That is what Rabbah argued. When his father, Rav Hunna, wondered why his son did not attend the lectures of Rav Hisda, Rabbah replied that he was not interested because Hisda lectured about anatomy and hygiene, milay d'almah, secular things.

To which Rav Huna responded, "Rav Hisda deals with matters of health and you call them secular matters? All the more reason for your attending his lectures!" (T. Shabbat 82a)

SPLITTING THE JEW FROM THE MAN

In our own times, Abraham Joshua Heschel warned against such narrowness. Listen to his words. "Torah speaks in the language of men. But the sages have overlooked the man in the Jew. They gained no insight into his difficulties and failed to understand his dilemma. Ever generation has its own problems. Every man is burdened with anxieties. But the sages remained silent; they did not guide the perplexed and showed no regard for the new problems that arose."

These are Heschel's words; not the words of some unknowing, unfeeling outside critic of the tradition, but the descendant and teacher of rabbis.

The "man in the Jew": Have I in my desire to search out the Jewishly unique ignored the humanity of the Jew?

Have I in my desire to preserve the particularity of Judaism identified it exclusively – like Moses Mendelssohn – with geoffenbarte gesetze, revealed legislation, the ceremonial acts of ritual observance, and relegated the personal to the secular, universal order?

Have I, as Heschel charged the chazal, the sages, reduced the grandeur and pertinence of Judaism to "Is it permissible or forbidden, is it kosher or not?" And is that what is meant by declaring Judaism as a way of life?

The synagogue must respond to "the man in the Jew,” not by muttering the psycho-babble of the popularizers of encounter, and not by imitating the facile theology of the new secular religions; but not by ignoring the cry for attention of the man and woman in the Jew. "He who says Torah is one thing and the affairs of the world are another is as if he denies God" (Midrash Pinchas, chapter IV).

How are we to begin? We have been called people of the book, but it will not happen by books alone. There is no dearth of texts in Jewish life; there is a dearth of persons. I mean by this no anti-intellectualism, any more than the founder of the Frankfort Freies, Judisches Lehrhaus, meant to denigrate Jewish literature when he declared, "Books are not now the prime need of the day. What we need more than every are human beings, Jewish human beings."

Jews need Jews to be Jewish. Jews are hungry for the warmth and sympathetic intelligence of other Jews. Most Jews within the synagogue and outside the synagogue are not comfortable with Sanctuary Judaism. I speak not of the Jews of the "daily minyan" but of the overwhelming majority of our Jewish constituency: the affiliated, the unaffiliated, the disaffiliated. They are fearful of their ignorance and of their doubts about being Jewish. They have questions of all sorts – questions so elemental that they are embarrassed to raise them publicly. They are fearful of the institution.

Some remember the humiliation of being called for an aliyah and then stumbling and muttering the benedictions, and rejoicing when the ba'al-kriyah drowned out the stammering with a loud "amen".

Some remember hearing the rabbi speak about the beauties of the Shabbat and are ashamed to ask which comes first, the kiddush or the Motzi or the lighting of the candles.

Some remember hearing about the Brith Milah and are confused about the mystery and complexity of the rite that entails surgery and blood, mohel, sandek, kvater and kvaterin.

They wonder what the fuss is all about; what difference – philosophical, moral, psychological – could it make whether it is the eighth day or the third day, or whether it is a mohel or a doctor who performs the surgery.

Some wonder what great principle attends the kohen's questioning the father mai bait tefay at the pidyon ha-ben and the father's declaration that he prefers his first-born son to the five silver coins on the plate. They titter at the ceremonyk and now it is I who am embarrassed.

The "nice" ones do it for the sake of grandparents or for the sake of the children. The others simply skip over it. But both the nice ones and the others are not personally convinced that there is personal wisdom in these acts. The “nice" ones join but then remain hidden behind the skirts of the community, affiliate only to melt into the anonymity of the congregational crowd, pretend that belonging is enough, attend a few services or public lectures to assuage their guilt and mark their public identity. The others cover the embarrassment of their ignorance or doubt by attacks on the vulgarities of institutional religion and the high cost of affiliation. In any event, both remain unreached, ignored and ignorant.

Their fears and fantasies about the synagogue and Judaism will keep them from the rabbi. Who can touch them? Who will reach out to them person to person? Who will talk with them? Who will befriend them?

Neither books nor scholars in residence nor adult education classes can touch these frightened Jews who represent the major constituency of our Jewish community.

Nor can the rabbi himself, however conscientious, meet their needs. For what they crave is intimate, personal, non-threatening supportive relationship with Jewish persons. And speaking for myself, I know I have neither the energy nor the time to personally satisfy their real need.

Is there no one upon whom we can call to help us fill the vacuum of Jewish feeling and spirituality? Have we no allies to help us personalize and humanize the tradition: to relate personally to the married couples so attended to on the day of the wedding and so neglected after the honeymoon is over; to relate personally to the newly affiliated families who would be ready to create a Jewish ambience in their homes; to counsel personally with expectant parents confounded by half-superstitious rumors they pick up about the naming of the child and the ceremonies of brith and pidyon; to help the proselyte in our midst, so uncertain of his or her way in the synagogue and in Jewish life; to assist in the forming of a havurah and enriching its life? Or is this all to fall upon the Rabbi's shoulders, and then because no single person can attend to this, is it to gnaw away at his conscience?

THE JUDAIC PARA-PROFESSIONAL

We are not so helpless or alone. There are Jews within our synagogues who want to do more with their lives than attend public lectures or sit at endless meetings or usher. There are Jews who can understand the challenge to Jewish life and would respond to a call to serve Jewish life; would respond to a serious program based upon classic Jewish purpose – to understand, to listen, to learn in order to teach, to observe and fulfill in love all the teachings of Thy Torah.

I propose for consideration a program which each of us can undertake individually or in partnership with other colleagues – for the training of Judaic para-professionals.

- A program, under our rabbinic supervision, for the training of lay men and women willing to tithe their talents and energy for the purpose of entering the lives of our fellow Jews who can only be reached personally by their peers.

- A para-professional Judaic program to help us transmit, on a personal level, the Jewish art of celebration and Jewish chochmah for their personal lives and for the lives of their families.

Consider the emergence in the last few decades of para-professionals of all kinds. Paramedical, paralegal, paraprofessional psychological counselors, lay people, trained so as to extend the influence of the professionals in the community and to help the professionals use their energy and talents more effectively. Why not para-rabbinics? Is the rabbinic vocation less demanding, less complex, less worthwhile than these others? Does Judaism need no help? Do rabbis need no help?

There is much untapped energy and idealism in our laity. For the sake of Judaism and our sacred tasks, that laity cannot be allowed to remain as passive critics, spectator and audience outside the circle of commitment. They must be brought into our confidence, to share the gravity of our calling and to help us. We cannot afford to continue the distance which grows between us. Rabbis need allies. We need collegiality with our laity.

I do not present this proposal to you on theory alone. Some five years ago, I witnessed in my own congregation, the formation of a para-professional counseling service, comprised of synagogue laity, and trained for two years by psychiatrists and social workers. Thirty-four of them, supervised by professionals – psychiatrists, psychologists, family counselors – all of whom volunteer their services, and service the congregation and community within the walls of the synagogue. Their altruism, their desire to learn in order to help, has gained for the synagogue new credibility as a community which cares about the man and the woman in the Jew.

RITES PASSAGE AND LIFE PASSAGE

Based on that model and on that experience, I have recently initiated a para-rabbinic program comprised of 26 lay synagogue members, mostly drawn from the Board of Directors.

They have committed themselves to a two-year program of study and to three additional years of service to the congregation. We chose for the first year of study the rites of passage because of two major reasons.

(A) Because there are few moments in the life of a Jew and in his family where in the observance of Jewish mitzvoth have so much wisdom to offer them personally; and

(B) Because I have seen in my rabbinic career the tragic waste of opportunity to transmit Jewish values to our people.

I confess that inadvertently but undeniably I have stood by to see mechanical routinization lay its dead hand upon the rites of passage. I have allowed the rite to become isolated from the living passage so that what remains of my rabbinic role has to do with answering questions about technique: where, how, when.

I have provided no occasion or time to explain the new stages, the new turning points which such rites of passage celebrate.

It is not for naught that the Brith is known to them as a circumcision, a surgical procedure, not as the child's covenant with God.

I have insisted that those divorced by civil authorities go to the Beth Din because there the religious community expresses its spiritual and moral sensitivity and wisdom. Does the Beth Din – the rabbinic council – deal with the emotions and ethics of separation, the responsibility toward the separated partners, toward the children and their education, towards the rebuilding of life, or is its justification satisfied with the punctilious writing of the twelve lines and the proper presentation of the scribe and witness? And do I hope thereby to convince Jews that a get is qualitatively different from a civil divorce?

Illustrations can be quickly multiplied of the neglect and perversion of Jewish spirituality when the rite is reified and the passage unobserved. The rites have nothing to do with the passage. Jews are not being instructed how to cultivate the Jewish virtues which attend each stage in the development of the Jewish human being. But life passages without rite passages are blind. Rite passages without life passages are empty.

CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGISTS

I read the literature of contemporary psychologists, e.g. Erik Erikson, Daniel Levinson, Roger Gould, and I am jealous for Judaism. For it is they, the "secularists" who in dealing with the life cycle wrestle with the spiritual and moral "virtues" of the growing self. It is they who discuss the need for basic trust, the balanced self, fidelity ad ideological commitment, generativity and altruistic concern. It is they who deal with the passages, turnings, crises of the journey. It is they who are physicians of the soul, and I who have become a master of customs and ceremonies. It is I who am relegated to the role of ritual functionary along with the caterer, florist, photographer and leader of the band.

It is not fair to me or to Judaism or to the Jewish community. And it has been going on for a very long time, despite the grandiosity attached to mara d'athra. Can we pay attention to rites without concern for the spiritual struggles of the passage, external gestures without interior affect. Am I part of the problem Isaiah described as mitzvoth anashim melumadah (Isaiah 29:13)?

It is not my fault. I am overwhelmed and outnumbered. The attribute of omnipresence belongs to God alone. I need, rabbis need allies in the sacred task of creating Jews. We need Jewish persons to relate personally and sympathetically to other Jews. We need Jews who can listen to other Jews and who can help them anticipate the kinds of concerns they will confront at the critical junctures of their lives. The ritual can be redeemed from perfunctory enactment when it is preceded and followed by living contact with Jews who care.

It will not be accomplished by noble urgings but it can be achieved by personal engagement; not by abstract rationale but by concrete doing. For people believe what the do, more than they do what they believe; people feel what they do, more than they do what they feel.

Judaism is doing. So let Jewish consciousness be raised and internalized through personal encounters between para-rabbinic counselors and expectant parents weeks before the ritual choreography of brith and pidyon; through Jews who are trained to explain the moral and spiritual presuppositions articulated through the rites; through personal meetings with the families about to celebrate Bar and Bat Mitzvah, which will deal not only with the logistics of the event but with some of the constant concerns of parents and adolescents in their transitional stages; through personal sessions with engaged couples to discuss etiquette of the wedding and the theology and morality of consecrated love; through personal involvement in assisting the mourner in arrangements for the funeral and attention to the grieving period.

The synagogue today is challenged by the secular religions to create a community of personal concern centered around the mitzvoth of every Jew's life-passage. In an age of loneliness, the synagogue has a golden opportunity to make of Jewish rites of passage the consequences, the celebratory outcome of Jewish activity. Jewish activity in which Jews as Jews help Jews through the normal crises which attend the stages of personal and family growth. The man in the Jew and the Jew in the man needs a compassionate ear, a responsive spirit, an informed intelligence in which to confide.

RESOURCE CENTER

Not all of these ends can be accomplished at once; nor should they fall upon all the para-rabbinics. In the course of their training, para-rabbinic students will discover special areas which are particularly meaningful to them and with which they feel more comfortable. The rabbi has not vanished from the scene. He remains the supervisor, the personal resource center of the para-rabbinics. He will enter situations where the issues warrant and according to the capacity of his energies. But he must be relieved of the pretense of ubiquity – for it ends with exhaustion, despair and self-accusation. Rather than scatter his energies to the public winds, let him concentrate his talents upon these men and women and train them to be partners with him in the creation of Jewish life.

Towards that end, I propose that the Rabbinical Assembly adopt and adapt the idea of a para-rabbinic or para-professional Judaic program and that an interdisciplinary commission of Rabbis, educators and psychologists be appointed.

A) to develop a literature of Jewish wisdom addressed to personal and familial life situations; e.g., sibling rivalry, sexuality and separation; aging, sickness and death; anxiety and the search for meaning and

B) that programs to train the para-rabbinic student be developed including a practicum designed to relate life-passages to rites of passage.

If it is true that a Jew can best be defined by what hurts him, Jewish institutions and Jewish leadership can be best defined by what they do to alleviate that hurt.

 

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